A team of Australian academics, conducting a taxpayer-funded study of Internet porn, has apparently concluded – based on surveying over a thousand porn-surfing Netizens they say must be accounted, if the country plans to mandate automatic Net filtering – that Net porn is good for you.
"The surprising finding was that pornography is actually good for you in many ways," said Alan McKee, leading the "Understanding Pornography in Australia" study with fellow academics Catharine Lumby and Kath Albury. "When you look at people who are using it in everyday life, over 90 per cent report it has had a very positive effect."
McKee told the Australian press that Australian porn surfers say it teaches them to be "more relaxed" in their sexuality and that their marriages were healthier. Not to mention, McKee continued, porn made them think about another person's pleasure while being less judgmental about body shapes, according to one news report.
"The more we try and turn porn into something that's seen to be bad and has to be kept away from families," McKee said, "the more problems we might be causing for ourselves." But he wouldn't go so far as to say it was good for children, telling reporters that's "an issue we can't answer – should children who are 16 years old be allowed to be sexual."
The McKee-Lumby-Albury report isn't exactly going to make them friends in the government. Australia Institute executive director Clive Hamilton, who wrote the filtering policy now being considered by the government, rejected the study findings. "No man who regularly uses pornography," Hamilton told reporters, "can have a healthy sexual relationship with a woman. The question is how much are we willing to pay to protect our children from damaging pornographic images?"
The Australian Internet industry isn't exactly thrilled about proposed mandatory filtering, saying it wouldn't work except to punish smaller Internet service providers. Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos told reporters there were technical and economic consequences at stake.
