Online pornography involving women and children could be treated in all cases as commercial sexual exploitation, if recommendations by cross-party MPs are accepted by government.
CARE, the evangelical charity which campaigns for better online safety, has also urged the government to implement MPs’ recommendations. A recent inquiry led to parliamentarians concluding that existing legislation is ‘wholly inadequate’, and recommended that pornography ‘must’ be treated as commercial sexual exploitation and a form of violence against women. This approach has already been adopted in Scotland.
In its recent report, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Commercial Sexual Exploitation warned that explicit content is fuelling real-world sexual violence. It evidences multiple harms connected with the pornography industry and found that sexual coercion is ‘inherent’ to the commercial production of pornography, with exploitative and abusive tactics used to coerce women into performing.
