You can’t see any, you’re too young.

Am I the only person who believes there is a fundamental flaw in the movie/TV/music/game rating systems ? I don’t mean there is a problem with how they work – I mean that the very existence of these systems are a flaw. In fact, this censorship against the youth is one of the most discriminatory and outright unconstitutional set of laws in our society today. No less so in America than here as I can gather.

So why do I say this ? Well firstly, I believe that the burden of proof isn’t on me. It’s not up to the individual to proof that I what she wants to do is harmless, it’s up to the government to prove that it is harmful before they are allowed to restrict the activity. This has, as far as I can tell, never been done at all. The ‘harm’ of sexually explicit and or violent media is completely unproven and taken at face value. I am instinctively more wary of violent than sexual material around children but I fundamentally reject the notion of censoring either.

So that is my first point: there is absolutely no proof that it is harmfull. Moreover there never can be. We are talking here about the impact of media on individual psychological makeups. Which makes it dependent on not just the specific media but each individual’s personality and prior experiences, so contextual that there can hardly even be a trend. The effect of sexual imagery on a young victim of sexual abuse for example is likely to be very different from the impact of the same imagery on a child with a happy family (they are still the majority after all).

So we’re restricting the activities of people based on little or no evidence whatsoever. Isn’t that by itself opposed to the very idea of a free society ?

In fact, the film and publications board in South Africa is so aware of how fundamentally unproven their premise is that they never even state it. In one propaganda leaflet they handed out at cinema’s a while back they say: “Depictions of sexual interaction in the media is generally very unrealistic”. It is never stated that viewing depictions of human sexual interaction is harmful in any way. The implication is given though that the unrealistic nature of the depiction is harmful, and it’s later implied that ‘false expectations of the opposite sex’ would be the major harm.
Now false expectations of the opposite sex seems to me to sum about 95% of anybody’s non-professional interaction with said opposite sex anyway so this can hardly get worse. But the claim they make is at odds their actions anyway.
If it’s the unrealistic depiction of sex and sexual relationships that cause harm… why is it then that the more realistically we depict sex the higher the age restrictions become ? Softcore porn is usually given an 18 rating here, hardcore an R18 (meaning you cannot show it on TV and it can only be sold in sex shops).
Sure a claim can be made that the actual interaction prior to the sex is very unrealistic in porn movies, but in my opinion it is no worse than most popular romantic comedies (which are generally rated all ages).
Even then it holds no water, imagine a voyeuristic recording of a married couple having sex, made without their knowledge. Now stop imagining it and concentrate please, can you think of a more realistic depiction of both the sex and the relationship ? Do you think for one second the film and publications board would rate it all ages ?

So we’ve basically blown apart the premise of it being harmful, try selling that one to the religious right though (odd how they tend to be a lot more lax about violence though isn’t it ) ?
For the sake of argument however, let’s assume that exposure to certain media can be harmful under certain conditions for minors.

In that case we must find the best way to handle the situation. A UK parliament report recently had a very good analogy. We can compare movies with sex in it to a public swimming pool. Swimming pools are potentially harmful (of course, the analogy’s flawed in that this is actually proven). Children have drowned in swimming pools. So we put up signs around swimming pools to warn about safe and unsafe behavior while swimming. We may post lifeguards. What we don’t do is to refuse anybody under the age of 16 or 18 access to the pool. Quite the contrary because we’ve long since learned that by far the best way to reduce the risk of drowning is to teach children to swim. Prepared knowledge is a far better preventative than restrictions could ever be.
The same logic goes for media and art. We should not withhold this media from children, but we should be there with them when they first encounter it – to teach them how to appreciate it safely and correctly. After all imitating what is seen in the media is often dangerous – any afternoon educational chemistry program will have some ‘don’t try this at home’ warnings. Surely the only real risk with any media is if it’s imitated too much – and that can best be prevented with education. All media can teach us something, but that something isn’t always what to do (in fact, I would venture that this is hardly ever the lesson).
Teaching children this basic principle is fundamentally the task of parents, not the government and currently the law, if anything, makes their job harder. We can’t teach our children to swim since the government won’t let us take them to the pool.

This should mean that, at the very least, anybody ought to be able to enter any film theater in the presence of a parent, odd that isn’t the case. If the purpose here was truly protection, rather than moralism and abuse of power (think of the children is usually just an excuse for censorship – and the slippery slope may be a falacy in philosophy but it’s an observable fact in politics).

Finally, there is the simple reality that these anti-child censorship laws are not even in line with our actual laws about sex !
According to South African law the age of consent is 16. It used to be 16 for girls and 18 for boys but because this was decried as being discriminatory it was set at 16 for both. Now it isn’t actually important to us whether this age is a good age for sexual consent, it merely matters that this is the age according to the law at this time.

So what does this mean ? It means that the law believes a 16 year old to be quite mature enough to make decisions about her own sexual activity, and yet believes her entirely unable to make her own decisions about watching sexual material, even entirely fictional. She can legally have sex, but she cannot watch it on television ? To the full extent: she can record herself masturbating or engaging in sexual activity with a partner, and not legally watch the recording she just made when she’s finished.

In short, the law makes no sense.

It’s worse than censorship, it’s censorship that discriminates by age, it’s censorship that does not prevent harm – but could well be preventing adequate measure to control risk, and it’s censorship that is completely in contrast with other laws causing a discrepancy that borders on the comically ridiculous.