Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

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 Nonetheless, our ridiculously outdated censorship system is still used by the religious right as a tool for imposing their version of morality on the rest of us.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.)


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.

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.

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.

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’

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.

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.

The Australian Sex Party has released a statement on their site about the new bans on female ejaculation films (my original post is here).

Turns out that squirting is not the only natural aspect of female sexuality that the Classification Board deems obscene. Now small boobs are in the firing line.

The Board has also started to ban depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint’s Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications. “We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size”, Fiona said. “It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator’s actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late”.

Fiona says she’s seen some of the photos deemed “too flat chested” and the women depicted had larger breasts than her.

Why ban small boobs? I can only assume it stems from paranoia that flat chests somehow stir up the pedophiles. And you only need to mention that “p” word to start a full-scale moral panic in Parliament.

Shall we put such hysteria aside and look at what this ruling is saying to Australian women? Basically, it’s classing a certain normal female body type as obscene. It’s declaring all flat chests to be automatically juvenile, something that should not be viewed by anyone because of a fear that it will stir up “base instincts” in certain people.

Can the Classification Board be any more insulting or sexist?

As mentioned in the statement, adult companies are already narrowing down the range of “acceptable” body types they can display. Add in the requirement to Photoshop out any glimpses of inner labia and you’ve got a delightful recipe for distorted body images.

Indeed, these new rules are pretty much saying: normal women should have nice large fake tits and never emit any kind of liquid when they orgasm. Actually, it might even be less obscene if the women don’t have orgasms at all. Much easier that way. Just stick to the facials and the bukkake, thanks very much.

Oh, and if you’re a guy who just happens to think small boobs are sexy? Look out, mate. You’re obviously a pervert.

This all stems from the law that says that not only should a model be over 18, she has to LOOK over 18. This kind of extremely-hard-to-define rule exists solely to prevent thought crime. But too late! Now, thanks to the prudes, we’re all forced to look at women with small boobs from the perspective of a pedophile, trying to work out if she looks “too young.”

There’s an easier way to do it, folks. It’s called identification. If a model is over 18… well, she’s over 18. Simple, sensible, straightforward. Far too sensible for this government, obviously.

Other posts:
Great moments in Australian censorship
The small boobs have snowballed

I’ve received a circular from the Eros Association, the advocacy group for the Australian adult industry. Thanks to shit stirring by a fundamentalist Christian group, the rules have been tightened as to what adult films can be imported into Australia.

The Classification Board has explicitly stated that films featuring female ejaculation will now be seized and considered RC – refused classification. Effectively banned. This also means that female ejaculation sites will be considered RC (prohibited) for the purposes of the internet filter planned to be introduced here this year.

Eros says:

The Classification Board have determined that female ejaculation is not a real event and therefore all issue from a women’s vagina is piss and therefore covered under the parameters in the Guidelines for ‘golden showers’. This means that if the shower happens to land on the body or in the mouth it is determined to be an offensive fetish and goes RC. The Classification Board’s finding that female ejaculation does not exist is something we will contest with them as there is a body of scientific (and personal) evidence that says otherwise. Even last month on the ABC Science Show with Dr Norman Swan, they spent an hour with scientists discussing this phenomenon and how it was not urine.

I’m glad Eros is going to fight this. It gets me hopping mad that a government can perpetuate this nonsense and are so eager to do the will of prudes and ignorant religious nutters who wish to meddle in the sex lives of others.

The sooner our outdated classification (censorship) system is abolished, the better. They should not have the right to ban films based on subjective, religious, unscientific, biased and sexist opinion as to what is and isn’t “obscene.”

* Please read my follow up post The Strange Politics of “Obscene” Bodily Fluids.

* Update 27th Jan: Please read my new post: Now Australia is banning small boobs

SPOILER ALERT: Warning! This post is about the film Avatar and may contain spoilers. Stop reading now if you haven’t seen it. Also, stop reading now if your find the idea of alien nipples or hair sex disturbing.

I finally saw James Cameron’s Avatar yesterday and I quite liked it. The visual imagery was stunning but I found the plot a little derivative and unoriginal. Where Titanic made me cry like a romantic fool, Avatar didn’t really inspire any serious emotional reaction. So I was a trifle disappointed but still mostly impressed.

Reviews aside, I’m rather intrigued about the “nudity” and sexuality depicted within the film. As you probably know, Avatar features a race of blue-skinned, forest-dwelling aliens called the Na’vi who tend to wear very little clothing apart from loincloths, necklaces and weapons. Their long tails tend to cover up their buttocks and we don’t ever see any glimpses of genitals.

The females have small breasts and presumably also nipples because the males have them. Problem is… we’re not allowed to see them. The women wear various neck decorations which cover the whole nipply area although there are a number of times when we are given glimpses of the full boob. At the very start I swore I saw a nipple outline but on other occasions there was a simple flat blue surface. Others have debated this whole vexed question and someone pointed at that since these aliens aren’t placental mammals, they shouldn’t have breasts at all.

Why do I care about whether the audience can see alien nipples?

I’m interested because it throws light on issues of censorship, “child friendly” entertainment and of Western society’s whole attitude towards breasts and sexuality.

In theory, it shouldn’t matter that we can see the nipples or genitalia of an alien. If the computer-generated image on screen doesn’t depict a human, why are we imposing human ideas of “obscenity” onto it? Surely the tails of the Na’vi are just as rude?

The same thinking applies to the excision of the love scene between hero Jake and the Na’vi woman Neytiri. We only see them kiss… and then we have a few vague shots of them cuddling, fading to black. The original script sees them “plugging in” to each other via the nerve-type thingies (”queues”) in their hair:

He puts his face close to hers. She rubs her cheek against his. He kisses her on the mouth. They explore each other. Then she pulls back, eyes sparkling.

NEYTIRI: Kissing is very good. But we have something better.

She pulls him down until they are kneeling, facing each other
on the faintly glowing moss.

Neytiri takes the end of her queue and raises it. Jake does
the same, with trembling anticipation. The tendrils at the
ends move with a life of their own, straining to be joined.

MACRO SHOT — The tendrils INTERTWINE with gentle
undulations.

JAKE rocks with the direct contact between his nervous system
and hers. The ultimate intimacy.

They come together into a kiss and sink down on the bed of
moss, and ripples of light spread out around them.

THE WILLOWS sway, without wind, and the night is alive with
pulsing energy as we DISSOLVE TO –

LATER. She is collapsed across his chest. Spent. He
strokes her face tenderly.

(from this page)

Apparently Cameron made the decision to cut out the scene to keep the film PG-13. It will feature in the DVD, along with more nipple shots.

I think the whole “ultimate intimacy” idea behind “queue mingling” sounds rather fabulous. Much more spectacular than the usual messing around with bodily fluids. And it certainly buys into the idea of sex as being a transcendent activity, more important than mere reproduction or physical pleasure.

But is it sex at all? There’s no real hint as to whether “queue mingling” actually qualifies as a reproductive act – especially given that the Na’vi tend to “plug in” to their horse-creatures and dragon-type animals and trees. Declaring the act to be a sexual one tends to turn the Na’vi into the very naughtiest kind of tree-huggers.

But why should children not see a scene that doesn’t actually involve sex – at least, sex of the human kind? Why should kids be protected from glimpses of alien nipples? (Indeed, I could go off on a rant about why we get so upset at the idea of kids seeing human sexuality… but that’s another post.) In theory, the Na’vi are the same result of evolutionary biology as the rest of us; their bodies do what they have evolved to do. I could detect no overtly restrictive sexual “morality” written into the imaginary society of Cameron’s indigenous people beyond the fact that queuing enforces a natural monogamy.

Of course, we all know that these imaginary aliens are simply a metaphor for human indigenous people. They share too many humanoid traits for us to consider them as “true” aliens – of the kind that, say, tend to lay eggs in your chest or go on intergalactic hunting missions.

So all the careful concealment of genitals and nipples and weird hair sex are to suit the strange attitudes of the audience, for whom nudity is still shameful and sex is still taboo. And ultimately, this self-censorship by the filmmaker was about getting the film out to as many people as possible, including children, who we deem to be too frail to endure the sight of blue nipples.

And do I even need to point out the ongoing insanity that says kids can’t be exposed to sexuality but violence – such as the graphic final battle scenes of Avatar – is fine?

We’ve obviously got a long way to go with the way sex is depicted in mainstream films if we can’t even explore the sexual biology of an imaginary alien species.

Photo is from the official Avatar site. I wasn’t able to find many pics to better showcase alien boobs, although I suspect the filmmakers want it that way.

The mandatory internet filter has been on the cards for nearly two years now but I must admit I honestly didn’t think it would get off the ground. The whole idea is manifestly flawed and technically unfeasable and I foolishly thought that Senator Conroy would have to bow to common sense in the end.

Alas, no. Religious zealotry tends to flush away all common sense and thus it is that today Stephen Conroy has given the green light to the filter.

It’s hard to articulate the churn of negative emotions I’m feeling now but suffice to say that I’m angry, frustrated, outraged and perplexed by the decision. The plan still involves a blacklist and it’s still going to be secret; it’s essentially a green light for the government to censor pretty much anything under the guise of “protecting the children.”

And what’s being sold as a fight against child porn is actually a war on legal, adult pornography. The report says that RC (”refused classification”) material will be blocked – this is material that it is actually legal to own in Australia. The Australian Sex Party says 99% of all adult websites would be considered RC if the government had the resources and time to classify the millions of them out there.

Even female ejaculation is considered a “fetish” and thus beyond the pale. Once again, censorship imposes itself on female sexuality and tells us what is and isn’t “normal”. This is a regime that bans the healthy sexuality of Matinee but thinks images of clitoridectomy a la Antichrist is OK.

The only positive thing I can take from this is the overwhelming response to the announcement on Twitter and in comments on news sites. About 99% of all comments and tweets I’m reading are opposed to the filter and a lot of people are saying it’s a vote-changer. There’s real anger out there and I think it’s going to be forcefully expressed in the coming days and weeks.

Fact is Australia has outgrown it’s ridiculous censorship laws and there’s a wave of Gen X and Y internet users that are about to start getting seriously vocal about their right to freedom of speech. It really is time we stood up to these conservative bastards and told them what the majority of Australians really think.

And if protests and letters and emails and strong public antipathy don’t work, I will be leaving Australia. Probably in a year’s time when the filter is due to come into force. No doubt For The Girls and some of my other sites will be blocked and I don’t want to give my tax dollars to a country that thinks my brand of positive sexual expression is obscene.

Fuck them.

Update (and I think I’m going to keep updating this post this evening as things progress): The Australian Christian Lobby which pushed for the filter is ALREADY demanding that it be extended:

Managing director Jim Wallace issued a statement claiming the Enex report had “proven the technological principle [of filtering] can be extended to deal with other harmful X and R-rated material on the internet.

“This is now clearly feasible and we need a review in three years that might test this in practice, particularly using third party providers of URLs,” Wallace said.

Hello slippery slope.

Scanning in old photos a few weeks ago I came across the pics we took at the Sydney performance of Annie Sprinkle’s Post Porn Modernist in 1996. Annie positively insisted that the audience took photos of the show so these blurry images are the result of our participation. I’ve also still got one of the rice-filled shakers we used to create a wall of sound during Annie’s orgasmic meditation.

This show was like a first step into a wider world for me. I’d had my interest in sex and sexuality stirred by the then-risque pages of Australian Women’s Forum mag but beyond a few furtive visits to a sex shop, I was still pretty naive.

And then Annie Sprinkle came to town amid much fanfare and negative press. I don’t think I paid much attention until the day the police paid her a visit. Suddenly it became imperative that uniformed officers determine if “obscene” acts were being performed in the Belvoir Theatre, something that couldn’t be allowed to go on if drinks were being served.

The libertine in me was galvanised. I booked two tickets to the show, partly to say “fuck you” to conservative censors who would tell me what I could and could not see.

Once I was in the theatre, I found myself feeling rather nervous. What was I in for? Was this really my kind of thing?

And then Annie appeared in all her positive, cheerful, bewigged glory and related the fascinating tale of a life lived to its fullest. She made us laugh and she made us share in the sad times. She also made us squirm. I can still remember my shock at hearing the story of a customer who enjoyed anal fisting: “I’d reach up and around and tickle his heart,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. I think that’s the first time I’d even heard of fisting, let alone the anal kind.

In the interval she invited audience members to come down and have a photo taken with her boobs on their head – for $15 of course. I was too shy and I still regret not doing it. The above photos show that we enjoyed it vicariously.

And then she performed her amazing breath orgasm which was just a stunning thing to watch (I actually tried it a year later with mixed success). It was a mind-expanding experience, to be in the same room as a woman who could achieve orgasm through breathing and mind power alone. I was just so impressed and Annie has been a heroine for me ever since.

Indeed, she showed me that sex can be a positive and feminist experience and that one can make a living out of prostitution or porn or sexually-based art without having to be all those negative things that society insists a woman should be. In a way, Annie’s Post Porn Modernist put me on the path that I’m still walking today: a feminist pornographer out to change the world.

I dug up my old Sydney Morning Herald and Age data CDs to see if I could find the news reports of Annie’s visit here. They’re so out of date they don’t work on Windows Vista but I did salvage some articles after much mucking around. Here’s a sample of some of the media from Annie’s 1996 visit.

Sprinkle’s tour into realm of the censors
By Mark Ray

IN a city accustomed to sordid revelations at the Wood Royal Commission on corruption within the New South Wales police force, New York-based performance artist Annie Sprinkle seemed an odd target for a burst of censorship fervor.

Sprinkle, a former US prostitute and star of 200 pornographic movies, has just finished a sell-out week-long season of her show ‘Post Porn Modernist’ at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, despite threatened police action against the theatre. The show opens at the Athenaeum in Melbourne on Tuesday for a two-week season.

During the week, the Belvoir Street Theatre was told its liquor licence might be revoked because of Sprinkle’s explicit one-woman show. There are no longer any censorship laws in NSW but police action against the show was threatened by recourse to provisions of the Liquor Licensing Act.

By Friday that threat had been abandoned – apparently after the Minister for Police suggested to his commissioner that the moves against Sprinkle were inappropriate.

‘Post Porn Modernist’ is certainly explicit, but the atmosphere at one performance here this week seemed unlike that of a sleazy porn show.

An audience of apparently unremarkable suburbanites, dedicated fans and the curious broad-minded staged no walkouts, made no complaints but responded with much laughter…

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT ANNIE.
SHANNON HALBERT, 26, high-voltage linesman.
“It was bizarre. Much more spiritual than I expected. I thought it’d be the life and times of a porno queen but it’s a decent show.”
AMANDA GARLAND, 29, film producer.
“I didn’t know what to expect but it was nice to see sexuality brought out so openly and presented so positively.”
ROBERT SKAPPEL, 50, interior decorator.
“I liked the fact that she included spirituality into her sexual experience. I’m all for that message.”
DIANA COXSHEAD, 35, naturopath and pharmacist.
“She seemed most comfortable in the last part of the program, going into the spiritual, tantric side.”

- The Age, 31st March 1996

Annie’s Happy Ritual
By Jim Schembri
…The reaction to the show has been strictly divided, Sprinkle says. “I’ve had the best audiences in Australia and the worst press. The audiences have been the most appreciative of anywhere I’ve been in the world and the press has been the most vicious.

“I’ve been misquoted here in Australia more than I’ve ever been. I wouldn’t say (the coverage has been) the most conservative, (but) I would say (it’s been) the most misinformed, the most taken out of context, the most uneducated. And very judgmental, extremely judgmental.”

Sprinkle says she’d never bring Post-Porn Modernist back to Australia because of the stress of bad press, but will bring her new show MetamorphoSex here. “I would have to think hard if I’d want to bring something back that has that potential to be controversial. The bad press inspires a lot of hatred.

I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
- The Age, 4th April 1996

In deep water with Annie
By Emma Tom

NOT LONG into the all-nude Annie Sprinkle bath-house interview, I wish to inform Houston that we have a problem.

Note-taking in a ginseng bath is turning out to be almost as difficult as the well-documented “where the hell do I put my wallet?” nudist nightclub dilemma.

Plus, for some weird reason, the unclothed subject matter is not proving conducive to family newspaper photographs. No matter how low we sink in the spa or how strategically placed the sauna towels, there’s always a stray nipple or three vying for camera attention.

This is Annie Sprinkle, live performance sextress and former porn film starlet, after all. Asking her to keep her money- makers out of the camera would be like asking Eva Cox for a lap dance. Just wouldn’t seem right…

- The Age, 29 March 1996

Reading through some of the other pieces I’m somewhat depressed that Australian society hasn’t progressed in the 13 years since Annie’s visit. A 1996 article called “Have We No Shame?” used Annie’s public cervix announcement as an excuse to bewail the alleged decline of society’s morals. You could easily reproduce the piece in today’s papers and the conservatives would happily nod along. The visit by the police was reproduced during the Henson art gallery censorship incident in 2008. Seems that Australia’s attitude to sex is still very furtive and juvenile.

Annie hasn’t come back and I don’t blame her. Looks like I’ll have to make the effort to go to the US and seek her out. Maybe then I can finally get that photo of her boobs on my head.

In Berlin last year I had the honour of meeting Jennifer Lyon Bell, an American filmmaker with a compelling vision for erotic film. Her film Matinee is a gorgeous work of art, well written, masterfully acted and beautifully filmed. It is a wonderful addition to the growing canon of well-made, female-focused erotic films and I consider it to be part of the new wave of sex-positive movies that are forging a new path in porn.

Naturally this means the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned it.

Matinee was due to screen as part of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival over the weekend but the OFLC told MUFF it would be illegal to show the film in public, effectively banning it. The film has not been officially classifed by the panel; they merely made a brief decision based on… well, I’m not sure what. They haven’t actually seen the film. They found out it had real sex in it and that was enough, I suspect.

MUFF and Jennifer have issued statements regarding the decision and they’re currently on the front page of the MUFF site.

The organisers rightly point out that the OFLC didn’t have a problem with Lars Van Trier’s Antichrist, which disturbingly depicts a scene of female genital mutilation and seems to be misogynist in intent. Jen’s film, which only shows two people having nuanced, meaningful, tender sex, is apparently more offensive than that.

MUFF says:

MUFF opposes the OFLC’s decision on the grounds that it represents a hypocritical and troubling suppression of transgressive female-centric sexuality on film. The modus operandi of Blue Artichoke Films, Bell’s production company, is to create films which portray realistic sexual intimacy, depict empowered female characters, possess artistic merit and strong narratives, and do not fall back upon the damaging and often dangerous stereotypes of female sexuality that the Western media is accustomed to. In other words, Bell is looking to produce films about sexuality which women can enjoy, free of masculine control.

MUFF are considering a “civil disobedience” screening as a way of protesting this ridiculous decision.

Jen writes:

Seriously?

It’s just two characters enjoying sex in a realistic way that fits with their characters’ personalities. Consensual sex, nothing weird. Why on earth would that be dangerous to watch?

What’s weird is that mainstream movies spend hours building up the characters in a story, then mangle the lovescene with brusque camera cutaways and awkward sheet-covering bedroom choreography as soon as the moment arrives. You never see James Bond have sex; after a few witty double entendres it’s fade-out then fade-up with a lit cigarette…and this is considered a perfectly acceptable depiction of sex on film.

Frankly, I’d like to know more about how James Bond does it. Is he a true sexual connoisseur, able to quickly divine each woman’s preferences and feel from her subtle reactions whether she wants her G-spot stroked or her hands deliciously pinned to the bed? Or is he an arrogant Casanova who uses some weird abrasive “patented technique” on every woman he sleeps with, smugly congratulating himself “They all love it when I do that”? I’d like the movie better as a whole because it’d tell me a lot about who he is. Plus, if he was good, it’d be really fun to watch, wouldn’t it?

The films that inspired me to mix explicit sex with story and character – Ken Park, 9 Songs, Shortbus – have all had rough roads. But I hoped that outside of America, my loving but prudish home country, everything would be easier. As it turns out, New York was no problem at all, and neither was Amsterdam (my current home). Strasbourg and Berlin festivals are happily screening it this fall. But Australia has a problem.

It’s depressing but not surprising that Matinee has been banned. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that our country’s ridiculous censorship laws are applied in an ad hoc manner and that they are out of touch with what most Australians think.

How is it that grown adults are prevented from seeing a film because it contains sex? And why aren’t we up in arms about this?

There are no reports in the major newspapers about this issue. I’m hoping to contact Margaret Pomeranz for a statement on where she stands with this. She was willing to be arrested for Ken Park in 2003… will she also speak out for Matinee?

Find out more about Matinee and Jennifer at the Blue Artichoke Films site.

Edit: Tony Comstock gives his view on the issue here.

The other day I visited one of the local video rental shops, a store I haven’t been to in a while. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs sitting unabashedly on the drama shelves. This is a small town, after all, and sexually explicit “art films” are a bit thin on the ground. I haven’t had a chance to see Shortbus, Destricted or any of those other “mainstream” explicit films due to this general scarcity so naturally I jumped at the chance to see 9 Songs.

The film happily bills itself as “the most explicit mainstream movie ever!” The plot, such as it is, focuses on a young couple in the flush of first lust and love. We see their relationship over the course of a year as they fuck frequently and go to concerts. That’s pretty much it – nothing else happens except concert footage and sex. Winterbottom apparently wanted the audience to “fill in the blanks” of the couple’s relationship, opting to show only snippets of conversation amid a lot of fucking, letting the viewers decide what kind of characters they have and what problems they my encounter.

It’s an interesting idea and I’ve yet to decide whether it’s clever or makes for a very boring movie. Certainly I wasn’t enthralled by it (and fast forwarded most of the songs). Of course, if this was a porn film (i.e. a film made explicitly to arouse) I’d think it was fab because it shows perspectives and characters often missing from the genre.

But this is NOT, Winterbottom insists, a porn movie. This is an art film, thank you very much. And thus that makes the explicit sex far different from all the explicit sex you see in a porn movie. This is a film with morals, people, and it’s made for a more discerning class of viewer than your average wanker who likes porn.

At least, that’s the spin on it.

I personally sat there watching it and couldn’t help but fume at the hypocrisy apparent in the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) Board’s decision to give it an R rating (after an initial X rating). And I wasn’t fuming because I thought it should have been lumped in with the porn films and effectively banned from cinemas. Nope. I was angry because this film’s R rating entrenches an arbitary line that says “this is an art film, it’s OK” and “this is a yucky porn film, ban it”.

I found myself reading the OFLC appeal decision on the film, which lists in extensive detail all of the sex acts in the film like some kind of really bad sex story:

At 47 minutes 58 seconds Lisa ties Matt to the bed, she slaps his face with her open hand and puts her stiletto heel into his chest and puts her weight on her foot. She then puts her booted foot onto Matt’s legs. She undresses. At 49 minutes 45 seconds Lisa asks Matt “do my nipples feel sore to you? They are.” At 50 minutes a two-minute scene of actual sex commences. Lisa kisses Matt’s penis and pulls at his testicles. She holds his penis in her mouth (actual sex), she manipulates his penis with her hand (actual sex), her hand is shown repeatedly manipulating Matt’s penis (actual sex).

The “interested parties” who made submissions regarding the film’s classification included TV critic Margaret Pomeranz and the conservative Christian lobby the Australian Family Association (and can I just say how much it pisses me off that the religious nutjobs have commandereed the word “family”?).

The paper discusses why the board decided to go against the “general rule” of “‘simulation, yes – the real thing, no.” I’ve added my own emphasis:

The Review Board in the majority found that there were special aspects of 9 Songs which differentiated it from other films which feature “the real thing” and have been Refused Classification by the Classification Review Board:

• 9 Songs is a film in which Matt and Lisa’s relationship is explored, from Matt’s perspective, through music and sexual activity. In this context, the scenes of actual sex are integral to the plot and theme of the movie.

• 9 Songs, made by the highly-regarded British director Michael Winterbottom, is a film of serious intent and considered by many to have artistic merit. The underlying themes of the movie, the honest, realistic and, at times, emotional and poignant depiction of the couple’s relationship, which were integrated with the scenes at rock concerts, were likely to resonate with a number of the film’s likely audience and had artistic value.

• The scenes of actual sex are not considered by the majority to be exploitative, immoral, indecent, demeaning, improper or gratuitous. In particular, regarding the scene in which Lisa slaps Matt and steps on him with a stiletto boot, the majority was of the view that the impact of this scene was mild and was not demeaning to Matt or Lisa.

• The tone of the scenes of actual sex, in terms of theme and style, were contextually relevant, filmed in a restrained manner and different from standard pornographic films that are routinely classified ‘X’.

The board also took into account “the persons or class of persons to or amongst whom it is published or is intended or likely to be published.”

So the decision to let 9 Songs be R rated was based on the idea that the film was artistic, serious, moral and not demeaning to the participants, as well as the fact that, being an “art film” it was designed for a higher class of people – you know, those smart trendy ones with university degrees who can obviously watch explicit sex without being corrupted or aroused – unlike all those scum who watch porn and for whom the X rating was created, to stop society from descending into a Mad-Max type scenario.

At least, I think that’s what the Classification system is supposed to do.

The OFLC document holds its moral head high in declaring the various teddibly important and artistic reasons why they made this exception to the rules. And yet to me it reveals that the Australian censorship emperors are clothing themselves in particularly airy garments.

I can name numerous adult films with explicit sex that are artistic, serious, moral and not degrading. Of particular note is, of course, the films of Tony Comstock which were banned from a film festival several years ago, but I could also talk about the explicit films of Petra Joy, Jennifer Lyon Bell, Shine Louise Houston or Tristan Taormino. Most of the movies I saw at last year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival could fit into that mould… but they would be illegal to screen here. I could easily argue that the new brand of porn seeks to explore relationships and sexuality in exactly the same way that Winterbottom has done with 9 Songs.

The only difference is that adult filmmakers acknowledge the arousal of their audience rather than placing themselves on an “art” pedestal, one that denies the fact that people WILL get turned on and masturbate if you show them sex.

And that’s what it really comes down to in the end. The OFLC can use all kinds of excuses about art and class and audience and intent but ultimately our laws are about the fear of people getting aroused and masturbating.

(It’s interesting to see the way film reviewers are so quick to say that 9 Songs isn’t really arousing… at least, for the right sort of person.)

If 9 Songs can explicitly show penetration, fellatio, cunnilingus and ejaculation and receive an R rating, why can’t others? I might think that 9 Songs is an art film but no doubt the Australian “Family” Association thought it was filth on the same level as your average gonzo. But if real sex gets the OK in some films and not others, what is the basis for distinction?

The OFLC document talks about the porn genre with disdain, indicating there are personal judgements of taste at work. I find a lot of porn to be distasteful as well (not to mention artless and downright stupid) but that should not be a defining factor in what adults can and cannot see in this country. I find the whole idea of Australian Idol and Transformers 2 to be fairly tasteless… so why are they on our TV and cinema screens?

Why are the personal tastes and “morals” of those who sit on the Classification Board considered to have more authority than mine? What special thing makes them able to sit and watch films that may corrupt the rest of us?

One of the things I find frustrating is that this nonsense is still on our lawbooks in 2009. 9 Songs was released in 2004 and the R decision prompted some debate… but nothing has changed. The legislation still talks about “the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults” but those in power won’t accept that standards have changed. The ready availability of porn on the internet means that people are a lot more comfortable with sexually explicit material now. What’s more, the fact that society hasn’t disintegrated as a result of this ready availability should be a strong indicator that all the moral panic surrounding sexually explicit material was wrong.

Until someone can show empirical proof that porn causes harm, there should not be laws restricting the consumption of it.

And if Australians can be grown up enough to rent 9 Songs from Video Ezy and not go mad, why not Xana and Dax, or Chemistry or, hell, even your average Buttman nonsense gonzo.

I’m looking on the bright side. 9 Songs has given me a happy hitlist of the top 10 important things I need to include in order to get an R rating for any explicit film I make:

1. Concert footage from whiny-yet-hip bands plus a brief snippet from a classical music concert
2. Footage of a couple eating breakfast and being playful together. It helps if the guy says “I love you” while wading in freezing water.
3. “Restrained” penetration, oral and cumshots. Whatever that means.
4. Arty lighting.
5. Wandering piano music during the sex scenes.
6. Comments about Antarctica and global warming.
7. A trailer that doesn’t show very much sex.
8. A marketing campaign that focuses on the right “class” of people.
9. A constant avowal to the press and critics that “it’s not porn, it’s art.”
10. A good relationship with Margaret Pomeranz.

I must admit, I’m not saying anything new with this post. If you want to read a more researched and academic critique of the whole “porn vs art” censorship issue, visit Tony Comstock’s The Intent To Arouse. For the Australian perspective I’d recommend my friend Helen Vnuk’s book Snatched: Sex and Censorship in Australia or read her excellent article on the whole topic here. Also another one here.

Here’s the trailer for 9 Songs. As you can see, it’s pretty light on for sex.

Yesterday the Victorian cops raided the office of abbywinters.com and arrested its owner Garion Hall. The raid was instigated by a journalist at the Herald Sun who provided the cops with a “dossier” on the site.

Garion has since made a statement saying no charges were laid, no hardware was taken and the police were “polite and amiable”. No doubt this won’t satisfy the Rupert Murdoch-run paper which will continue to hound the site, even if the cops aren’t particularly interested and have much better things to do.

Even if this hasn’t become a major legal case, I’d say most of those who work in the Australian adult industry are feeling more than a little nervous, myself included.

Australians are tolerant people and survey after survey has shown that we like porn and yet our laws remain stuck in a time warp. It is illegal to produce an “objectionable film” in the states (I must admit, I didn’t know this). Of course, what qualifies as “objectionable” hasn’t been tested in court and if Abby Winters becomes the test case I’d like to see them push the issue. How many “reasonable adults” would consider that site offensive?

Fact is that Abby Winters create some of the most positive and respectful adult material that I’ve ever seen. Their rules are very strict regarding how their models are presented and I know that all the girls on the site are paid and treated exceptionally well. One of the reasons they’ve done so well is that their brand of “Australian porn” was based on respect and goodwill towards the models. Abby Winters is creating change for good by showing that you can successfully offer adult material without resulting to degrading language or acts or by grossing out the audience.

So to see our country’s ridiculous censorship laws being used against it by a journalist on a right wing “moral” crusade is pretty fucking galling.

In theory, creating an “objectionable film” extends to couples filming themselves having sex. It’s nice to know our laws are protecting people from themselves.

I really am considering emigrating.