Like it or not, pornography is part of human society. As long as there has been a demand for it, it has existed in human society. The "morality" of this is always up for question, and is an ongoing argument.
An article about the recent surge in sexual violence in India talked about the role that pornography has in seeming to encourage sexual violence against women. In the case of India, its highly patriarchal, male-dominated society is far more conservative in behaviour and perspective than in the West; in some ways, shockingly so. Indian society - and other highly-traditional societies like it - seem to give free rein to male urges and behaviour. In a culture where arranged (as well as underage) marriage is the norm, and where many women are expected to follow a man's wishes almost without question, we see the attributes of a highly-narcissistic male-led society. On the one hand, sex before marriage is illegal in their traditional culture and interaction between genders can be highly-ritualized; on the other, women are expected to give in to men's personal whim. The result is what the psychologist Oliver James once called "Gender Rancour", leading to a male frustration at the contradictory messages - of both omnipotence and impotence - from their culture.
Then comes the question of pornography. In a culture where men are, in many cases, treated as a "superior being" to woman, the injection of modern pornography is, as the writer in the article says, a recipe for disaster. However, the issue is not necessarily with the pornography in itself, but with the already inherent malignant male narcissism in society.
Is pornography "immoral" and therefore a malign influence on society? To some extent, it could be argued so, but if the logical conclusion of this thinking is to criminalize the depiction of "immoral" acts, then where is the line drawn? The judgement then becomes a highly-subjective (and prejudicial) act. If sexual imagery is banned, then why not all violent imagery?
The argument was once put that violent films generated violent behaviour in children (which was one reason for film classification). But it is a question of degree. The problem is that a logical argument could be made that films and books that enact criminal behaviour encourage that same behaviour, and therefore should be banned. The obvious difficulty with that is it would result in a large portion of all film, TV and literature being banned. Likewise, when "prohibition" of alcohol was put into force in the USA, it was quickly shown to be as ineffective as it was nonsensical.
The author of the article mentioned above seems to suggest that banning pornography in India could be a possible solution. But as seen from the highly-narcissistic male-dominated society that India already is, the accessing of pornography by men in India seems far more to be a result of the problem, not the cause. Indian men seem to react in such an anti-social way towards women because of the ingrained culture of impunity; accessing pornography is more likely to make them violent towards women because their impulse control is already very low, thanks to the male narcissism ingrained in their culture. The real solution is to re-educate male society so that it is less narcissistic and anti-social towards women, but that would require decades of work. And few people in authority are going to suggest that their own culture is really to blame; much easier to blame pornography.
That same culture of male narcissism exists in parts of the West, although to a lower degree. It is true that Western culture is more "sexualised" than it was in the past, and this is something which this author wrote about several years ago. But the real question is about instilling behavioral controls. Going back to the example of violent films, there have been cases of mass murderers who have been said to have been "inspired" by watching ultra-violent films. As a result, there are always periodic "moral panics" about banning them, or other "extreme content". The British government has already cynically caved-in to such "moral panics" in the past, for the sake of a few electoral votes. Besides, they might well rationalise, who would argue the case in favour of them in court?
But the purpose of these films, and others like it, is to titillate, and to make a "moral" judgement over this is to miss the point. All forms of art are subjective, and some are bound to be "offensive" - with some being intentionally "offensive" for the purpose of titillation. The real issue, as said earlier is about behavioural controls. Any rational person should be able to look at a sexual or violent image without instantly wanting to imitate it. The problem is that if society itself makes people (or men in particular) more narcissistic, then those behavioural controls become less effective.
As we have seen, many highly-traditional cultures - such as in the example of India, above - create a society that instills malignant male narcissism. This is where behavioural controls among men are lower than in an "average" society. Likewise, there is good evidence that modern societies with high levels of both consumption and inequality (e.g. Russia, South Africa and in the "Anglosphere", in particular the USA, UK and Australia) also generate high levels of narcissistic behaviour. The correlation with this behaviour, violence towards women and pornography use is therefore not surprising.
While there may be calls to ban pornography in India in the light of the issues raised above, in traditional Islamic cultures, there seems to have long been an assumption that men are, by their nature, poorer at controlling their behavioural impulses than women. Going back to the issue of "Gender Rancour" talked about by Oliver James, it could be argued that the traditional form of highly-controlled gender separation seen in strict Islamic societies creates the same form of malignant male narcissism seemingly prevalent in India. On the one hand, men have more greater legal rights than women, but on the other, the many social boundaries that physically separate men from women are bound to create a form of sexual tension; the result is a vicious circle, where women feel obliged to cover their bodies from brooding male gaze, making male resentment even worse.
Given the sensitivity of the issue, there is alas little real data on hand to research this; the closest we have in the West is the (highly-sensitive) issue of the various "sex ring" scandals that have appeared in the UK, which implicate the highly-traditional (and often self-segregated) cultures of South Asian community. Unfortunately, the "malignant male narcissism" mentioned before is all too evident in the behaviour of the (usually Muslim) men involved in these cases. Given their limited ability to interact with women from their own community, it seems they have turned to more easily available (and persuadable) women from the "white working class", who they have then effectively used as sex slaves: acts of pathological narcissism.
To sum up, there is not enough clear evidence to say that pornography it itself causes narcissistic (and anti-social) behaviour. The above evidence shows that it is the malignant male narcissism that already exists in society - which may come from different sources - that plays a more important role in the anti-social behaviour shown by these men towards women. If men who use pornography are more likely to carry out anti-social behaviour towards women, it is much more likely because they already lack the behavioural controls, due to their culture, or other social factors. Their use of (or addiction to) pornography is more a result of their existing narcissism, not a cause of it.
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