Given the title of this piece, a disclaimer is in order so that no one would be excessively misled. This is a family paper and one should not expect from this piece anything that is not consonant with family reading. However, a discussion of this subject is in order for a number of reasons.
The crusading lawyer Charles Rembar, following his successful defence of Fanny Hill, immortalised the aphorism “pornography is in the groin of the beholder” in his 1968 book titled The End of Obscenity. Setting aside the biological fact that porn is more in one’s brain than in one’s groin, one can spin that aphorism, stating that “pornography is in the home of the beholder”.
This was never as true as it is today. Porn is all over cyberspace, which is easily accessible from our desktops at home, or from the smartphone we carry in our pockets. The pervasive presence of porn is the first reason why it should be discussed.
A Google search comes up with 78.8 million entries. It is estimated that there are nearly 25 million porn sites worldwide and they make up 12 per cent of all websites.
Sebastian Anthony, writing for ExtremeTech, reports that the biggest porn site on the web – which I will leave unnamed – receives 4.4 billion page views and 350 million unique visits per month.
There are no official statistics I know of about the use the Maltese make of porn sites. According to the Maltese search engine firstmalta.com, the top three searches by Maltese users are porn sites. Although other sources such alexa.com do not indicate such a massive use of porn sites, I think it is fair to assume that use is made aplenty.
The reason that inspired this commentary was the recent news item informing us that the largest Scandinavian hotel chain, Nordic Choice Hotels, has decided to remove pay-TV porn movies from all its 171 hotels. In recent years, the provision of this kind of service had become a staple part of the menu in most hotels.
Many probably remember the local controversy about porn in hotels stirred in 2010 by the then Labour MP Adrian Vassallo. Unfortunately, Dr Vassallo had shot his campaign in both its feet when he said he would rather live in Iran and riot in the streets to defend his religion than live in a country where pornography was available in hotel rooms.
Many, including those who don’t use porn, protested in disbelief. Who wants to live in Iran?”
Besides, Dr Vassallo was not lobbying hoteliers to take the plunge and pull the plug but he was pushing the government to take this step. This was also seen by many as a bit too much. Lobbying the industry to take an action is different from pushing government to legislate in the same direction.
It is ironical that a company in liberal Sweden decided to call it a day. I live in hope that local ‘liberals’ will not dub them ‘dinosaurs’ as they did Dr Vassallo.
This will not be a very appropriate appellative considering that the company taking this decision is not run by troglodytes controlled by some medieval curia, to use another favourite ‘insult’ that local ‘liberals’ love to hurl at whoever crosses swords with them.
The decision Nordic Choice Hotels took pulls the carpet from beneath pseudo-liberals, as this is just one in a series of innovative policies adopted this company.
In 2006, for example, they were the first hotel chain to introduce a smoking ban in all their rooms. They are also very active in the area of environmental protection, so much so that they took part in the projects of the Rainforest Foundation and also introduced ecological breakfasts to all their hotels.
The immediate prelude to the ‘ban porn’ decision was last year’s commitment by more than 2,500 of the hotel chain’s employees who voted to support the Unicef project Free to Grow.
This project aims at giving children who are victims of violence, abuse and sexual exploitation a safer everyday life in line with the UN Millennium Goals is to make sure children have a safe childhood.
Petter Stordalen, the owner of Nordic Choice, said that “1.2 million children are victims to trafficking annually. Seventy per cent of these are sexually exploited. Children are sold to both prostitution and the porn industry. Through Free to Grow, we want to contribute to the important work Unicef is doing to combat this problem.”
The biggest porn site on the web receives 4.4 billion page views and 350 million unique visits per month
The passage of Nordic Choice from their support for Free to Grow to ban porn from their hotels was a logical and natural one. Stordalen added that he believes that withholding support for an industry (such as porn) that contributes to the trafficking of children was a natural part of the social responsibility of Nordic Choice.
The list of reasons given by the porn industry to justify their business sounds as if nothing better than porn has befallen the human race.
They say that pornography is about a respectable use of one’s right for free speech. Others give it a social dimension, stating that it is about helping couples who have sexual problems. Others say that it is a harmless aid aimed at enhancing sexual pleasure.
Stordalen is right on the mark when he took the brave decision he took, stating that the porn industry is mostly (not to say exclusively) about the exploitation of the many by the few.
Quite naturally, there would be those who do not feel exploited, or in fact, are not exploited, theirs being a truly free choice. These are in the minority.
There is a lot of research and common sense knowledge which shows that there is nothing romantic about pornography. It is an exploitative industry, (im)pure and simple.
Strodalen took a financial risk when he decided to put principles and values about monetary concerns. Is our local hotel industry courageous or principled enough to show the same level of social responsibility as shown by Nordic Choice?
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt