This refers to the article “Freedom that must have limits” (April 29). While there is no credible evidence to link the rising number of crimes against women with easy access to pornography, we should not be oblivious to the negative impact an early exposure to pornography can have on the impressionable minds of children. Reasonable restrictions on access to pornographic material on the web with an objective to save children and women from sexual predators are indeed the need of the hour.
M. Jeyaram,
Sholavandan
The writer has given an irrelevant precedent from the U.K. which is about banning pornography in public places — I don’t believe anybody in our country is fighting for the right to display pornography in public places either. The example of Iceland is speculative, at best. One wonders how she came to such dire conclusions as to say that pornography “extols rape, defilement and mutilation.”
MMS, up-skirt pictures and documented rape are not pornography — they are criminal acts and invasion of privacy and need to be treated as such. As for the suggestion that violence in cinema is less accessible as it is “filtered by some form of certification,” I have only this to say — half an hour of prime time soap on cable television (which is not even rated as adult material), with its degenerative messages of negative gender biases and stereotyping of women, causes much more harm to women in our society than pornography can ever be accused of.
K. Ram,
Hyderabad