Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

A while ago I went to Sexpo and came home with a showbag full of… well, I didn’t bother to look to be honest. I was too busy being interested in my new corsets. The bag got shoved into a corner of my office and ignored until I did some cleaning. Thus I discovered 3 freebie copies of softcore men’s magazines: Zoo Weekly, Picture and People.

These magazines won’t win any prizes for offering subtle or intelligent journalism. They’re really just soft porn with exclamation marks. Guys like looking at naked women and these magazines cheerfully offer that, albeit with a veneer of hur-hur-hur sexism. In the era of the internet, when you can find any kind of porn at the drop of a hat, these mags still sell. I guess it’s sometimes hard to download porn in a truckstop bathroom.

In any case, that’s not why I wanted to write a blog post. What caught my eye was the ridiculous photoshopping that these magazines perpetrate. Not just removing blemishes or thinning thighs, either. These magazines heal up vulvas. Thus:

They even “improved” porn star Tera Patrick:

And here the frontbottom has vanished, leaving a worrying gap:

These magazines don’t photoshop vulvas into smooth mounds for fun. They do it so they aren’t penalised by Australia’s censors, the Office of Film and Literature Classification. The existing guidelines say that those kinds of soft porn mags can’t show “excessive genital detail” – i.e. pink bits or inner labia. Pink bits makes it real porn, not just a “lad’s mag”. So, to ensure they don’t get into trouble with the government, they get excessively happy with the healing brush, often removing any hint of a vulval slit at all. In other cases, protruding labia are “tidied up” so all that’s left is a “perfect” pussy.

This situation isn’t new. In 2001, Australian Women’s Forum published an article decrying this type of censorship, arguing that it was encouraging women to have genital surgery to meet the unrealistic bodily standards suggested by men’s magazines. Ironically, their article illustrating the difference between photoshopped and real vulvas was itself censored for having “too much genital detail” (see image above).

In 2010 the ABC program Hungry Beast discussed this censorship issue. Watch it here:

The message that this kind of photoshopping sends is very fucked up. It says that female bodies as they occur naturally are obscene and must be “tidied up”. But the censorship rules are fucked up to begin with – witness the attitude toward female ejaculation in adult films.

There is supposed to be a review of our censorship system occurring right now. Unfortunately it seems as though the Australian Law Reform Commission has dropped the ball. They’re actually recommending MORE censorship, especially of online content, while refusing to recommend the legalisation of X-rated movies. Irene Graham from Libertus tears them a new arse in her excellent submission which points out all the assumptions and errors in their discussion paper.

Meanwhile, the UK has just taken a step into the 21st century via a court case which has challenged their definitions of obscenity. It feels as though a legal challenge is the only way we’ll get anything changed in this country.

Just as an aside, these kinds of photos remind me just how censored the female vulva has been throughout the ages. If you go to an art museum you’ll find that female nudes rarely feature realistic genitals. They were either covered up or the artist simply glossed over the details, creating the familiar “smooth mound”. Public hair was considered to be obscene. As far back as Roman times they were leaving out the all-important slit and the tradition continued up into modern times.

Hell, Barbie still has the smooth plastic mound although there are now other anatomically correct dolls on the market. Which reminds me, when I was a kid I honestly thought that grown women grew hair and then their slit healed up.

See how important it is to show bits as they really are?

* Note: The last pic is from People magazine 25 July 2011. The ones above it are from Picture magazine 27 July 2011.

Related Posts:

• “Too Much Genital Detail”
• “A Real, As Opposed To A Fanciful, Risk Of Harm”
• A Need For Privacy Makes This “Debate” One-Sided
• Quick! Censor The Non-Existent Boobs!

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (attributed to Voltaire)

I thought I’d preface this post about censorship with that (overused) quote because the film I’m about to write about is exceptionally distasteful, disturbing and, most likely, trash. The Human Centipede 2, which has just been banned by the British censor, could well be the most horrific movie to be made in many years.

Someone made a comment on a Guardian article about it saying “You should pick your battles and this is not a good battle to pick.” And this piece points out that the film is made expressly to shock and, by writing about it, I’m helping to sell it. Still, I wanted to blog about the issue because it raises some important questions about censorship and the assumptions behind governments making decisions about things adults can and can’t see.

The official press release from the British Board of Film Classification is here. The article describes some of the horrific acts depicting in Human Centipede 2 (including masturbating with sandpaper and rape using barbed wire). It says the film must be banned because it focuses too much on explicit sexual violence.

This Guardian piece questions the double standards of the board: why is the torture violence of “normal” horror (e.g. Saw) OK but sexual violence not OK? Why does the presence of sex tip this film over the edge into “obscenity” when common or garden variety flayings, disembowellings and murder easily get the nod?

I’m no fan of horror and the thought of watching either Centipede films is stomach-churning to me. And there’s a little voice in my head that almost agrees that something so disgusting should be banned. Why would anyone want to watch that? I mean, really?

But what’s prompted me to write this post is a single line in the BBFC press release that stuck out like dog’s balls:

It is the Board’s conclusion that the [film] poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers.

Got that? The BBFC thinks that watching Human Centipede 2 will harm you. Really harm you. Not just some “fanciful” made up harm which has apparently motivated the banning of other films in the past. Nope, this time, this sucker is going to fuck you up big time.

Let’s think about this, shall we? Watching a movie is going to cause harm. What kind of harm? Vomiting? Nightmares? A pathological fear of sandpaper?

Is it more serious than that? Are they saying it’s going to cause people to want to replicate the disgusting scenarios in the film? Copycat crimes?

Or are we talking “psychological harm”? That mysterious, difficult-to-prove concept that insists that watching a film will irrevocably alter a person’s mental health and way of thinking? According to that theory, seeing this kind of film degrades the viewer, encourages negative or pathological thoughts and makes them less empathetic or emotionally insecure. This is the kind of harm that Gail Dines talks about when seeking to ban porn. No doubt it’s the kind of harm that motivated the banning of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

I don’t know what kind of “harm” the BBFC is talking about because they don’t elaborate on that point. Nor do they provide any actual proof for their assertion.

And what’s interesting is that they all managed to view this film without suffering harm themselves. No doubt this proves they have very mild superpowers which the rest of us don’t possess.

This point illustrates the underlying assumptions about class and intelligence that underpin censorship regimes. The censors themselves can watch films without “psychological harm” because they’re better people than the riff-raff plebians who’ll watch it. They’ll have all the proper reactions like disgust and horror and they’re completely immune to sexual arousal because they have special states of mind.

But the rest of the film-going public? Well, you can’t trust them, can you? They’re not smart enough to think critically about what they’re seeing. They might not understand that it’s just a story or a fantasy. You’ve got to make their decisions for them, protect them. It’s for their own good.

Is “psychological harm” real? I don’t know. I haven’t researched the topic so I don’t know if there are any peer-reviewed studies looking at whether viewing media causes *actual* harm to adults.

What I do know is that more people need to be asking that question. If the government can ban something based on the concept of “real, not fanciful, harm” it would be really useful to see proof of their assertions.

* You might also want to read this piece about how the British censors classify films.

* I’ll be interested to see what the Australian censors do with this film.

Related Posts:

• British Censors Finally Allow Female Ejaculation Scene
• Cabaret Desire Is Like Visual Erotic Fiction
• New Porn For Women Movies
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Last Friday I heard that anti-porn author Gail Dines was going to appear on the ABC’s interactive program Q&A. As the public is invited to submit questions, I thought I’d add mine. It went something like:

Gail Dines dismisses feminist porn by saying it’s not different enough from mainstream porn. What kind of sexually explicit material would be OK by her personal feminist standards?

I signed it as “Louise Lush” because, after being mentioned in the SMH a couple of weeks ago, I should post the question as a feminist pornographer.

I hit return and the question went into moderation, along with thousands of other questions. Then, at 10.30pm on Sunday night, I got an email from one of the producers of Q&A asking me to video myself asking the question and to send it in. She also wanted to know where I lived.

Immediately, I quailed. The idea of me appearing on national TV under my porn pseudonym – with bonus information about where I live – is not appealing. I live in a small town and every second person on my street is a fundamentalist Christian.

I declined on the video question. The producer replied the next morning saying that was OK… but where did I live?

I didn’t reply. As far as I know, the question didn’t get asked. (I couldn’t bring myself to watch it).

I guess you could say it was a cowardly response. Surely if I believe in what I do and oppose censorship I should stand up and be counted, fight the good fight and be damned what people think.

The problem is, if it was only a matter of what people think, I’d probably be OK. But it’s not that simple.

Australia has some very confusing and fucked up laws regarding porn. As far as I’m aware, I haven’t broken any of them. Still, that’s no guarantee of protection from persecution. As we saw with the prosecution against Abby Winters, it only takes one crusading journalist to kick up a stink and things can go very pear shaped indeed. It would only take one fundamentalist Christian neighbour to call the police and tell them I was making child porn and my life would become a living hell. Never mind that I don’t or that my kind of porn is possibly the most innocuous stuff in the world… that doesn’t matter when the police are raiding your house at dawn and confiscating your DVDs and computers.

Ask Richard Wollstoncraft about that one.

I have a lot to lose. And while I want to engage in political discussions and tell the world that Gail Dines’ anti-porn stance is wrong, I’m at a distinct disadvantage.

Things are great for Gail Dines and other anti-porn activists like Sheila Jeffries and Melinda Tankard Reist. Our society gives them the high moral ground. Porn is automatically assumed to be evil so those who want to ban it can swan about and demand censorship with impunity. Gail Dines gets opinion pieces in major newspapers, radio show slots, TV appearances and special presentations at NSW Parliament House. Those who oppose that position are on the back foot already because defending porn invites automatic personal attack. And, in my case, possible breach of privacy or persecution.

I’m always conflicted about this. I wanted to start a group similar to Feminists for Free Expression in Australia. I want to have a lobby group to oppose the increasing influence of conservatives with an anti sex agenda. Problem is, I don’t want to be the spokesperson. I can’t be the spokesperson. I’m tainted. And I’m also afraid for my privacy and my livelihood. And yet I want to defend freedom of speech and speak out for feminist porn.

How can there be any kind of reasonable debate about the place of porn in society when the board is set so unevenly?

—-

Note: Thomas Roche has written an excellent reply to Gail Dines’ SMH piece from last week. He says everything I wanted to say – and saved me the hassle of writing it myself. Thanks Thomas!

Related Posts:

• First They Came For The Pornographers…
• At Last: The Sex Party
• Australian Porn, Censorship And Statistics Roundup
• Poems Punishable By Jail

In the US bookstores Barnes and Noble and Borders are censoring the cover of Dossier magazine which features an image of androgynous model Andrej Pejic, shirtless. As you can see, Andrej is biologically male but he is also very pretty and his face may be considered to have feminine characteristics. Andrej has made waves in the fashion world by modelling women’s clothing, including a wedding dress by Jean-Paul Gautier.

It seems that Andrej’s genderbending prettiness is too much for the good folk in the US so opaque plastic covers are being placed over the cover to protect the oh-so-delicate sensibilities of bookshop customers. Dossier are expected to pay the extra expense for the plastic.

So… where to start with this. Firstly, it’s a lovely PR coup for Dossier magazine and a great publicity boost for Andrej, so in essence I guess this kerfuffle isn’t a bad thing. But it says so much about gender, censorship and society’s attitude to breasts.

From the SMH:

Dossier creative director Skye Parrott told the Huffington Post that the magazine had informed both stores that Pejic was male, and that they were essentially censoring the image of a shirtless man.

However, both stores stood by their decisions, saying customers could mistake Pejic for a shirtless woman.

I think that statement what’s really caught my attention. This shows up just how ridiculous it is that we declare a woman’s breasts to be obscene and censor-worthy but it’s OK for a man to show his nipples (except, of course, for this man, because he looks too much like a woman). It’s the assumption that breasts are alwasy sexual and must be hidden from view. That putting boobs on a cover is always indecent or sleazy.

This is the same way of thinking that sees breastfeeding photos banned from Facebook and images of shirtless children deemed obscene. It’s helped along by the increasing use and acceptance of the term “breast nudity” in the media, a fact that no doubt pleases the hysterical anti-sex conservatives. Men can be “shirtless” but women must never be “topless”.

I’m a believer in the top free movement. If guys are allowed to take their shirts off in public, women should have the same right. Nobody should be demanding censorship because a magazine shows male nipples, no matter how feminine he might look. And nobody should be automatically assuming that censorship should occur because a magazine shows female nipples.

Obviously this censorship is also a kneejerk reaction to a queer image. Andrej’s photo messes with our ingrained perceptions of gender and no doubt this upsets some people who want it all to be neat and tidy, thank you very much. I’m sure there’ll be howls about the “gay agenda” surrounding the whole thing. Dossier have achieved their aim which was to garner attention and create that gender-ridden confusion. It’s challenging to our sense of what’s “normal” and that’s a good thing.

I’ve looked at pics of Andrej on Google Images. He’s a very, VERY pretty man. He has that aloof, ethereal quality that seems to be favoured by the lunatic fashion designers. I’ve seen comments suggesting he may be the image of perfection to the often weirdly misogynist fashion world: a stick-thin model that looks female without all that nastiness of actually being female. Part of me thinks that’s not too far off the truth.

Is he sexy? I’m not sure. He’s not really my type. Perhaps he looks TOO female for me. Especially in this pic (left) which would probably have caused armagedden if it was on a magazine cover.

Actually, that image is also a good one for challenging stereotypes and stirring up discussion. It shows just how critical the pose is to our interpretation of an image. Here Andrej is posed in a typical, “sexy” female position. It demands that we read that picture in a certain way, looking at it as a sexual image. It also demands that we study it with a male gaze and admire the feminine beauty of the model. But he’s male and that throws a delicious spanner in the works. It’s good fun.

Reminds me of the good old days of Boy George and Marilyn and Dead or Alive. Although I do hope lovely Andrej doesn’t go the way of Pete Burns.

In any case, fuck you to Barnes and Noble and Borders. And fuck you to everyone who thinks censorship of the human body is a good idea.

Related Posts:

• Now Australia Is Banning Small Boobs
• Alien Nipples And “Adults Only” Hair Sex
• “Excessive Genital Detail”: Photoshopped Vulvas In Men’s Mags
• “A Real, As Opposed To A Fanciful, Risk Of Harm”

Back in 2008 a censorship controversy erupted over Bill Henson’s photographs of nude teenage girls. Police raided the gallery and shut down the exhibition, the Prime Minister called the images “disgusting” and a lynch mob mentality generally prevailed. Eventually the images were classified “G” (suitable for children) by the censors.

Since that time the art world has become increasingly paranoid about censorship and have been self-censoring images of children, including closing down an exhibition because it included a painting of a young boy without a shirt (mischievously called “above the waist nudity” by the religious nutjobs who support censorship).

Now the issue is in the papers again. A right-wing Christian senator (due to lose his seat in a few months) has chaired an inquiry into the Australian classification system and accepted submissions calling for art to be classified and possibly blacklisted if it contains nudity. The are also calls for films with full-frontal nudity to be banned. The Australian Christian Lobby have said “there are dangers to children everywhere” posed by images and bemoaning the fact that “it will be argued that adults should be able to see whatever they want, even claiming photos of naked children have artistic merit.”

(Yeah, like photos of your children in the bath. Or images like this one of Mary breastfeeding a naked Jesus.)

Naturally, the art community isn’t impressed.

Some shuddered at the thought of bureaucrats or religious groups controlling what art lovers could see. And others feared it would have a chilling effect on boundary-pushing art.

Welcome to my world, I thought.

In my original blog post on Henson I wrote my defence of his work from the position of “Come ON, people. It’s ART!”

The post incited a lot of comments including criticism from Tony Comstock who pointed out the flawed logic in my post (and I’m grateful for it). He wrote:

If you want controversial work to be protected because it’s “art”, then you are opening the door for controversial work to be supressed because it’s “not art”.

His comment is ringing true at the moment because I’m seeing all sorts of people up in arms about the idea of censoring art (and rightly so). Unfortunately it’s often couched in terms of “But you can’t censor us, it’s ART! Not porn!”

The subtext is obvious: art is good, porn is bad. Some censorship is OK… as long as it’s not of MY work. Because what I do isn’t nasty pornography! I am tasteful and intellectual and upstanding and I make ART, not PORN.

This page on the ABC website says:

We live in a time in history when more than ever before, all sorts of images are available to us. Some are beautiful. Some will make you smile. Some are confronting. Others are downright disgusting.

So how do you make that judgement about what is just a naked body – and what is pornographic? Is it about context? Is about whether or not you can see genitalia? Is it about positions, facial expressions, intent? And who do you trust to make those decisions for you?

Notice how that paragraph automatically makes a number of assumptions, mainly that pornography is inherently bad, that someone ought to be making decisions for you about what you can see.

This kind of porn/art dichotomy is ultimately harmful to the cause of free speech. It goes against the old saying, attributed to Voltaire, of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

I’m writing this post to make an appeal to artists and people who enjoy art. My appeal goes like this:

Thank you for being appalled at the idea of censorship. You are, quite rightly, upset at the idea that some government body would want to ban artwork or prevent you from seeing something, thus taking away your own agency to make decisions about what content or media you wish to consume. You want to change this. You want to fight it. Great.

Because if you don’t stand up for speech you don’t agree with, you open the door for the kind of censorship the art community is facing today.

Someone on Twitter has suggested sending Senator Guy Barnett hundreds of photos of Renaissance nudes to make a point about the stupidity of his anti-nudity stance. I like the idea but I doubt it will make much difference. The man is a dyed-in-the-wool religious conservative who probably believes that seeing nudity is harmful to children. He’s also a fan of using child pornography and “protecting the children” as an excuse for curtailing the rights of adults to freedom of speech.

He’s not the only one. Modern day prudes like Melinda Tankard Reist and “Young Media Australia” are also pushing for censorship in their crusade to “protect children”. The Australian Christian Lobby have their tentacles everywhere in government. They too are waging a moral battle to “save the children”.

Don’t be fooled. This isn’t about protecting kids at all. It’s really a campaign to inflict a certain religious moral agenda onto adult Australians. This “morality” is ultimately anti-sex, anti-reproductive rights and anti-feminist. It’s about returning Australia to a repressive time when information about sex was hidden, when children were seen and not heard, when women knew their place and had no access to contraception or safe termination.

These people want censorship because they fear sex. They think images of nudity or sexuality are inherently corrupting. They believe that repressing sexuality will somehow create a better world. They have no peer-reviewed scientific evidence to back up their claims of “harm”. All they have are religosity and an unshakeable belief that they are righteous. They are the Western version of the Taliban.

We have to stand up to them.

Here’s hoping that this latest censorship assault on the art world will be a quickening for some people, in the same way that the gamers have become organised. And I’m hoping that those who love the arts remember what’s happening here next time they ban an erotic film like Matinee or LA Zombie or Ashley and Kisha.

* The top image is by Rodney Pople. He painted this image of himself being beheaded by his children as a comment on the censorship of art.

* The bottom image is Caravaggio’s “Triumph of Eros” which would undoubtedly be blacklisted.

* Wikimedia Commons has a lovely collection of nude boys in art, there’s plenty of images to help to fire up the moral panic.

Related Posts:

• A Need For Privacy Makes This “Debate” One-Sided
• “9 Songs” And The Hypocrisy Of Censorship
• Australian Porn, Censorship And Statistics Roundup
• What’s Art? What’s Porn? What The Fuck?

Wendy Bacon was a campaigner against Australian censorship in the 1960s and 70s. In this amazing article, she details the fight of students against censorship in those heady libertarian days. This was a time when the Minister for Customs justified bans on books by saying “normal healthy Australians would not be interested in the works of DH Lawrence and Henry Miller anyway.”

Wendy and her friends conducted civil disobedience activities to highlight the nonsense of censorship. They included the publication of two poems that I want to include here on the blog. The poems show just how much sensibilities have changed – and how much the reactions to “obscenity” have stayed the same.

The first poem, Eskimo Nell, is a bawdy football poem:

But Eskimo Nell was an infidel – she equalled a whole harem,
With the strength of ten in her abdomen and her rock of ages beam.
Amidships she could stand the rush like this flush of a water closet,
So she grasped his cock like a Chatswood lock on the National Safe Deposit.
She lay for a while with a subtle smile while the grip of her cunt grew keener,
Then giving a sigh she sucked him dry with the ease of a vacuum cleaner.

The second poem is a deliberately provocative anti-religious poem called “Cunt is a Christian Word”:

Think of all the careless girls
who let men touch them there,
Who were foolish and silly
and forget about their immortal souls
Thinking instead of fleshly pleasures
and who have been brought to ecstasy
five thousand times.
But you have been saved from that.
Saved.

But soon you will realise,
That you have been getting fucked all along.
For there is no cock as big and rough
As the one your church has thrust into you.
God’s great steel penis …

Funny how the football poem is almost tame by today’s standards but I’m sure the religious will still be horribly offended by the second. That’s no reason to not publish it, of course. Freedom from offense is not a human right.

Wendy went to jail for publishing both of those poems. I’d like to thank her for her bravery and fortitude. A pity that 40 years later, we’re still fighting this nonsense fight with our government.

Related Posts:

• A Need For Privacy Makes This “Debate” One-Sided
• First They Came For The Pornographers…
• Fiona Patten Reveals How The NVE Classification Was Derailed
• The Small Boobs Have Snowballed

In August last year, film director Richard Wolstoncroft decided to engage in some civil disobedience.

He had wanted to screen the film LA Zombie, an explicit gay film about zombies, at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF). The Australian censors did not grant permission for him to do so – it’s illegal to publicly screen porn in Australia. Angered by the banning of the film, Mr Wolstoncroft organised a “public disobedience freedom of speech event.” No police turned up so he went ahead and showed the film.

Then in November, police raided his home demanding a copy of the DVD. He said he’d destroyed it. They threatened to confiscate all his DVDs and computers but finally relented.

Yesterday he went to court to face charges of… well, I don’t know what, to be honest. Screening a porn film in public or similar. He could have been given a $28,600 fine and spent 2 years in jail. Instead, the magistrate gave him a diversionary order and fined him $750 (plus all costs). He was ordered to pay the money to the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Let’s go beyond the insanity of our laws that make it illegal for consenting adults to view an adult film in a cinema because I think the absurdity of the situation speaks for itself.

What’s more interesting is the way Mr Wolstoncroft has been told to effectively donate to a charity to expunge the sin of showing other adults a porn film. A children’s hospital. Are you picking up the message loud and clear here folks? The implication is that the showing of LA Zombie caused harm. And somehow that harm was to children, apparently. Hence restitution for the crime of watching porn is to pay money to the children’s hospital.

Never mind that nobody was actually harmed, that adults happily attended the screening with out any ill effect, that police didn’t give a damn about it for months (it does seem that in November somebody higher up got a few phonecalls from a Christian lobby group and felt compelled to act).

The other thing is the rather mixed messages it sends. 2 years in jail for showing an adult film is just horrific. The $750 fine seems to suggest the law doesn’t want to take such a ridiculous “crime” seriously. Except to send a veiled message that porn somehow harms children in hospitals.

I’d love to hold a porn film festival in Australia. Perhaps we could just dispense with all that messing about in court and I could just donate some money directly to charity. A couple of grand to the children’s hospital to erase all the sin of watching explicit sex and we’ll call it even. Kind of like six hail marys but with swearing in between.

Or we could, oh, I don’t know… change the fucking classification laws in this country to reflect the 21st century.

Richard is holding a free speech event and mystery film screening to help pay for the court costs this Sunday. Check out the details here.

Related Posts:

• Berlin Porn Film Festival 2009
• Ms Naughty Goes Adventuring
• My First Premiere
• “9 Songs” And The Hypocrisy Of Censorship

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” – Mark Twain

We’re into the… let me think… fourth year of plans to introduce a mandatory internet filter in Australia and now it seems the UK conservatives want a piece of the censorial goodness. The British government is going to start talks with ISPs to discuss creating an “opt-in” version of the internet where all porn is mandatorily censored unless you put your name on their list.

Wow, sounds horribly, stupidly familiar. And I can only assume that the UK will now go through the same process we have: first, questions will be asked as to the technical feasibility of it all. Because naturally the idea will be prohibitively difficult to pursue and also expensive.

Next, they’ll have to work out what they mean by “porn”. Are we talking just the hardcore stuff? Nudity? Breastfeeding? Sex education sites?

Then, the geeks shall arise. Porn-loving people will realise they’re not alone, that they won’t stand for the government telling them what they, as adults, can and can’t see and they’ll start to get organised. To protest. To stand up for free speech. Because this is absolutely an attack on free speech.

The usual excuse is being used: “Won’t somebody think of the children!”

The MP (Claire Perry) rejects claims she is anti-porn, instead insisting tighter regulations would stop children from viewing restricted content.

“Why is the onus on parents, teachers and carers to act as web guides and policemen? Where is the industry responsibility?” Ms Perry asks.

(Source)

Why is the onus on parents, teachers and carers, Ms Perry? Because that’s their fucking job! That’s what “parenting” is about last time I looked. But never mind that, she is going to impose censorship because she believes most people can’t look after their own kids. Insulting to both the child-free and those who are responsible parents.

She also defends her position because apparently most people won’t use filters, either because they don’t know how or they don’t want to. Sorry, Ms Perry, but the rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s stupidity.

Read her full opinion piece here.

Alarmingly, she does her best to back up her call for censorship with the claim that there’s “compelling evidence” that porn does harm to children. Her source for this is a group called Safer Media. I looked up their site. They are a Christian anti-porn group who believe that any kind of media can induce crime. Aside from 4 outdated studies from the 70s, their main example of this “compelling evidence” is a study called “A meta-analysis of the published research on the effects of pornography” published in 1997. It seems to be a favourite of the anti-porn and religious purity brigade because it’s quoted often on the various anti-porn sites.

And, unsurprisingly, the research for that study was conducted by The Marriage and Religion Research Institute in co-operation with the “Love and Responsibility Project of The Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education.” The opening statement on that study says pornography is a “grave offense” that “perverts the conjugal act.”

Yep. Nice bit of unbiased research there. Read it and be impressed by the way it reaches its conclusion at the start, unhindered by any trifling concern with scientific method.

One biased meta study by a religious group shouldn’t comprise enough evidence to motivate a government into large-scale censorship. Because the fact is there is still no definitive peer-reviewed scientific evidence that porn is harmful – to children or adults.

So, UK readers. It’s your turn to stand up and fight this crap. Tell these people that they can’t take away your right to free speech just because some people are bad parents. Tell them that if they want to start censoring porn, they’d better come up with real, quantifiable scientific evidence that it actually does harm.

And pop on over to the various Australian websites like Gizmodo where we’ve already been having this argument for four years. You’ll be able to see all the opposition’s nonsense trotted out in advance, along with the well-reasoned discussion points you can use in reply. And note that we are still fighting this shit – even though the government has been forced to back down and change its position numerous times thanks to our ongoing opposition.

You can win this. We can win this. You just have to stop being embarassed about liking porn and be prepared to stand up for free speech.

And if enough of you can unite to get Surfin’ Bird into the Christmas singles chart, you can definitely stand together to save the internet from government philistines.

Pic is from here.

Update – more good posts:
Sex educator Dr Petra Boynton unpacks the whole shebang here.

Good critique of dodgy data at Thought Soup.

Bish Training has another great perspective.

Violet Blue shreds MP Claire Perry’s “research” at ZDnet

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In 2000, the Howard government seriously considered introducing a new law that would have essentially made explicit porn movies legal in Australia. The Non Violent Erotica (NVE) classification was to replace the existing X classification. Explicit films rated X are illegal to sell in all Australian states (though it’s not illegal to own them). The NVE classification was a handy way of liberalising erotic material in one broad legal stroke without messing around with the laws of individual states.

(I have to say, part of me is still stunned that the Liberals, traditionally the conservative side of politics in Australia, had actually decided to go down this path in 2000. And I’m appalled that the government and opposition we have in 2010 are essentially more conservative, religious and pro-censorship!)

Unfortunately one right-wing fundamentalist Christian had balance of power in the Senate in 2000 – Brian Harradine. And he succeeded in sinking the NVE classification, ensuring that Australia continues to be stuck with an archaic censorship system.

In this video, shot at the Queensland Humanist Convention in May, Sex Party leader Fiona Patten describes how Harradine convinced the Prime Minister that porn shouldn’t be legalised: he held a private screening of porn films. Essentially, Brian Harradine held a stag night at Parliament House.

Fiona also talks about how she’s spoken to MPs who privately have no issue with porn but who are afraid of losing the religious vote on “moral” issues – thus, we end up in this stagnant political quagmire.

You could argue that the derailing of the NVE classification became something of a moot point in the face of the glories of internet porn. Nonetheless, our ridiculously outdated censorship system is still used by the religious right as a tool for imposing their version of morality on the rest of us. And the internet filter plan has meant we are now hearing calls for the government to classify everything on the internet, with an aim of banning legal adult material.

If you are interested in the history of the X-rating, read An X-Rated Hoax on Libertus. This was written in 1999 and was originally submitted to the government when they were considering the NVE classification.

If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know I’ve been plugging the Sex Party a lot recently. As an atheist, feminist pornographer who believes in human rights, how could I not? We’re currently in the middle of an election campaign here in Australia, so I can’t help but “root” for the ones who are fighting censorship and oppression.

One more thing: isn’t the hypocrisy of censorship infuriating? It was OK for a group of politicians to have an (illegal) public screening of erotic transsexual films in order to “assess” them but the rest of us are apparently morally incapable of such dispassionate judgement. The same thing occurs every time the Australian Classification Board judges something to be Refused Classification; they can see it but the rest of us are too fragile to withstand it.

(Note: The video is 2:12 long and I’m hosting it on my server. Unfortunately I am having a lot of trouble uploading videos to Youtube or other vid services at present so this means the video is not embeddable. Sorry.)

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History Eraser Button

emski* [AVS/MFL] | MySpace Video

Fresh from saving us all from “spams and scams coming through the portal“, Minister for Communications Senator Conroy has come up with another brilliant idea to save the kiddies from all the horrors of the internet. A nice shiny red browser button.

Based on the Adobe Air platform, the security device, notionally referred to as a “big red button” will either occupy the Windows taskbar or sit prominently on the desktop.

Clicking the device will permit a child experiencing trouble to either access assistance to report issues to a social networking site or to connect with Police.

Sounds a lot like the Porn Siren, a cunning idea I came up with quite a few years ago.

Ridiculously, the panic button is said to have cost $100,000 and a team of 8 programmers to create. Junket, anyone?

As IT wire points out, either kids won’t know when to push it or, like Stimpy in the History Eraser Button video above, they’ll be sitting there feeling incredibly tempted to push it. Hell, I’d like to push it just to piss people off.

What is wrong with simply talking to kids? Educating them about their media environment? Parenting them. Being in the room when they’re on the internet. Instead, this government is wasting my hard earned tax dollars on pointless things like the big red panic button.

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In June 2009 the officers of Australian sex positive adult company Abby Winters was raided by police. In January 2010 Garion Hall was charged with “producing an objectionable film” and also 2 counts of child porn.

The case has finally gone to court and G Media, the company that runs Abby Winters, has been fined $6000 after Hall pleaded guilty to the objectionable film charge. The CP charges were dropped, unsurprisingly. The verdict seems to have been the result of a deal between prosecutors and Hall. It’s possible that the police couldn’t get most of the charges to stand and wanted the whole thing to be over and out of the way. I’m sure the politicans wanted it this way too.

Looking at the broader picture, the end result is very disappointing. This was supposed to be a test case to see if the nonsense law of “making an objectionable film” could even stand up to scrutiny. “Objectionable” is defined in Victorian law as something that is offensive to a reasonable adult. Ideally the court should have tested this supposition by asking if Abby Winter’s films were too shocking for the average joe to deal with.

That didn’t happen. Indeed, the Magistrate declined to even watch the films.

Got that folks? The Victorian legal system has declared that someone had made an objectionable film without even viewing that film.

The Magistrate didn’t even get someone to do the dirty work for her. No “experts” in the form of Australian Classification Board officials were called in to discuss the nature of the films. Instead, we have the first ever prosecution of this criminal law without any decent kind of legal test.

I don’t blame Garion Hall for wanting to just pay a fine and bog off to the US to make his films. Why fuck around with such nonsense laws? And yet it feels like a wasted opportunity to really show just how out of touch our country’s censorship laws are.

It’s also a great big slap in the face for freedom of speech in this country. Rest assured, you can’t make films with explicit sex in Victoria, even if that state has recently put new human rights protection laws onto the book. Seems that the courts won’t bother to consider the craptabulous question of whether it’s “art” or “porn”. You’ll just be fined and told to go elsewhere because Victoria doesn’t stand for that sort of thing. Cue the pearl clutching.

If you’re Australian and you’re shaking your head at this please consider voting for the Australian Sex Party in the senate at the next election. It’s our best chance to get laws like these off the books.

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The Examiner reports that a conservative “family” group operating on the campus of Princeton University has created a petition protesting against a planned lecture by Tristan Taormino on feminist porn.

Tristan is due to speak tomorrow at the campus. Her presentation is called “My Life As a Feminist Pornographer” and will feature clips from her films.

According to the Examiner, The Anscombe Society is a student organization at Princeton University “dedicated to affirming the importance of the family, marriage, and a proper understanding for the role of sex and sexuality.” The anti-porn group has put up posters condemning the event and created an online petition which currently has 274 signatures. They’ve also written to numerous university officials calling for the event to be cancelled and expressed disapproval at the government funding it has received.

The university has responded by saying it’s a legitimate academic discussion, aided by examples. Nice to see the uni standing up for freedom of speech and honest intellectual discussions.

And I bet the Anscombe society is never invited to Porn and Prawn nights off campus.

More details in this report from the Daily Princeton.

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Today I was reading about the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) – the group headed by Tipper Gore responsible for creating the “Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics” sticker. Given the current climate of censorship it’s always useful to go back and look at previous moral crusades. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it all sounds very familiar.

In 1985 Tipper Gore decided that somebody had to think of the children after hearing Prince’s distinctly sexy song Darling Nikki on Purple Rain (featured in the vid above). She began to push for ratings on albums and made up the “Filthy Fifteen” list of songs considered to be the most objectionable. Those songs are:

1 Prince “Darling Nikki”
2 Sheena Easton “Sugar Walls”
3 Judas Priest “Eat Me Alive”
4 Vanity “Strap on Robbie Baby”
5 Mötley Crüe “Bastard”
6 AC/DC “Let Me Put My Love into You”
7 Twisted Sister “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
8 Madonna “Dress You Up”
9 W.A.S.P. “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)”
10 Def Leppard “High ‘n’ Dry (Saturday Night)”
11 Mercyful Fate “Into the Coven”
12 Black Sabbath “Trashed”
13 Mary Jane Girls “In My House”
14 Venom “Possessed”
15 Cyndi Lauper “She Bop”

As a child of the 80s, I regularly listened to music with explicit lyrics, including many songs on that list. I seem to have survived OK. As have the millions of other people my age. I fondly recall listening to Dress You Up at age 13, thinking that it was about… well, fashion, actually. And She Bop was about dancing.

But you know, I DID understand that Darling Nikki was a sexy song. I was a little shocked to hear the word “masturbating” but that’s what made it so damn cool. It made me feel sexy and it turned me on, which was pretty much the whole point. Beyond that… well, it was only a song. I can’t say it had any negative effect on my psyche or behaviour.

The PMRC also organised a senate hearing into “porn rock”. Those keen on censorship said that music had become dangerous because it no longer talked about sex in a subtle way.

Susan Baker testified that “There certainly are many causes for these ills in our society, but it is our contention that the pervasive messages aimed at children which promote and glorify suicide, rape, sadomasochism, and so on, have to be numbered among the contributing factors.” Naturally they didn’t provide any conclusive evidence to back up their claim. The PMRC also got their knickers in a knot over backmasking and supposed subliminal messages in music.

There were three opposing witnesses: Frank Zappa, Dee Snider from Twisted Sister and… John Denver. The latter had been through his own controversy thanks to people misinterpreting Rocky Mountain High. He said he was “strongly opposed to censorship of any kind in our society or anywhere else in the world.”

The PMRC won, of course. The stickers went out and major stores such as Wal-Mart then refused to stock the albums. The “voluntary” rating created a chilling effect within the music industry, with some labels urging bands to tone down lyrics for the sake of better distribution and sales. At the same time, there was quite a backlash, with heaps of artists deliberately using explicit lyrics as a statement of defiance.

Interestingly, one of the first albums to receive an “explicit lyrics” sticker was Jazz From Hell by Frank Zappa, an instrumental album with no lyrics whatsoever.

* I’ve plundered most of this blog post from the Wikipedia entry on the PMRC which is well worth reading – especially the section on the various anti-Tipper statements made by bands.

Best example: the sticker that appeared on Metallica’s 1986 album Master of Puppets which read: ‘THE ONLY TRACK YOU PROBABLY WON’T WANT TO PLAY IS “DAMAGE, INC.” DUE TO THE MULTIPLE USE OF THE INFAMOUS “F” WORD. OTHERWISE, THERE AREN’T ANY “SHITS,” “FUCKS,” “PISSES,” “CUNTS,” “MOTHERFUCKERS,” OR “COCKSUCKERS” ANYWHERE ON THIS RECORD’

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A couple of weeks ago Hungry Beast on the ABC did a great job of exposing the insanity of Australia’s classification laws, focusing on the rule that forbids “too much genital detail” in photos of naked women in magazines. Essentially, the rule means that any glimpse of a woman’s inner labia is considered to be obscene and thus the mag has to be classified as “restricted” and be wrapped in plastic in some places.

This rule has been in force for over ten years. The end result is that soft porn magazines like People and Penthouse regularly adjust photos of women’s genitalia with Photoshop, “healing” any stray pink bits to ensure the pussy looks “neat and tidy”.

Never mind that women’s pussies are rarely “neat and tidy” or that uneven or protruding inner labia are perfectly normal, our government ensures that the average person can’t see them in a unrestricted magazine. The result, of course, is that anyone looking at these pictures may develop a warped view of how women’s vulvas are supposed to look.

This issue last surfaced in 2001 when Australian Women’s Forum featured an article on labiaplasty and discussed the effects of airbrushed porn on women’s self esteem. It sought to include “before” and “after” photos revealing how the Photoshopping occurs… but then the Classification Board stepped in and ruled that the article contained “too much genital detail.” Even though the photos were absolutely relevant to the story.

I watched this and snarled, especially at the clueless representative of the Board who hedged and said had no real idea as to what met the guidelines and what didn’t. Of course, he was lying. He knows that pink bits are bad. That’s the way it’s been done for the last ten years. The publishing industry knows it and have adjusted their practices accordingly.

I’m hoping that this report helped to raise awareness among younger people about the nonsense that is our censorship system. Maybe this combined with the R-rated games issue and net filtering will get people finally thinking about why the government thinks adults are unable to deal with inner labia, or violent video games, or fetishes.

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Not long after I posted about the Australian Sex Party’s press release that the Classification Board were now banning depictions of women with too-small breasts, my friend Michael Meloni wrote something similar on his blog Somebody Think of the Children.

His post ended up on social networking site Reddit and from there it went beserk, ending up on hundreds of blogs, The Register, Jezebel, Encore, Crikey and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Both Michael’s blog and the Sex Party’s site went down under the strain of so much traffic.

Michael’s post was far less ranty than mine. He also contacted the Board and received this response. They stated that they’re only following “the guidelines” and that said guidelines don’t specifically target small boobs or female ejaculation. They did not, however, say that female ejaculation was NOT urination and have yet to respond to a direct question on that topic.

Their reply pretty much confirms that the Board are able to arbitrarily ban films and magazines based upon their own interpretation of the almighty “guidelines” and that interpretation is not necessarily based on science or evidence.

The viral response to the idea that “Australia bans small boobs” has been rather fascinating. Almost everyone has responded with horror at the idea. Even feminists who are anti-porn think that banning female ejaculation is sexist and stupid.

Crikey has criticised the whole thing as being a case of Chinese Whispers. But even if the headline was over the top I think it’s done a great job at getting the problem of Australian censorship out into consciousness of the wider world. The plethora of comments I’ve read today suggests that plenty of people understand the issues at stake here and they’re not happy about it. Questions are being asked about why our censorship system is making these kinds of judgement calls about body types and sex acts. I think people are wondering about the accountability of the Classification Board and their ability to be so secretive about their decisions.

The pro-censorship groups who lobbied for stricter applications of the guidelines have weighed in to the debate, arguing that banning depictions of models who “appear to be under 18″ is basically about banning certain magazines that allegedly appeal to pedophiles.

While I can understand their concern, I remain an advocate of free speech. If a model is over 18, she is legal. The magazine in question may be offensive in what it depicts but it’s not child porn. Unless someone can show evidence that reading that kind of magazine leads directly to criminal activity, we are legislating against thought crime.

Interestingly, today’s Sydney Morning Herald featured a related story saying that Australian artists are now afraid to depict children in their work for fear of prosecution or censorship. They’ve even released a book for artists called The Art Censorship Guide, detailing what to do when confronted with police. The spectre of thought crime is having a chilling effect on our artists, it seems. I discussed the issue of thought crime and art a couple of years ago during the Bill Henson saga.

To be honest, I feel like the “small boobs” thing is not as important as the female ejaculation ban. This is a real clear-cut issue that feminists can stand and fight for. We need to be vocal and tell the government that banning certain depictions of the female orgasm is sexist and wrong. We need to tell them to stop trying to regulate sexuality and to let adults be adults. We need to say that the personal is the political, that freedom of speech includes sexual speech, that declaring female ejaculation to be “abhorrent” is an act of oppression against women.

Time to draw up the slogans, girls?
Get your laws out of my drawers!
I squirt and I vote!
Female ejaculation is not a phallusy!
Every orgasm a gushing orgasm!
Australian women need the Classification Board like a fish needs a bicyle. (Ok, this one isn’t going to fit well on a sign)

Previous posts:
Female ejaculation films to be banned in Australia
The strange politics of “obscene bodily fluids”
Now Australia is banning small boobs

Update: The Sex Party have posted further comments about the last 24 hours here including a story of a female ejaculation scene being classified RC.
Update 31st Jan: The comments section on the Crikey article has made for interesting reading. In it I’ve elaborated on a few points.

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