Opinion: Porn Always the Boogeyman

As 2025 winds down, we begin to look at our End of Year retrospectives with the state of Porn around the world being at the top of mind. This year has been brutal for adult entertainment as the War on Porn continues to ramp up. More states in the US implemented, passed, or upheld age verification laws. As did Italy, France, and the UK, with Australia soon to follow. The European Union has launched an investigation into major porn platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA) for breaches of the law.

Not to mention the proposed laws from all over the world, ranging from restrictions and regulations to outright bans, that have been floated. Censorship leaked into video games as the major digital platforms mass removed adult-themed games, citing compliance with policies of payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. The social media platform Discord was also made to implement ID verification under the UK's Online Safety Act, which also saw a major data breach this year. One day, we can get into who is behind these anti-porn pushes or the efficacy of these restrictions and regulations, but for today, I want to get into the main arguments against porn.

You can make the counterargument that, despite that, people are still learning about sex from porn. However, that says more about the poor state of sex education than it does porn. If people are looking to porn to learn about sex, then that’s a failure of teaching them sex education. You can’t put that on responsibility on porn’s shoulders. That’s like getting mad at Hollywood for showing The Rock and giving people unrealistic body expectations. (Am I referencing The Fast and the Furious franchise too much today?) We don’t need to ban porn; we need to get over society's collective hang-up around sex and improve sex education.

That’s not to say porn can’t or doesn’t have negative effects on people. If you are putting up a Goon Cave to Rara Anzai to edge for 6 hours, then you’ve got a problem (one of those being finding a better JAV actress). If your behavior is causing a negative impact on your mental health, home, work, or relationships, consider talking to a mental health professional.

It might be odd to think of, but yes, porn predates movies and even photography. Porn is nearly as old as civilization. It has appeared in all sorts of forms, from erotic paintings, fertility sculptures to cave paintings. The famous artist Hokusai, of the well-known The Great Wave off Kanagawa, also made The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife and more Shunga erotica. Call it fine art or smut, either way, humanity has been and will always be interested in sex.

Where there is a will, there is a way, and with porn, there has always been a will. All these regulations, removals, and bans aren’t going to stop people from wanting porn. Despite the fact that millions and millions of people enjoy it in some form, few people are willing to go to bat for it. There are many people who consume porn without it ruining their lives and have a healthy or at least not unhealthy relationship with it. Expect for you, Rara gooners, stop printing out pictures of her to stick on your walls or find someone newer.