“It seems that pornography now plays a large role in shaping community beliefs and misconception about consent.” - Former Queensland Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo
The porn trade has had a leave pass to exploit young women because its apologists in the media and politics have always claimed it is harmless.
The #MeToo movement has dented that perception and a reckoning has begun but still attitudes remain hard to shift.
But there’s evidence we are slowly joining the dots between violence against women and porn.
“Porn paving way to sexual assault: leader of Queensland taskforce” was the headline in yesterday’s Australian newspaper online.
The link between porn and domestic violence will be probed by former Queensland Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo as part of a government review of consent laws.
“It seems that pornography now plays a large role in shaping community beliefs and misconception about consent,” McMurdo told The Australian.
“With the ready availability of the internet on mobile devices, there has been a dramatic increase in young people and children accessing pornography in recent decades.
“Mainstream heterosexual pornography often contains high levels of violence and female degradation.
“It can depict sexual interaction where consent is ‘assumed rather than negotiated’,” she said.
Anyone raising concerns like this in the past was quickly labelled a morals crusader and dismissed.
But porn has reached such epidemic proportions with the average age of exposure to it now below 10, it’s toxic consequences can no longer be ignored.
Several states in the US have declared pornography a public health emergency, such is its effect on women and girls.
Expect pornography proponents such as Victorian Parliamentarian Fiona Patten to push back on the work of McMurdo.
Patten, first elected under the banner of the Sex Party (now Reason Party), was the industry lobbyist for the sex trade in Australia, the Eros Foundation.
The tide is slowly turning as the truth emerges.
Lyle Shelton is a political activist and commentator. You can support his work by donating here.