Tune in, turn off

    Without doubt, though, the Net has bred a new generation of electronic voyeur. Does society have an obligation to make access to material like this as difficult as possible? Some, especially those who associate pornography with abuse, would say yes. The trend over the past few years has been for online pornography to get steadily more hardcore. People become unmoved, turned off, by seeing the same old "man bonks woman" routine and seek something ever more daring, ever more out of the ordinary. Constant exposure to explicit and increasingly bizarre images may well blunt our reaction to what is acceptable behaviour and what isn't.

    It may be that levels of violence in our society have increased roughly in line with the levels of graphic violence in film and on TV. It may be that appropriate sexual behaviour is threatened by the increasing availability of explicit material. It may also be that neither of these is true. We can speculate but we don't know. I've often wondered why, if exposure to hardcore pornography leads to sexual abuse, more censors are not appearing before the bench on serious charges? (Maybe it is just the rest of us who are affected by pornography.)