Posts by Emma Hart
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Yeah, it's all about protecting victims, except that it isn't, it's clearly about getting off on your moral crusade, and the actual outcomes are beside the point.
My partner and I were discussing this a couple of nights ago: what's behind this growth in moralism when we're supposed to be becoming more liberal. It's not just a matter of perception, because in Britain and Australia you can count the increasingly restrictive laws being passed. And in the US, the change of government seems to have had no effect on the moral crusade.
Which is because these laws are enforced by elected prosecutors. People who can get votes out of being 'tough on crime' can also directly prosecute offenders. Imagine Rodney Hide being the state prosecutor...
In a nice piece of convergence, the Outlawing Indencency doco Russell mentioned has a section on a state trying to outlaw low-cut jeans. Yes, to the point of sending people to prison if their underwear shows above their jeans.
The Whale Tails site is on the ACMA ban list.
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What can I say about an image that we can't safely look at.
Censorship, pretty much by its definition, stops us from talking about things. It curtails freedom of speech, that's it's job.
I have found myself in quite surreal situations as a result, and I totally get where steven is coming from. Somebody asked me in an open forum at BW a question which required me to explain to her the difference between R content and NC 17 content. (We have different rules for the two.) I couldn't give her examples, because we were in an open forum. Nor could I link to examples, because the NC 17 content is locked away. She couldn't get it, and I couldn't tell her.
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Oh, and while we're here, 'downloading'.
Someone sent me a link to an image to check whether it was okay to link to from here. In order to determine that, I went and looked at it.
That means I've 'downloaded' it. I've committed just as much of a crime as the person who was convicted, and lost his appeal, for possessing it.
There's something very sad and pathetic about the fact that I'm now off to clear my cache, just in case.
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The French documentary on these trends in the US, Outlawing Indecency , is out there on the wires, and highly recommended. I was shouting at the television by the end of it.
I was sitting with my head in my hands thinking 'I wish I was more surprised by any of this'.
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Is it a different story if the experience wasn't portrayed negatively? Like if rape or other abuse of someone was presented as positive? Not just for you, but "OK for someone else to do because it's fiction and freedom of speech"?
I have this really big space between 'things I think are okay', and 'things I think should be banned and people should be jailed for producing'. This would be in there. Would I want to read it? Nope, but I'm a grown-up and I can make those choices. Do I think it should be banned? No. Would I defend somebody else's right to write it even though I'd find it repulsive? Yes I would.
But I presume there are two bases to our laws in this area - the harm in the production of the material, and the possibility of harm arising from the viewing of it.
If somebody wanted to stop me producing something because other people consuming it would cause harm, my first response would be 'prove it'. The research around porn as a cause of rape is contradictory and inconclusive, certainly not strong enough to make a case for curtailing freedoms. I've previously linked to studies conducted in both the US and Japan, and that Neil Gaiman piece links to a US-based article, which show that over the last thirty-odd years, the availability of porn has increased, and the rate of rape has decreased. I don't think that in any way proves that 'porn reduces rape', but it does make it very difficult to make a case that porn causes rape. I know there are studies that show that individuals who view large amounts of porn (ie more than six hours a week, which is about four movies) are more likely to have raped and to have poor attitudes to women, but they're not showing a causal link, just a correlative one.
Now perhaps it's different with child pornography, but I can't really see why it should be.
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My line is that if it involves obvious pre-pubescent children, and it is showing sexual activity, it should not be permitted. Sure, things like Simpson porn will be caught up in that, but frankly I don't care.
See, I disagree. No real people were harmed by the production of that Simpsons porn. A real person was harmed by being prosecuted for owning it - and he lost his appeal. He now spends the rest of his life having to declare that conviction - a conviction for having child pornography.
Neil Gaiman wrote a great piece on defending cartoon pornography, including lolicon. I'm not going to explain lolicon, you're all perfectly capable of looking it up on Wikipedia.
Still, you seem to want lolicon banned, and people prosecuted for owning it, and I don't. You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.
Also, if you prosecute it all the time, you prosecute it when it's used for therapy. You prosecute it when it's depicted as negative and destructive. You make it, basically, something that can't be portrayed at all in any way for any audience.
I do see the concern about drawing from life, however my concern in that instance wouldn't be the drawing.
I will say that I don't think any law will keep child pornography out of the hands of paedophiles. So if you say it's worth the cost (which is always a cost to someone else) you're assuming there's a benefit. You can't be protecting a child by banning a picture that's never involved a child.
I could really go on about this, and I very much don't want to sound like I'm having a go at Tracy because I'm not. I think stephen raised a very good point, and not an easy one.
My own experience has been not with pictures but with words. I've been criticised for writing a woman who enjoys violent sex, even though such women exist. I've been criticised for writing scenes that involved rape, even though experience was portrayed extremely negatively, showed real and horrendous consequences, and the writing left me shaking and in tears. If someone's who's experienced sexual abuse as a child wants to draw about it, I don't believe anyone should be telling them they can't.
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Thanks for drawing attention to the situation David.
Indeed. It did take me a while to articulate a response, given my original reaction was vowel-less.
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Wow. Josh just summarised the internet.
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Ah, here we are, squishy middle position again.
I'd not ever be in favour of using real children to produce pornography in any way, no matter how manipulated the images were, for the reasons Sam stated:
Even the tamest softcore including actual adults is predicated upon the consent of the adults appearing. Minors by definition can't give that consent and goodness knows what the long-term psychological ramifications would be of growing up knowing pornographic images of you had been passed around the Internet during your childhood without your consent.
The same goes for adults: there must be consent.
Also I'm not a criminal or abnormal psychologist, and I've no real idea of the theraputic value of such an approach. It seems to run counter to the approach of making paedophiles realise the harm their predilection does.
However... I'm also not entirely on board with Islander's 'art stuff' exclusion. I mean, I know it's not the stuff paedophiles are using, but that didn't stop the Henson exhibitions being shut down - art photos of naked adolescents - as child pornography.
Nor did it stop Stuff, just a couple of months ago, publishing an article which stated unequivocably, that all paedophiles had ordinary pictures of (clothed) children downloaded from the net in their stashes.
Then there's the Red Rose case (you can't write about it) and the Simpsons case (cartoon characters must be treated like real people). Old art does seem to be safe, but new art?
the New South Wales Supreme Court ruled that a fictional cartoon character was a “person” within the meaning of the relevant state and commonwealth laws. McEwan was convicted of possessing child pornography and using his computer to access such material - The Simpsons porn - in February.
And...
Stuff keeps happening with this. The guy who owns the WikiLeaks.de domain had his home raided by German police yesterday.
A Bill Henson fan-site is on the ACMA blacklist. Again, despite his work being cleared for general audiences, art photos = child pornography.
And the Australian Classification Board's website has been hacked.
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So you blacklist all child porn sites, offer absolutely no dedicated counseling for people who are into looking at child porn, it really leaves the potential pedophile no recourse but to leave the house and find a child...
I see I did leave out any suggestion of what to do with people who consume child pornography, as opposed to people who produce it. I believe prosecution is necessary, but so is counselling and rehabilitation.
There is some evidence that suggests that paedophiles will use child pornography to... ease the urge, for want of a less revolting phrase. If that pornography, however, has been produced by harming children, it's hardly keeping children safe overall, is it?
This is a little weird, I'm usually accused of being too soft on paedophiles and supporting rapists.