Clive Hamilton the Net Nanny

Guess who really kick started the current push for mandatory Internet Service Provider (ISP) level filtering? No, it wasn't those wretched Christian fundamentalists; it was Clive Hamilton  and the Australia Institute (of which Hamilton was until recently executive director).

They launched their campaign back in 2003 with a deliberately targeted media splash based on some rather spurious research supposedly documenting the evil effects of porn on Australian youth (more detail here).

This is all written up on the Electronic Frontiers Australia website (here and here), but has remained unmentioned (as far as I can see) , by most of the "leftish" opponents of the scheme.

Back in 2003, Hamilton did manage to get the attention of the Howard government and Senator Alston promised to look into it: Internet Porn Filters May Become Compulsory.

Following the launch of the Hamilton/Australia Institute campaign for mandatory filtering, various conservative and religious "family oriented" groups also joined in. These groups made extensive use of the Australia Institute material in their lobbying on the issue.

Nevertheless, in 2004 the idea of ISP-level filtering was rejected by the Howard government:

Given the limited benefits of an ISP-level filtering system, the costs of a mandated requirement to filter do not appear justified.

While Howard remained PM, the only action taken was the establishment of the Net Alert website which provided advice about net safety and free downloadable filters, for those who wanted them. Shortly before the 2007 election, the Liberal Party tried to capture the vote of the Christian Right by offering to fund and enforce ISP-level filtering, but only for those who wanted it (ie it was a non-mandatory filtering proposal). That was as far as it went under Howard.

However with the election of the Rudd government last November, the Hamilton/Australia Institute campaign was finally able to bear fruit. The ALP under Rudd is in fact far more moralistic and authoritarian than the Liberals ever were. In his election campaign, Rudd quite consciously targeted "market fundamentalism" on the basis that it undermines traditional family values. He publically (and opportunistically) embraced some of the communitarian ideas of David McKnight author of "Beyond Right and Left") in his speeches to the intelligentsia, noting in his November 2006 lecture at the Centre for Independent Studies (at which he was introduced by McKnight), that:

... market fundamentalism has split the political right down the middle along the traditional fault lines of conservatives versus liberals and (how) this in turn provides Labor with fresh political and policy opportunities for the future.

Hamilton like McKnight believes that capitalism has made us too wealthy and too free. In a number of his books, he has hijacked part of the earlier (and far more interesting) analysis developed by Daniel Bell in his 1976 book "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism", arguing that economic growth engenders a consumerist mentality which destroys "normal" human relationships, creates the desire for instant gratification, manipulates us in ways over which we have no control, gives us freedoms which are bad for us and so on. We would be happier and morally better if we were poorer it says.

Hamilton's crusade against pornography is driven by standard political correctness (it "objectifies women", "subverts healthy sexual relationships", "incites male violence" etc), as well as by a more generally puritanical attitude toward sex. He rails against the "pornographication" of everyday life and chastises the libertarian-left for continuing "to invest so much in the freedoms won in the sixties":

The ideas of the libertarian left have become a reactionary force, for they have substituted an uncritical defence of the freedoms won in an earlier era for a real politics of social change...

Like young people everywhere I thought we were freeing ourselves from the shackles of oppressive convention and sexual hang-ups. We thought we were creating a new society and we knew our opponents were being defeated. The conservative establishment lost cause after cause and could no longer sustain the institutions of social convention. Victorian morality, women's oppression, and the unbearable constraints of social convention. But while the battle against social conservatism was being fought and won, the real enemy was getting on with business and savouring the new commercial opportunities that the radicals were opening up...

In the 1950s middle class respectability may have been oppressive but it carried with it a certain deference. Women are the subject of far more sexual objectification now than they were in the 1950s, although men have become more adept at concealing it. And even the need to conceal has been discarded by the crass exploitation of "girl power". Why should a young man pretend that he doesn't lust after the young woman who has just burned him off at the traffic lights, when nubile popstars thrust their groins at the camera and declare "more power to us"?

The research conducted by the Australia Institute /Hamilton and Dr Michael Flood concludes that internet porn is a social evil associated with increased levels of mysogyny among young Australian males. (There's a critical account of it on the EFA website). However as far as I know, there is no empirical evidence that Australian men have deteriorated in their attitude to women, and furthermore there is a reasonable body of research which has concluded that access to porn is either neutral or actually positive in its social impact. The work of Dr Alan Mckee (eg Net Porn Good for you and What do people like about porn? Everyone knows the answer to that) is an example in point.

Hamilton is of the view that pornography/erotica which depicts any form of sexual violence is clearly dangerous and likely to have negative social effects. He's very worried about porn which depicts things such as men ejaculating on women's faces, double penetration, male-female anal sex, bondage, rape scenes and so on. "Normal" sex as defined by Hamilton should be...well, I don't know quite what...but very politically correct and restrained. He wants the government to find a way of censoring our fantasies.

The unfortunate fact for Hamilton is that it is not only men who look at on-line material which depicts sexual interactions of a very "non-vanilla" type. Many women report being drawn to fantasies about "rough sex". These women are clear that in real life they have no desire whatsoever to be the victim of non-consensual sexual violence, but nevertheless they enjoy the idea of being safely able to engage in sexual encounters which satisfy various primitive desires. It's possible that some of this even has a biological basis. (I hesitate to theorise about this however. The whole area of human sexuality is such a complex mix of primitive urges, emotional needs, and our higher level needs for connection on a mental level, that at present we don't have the tools to tease it apart).

In any case, we have laws about real life non-consensual, violent sex and I find it outrageous that people like Hamilton would like the State to regulate material which allows people to explore the fantasies which turn them on.

There is oodles of material out there showing that women appreciate having access to porn. Just a couple of examples:

• The blog of pro-porn activism; and
• Consuming porn will not turn you into a violent degenerate. Helen Razer is living proof.

Of course there's a lot of porn around which is distasteful, boring, superficial and (to me) very off-putting. But I don't have to look at it, and if our young people come across it either accidentally or as part of their natural curiosity, I don't believe that it will create dangerously "unhealthy" sexual appetites.

Hamilton really ought to be taken apart for his role in attempting to impose his own morality on everyone else. His role in this has been far more significant than that of the Christian right.

While he's correct when he says that market capitalism has a shallowness which leaves us with an "emptiness" and a desire for deeper, more meaningful lives, his moralistic call for people to accept lower living standards and his (very serious) attempt to have the State step in to regulate various atavistic desires, is just reactionary. The yearning "for something more" is exactly the impulse that will one day lead people to want to step up, take responsibility and run things themselves. I’m convinced that they won't decide that they want to be poorer and have less freedom.