Do We Need a Ministry of Porn?

image : zorpia.com

In my family, the topic of sex never survives to the surface. Being a child with an exotic mixture of Javanese-Sundanese-Chinese blood running in my veins in a very strict environtment where any vulgar comments will never be tolerated has made me somewhat lack of reproduction knowledge in my early stage of life.

Then, as many of fellow Indonesians children, my friends were the only source of this so-called grown-ups thing. I remember listening to my friends' stories and everything which I didn't quite know from where they found them. As an 11 years old girl, it was pretty disturbing at first. Knowing that your little 'thing' down there could do something else other than peeing was pretty amazing but disgusting at the same time. But a little curiosity made everything go for quite a long time. Dirty jokes from the boys, sexy pictures on the comic books, and a little bit of Biology combined into the wildest imagination of us.

My first encounter with porn happenned when I was in Junior High School. There were nude pictures the boys brought from nowhere, and I saw them giggling and laughing to the pictures. Where did this pictures come from? Only God knows.

The first time I watched porn videos is when I was in High School. Again, it's the curiosity that brought me further. From cellphones videos to the high resolution clips you found on the internet, I and my friends were just having fun of seeing the things our parents forbid us to take a look at.

So, the banning of pornographic contents from the internet for Indonesian users must be very upsetting for many Indonesian super curious teenagers and lonely citizens. The goverment through one of the ministries claims that it was a very important action to protect Indonesian young generation from being such a stupid perverted person. And since our own Mr Tifatul Sembiring once implied that the earthquakes were also caused by those perverted guys who watch porn over and over again , it sounds pretty nice and makes sense.

On the other hand, some people calling themselves the defender of a certain religion in Indonesia were raiding, sweeping, and even violently bashing anything that shows some human skin. I don't even want to talk about that.

Now, again, the ministry of communication and information are trying to do something with RIM, scaring many BlackBerry users that their super cool gadget might have no use in the future (especialy the ones that still on 6 months payment). I don't know what's the deal with this but as long as I know, some expert say that this RIM thing is just some sillines where pornography is to blame--again.

Before I proceed, I need to make my stand first. I don't think pornography is good for some extent. But banning it completely will not make Indonesians less perverted.

'Mati satu tumbuh seribu'

This old adage should say it all. You can ban the internet, you can ban the magazines, the papers, RIM, even the television, but as long as we're still breathing and walking on earth, there's no way you can stop human beings to think dirty. There will be other means to spread the pictures of naked women and men all over the world.

If you want to decrease the criminal rates of raping and sexual harassment, take your children to the living room, talk with them, educate them, give them the freedom to speak and ask, and just hope they won't knock up the girl next door. If you think your religion has the power, then give them the wisdom of it. Nothing can guarantee that your children wouldn't be somewhat a hypersex by doing those. But it's better than sending us all to the pre historic age.

In my opinion, our goverment is too busy doing things that our own families should do--not to mention the politic agenda that might be hiding behind.

Have you ever seen the news that an elder (I'm not even interested to mention his age) was acussed of raping?

Did he own a BlackBerry? No. Did he subscribe to any magazine? No. Was he an internet maniac perhaps? No.

He's just perverted lonely old guy with no brain. Case closed.

On the other side of earth, my friend, who used to collect porn CDs under his bed, went to Theology school and soon will become a priest.

Seriously, do we need a 'ministry of porn' to ban anything that might be too 'open' to be true?

Some people may say that we do.

But I don't think so. :)