Sir, - It seems to me that the central point on which Mr Culhane's argument (February 15th) rests is that pornography is a value-free representation of sexuality. It is with this belief that I take issue.
Far from reflecting what is "normal and healthy", as Mr Culhane puts it, the pornography available in newsagents promotes a narrow, skewed and deeply conservative view of sexual relations between men and women. Pornography casts women as desirable and passive objects, men as active possessors and observers. There is no room in mainstream pornography for women's perspective, for expressions of active female desire. Women characters in porn images/stories are chosen, they do not choose.
It is in this regard that pornography has been linked to rape. Not that pornography causes rape, but that it defines a social environment where men can imagine that women are passive beings, stripped of individuality, on whom sex is enacted.
Pornography undermines gender equality. It encourages men to picture women primarily as sexual objects, regardless of the context. It provides men with a vocabulary of images of women posing as sexually willing secretaries, police and so on, thus serving to undermine professional women. I am in favour of sexual candour. I agree that our inhibited ways of dealing with sexual matters have caused great damage to our community - witness the Magdalen Laundries, the number of secret abortions, the abuse of children and countless other damaging features of Irish culture.
However, I believe that the growth in the pornography trade, with its demeaning and narrow-minded conception of man as sexual aggressor and woman as passive object, is a symptom of this sexual repression and not its antidote. There is a world of difference between liberated, active, inquisitive sexuality and the consumption of pornography.
The pornography trade in Ireland is still at a relatively early stage of development. I believe we should take this opportunity to strive for a community where sex is not dirty, or tainted with power or violence, but a free and active statement of desire on both parts. A first step in this direction is to regulate and monitor the trade in pornography. - Yours, etc., Adam May,
Great Strand Street, Dublin 1