Posted: Sep 11, 2012 2:13 pm
AndreD wrote:Is there really much of a difference in maturity between 16 and 18 for most people? There's also just a practical argument in that teenagers are already filming and taking stills of themselves and sending it to their boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever, the problem is that they're being criminalised for it when they clearly haven't exploited anyone in the real sense of the word.
Well firstly, there has to be a cut-off point somewhere. If you want 16 to be the age that we consider someone an adult, then I'm open to that argument, but as long as a 16 year old is legally a minor, I don't think they should be allowed to do porn. I was always under the impression that it was legal for 16 to 18 year old to make pornographic images of themselves for personal use and the use of their partner, and the illegal bit was distributing them to a third party. But on further reading, it seems that this isn't the case (maybe it changed or maybe I misremembered it). But I don't think that reducing the age to 16 would do anything to solve this issue anyway. There would still be 14 and 15 year olds susceptible to the same laws, and all it would do would open 16 year olds to being pressured by powerful companies to engage in sexual acts that they might not be fully comfortable with and might not have fully thought through. I've said before that I believe that legal porn industry does is responsible for far more people being pressured into doing something they're not comfortable with sexually than the legal prostitution industry. After all, it's far easier for a self-employed prostitute to tell a customer they're not going to do something than a porn star to tell the same thing to a big production company.
Interestingly, it did used to be legal for the paedo-hysteria masters The Sun to have 16 year old page 3 girls.