There are a number of different points in his piece, not all of which I care to deal with. But there are some points there that cry out of discussion.

 
It's porn, therefore it's bad. Therefore ban.

The first half of his article set out to make the point that Leslie Kee's book SuperStars is porn, although he didn't quite put it as bluntly as that. He wrote, after having had a look at the book,

... some 10 per cent of the pictures are those of full-frontal nudes, mostly Japanese models or singers, predominantly male, with their manhood not obscured from view in any way, shape or form

and that

...it is hard to escape the impression that the work has a homoerotic motif running through it.

That comes real close to saying it's porn, but perhaps he was trying to hedge his bets. However, a little further on, he made a slip, saying,

I would argue that the gay community itself should also support the ban. This is because gay porn promotes an illusion....

Support the ban. Why? Because gay porn....

By that association, he has in effect called it porn. To some people, whether something is porn or not porn is a big deal. Once it is so labelled in their minds, a host of moral judgements is formed, and with them come another host of justifiable prohibitions.

While it is always useful to have words that signify appreciable categories of things, e.g. docudrama, sitcom, police drama, horror flick, we should always be questioning how we have defined things and the baggage that we associate with them. Does 1 in 10 pictures make a book "porn"? What about 1 in 30? What if only one photograph in there has full frontal nudity -- is it porn yet?

Does a flaccid cock make porn, or must it be hard?

The impertinence in these questions serves a point, which is that as in all categorisation, it is damn hard to agree where to draw the line. Normally, it doesn't matter that it's impossible to be precise. It rarely matters for example, whether a program is a documentary or a docudrama. But it often matters when we label something as "porn" because the very act of labelling brings on major consequences.

Where does a free-speech advocate like me stand on this? It shouldn't matter whether something is "porn" or not, it should still be protected speech. Labelling something as porn shouldn't make much difference. Which is to say that trying to prove that the book is porn -- as Ho was trying to do -- is basically irrelevant to the issue.

It is true that at the beginning, when the controversy first broke, few knew that 10% of the photographs had full frontal nudity -- after all, the book had been banned. The early letter to the Straits Times by Gilbert Cheah had stressed the artistic merit of Kee's work, a point that I picked up. What Ho appeared to do in his article was firstly to demolish the artistic merit argument by applying the porn label, and secondly, to question Kee's professional integrity (a point I won't deal with here).

In truth, the artistic merit argument is incidental. If a work is artistic, it does make any ban more absurd, but even if a work is not artistic, but purely gratuitous explicit sex, a free speech advocate like me would still oppose a ban.

 
But isn't porn harmful?

Bans are often rationalised by harm arguments. With some things, harm or risk of harm can be quite readily demonstrated, e.g. driving under the influence of alcohol, or books showing how to make nerve gas.

But in some other cases, the "harm" is poorly substantiated. Depiction of explicit sex is one of those cases. The most credible part of the harm argument has to do with influence on children, leading them to experiment with their sexuality, when psychologically they're not ready for it. The harm argument with respect to adults, on the other hand, is very poorly made out, if not altogether laughable. Adults are already having sex, to start with.

This kind of problem generally calls for restrictions on distribution channels, not total bans.

To that, some would say: well, since porn doesn't serve any positive good, even for adults, why not ban it altogether... for the sake of the children?

 
Gay porn makes gays more unequal

The middle section of Ho's article tried to argue why porn is bad. Not just for adults, but quite particularly, for gay men. He wrote,

I would argue that the gay community itself should also support the ban. This is because gay porn promotes an illusion of gay males as young, muscular, good-looking and able-bodied. This fantasy is quite at odds with the bodies that most real gays have. Fed a diet of stereotypical images of perfectly buffed men with large penises, gays may develop unrealistic expectations about their own bodies. This can only compound the pre-existing feelings among gays that society marginalises them because of their sexual orientation.

I had to read it at least thrice to get his meaning, as he went very quickly through his logical equations. His point was that if gay men saw non-average bodies, they would end up feeling inadequate, and blame their inadequacy on society generally.

Equation #1: see non-average bodies = feel inadequate. 

Equation #2: feel inadequate = blame society for marginalisation.

Therefore the ban is justifiable and even gay men should support the ban.

Well, in that case, heterosexual men should be demonstrating on the streets demanding a ban on pictures such as this one, of an unusually good-looking, athletically-talented heterosexual male. Pictures like this will make all straight men feel inadequate and -- quick equating here -- marginalised by society.

But Ho didn't stop there. He further argued that when gay men feel inadequate and marginalised, they will either overcompensate by becoming "dominant", or accept their place in life by becoming "effeminate subordinates".

Body image aside, gay porn also subverts gays by offering them two choices Try to become like the straight and dominant men portrayed -- whom society says you have really never been -- or be the effeminate subordinates you are, whom 'real men' like those in these pictures use and cast away.

How he jumped to this is astounding. I can't rebut this logically, because his proposition is beyond logic. Going by his line of argument, heterosexual males, on seeing too many pictures of David Beckham posing as a sex object for females to devour, will either overcompensate by trying to become predator women, or else accept their subordinate status by being no more than toyboys.

The third of Ho's paragraphs that I quote here is possibly difficult for many readers to understand. You'd likely ask how he drew such tenuous connections.

Gay porn says to gays that they are less relevant in society and not entitled to equal respect because they are less male. It supports a system of inequality where men trump women and straight men trump gay men.

The best I can make of his logic was that gay men feel so debilitated by the "impossible" standards of gay porn, that they end up supporting the superior status of straight males. There isn't a shred of evidence for such an assertion.

If there is any effect on straight males at all, I would say it's the other way around. Sexualised male imagery can also be attractive to heterosexual females; they thus make the male a sexual object to be consumed by the female, with the effect of diminishing the power status of heterosexual males. This explains why heterosexual males find gay porn so threatening (and why they might weave such tortured arguments to convince gay men to help them support bans on porn featuring males). Far from increasing inequality between straight men and gay men, this genre reduces the inequality between males and females.

* * * * *

The censorship instinct has never served minorities well. Typically, such power is wielded by the majority to protect the privileges of the majority. For all the complications that explicit sexual material may (or may not) bring, the gay minority is better served by having their human rights, including the right of free speech, respected than by spurious arguments about why this ban or that restriction is good for them.

It sounds awfully like the days when the state supported programs involving hormone injections and electro-shock treatment in an attempt to turn gays straight. It's good for you, the state said. You'll be accepted by others and it will equalise your status in society.

© Yawning Bread