UK government consultation on porn age verification

Hi James,

my partner and I are big fans of your blog, please keep up the good work 🙂 Based on your opinions on porn and sex ed, I thought you might be interested in the ongoing government consultation concerning age verification for porn sites. The article I link to on my tumblr has a very good analysis of why this is a terrible idea, but it boils down to this:

The first problem with the government plan is that the technological and political structure does not exist to implement it. They might as well legislate for unicorns.[…]

But aside from the fact that what it is doing is impossible and that it tries to implement that which it only just finished dismantling, the consultation is also staggeringly hypocritical. Just last week, David Cameron was reported to have personally intervened to stop making sex education classes compulsory in all schools.

These classes are vital. We need to teach children to approach porn critically. We cannot stop them watching it – that’s not technically possible – but we can teach them what it is, why pornography and reality are not the same thing, and what the distinction is between fantasy and real human relationships.

It would be great if you could give this a signal boost. I just filled in the survey and it only took me a couple of minutes.

Thanks a lot!