Show em we don't need a site to get off: India’s reaction to porn ban

Monday morning blues in the world’s largest democracy this week included a ban on online pornography. Porn-loving Indians—who are among the most prolific consumers of the stuff in the world—now must do without some 850 websites the government has reportedly banned. The country’s internet service providers have to ensure that their users can’t access these websites, and some already have.

While no one is quite sure what exactly prompted this latest crackdown, HuffPost India reported that the Narendra Modi government apparently went for the kill after the country’s supreme court prodded it for its “lethargic approach to the issue” of pornography in India.

“We aren’t challenging anybody’s right to see the content,” a government official involved in the process told Quartz, requesting anonymity. “We are challenging the right of a person to show the content.” That argument, of course, is specious, especially since the Supreme Court itself had earlier indicated that banning porn may be problematic.

“Somebody may come to the court and say ‘look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room.’ It is a violation of Article 21 [right to personal liberty],” chief justice HL Dattu had said last month. To add to that, government sources had told Quartz that they scarcely expect the ban to be entirely enforceable, given the massive volumes of pornographic content on the internet and the multiple routes for accessing them.

In effect, the ban seems largely symbolic. Meanwhile photographer Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi and has appealed to anyone and everyone to flood Facebook with Your Hotness. “The best way to beat the Indian Government's ban on "porn" is by making your own. Show 'em we don't need a site to get off.

We are, on a slightly sloshed afternoon, a pretty swank site to get off already. (I mean, screw modesty also). Here's my "proof of the pudding". Got yours to give? Flood Facebook with Your Hotness. Normally, I don't like to direct my rage against the government on social media - it amounts to nothing, honestly, other than appearing civic-minded before a bunch of phones. But I can encourage you to take the Clowns in Power head on and wide open in private.

Switch carriers that come in the way of your civil liberties. “Switch governments that don't know what civil liberties are,” he wrote on his Facebook page, which now has over a couple hundred likes and a thousand views. “For folks who believe porn, or documented sex, is abusive of women, men and other sexes and genders, should also see the high quality, deeply imaginative self-sanctioned, body positive amateur porn.

Don't break the law. But do make your own laws. And let these laws involve love, and the pleasure principle. #freelove#sexrepublic#getthehellouttamyway,” he added.