David Cameron's internet porn war won't put women off watching it

The announcement from David Cameron today about 'opt-in' porn restrictions and bans on particular material, such as rape scenes, is being heralded by some as a success for families. The hard campaigning on the subject, which kicked off in earnest following pieces in The Sunday Times and Psychologies magazine several years ago, shows what can be achieved by keeping definitions purposely vague, the better for scooping up all voguish moral panics as they come along.

At no point has anybody who sought to ban particular kinds of pornography ever sought to make a clear and distinct definition of what constitutes porn. Particular types of images are already illegal, such as child abuse images and depictions of real sexual crimes. What do the new regulations add of substance or value from either a morality or legal standpoint, apart from conflating the adult and consensual with the obviously deviant and criminal?

Moreover, the overweening concern about attitudes towards women is disturbing, not least because many such discussions treat women exclusively as victims or potential victims, with no more control over their own lives than toddlers. With the endless ongoing campaigns to ban boobs in the Sun or ban whatever type of porn is being presented as a cause for panic this year, no one ever asks - what if we ban this, and attitudes towards women don't improve? What then? Because there are plenty of places with considerably less sexual freedom and access to porn than here, and they are not exactly bastions of gender equality either.

One big assumption seems to be that only blokes will opt-in to porn, because the widespread myth is that only men watch it. Famously, one researcher who sought men for a study who had never watched porn had to give up on the project because he was unable to find any.

But women seek out hardcore content too. Not only in books like Fifty Shades of Grey, but online as well. Google search term statistics show “porn,” “free porn,” and “playboy” to be more likely to be entered by men than by women (96%, 97% and 86% male users, respectively). So far, so stereotype. Men outnumber women slightly for searches of “adult DVD,” “XXX videos,” and “sex toys”. The search terms “sex,” “sex chat,” and “sexy”? Those are equally as likely to be entered by women as they are by men. But then the surprise - women are more likely to type the search terms “adult sex,” “free sex,” and “cyber sex” into the search engine than men are.

What the searches demonstrate is the extent to which the internet has helped remove stigma for women who seek out erotica in much the same way that better lit, couple-friendly sex superstores encouraged buyers who were otherwise put off by old-style seedy private shops. Having to provide ID to access porn will not likely put off the male consumers, but will it put off the women? I suspect not.

The fact that women are porn consumers too is not something you hear a lot about - you're far more likely to hear shock stats about the number of 12 year-olds looking at porn than adult women, even though the latter category hugely outnumbers the former.

To those who have been following these campaigns as they developed, today's announcement from Number 10 has been inevitable for some time. What surprises me is the lack of imagination on the part of people claiming success: filters on some devices and services already block sexual health websites, informative blogs for young people, and LGBT resources. Do people really think these won't also be caught in the filters? And what outcomes could this potentially have in a country where provision of sexual education is - to put it mildly - inconsistent?

And for the silent majority out there of women who have watched porn and probably would do so again, will this herald a surge in signups to private browsing services? Possibly. But my guess is that lots of ladies will simply go back to that old faithful, lo-fi option: the paperback rack.