Ethics, the internet, and sexual imagination
Operation Ore was big news in the UK for a while. It was, in the words of the BBC, the largest police hunt of internet paedophiles there has ever been in that country. It started after the United States Postal Inspection Service passed to the UK police a list of more than 7000 people who had allegedly used their credit cards in order to access web sites featuring child pornography. To date, nearly 4000 people have been arrested in the course of the investigation.
It is, of course, a good thing if this investigation prevents the occurrence of harm to children. Nevertheless, it does bring to light a number of interesting and difficult questions about ethics, the internet and sexual imagination.
Paedophilia is normally taken to mean the sexual attraction of adults to children. The first point to make, therefore, is the obvious one that viewing child pornography is not synonymous with paedophilia. Indeed, it is difficult to see how it is possible to draw any general conclusions about a person from the simple fact that they have looked at pornographic images of children. Consider, for example, that such a person: might be a regular user of child pornography and also might pursue face-to-face sexual encounters with children; might have viewed these images out of curiosity, been shocked to find that they were sexually aroused by them, but have no intention of looking at them again; or might have looked at these images because they were curious about the internet, but have no particular interest in pornography.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the internet is a relatively new technology. Prior to its advent, possession of child pornography, correctly or incorrectly, was widely perceived to be a good indicator of a propensity to engage in the physical abuse of children. But the internet has removed many of the barriers which in the past might have deterred relatively casual “pornophiles” from amassing collections of photographs. Easier access means that increasing numbers of the simply curious will have viewed this kind of material. In sum, then, the relationship between the use of child pornography, paedophilia and child abuse is complex.
However, it is an important point that the absence of a sexual response when viewing pornographic images of children is not sufficient to guarantee that this activity is morally acceptable. There are apparently strong arguments which suggest that simply viewing child pornography is a moral wrong. For example, one such argument is that the supply of these kinds of images follows the demand for them, and that if people view these images – certainly if they pay for them – they are part of a process which necessarily involves children being harmed.
This is a persuasive argument, but it has its problems. For instance, whilst it is plausibly levelled at the person who regularly downloads child pornography from a commercial web site, it is much less convincing when applied to the person who occasionally downloads a picture from an internet newsgroup.
Also, there is a suspicion that the primary function of these kinds of arguments, regardless of their veracity, is to provide a rational underpinning for prior moral convictions. In other words, even if there was no harm associated with adults finding children sexually arousing, people would still think it wrong; but arguments which show that there <i>is</i> harm associated with these desires perform the useful function of solidifying this baseline moral commitment.
This line of thought raises another thorny issue which is integral to the debate about pornography on the internet. This concerns whether sexual imagination, <em>in and of itself</em>, is the kind of thing about which it is sensible to make moral judgements. For example, if a person fantasises that they are a rapist are they, <em>for those thoughts alone</em>, deserving of our moral condemnation?
Yes, is the answer suggested by the philosopher Gordon Graham, in his book <em>The Internet: a philosophical enquiry</em>. He argues that the causing of an outward harm is not the only mark of a moral wrong. “In an older language,” he writes, “there are gross appetites and interests. People can resist them, fail to do so or wilfully indulge them. Which they do is relevant to moral character, just as whether people’s thoughts about others are charitable or uncharitable, contemptuous or sympathetic, are morally relevant facts even if their outward treatment does not specially reflect these attitudes.”
As ever, though, these arguments are not conclusive. Most significantly, they appear to presuppose what they need to demonstrate; namely, that there <em>are</em> such things as gross appetites and interests where there is no outward harm. Also, it seems possible to come to the opposite conclusion to the one reached by Graham. For example, it doesn’t seem particularly counter-intuitive to argue that the person consumed by uncharitable feelings, who nevertheless behaves charitably, in some sense behaves heroically.
The fact that there are complicated arguments to be had about the internet, pornography and sexual imagination in no way mitigates the harm that some children suffer at the hands of pornographers and predatory child molesters. However, what it does mean is that it isn’t possible to arrive at the truth about the internet, child pornography and its consumers by uncritically taking the tabloid line, and indeed it seems the BBC line, that Operation Ore is about unmasking more than 7000 dangerous perverts.
Category: Ethics, Sociology | Tags: internet, sex 5 comments »
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I agree with you. The internet itself has lowered the relevance of such evidence. The clandestine efforts folks went through in the olden days of porn added perhaps rightly so, a suspicious overlay to the entire acquisition process. And while the supply and demand argument stand up in both cases. It does not strike me as totally genuine to infer a rise in supply would necessarily follow simply because a fairly fetishistic type of material, child porn, was deemed socially acceptable. Also, this is still sex we are talking about after all so really a moral stamp of approval is not something anyone much cares about. For example, I am not interested in gay sex the way the others may be. This topic has opened up over the years and we could say to an extent that homosexuality enjoys a pretty high moral acceptability rating especially compared to its deeply shameful closeted roots. Yet for myself I know my arousal rating on this material is still flat lining regardless of “supply”. Are there more actual gay people now than ever or just more out of the closet? I’m guessing the latter.
My point being (however round about) that moral thumbs up or down should not really be part of the child pornography debate. The law protects people. Cartoons of kiddy images obviously hurt no actual children, nor do they unleash new perverts. They are not even in the hate realm of regulated material because children can’t see it and thus be frightened or terrorized like say a racist cartoon in the newspaper where the offended party might see it. I’m being too flippant but blah ,who cares.. but it must be said: Kids can’t buy porn. Right? They won’t even see it or be emotionally damaged by it.
I realize We are desperately seeking an excuse to utter a collective “EEEWWW!” about child pornography. Me too…I mean God, How EEWWW can you get? On second thought you stay out of my sexual fantasies and I’ll stay out of yours. Things could get dicey and hypocrisy of this nature is the biggest turn off of all. When this material is deemed illegal as it sometimes is, the reason is because of actual exploitation of real humans or because it is relevant pursuant to a criminal investigation not just because it’s yucky…. Remember that’s why we call it case law. Oh yeah we almost forgot. Actual cases with facts and stuff.
Oh, and by the way. speaking of kids, grow up people, sexual fantasies are supposed to be gross. Hello? It’s just not naughty otherwise now is it? Those images are typically published in books know as medical journals. They serve a different purpose entirely. So much so that no one gives a hoot about the naked pictures contained therein.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz boring.
(sarcasm ya’ll. I’m only playin.)
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Thing is, though, it is possible to construct an argument to the effect that sexual fantasies can have a moral dimension even if they do not involve harm.
Take, for example, the case of a man who exclusively fantasises about violently raping women. I’m not sure that does not have moral dimension that is somehow linked to thoughts we have about good character, and so on.
Internet porn is kind of a case in point. If you check out a site such as YouPorn then you’ll find that it is filled with endless videos of women giving men blow jobs.
I must admit I do tend to think that this is indicative of the way that some men tend to view women’s sexuality (i.e., as subservient, etc).
It’s a complicated issue!
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
I’d like to take a look at this from a slightly different viewpoint, that of the child.
Whether the person viewing the image is doing so for personal sexual pleasure, or he just happened to type the wrong address into the bar – there is one thing that remains the same: someone, somewhere, has taken a child, put them in a provocative pose, and taken a photograph of them.
I’ve never actually looked at child-porn, so I can’t say how many of the images are just pictures of children, and how many are deliberatly posed images.
I think we can disregard the first case, if you find it sexually exciting to look at pictures of children, then there are millions of those out there with no pornographic connections what-so-ever.
The second case, however, is more terrifying. For each of these pictures a child’s life has been impacted.
I was sexually abused when I was younger. I’m not sure if there are any images of me out there, but I don’t put it past the abuser to have taken photos. This abuse has had implications on my entire life. I’ve not found it easy to get into a sexual relationship without severe flash-backs. I sometimes can’t sleep at night due to nightmares. I find myself constrained in public with the need to follow rituals to help me through the day. And I self-harm when the pain just gets too big. All this could be caused ot a child from a few photographs.
It actually doesn’t matter the reason behind the taking of the photos, a six year old doesn’t know the difference between being posed naked for an adult’s pleasure or for an adult’s profit. The resulting impact on that child’s life will be the same.
Should we legislate against child porn simply because some people look at it or fantasise about it – no. Should we legislate against it because it harms children – yes: and unfortunately the only way we can target distributors is to target users and go up from there.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
Sarah
As you say, that’s a slightly different question.
You’re offering a utilitarian justification for targeting consusmers of child pornography. Basically, your argument is that child porn causes harm, therefore, we must stop it being used.
The problem is that one can accept that argument, but still think there are further questions to be asked. Not least, the distinction between those people who look at child pornography in order to gain sexual pleasure and those who have looked at it, or to continue to look at it, for other reasons remains in place.
If that’s so, it follows that if you think that it is wrong, in and of itself, to find children sexually arousing (and many people do think this), then you need to get beyond the reaction that anybody who has looked at child pornography is repulsive (at least you do if you want your moral opprobrium to be correctly targeted).
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Jeremy
I apologise for my first post. It was a poorly worded argument created partly while my mind was elsewhere; let’s see if I can try better.
Firstly, I accept that the point of counting people criminals for accessing child-porn without taking into account the reason they accessed it is wrong. Pigeon-holing people is wrong for any reason: sexual fantasy, colour of skin, preferred football team. As I understand it, part of your argument is that it is harmful to some of the people targeted by the police who accessed the images for ‘acceptable reasons’ as they are judged as bad as those who are full-on child abusers. Without going into what is an acceptable reason, I agree with this point.
I also am concerned about ‘thought police’; there are people who are willing to jump on any bandwagon they can to control, judge, or make themselves look or feel ‘better’ than others. However, in this particular case there are a large number of people who are concerned not about the reason for looking at the pictures, but rather about the harm to the child.
Let’s look quickly at a different but related issue – how do you feel about putting out snuff films on the internet? Should these be freely available, or should we be looking at them carefully to see how to stop their production? And can there be an acceptable reason for watching one? I’m not saying there isn’t, I’m just can’t think of one off hand.
There are no easy answers: the internet has changed the way we can access information so much that the ethics of a decade ago are no longer relevant.
Discussions such as the one you have started here are very useful in examining our ethics, and adapting them for the new age. But any ethical argument must be look at the entire problem.
Judging everyone who access child-porn the same is bad; so is creating child-pornography. How can we build an ethical framework which encompasses both these issues?
And thanks for using the term opprobrium, I do love it when someone increases my vocabulary.