When is pornography a sign of women’s progress?

It was a jolt to stumble across a debate on pornography recently (on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, of all places, a radio show first introduced for post-war-era housewives). The theme: does pornography empower women? The program was linked to the sweeping success of the book and film”50 Shades of Grey,” which has, despite mixed reviews, filled the cinemas of the world with audiences avid to see the way in which it realized women’s sexual fantasies.

The panel, all women, was severely divided: Two thought pornography did empower, two thought it an abomination, forcing women into a kind of virtual sex slavery, pouting and posturing to serve male lust. The star of the panel was Pandora Blake, who takes part in and produces pornography aimed at women, serving her own fantasies. She had recently returned from the Berlin Porn Film Festival, where, she said, more than half of the films’ directors had been women. She was articulate, frank and funny. And her attitude reflected something profound: That women were taking their share of perhaps the most male-controlled industry on earth.

A large part of those present had been convinced of the empowerment argument, or were discreetly fessing up that they indulged, or wouldn’t mind indulging, themselves.

But for the shifting attitudes among women, the media and sexuality shown during BBC’s debate, other parts of the world remain firmly adrift in the past.

A day after the Woman’s Hour debate, a friend linked me in to the film "India’s Daughter” – made by the British actor and documentary maker Leslee Unwin, which has gone viral on the net and that brought shock and anger  to millions outside India as well as in.

The documentary tells the story of a rape which has become famous worldwide, because of the hideous violence, and the huge demonstrations that followed it. Jyoti Singh, a 23-year old medical student, going home from the cinema with a male friend in Delhi, was beaten and gang raped by six men, an iron bar inserted into her vagina, her entrails bursting out. She and her friend, also beaten, were thrown out of the bus in which the rape took place, taken to hospital and then transferred to the world’s most advanced trauma unit in Singapore. Jyoti died. One of the murderers, on death row with three of his fellows, was clear in an interview for the film that it was Jyoti’s fault. She should not have been out at night, he said, and not been out at all with a non-family member. Being raped, she should not have struggled. If she hadn’t, she would not have been beaten, he said. We were looking for entertainment, he said: "Everyone deserves entertainment”.

The two lawyers for the defense were worse — in that they were educated men, experts in the law. "Women,” said one, "should not be put on the street like food”- or someone will snap it up. "We have the best culture,” said the other. "There is no place in it for women.” After the judgment, one of the lawyers, enraged, said that had his daughter gone out like Jyoti, he would have set fire to her.

Between a merry, spirited argument about pornography for women and the drunken horror visited on a young medical student in a Delhi bus there is more than a gulf. There’s a world of work to be done by a state which prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy.

Our interconnected world brings the two together in the virtual world of the media. At least the shock of the contrast may jolt some change.

(blogs.reuters.com)