Banning Porn Is ‘Counter Productive,’ Says Australian ‘Sexademic’

Saying that porn is “an intricate part of our wider culture,” University of Western Australia professor Paul Maginn, a self-described “sexademic,” said that his recently completed study of Australia’s porn-viewing habits shows that attempting to ban porn in the country would be “counter productive,” and even “futile,” according to a report by The Sydney Morning Herald.  Australia is now one of several countries worldwide considering placing a ban on internet porn, as AVN.com reported. Under the current proposal, Australia would impose an “age verification” system that would block anyone from viewing porn sites who cannot prove that he or she is of legal age. “Porn is an intricate part of our wider culture; trying to ban it would be counter-productive, futile even,” Maginn told the Morning Herald.  His study, presented to the  State of Australian Cities Conference in the Western Australia capital of Perth,  found that the popularity of online porn has skyrocketed Down Under in recent years, with an increase of 205 percent between 2014 and 2017. The largest chunk of that increase comes from the growing popularity of viewing porn on smartphones, as opposed to desktop or laptop computers, Maginn found. In fact, 58.2 percent of porn viewed by Australians is accessed via cell phone, with another 15.5 percent on mobile tablets, such as the Apple iPad, according to the professor’s research. Maginn also found that 93 percent of traffic to the porn mega-site PornHub originates from the country’s five largest cities—though only about 70 percent of the Australian population lives in those cities. And what type of porn is preferred by Australians? Maginn found that “the majority of the categories of porn viewed across Australian cities reflect heteronormative sexual preferences and interests.”  Though “lesbian” and “threesome” porn were among the most popular in Australia, those categories reflect “classic stereotypical heterosexual male sexual fantasies,” Maginn said. He added that he hoped his data would be used to promote empirically based policy-making.  “Porn is often the canary in the coalmine for all sorts of concerns about the supposed breakdown of society,” he told the Morning Herald. “However policy decisions on porn are often grounded in political opportunism as opposed to systematic evidence.” Rather than banning or heavily regulating access to porn, Maginn called for efforts to increase “porn literacy” among both teenagers in Australia and their parents. Photo By Owen65 / Wikimedia Commons