A genuinely liberal view of pornography

It's like Ben Elton's musical; it'd be immoral to ban it, but indulging in it indicates a sickness

The Liberal Democrats, apparently, had a debate at their conference about pornography. Which is the whole point of the Liberal Democrats, to have debates that wreck their image as a serious outfit, such as "Crack dealers should get their own TV channel" or "Devil worshipping should be part of the national curriculum", with a spokesman saying: "It's ridiculous. At 16, we can join the army, but we can't be taught how to sacrifice a deer!'"

So The Sun, without any irony, said this proved the Liberals were frivolous, "as the rest of the country was discussing Iraq". Right opposite were their three Countryside March topless beauties, and they were probably considering whether to have a week of "dossier dollies", with captions such as "There are a couple of biological weapons we wouldn't mind inspecting".

But pornography has often been a central issue to international affairs. In the years leading up to the French Revolution, pornographic literature was sold alongside illegal political pamphlets in the same book shops. Rousseau, for example, wrote at length about the joy he felt as a young boy when he was beaten by his nursemaid. Maybe this was why philosophy never took off in Britain as it did in France: not enough idealist spanking action. John Stuart Mill might have found a bigger following if he'd written: "If we fail to create a bond between individual and collective responsibility, we've been very naughty indeed and must be punished.''

In the decade before the French Revolution, the best-selling book was the illegal Thérèse Philosophe, which combined radical philosophy with explicit porn. I suppose a plumber walked in on two women in a bath, but as they beckoned him over he started to doubt if he was really there.

And in the 1960s, the right to publish porn seemed to be part of the movement for sexual liberation. This was a challenge to the books written about sex before that movement, such as the one that explained that "For women, sex feels rather like looking at a beautiful sunset". Which is comforting for men, because it means if a woman says during sex "Oh look, you can see Canary Wharf in the distance", that's a compliment.

But there was always a gap between magazines such as Oz, and the more traditional porn. For example, my dad had a screwdriver with a picture of a woman in a bikini on the side. The bikini was ink, so as it tipped up, the bikini came off. He'd show this to almost every man that came round, and they'd go "Wahoo, woor''. I doubt whether there's much of a case for saying there's anything positive about getting your excitement from an inky woman on a household tool. Now I wonder whether I was only seeing the soft stuff, and once I was in bed he'd creep out to the garage and get a spirit level.

By the time I first met feminists, at the end of the 1970s, they'd become anti-pornography. As a teenage activist, I didn't really understand this argument but thought I'd better follow it out of a sense of duty. When a colleague in an office thrust a photo of a model in a newspaper in my face, groaning "Woor'', I mumbled: "I don't really approve because it's seeing people as objects and sexist or something." Then he stared at me for about 10 seconds, and said: "Oh right. So are you a poof then?''

But the feminists were right. Because the pictures on the covers of soft-porn magazines and lap-dancing and Men and Motors digital TV channels don't advance women's sexuality, they make women out to be people with no real lives or emotions, just an image, as erotic as someone telling you a waist measurement and expecting you to go: "Woor – 36."

And porn can be the worst expression of this, reducing sex to a mechanical act. So while it shouldn't be banned, don't celebrate it. It's like sniffing glue or going to see Ben Elton's musical about Queen, it would be immoral to ban it, but indulging in it indicates a sickness that needs putting right as quickly as possible.

This wasn't the view of one woman who spoke in the debate at the Liberal conference, as she said porn "isn't sexist, it's just badly produced''. I'm sure she meant that as a joke, as it's unclear how it would affect the argument if Nurses Bend Over was made by Merchant Ivory. It may be more artistic, as the long shot across Dartmoor is followed by: "Do you really, really honestly want it harder, my dear? Then I shall try my best, I really jolly well shall." But it's unsure whether the target audience would appreciate it.

However, if you feel this leaves a gap in your campaigning week, you could join the demonstration against war in London on Saturday, beginning at 12.30pm on the Embankment. All we've got to do is beat 407,000 and we're guaranteed blanket media coverage, the first five pages of The Daily Telegraph and a week in The Sun of "Your sizzling anti-war pouting protest beauties".