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DUBLIN — Ireland is preparing to step deeper into the debate over online sexual content, with Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan planning legislation that would criminalize the possession and distribution of what he described as “extreme” pornography.
According to the Irish Independent, O’Callaghan, who leads Ireland’s Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, said his department is drafting proposals that would outlaw the production, distribution and possession of “extreme or violent pornography.” He said he hopes to bring the proposed legislation before the government within the next two months.
O’Callaghan told the newspaper that members of Ireland’s national police service have warned of what they believe is a “direct link” between online pornography and “serious sexual violence on women,” including incidents involving “nonfatal strangulation, degrading sexual acts, and coercion.”
“I’m not a person who’s interested in censorship, but I am going to bring forward proposals to criminalize extreme violent pornography,” O’Callaghan told the Irish Independent.
“I think it is necessary to introduce it and start it in order to protect young people, teenage children, young men, and women as well,” O’Callaghan said. “People are getting a distorted view of what human sexuality is about.”
Following the UK
The proposal in Ireland arrives as similar legislation has recently taken shape in the United Kingdom. Last month, the U.K.’s Crime and Policing Act introduced criminal penalties for depictions of “non-fatal strangulation” and sexual content involving adults portraying underage characters.
Momentum behind restrictions on “extreme” pornography in the U.K. increased earlier this year after the release of a government-backed pornography review that recommended banning adult material considered “degrading, violent and misogynistic.” Several of the arguments now being used in Ireland echo the language and themes contained in that review.
Speaking on the Irish podcast “Newstalk Breakfast,” Dr. Madeleine Ní Dhálaigh, vice chair of the Irish Medical Organization’s General Practitioners Committee, said, “So, modern pornography, we know that 90% of the scenes show an act of physical aggression and 95% of the time it’s directed against the woman who’s providing the content.”
Dhálaigh did not provide a source for those figures during the interview.
“The violence in pornography is real,” Dhálaigh argued. “It’s acted out by the content providers, but it is very real. That woman is experiencing pain and is being subjected to all forms of degradation and violence … These violent acts in pornography are informing domestic violence, informing teenage dating violence and informing the sexual scripts of our young people.”
Podcast host Anton Savage observed that, if the statistics cited by Dhálaigh are accurate, it could mean nearly all pornography would fall under a potential ban.
Dhálaigh responded, “Well, I think that this is a conversation we need to have.”
