‘The pathological native’ versus ‘the good white girl’: an analysis of race and colonialism in two Australian porn panics

ABSTRACT

Two examples of ‘porn anxiety’ have surfaced in Australia recently. The first of these is the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) intervention into 73 Aboriginal communities, instigated by the Liberal Coalition Government in 2007. A key measure of the NTER is a blanket ban on pornography in these communities. The second case refers to panics about pornification, concerned about the porno-saturation of young people's cultural worlds. In both cases, a straightforward connection is made between children, pornography and harm. However, the ‘problem’ is constructed in very different terms. Addressing a gap in the literature, this article explores connections between race, colonialism and pornography. I unpack how ‘pornography, fear and young people’ is incited in each case, how the problem is differently constructed in racialized terms, and how solutions to the problem are framed. I argue that the porn panics under examination are viewed through historically persistent racialized and colonizing discourses—in the NTER case, a particular racialized child becomes the focus, in ways that entrench colonial constructions of the pathological and degenerate other. In pornification panics, while fears are couched in terms of a general unraced child, anxieties rest on securing the goodness of the white middle-class girl.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• colonialism
• pornography
• pornification
• Aboriginal people
• Northern Territory Emergency Intervention

Notes

1. I use the term panic here because it captures the tone of alarm circulating the issues, and describes a cultural anxiety about changing sex norms. Panic and anxiety are used interchangeably throughout the article. I am aware of debates around the use of the term panic – see discussions (for example, Lumby and Funnel 2012) that explore, for example, how the term panic can assume a binary logic and oversimplify how panics can set up neat divisions between ‘panic’ versus ‘concern’. I retain the use of the term panic here as this article is not intended as an overview of how moral panics are working though this issue (see Mulholland [2013] for further analysis).

2. At the time, Minister Mal Brough was the Federal Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

3. Since 2007 the NTER has undergone some minor changes under the Rudd and Gillard governments. It now exists under the very similar Stronger Futures Policy which has maintained its key components.

4. Tennant Creek is regional town in the Northern Territory.

5. Canberra is the capital of Australia.