Here’s a little chunk of an article I wrote for Sabotage Times this week:

“There’s a lot of pornography out there. From the moment one of our ancient ancestors thought to scrawl a picture of a spunking cock on his (or her) cave wall, humans have sought to depict their sexual desires in paintings, prose and any other medium that science has since progressed to make possible – after all, the porn industry has always been at the sweaty, panting forefront of modern technological advances. Some people like to be aroused vicariously, while some people like to exhibit themselves as the masturbatory muse of an unseen audience. Some people like to do both. This has been the case throughout the history of every known civilisation. From high art, through niche kink, to raw, basic wank-fodder, porn takes a whole spectrum of forms. Why, then, is the modern debate about porn reduced to a binary argument about whether porn – any porn at all – is a good or bad thing?

Again, there’s a lot of pornography out there. Some is exploitative, depressing and degrading for both those involved in making it and those doggedly struggling to bash one out in front of it. Yet some porn is quite the opposite – some porn can be a deeply satisfying experience, both to create and to view. Good porn exists for you, whatever your gender identity, orientation and personal peccadilloes may be. This is rarely addressed in any mainstream debate, however.

One such debate occurred recently on BBC2’s Jeremy Vine Show. I must point out that, without exception, every Jeremy Vine Show discussion and phone-in I’ve ever heard has resulted in my descent into immediate, weeping, face-clawing despair. Aside from the comments section of the Daily Mail website, the demographic that contributes to Vine’s discussions is the one that most shakes my faith that the human race has advanced at all since the times of those cock-drawing cavemen…”

Read the rest here, and please do rate it 5 stars to make me feel all warm, snuggly and thoroughly validated.