All the `fun' of soft porn is about taking women back to 1950s

Just when we thought feminism had died gagging, along came Xena Warrior Censor to stamp out the sexual exploitation of women. Who would have dared imagine that the saviour of the feminist cause would come from what is perceived to be, rightly or not, the harbinger of Irish conservatives?

The Censorship of Publications Board's banning of In Dublin magazine shocked the liberal media, which predictably jumped to the defence of free speech and condemned the move. Secretly, however, a few of us felt vindicated that a magazine which has been aggressively demeaning women was finally getting its comeuppance.

In Dublin's covers have had nothing to do with anything but totty for the past year at least. Following like lemmings in the wake of Himself, Loaded and other macho rags, In Dublin made it an editorial policy to present women as passive, sexual playthings at the mercy of men's desires.

The Shagadelic cover was the perfect image on which to focus last week. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me is the ultimate, if pathetic, male fantasy: no matter how inadequate you are, women throw themselves at you anyway. The film's heroine, Felicity Shagwell, is a sex machine who has sex with whomever she's ordered to have sex with, no matter how disgusting, because her only purpose in life is to arouse and fulfil men sexually. This makes Shagwell the poster-girl of the feminist backlash.

Mike Myers, Loaded and the rest of the shagging lot would argue that their exploitative view of women is not a backlash, but an ironic take on the 1960s. They would probably accuse me of being humourless. But in my view all the humour and "fun" of soft porn is really about taking women back to the 1950s, when they belonged in the bedroom and kitchen. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, it's worse than that. It's a compulsion.

In Dublin, the magazine which once had feminist Nell McCafferty among its writers - God be with the days - was merely following this international trend to put women down. I don't agree with the secretive way in which the banning of In Dublin was done, but I do agree with the censorship board's sentiments.

The problem is, how can you balance freedom of speech and pornography? Some argue that pornography is the price of free speech. If you want the truth, then it has to be the truth warts and all. There is an entrenched attitude in the media that either you are an enlightened, sophisticated liberal, willing to put up with images of women being hustled like lifestyle accessories, or else you are a close-minded conservative who wants the Republic to return to the dark repression of the 1950s. Why can't there be an open-minded, informed path down the middle, which promotes freedom of speech, while guarding against sexual exploitation?

But there is one thing that overrules freedom of expression, and that is incitement to hatred. Pornography is incitement to commit sex crimes, because it preaches the view that women want to be raped, buggered and demeaned. If law prevents the media from incitement to hatred, why shouldn't the law also prevent the media from incitement to rape? It's merely a matter of proving the link.

It may seem extreme to link the relatively soft porn of In Dublin and other men's magazines to the hardcore extremes of sexual abuse, but you have to see the magazines, the films, and the prostitution industry as a continuum which starts with our tolerance of women being presented as little more than geishas, and ends with our tacit tolerance of sexual exploitation. At one end, there are page three girls and at the other snuff films. Both are justified by the same thing: that women should exist only for the pleasure of men, however sick that pleasure may be.

Pornography is increasingly available in the Republic, and the reported incidents of rapes, sexual assaults and child sexual abuse are also rising dramatically. Some psychologists would argue that there is a link because boys and young men who are brainwashed by pornography into seeing women as objects, treat women as objects. Others argue that the two trends are coincidental. Are they? Society needs to know. The Government should set up a commission to investigate.

There is also the issue of prostitution to deal with. Covers like Shagadelic, along with the titillating sex-related articles and the ads for massage parlours in the back, all combined to transform In Dublin into a promoter for the sex industry, as the censors recognised. For a long time, prostitution has flourished virtually unchallenged in the Republic. Either prostitution is illegal or it's not. If, as a society, we approve of prostitution, why not legalise it, regulate it and make it safer for women while also allowing women, instead of pimps, to make the money? After all, the illegal sex industry, which we have tacitly supported, is a form of repression, not freedom. If we were truly liberal, we would legalise it and give the women involved in it freedom of choice, while also banning its imagery from the general media and other outlets accessed by children.

If we disapprove of prostitution, then let's stamp it out. But to continue, as we have been, to let prostitution thrive while pretending not to see it, is an Irish solution to an Irish problem. By raising the issues of pornography and prostitution this week, the censorship board and the Garda have won a victory for feminism while also rumpling the bedclothes of Irish liberal complacency. Groovy baby, as Austin Powers would say.