TopTV's proposed plan to start broadcasting porn channels on the South African pay-TV service is coming under attack again, this time from the organisation Women and Men Against Child Abuse (WMACA) who says that as child rights' activists the organisation is "deeply concerned" about TopTV's porn plans and that there is the chance that the sex channels will be exposing children to harmful material.
TopTV appeared last months before South Africa's broadcasting regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on a public hearing over TopTV's application for authorisation for the separate bouquet of porn channels.
TopTV wants to broadcast the three TV channels - Playboy TV, Desire TV and Private Spice - as a separate bouquet and with a rating classification of R18. The channels are provided to TopTV by Playboy TV UK / Benelux Limited in England and are uplinked through SES Platform Services in Munich, Germany to South Africa.
Icasa is still deliberation over TopTV's porn application. TopTV is currently in business rescue and told Icasa in its application that "our ability to offer certain of our subscribers the channels that form the subject of this application, would help greatly in our attempts to take the business to a sustainable future."
WMACA in a statement says that "as child rights' activists, we are deeply concerned that by allowing broadcasters like TopTV to distribute pornography we are exposing children to harmful material detrimental to their healthy development."
"For us at WMACA the public testimony of women, interviews with pornography users and sex offenders, and various other researchers' work, have led us to conclude that pornography can be an important factor in shaping a male-dominant view of sexuality, be used to initiate victims and break down their resistance to unwanted sexual activity, contribute to a user's difficulty in separating sexual fantasy and reality, and provide a training manual for abusers."
WMACA says TopTV's porn channels has the potential of "ruining children's sexual development."
"Women and children exposed to child porn are internalising dangerous deviant sexual behaviour. Children are also often affected badly by broken and or dysfunctional marriages as a result of pornography used by a partner," says WMACA, indicating that children are being exposed to more and more extreme pornography at younger ages.
