I just read a piece by Brigid Delaney on how universities were right to ban porn sites from being accessed on their wi-fi, as porn does not encourage youth to develop a healthy sexuality and might cause crime. Never mind, of course, that studies disprove these beliefs almost as often as they prove it. Who needs research at a university, after all?

Excuse me while I bang my head into a wall.

I believe that Delaney herself makes an important point when she says "students didn’t have to watch porn to objectify women – this objectification was already buried deep within the colleges’ DNA". Society at large regularly objectifies, silences, degrades and dismisses women. Porn is not, of course, immune from that, but it's not exactly the centerpiece of it either.

I'm certainly not in the business of wholeheartedly defending the adult industry- I've got plenty of feminist critiques of my own- but it's absurd to suggest that banning porn is the answer rather than frank discussions and actual consequences for boundary violations. It's an easier answer, absolutely, but I'll be pretty surprised if trying to stifle the masturbation habits of 18-22 year olds is going to have the end result of less pent up sexual energy.

Additionally, and I speak now as a fat queer kinky person... porn did WONDERS for me when it came to realizing that I was not alone in my fantasies. I realized that there were people who found my body desirable. That there where other queer people in the world having all sorts of sex in a variety of delightful ways.

I was not witnessing that sort of accessibility to diversity of passions in my "real life", my offline life, where my interest in kink and women could cause me to be at best laughed at and at worst violently hurt. College kids are not exactly pinnacles of compassion and open mindedness after all, especially around sex, and dating sites often declare unapologetically "no fats no fems" alongside their dick pics and crude language. I, of course, was both, the ultimate undesirable. Porn was a place where I saw people like me having sex and at least seemingly having fun. I needed that, needed access to Cyberdyke and No Fauxxx in my life so I felt seen.

I think about the effects a ban like this might have on the ever-increasing number of students who turn to sex work as a way of helping them pay their bills. Sure, the risk of discovery might go down, but will the risk of stigma increase? How will that secrecy impact the safety of student sex workers?

One of the comments on the original piece asked "what's academic about fucking?" There is some irony to this query, of course, as the same person cited studies that "prove" that porn is objectifying and harmful to women, so I guess fucking is academic as long as it's ANTI porn. Still, there's plenty of academia around sex, and has been for at least a hundred years. Ask Kraft-Ebbing that question, or Masters & Johnson, or Mirielle Miller-Young. Look at the Porn Studies series, or the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics. I regularly show porn at universities to illustrate points about authenticity, the gaze, censorship and obscenity- hell I just showed porn at the Royal Holloway at an academic conference last week. There's plenty academic about who and how and why we fuck, it's just not taken seriously because at the end of the day we're all still 12 year olds giggling at the nudie magazine we found in the bushes.

I live in a town where a billboard declaring "PORN KILLS LOVE" literally overshadows my house.  I would imagine that my inability to love would be news to my lovers, friends, and family, who would likely accuse me of too many feelings rather than not enough. Seriously, though, I am so sick and tired of the industry I am a part of being blamed for people's emotional laziness and unwillingness to work on their own shit. I have been a porn consumer my entire life, a performer for 5+ years, and working behind the scenes for 2, and guess what? I can somehow manage, through all that nudity and sex tainting my life, to be an upstanding and ethical human being.

It's not the porn, folks. It's you.