LONDON — The U.K.’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation (APPG-CSE) today released a report repeating myths and stereotypes peddled by anti-porn activists and recommending a wide-ranging state crackdown on sexual expression online.
The parliamentary group report is entitled, “Pornography regulation: The case for Parliamentary reform.” The group was chaired by MP Dame Diana Johnson (Labour, Kingston upon Hull North).
Johnson tweeted “The APPG-CSE has today published its report on Pornography. Its findings are stark. We call on the government to urgently review laws on pornography to start to combat violence against women and girls.”
The U.K. Parliament's official website describes all-party parliamentary groups such as APPG-CSE as "informal cross-party groups that have no official status within Parliament. They are run by and for Members of the Commons and Lords, though many choose to involve individuals and organizations from outside Parliament in their administration and activities."
The APPG-CSE promoted its report by highlighting the following summary points:
“1. The user base of pornography is highly gendered.
2. Violence against women is prolific in mainstream pornography.
3. Illegal content is freely accessible on mainstream pornography websites.
4. The pornography industry is characterized by market dominance.
5. Pornography fuels sexual violence.
6. Pornography fuels social and political harms against women and girls.
7. Mainstream pornography websites perpetuate racist stereotypes.
8. Allowing or enabling children’s access to online pornography is an egregious violation of child safeguarding.
9. Sexual coercion is inherent to the commercial production of pornography.”
The content and phrasing of the group’s findings is identical to the talking points of religiously inspired anti-porn lobbies and crusading groups such as NCOSE and Exodus Cry in the U.S.
Like the religious anti-porn groups, Dame Diana Johnson and her group invariably reduce adult content to a heterosexual, cisgender dynamic between coerced women as objects exploited by pornography and men as its “users.”
The group made the following recommendations to parliament:
"1. Make the regulation of pornography consistent across different online platforms, and between the online and offline spheres.
2. Criminalize the supply of pornography online to children, and legally require age verification for accessing pornography online.
3. Address pornography as commercial sexual exploitation, and a form of violence against women, in legislation and policy.
4. Legally require online platforms to verify that every individual featured in pornographic content on their platform is an adult and gave permission for the content to be published there.
5. Give individuals who feature in pornography material the legal right to withdraw their consent to material in which they feature being published and/or distributed.
6. Hold exploiters to account by making it a criminal offense to enable or profit from the commercial sexual exploitation of others.
7. Conduct a comprehensive review of laws on pornography and obscenity."
The recommendations would apply to whatever the U.K. government decides to classify as “pornography,” including sexual content currently on open platforms like Twitter and Reddit.
Unlike the U.S., the U.K. has no written constitution or explicit freedom of speech protections similar to the First Amendment.
As XBIZ reported, in April 2022 Dame Diana Johnson said she thought the much-delayed Online Safety Act "does not go far enough on the matter of protecting women’s bodies from sexual exploitation" and endorsed a preemptive crackdown on online porn.
Defining All Porn as Coercive, Exploitative and Criminal
The reasoning behind the report also makes it clear that the group led by Johnson considers all pornographic content exploitative and criminal, and that the ultimate goal would be the establishment of draconian state censorship for websites accessible from the U.K.
“There is a need for the Government to conduct a comprehensive review of all existing laws governing pornography production, distribution and consumption,” the report states. “The aim of such a review should be to identify gaps, weaknesses and inconsistencies in existing criminal and civil laws relating to pornography, and to provide options for reform. At the heart of this review must be the clear objective of preventing the multiple serious harms, as identified in this inquiry, that occur during the production, distribution and consumption of pornography.”
The review, the parliamentary group advises, “should address pornography first and foremost as a form of commercial sexual exploitation within a violence against women framework.”
The report quotes religiously motivated anti-porn crusader Laila Mickelwait, but fails to disclose her affiliation with controversial anti-porn ministry Exodus Cry.
Though supposedly addressing all adult content online, the report does not mention the words gay, lesbian, LGBTQ+ or trans.
The U.K. group also disclosed that its hearings devoted an entire day to a presentation by NCOSE activist Haley McNamara, who presides over the lobby's global outreach operation, the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation.
To read the full report, click here.