The essay begins from the apparent paradox that while it is frequently condemned for its absolute explicitness (‘leaving nothing to the imagination’) it is at the same time condemned for arousing ‘uncontrollable fantasies’. This essay explores the nature and implications of sexual fantasies. The danger of such discourses is that they draw attention away from the real harm that is being caused to children by sexual and other forms of maltreatment - which overwhelmingly occur within families, and for reasons ignored in these debates. The result of many different ideological viewpoints all using the same argument - that the forms of culture they didn't like were damaging children - gives the impression that there is no element of culture today that isn't (somebody claims) causing harm to children: everything is child abuse. I suggested that commentators had collapsed these issues together because the image of the helpless child is a powerful one for critics to challenge undesirable aspects of contemporary culture. These included: child pornography children being targeted by any form of marketing young people becoming sexually active sexual abuse of children raunch culture protecting children from any sexualised material in the media and body image disorders. I made a submission to this Inquiry, noting that in public debate about this topic a number of quite distinct issues, with distinct aetiologies, were collapsed together. In 2008, the Australian federal Senate held an Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media Environment. Also considered are the ethical implications of such male sexual abuse fantasies, which is a subject of lasting trauma for victims, and one that poses unique challenges in wider contexts. The study ends with discussion of the anxieties and appreciations the site has prompted in viewers, and the presentation of two themes in particular: ‘bad porn’ and ‘harmful porn’.
More than 500 comments over a 2-year period help explain Boys Halfway House as a variant of extreme pornography, and canvas a range of views on rape and humiliation fantasy in gay porn more broadly. This article reads viewer commentary of scene updates on review site so as to consider the controversy associated with the proliferation of gay ‘abuse porn’, and of Boys Halfway House and its theme in particular. It is a recent addition to the genre niche of abuse and exploitation pornography sites that have surfaced in recent years. Boys Halfway House is a gay bareback pornography website that purports to host the recorded abuse exploits of managers of a halfway house.