Though the ordinance was struck down and later declared unconstitutional, this heralded the gathering of momentum of an anti-pornography movement. It remains at the root of a major feminist faultline They wrote an amendment that opponents saw as a de-facto ban, articulating sexually explicit material and its production and sale, as a violation of women's rights: "the sexually explicit subordination of women, graphically depicted” as "a form of discrimination on the basis of sex." In 1983, in the United States, feminist scholars Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin were brought in to draft amendments to the Minneapolis city civil rights ordinance, as a response to growing concern about the city's adult entertainment district. Indeed, the debate about pornography has been raging for decades in our own backyard - it remains at the root of a major feminist faultline. The link between anything considered 'pornography' and 'harm' has been made time and again. Historically, content which expresses women's desires or sexualities, or indeed any expression of desire and sexuality considered non-normative, has been first-up on the chopping block, labelled 'obscene'. Restrictions on such platforms, which are meant to curtail material considered 'sexual' and therefore deemed harmful, have categorically been shown to unfairly affect LGBTQ+ content and content by women. YouTube is just one of the major internet corporations who have come under fire for the censorship of LGBTQ+ content under restrictions meant to curb content considered pornographic or offensive. And it is not just governments who justify censorship by claiming 'obscenity'. Of course, it's not the first time something that is being instrumentalized in the service of women's expression, particularly women's sexual expression, has been black-marked as dangerous and obscene. In Indonesia, TikTok ran into major trouble when the government accused it of disseminating 'pornographic' and 'blasphemous' content.īut researchers in Sri Lanka have recently pointed to how TikTok is being used as a platform for performance and play by women. India followed suit, calling for a ban on TikTok over 'pornography concerns' in April this year, though the ban has now been lifted. The move came after a petition citing 'obscenity' was filed by a civil society organization with the Bangladeshi High Court in November 2018. ![]() Michel Foucault (as interviewed by Bernard-Henri Lévy in 1977)Įarlier this year, the telecommunications minister of Bangladesh declared a 'war on pornography', blocking access to around 20,000 websites and banning TikTok, the Chinese-owned video production and sharing app. ![]() "Sexuality could indeed be spoken of, spoken of a great deal, but only in order to forbid it." Image description: Illustration of body and various objects.
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