After the December 2012 gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi led to her death, the Indian government faced renewed pressure to confront the age-old problem of sexual assault. Since then, other heinous stories have emerged. The four-year-old daughter of laborers who was dumped in a field and died of cardiac arrest a few days ago. A five-year old raped and tortured in New Delhi. According to Neeraj Kumar, police commissioner in New Delhi, reports of rapes have doubled since December and reports of molestation have gone up six-fold.
While the recent spotlight on sexual assault holds the promise of government intervention for victims after years of inaction, India’s Supreme Court last week considered one proposed solution — banning pornography.
After all, according to India Ink, porn is no small matter in India. They report that New Delhi holds the distinction of being the city with the highest-worldwide percentage of searches for “porn” last year — second to Dallas, Texas.
The proposed ban on pornography is simple. According to the wording in the petition, pornography risks “peace of mind, health and wellness, happiness and potential.” The petitioner, Kamlesh Vaswani, an intellectual property rights lawyer who claims to have seen pornography adversely affect his hometown of Indore says that “most of the offenses committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography.”
It’s hardly a new opinion. You’ll find people across the globe who blame porn for a multitude of societal ills. But this particular patriarchal initiative does nothing to solve the problem of sexual assault. Instead of actually focusing on real steps that would combat sexual assault, it’s simply serves the purpose of a red herring.
Opinions on pornography are not nearly as one-sided as Vaswani and his supporters would like to think. Porn finds supporters in not just men — but also women and feminists. Whether we like it or not, porn is here to stay, and all the Vaswanis in the world can’t keep it off the smartphones of people across India — both men and women. Remember how the Prohibition turned out?
Banning porn isn’t the answer to decreasing sexual assault. Creating legislative safeguards that law enforcement actually enforces will decrease sexual assaults. Carrying out sentences will decrease sexual assaults.
Talking about porn will only do one thing — distract us from actually addressing the problem.
