The Same Old Arguments

My Sunday mornings, as with most people, are generally a relaxed affair. As a (very) early riser on most days, my Sunday morning starts at 4am, before waking my younger daughter up to get ready for her early morning shift at the local supermarket. This means I am usually out of the house at 4.45am taking her to work. If the weather is not too wet, I then will often go for a walk along the Swansea Bay seafront at 8am before picking the same daughter up at 9am when her shift finishes. That is then usually followed by heading back to the Supermarket for 9.30am opening so that I can get whatever groceries I need and get through the tills when they open at 10am – leaving the rest of Sunday to do with as I please from the comfort of my home.

This particular Sunday morning, I was sitting at my PC catching up on the usual round of blogs that I like to read, with the TV on in the background. I don’t generally take much notice of what is on the TV when I am catching up on blogs, I just like to have it on as background noise. 

As it happens, the TV was on BBC 1 this morning, and Nicky Campbell’s “The Big Question” was showing. It’s not a program I usually take any notice of. In fact, the only previous time I have taken any nnotice of it was when Chris Snowden made an appearance a couple of weeks ago. But this morning was different.

They started a debate about whether pornography was harmful. Now normally, this wouldn’t grab my attention, but I started hearing very familiar arguments being aired and that is what grabbed my attention.

It began with some woman (no idea what her name was) who was from an organisation called ‘Object’ (no, I’ve never heard of it before either). She was your typical ‘Mary Whitehouse’-type telling everybody why (in her opinion) porn was wrong and that everybody should be agreeing with her. She sounded very like the way Deborah Arnott comes across with her anti-tobacco rhetoric, and this is the reason why the debate suddenly caught my attention. Not because of what this woman was saying, but because of her reaction when people spoke up against her. Just like Arnott, her reaction to dissention was to attempt to talk across everyone else. Fortunately, Nicky Campbell is quite adept at controlling these debates so that was not allowed to happen.

The first person to silence her happened to be a young lady sitting right behind her. This young lady is a porn actress and her reaction to being talked across was to ask this ‘Object’ woman if she had ever been in the porn industry. When the reply came that she had not, the young lady quite rightly pointed out that she therefore had no real-world knowledge of how the porn industry works and that she should listen to somebody who did have that experience.

The debate continued with the woman from ‘Object’ getting more and more flustered as other people spoke and disagreed or countered her views. One author, who has written books on the porn industry, quoted a story he had been told by a stripper who complained that members of this ‘Object’ organisation actively came to the strip-clubs and screamed abuse at the strippers about what they do for a living and that ‘Object’ were actively lobbying various North London councils to get the strip-clubs (and therefore their livelihood) shut down.

If you are a smoker, such a story should be familiar to you because it is the exact same tactics that ASH have been using against smokers, retailers AND tobacco companies.

Another young lady, a Professor at some North East University, came out with an absolute belter of a statement that caused the whole audience to break out in a round of applause.

Her statement was:

“What is more damaging is people coming along and telling other people what their morality should be.”

That was a scathing commentary on the likes of Object, and indeed ASH. For what are those bodies other than busybodies who are intent on poking their noses into everyone else’s business and trying to impose their own values.

I found myself nodding in agreement with this Professor, as I suspect would every smoker, vaper & drinker. We are all well-used to such people constantly poking their noses into what we like to do in our private lives and lecturing us on why we are wrong, that we should not be doing that and the harms we are doing to ourselves, despite us all being in full possession of the facts and still being happy to continue with our ‘frowned-upon’ habit/enjoyment.

The last devastating statement came once again from the author, who said:

“Porn addiction is a non-entity dreamed up by scientists and researchers.”

To me, that was the nail being firmly whacked on the head by the hammer. Smokers & vapers are well-used to being lectured on how addictive Nicotine is by the ideological-driven tobacco control people. We all know there are reams of scientific evidence that points to nicotine in itself having no addictive qualities whatsoever.

So I had an interesting and unexpected diversion from my normal routine this morning. I could plainly see how the tactics that have been employed by Tobacco Control over the last 30 years is slowly seeping its way into other areas where the busybodies would like to poke their noses next.

This debate just happened to be about pornography, but we have all seen the same arguments used to justify regulation on smoking, vaping, alcohol, fast-food, sugar, salt, fizzy drinks. The list is endless and having got away with the lies in regard to smoking, these busybodies clearly think that is the way to go to get their other pet projects (i.e bans) off the ground.

...And what a joyless world that would be.

This morning’s episode of ‘The Big Questions’ can be found here.

The debate on Pornography starts at the 23:50 mark.

Watch it and see the parallels I describe.