I was looking around for something nice for you for the weekend but couldn’t find anything. So here’s some more pornography instead (sorry Satchel girl).

First up, Julie Gale’s piece on ABC The Drum Unleashed on the porn in the corner store issue which I have also covered. Much of the graphic material in the original piece was cut. While I understand why editors choose to remove explicit references and images from an easily accessible public site, it also serves to underscore Julie’s point about the fact that the same material is in the corner store with the lollies and kids’ mags.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Julie (Kids Free 2B Kids) on the issue of sexualisation of girls for about three years now (she has a chapter, “One woman’s activism” in my book).  We like to get together in her homey kitchen -where Julie’s laughter tinkles like cascading water as she prepares tea cups and plates of biscuits (thanks Claire Halliday) -  and share our favourite comments and feedback. (Getting Real readers may recall some of these gems in my introduction, such as the charming and mysteriously evocative “as ugly as a hatful of arses”). We’ve been accused of everything from wanting to ban all sex, forcing Australian women to don the burka and (just last week actually) hastening armageddon. Anyway, this special post in the Unleashed comments section provides fresh inspiration for Julie’s comedy routines:

I have read some drivel on this site but, really! What else does Ms Gale want to ban – shorts, singlets, short skirts (nothing above the knee) or puberty. Moreover, how about a time machine so that she (and those who support her) can be transported back to the Victorian era!

Julie has confirmed with me today that she does indeed want to ban EVERYTHING. “Everything must go!” she said.
But here’s a good one (thanks anonimouse):

Same old boring conspiracy theories about religious right whenever regulating pseudo child porn is discussed. Same old irrational assumptions that regulating this stuff is oppressing kids. These arguments are at least 40 years old now… and meanwhile the pseudo left have nothing to say about the massive capitalist exploitation of kids that is only too happy to co-opt their libertarian rhetoric. How come defending the status quo (creepy porn culture etc) is confused with being hip. Don’t mess with the sovereign consumer and their right to buy creepy porn from the newsagent! But it is not just creepy, this kind of porn is obviously normalising grooming kids…It is great that you keep speaking out.

Melbourne academic and long-time feminist activist, Sheila Jeffreys, who has written extensively against pornography, prostitution and harmful beauty practices in the West (some of her work appears in my recommended books section)  debated EROS Foundation’s Robbie Swan as part of the ABC Big Ideas series recently. Here’s the debate.

And here’s Communication Minister Steve Conroy’s defence of the Government’s internet filtering plans in The Punch (over which the defend-all-porn-at-all-costs brigade went ballistic, as described here).

When is the Coalition going to develop a backbone on this issue?

On the weekend – on the eve of International Women’s Day – I wrote about a Facebook slut page, arguing it enabled cyber bullying, stalking and harassment. On the page, photos were posted of girls and women who were labelled ’sluts’. One was 10-years-old. Another had been bashed (she deserved it, she was a slut). A later image showed a woman bound, with her head decapitated. Many were just smiling young women at home or having fun with girlfriends. And so it went on, image after image of girls and women branded with this virtual scarlet letter.

The piece got a run in On Line Opinion today.

It appears that Facebook has responded to criticism. The site has been removed. Thanks to all who reported it.

 Of course, that’s not the last of the bullies. Dannielle Miller from Enlighten Education blogged on bullying and social networking sites this week. You can read her piece here. 

 My friend Anita had her own experience with on-line abusers this week, who demanded their entitlement to child pornography. Anita set up a Facebook site to find 3 billion people willing to add their voice to a global campaign against child porn. The site was inundated with comments by men extolling the pleasures of child rape and posting links to child porn. (She has removed them). Please support Anita’s efforts against the production of and demand for child sexual assault images and sign up.  

Below is a comment on my original blog  by Merryn Smith. It’s so good I wanted to give it more prominence.  

“I think the problem with social networking sites and a great deal of internet is that people assume that it merely reflects socio/cultural reality. Actually it produces reality, as does all discourse. So it’s easy to reduce the meanings generated by groups like these as mere ‘words’. Hence men (and a small proportion of young naive girls) always call forth the freedom of speech argument to conceal one of purposes of this type of ‘othering’ discourse. Women are the largest group that are targeted as the ‘other’ inhuman ‘thing’ through this type of ancient discursive act. But of course ethnic groups and the working classes are also kept in place through these ‘othering’ discourses. This is of course about power. The power to dehumanise comes hand in hand with physical acts of violence. But we know that young women suffer terribly high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in our cultures. Yes these groups reflect that, but they also produce a cultural climate and language that condones, encourages and applauds the dehumanisation of half of the worlds population. Of course these groups hide behind notions of freedom and the separation of bodily acts and psychological acts, or body and mind, body and speech. But of course these young men and boys (mostly) are passing through their right of passage-their right to dehumanise woman and girls. This is how men bond. It is through the ‘othering’ process that makes them feel that they belong. We need to fight this by creating spaces for young women where they can ‘go’, real and virtual, where they are not used as a symbol of male belonging and bonding. We need to create spaces where woman and girls (especially girls) can create their own embodied and disembodied world realities. But it aint easy. Happy Women’s Day…”

 

Fancy some violence on Valentine’s Day?

Came across this, which is doing the rounds on some Facebook sites:

“I’ve got a Valentines poem that has never yet failed to get me into a girls knickers. . .  Here we go then . . .  Roses are red, Violets are blue, I’ve got a knife now get in the f—ing van !!!!” 

Some illegal porn perhaps? 

Then I received this press statement from “Operation Titstorm”: 

“The Australian Government will learn that one does not mess with our porn. No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason.”

For three days this past week, hackers calling themselves “Anonymous”, disabled the Australian Parliament House computer system. 

They also hacked the PM’s site, plastering it with porn in a protest against the Government’s internet filtering plans. Parliament House staff also received porn spam emails. 

So now we have porn vigilantes demanding their entitlement to every form of pornography – which would include child sexual assault images – by wrecking the computer operating systems of a democratic parliament and declaring cyber war on Australia. So great is their desire for violent porn and child porn, by overwhelming the system with pornography they also force others to view it against their will. This is how the porn lobby views freedom? Unleashing a form of cyber terrorism to get its way?

Speaking of illegal, Senate Estimates hearings of the Legal and Constitution Legislation Committee last week heard that Classification Board Director Donald McDonald had issued called-in notices for 37 unclassified porn magazines between July 1 and December 21, 2009. In the 12 months before ,he called-in 127 magazines. The called-in titles included ‘Live Young Girls’ and others imported by Namda/Windsor Wholesale, whose General Manager is David Watt of the Eros Foundation which launched the Australian Sex Party. 

Many of the recalled titles endorse rape and incest and represent very young girls as desperate for sex with older males. The magazines have been illegally distributed in corner stores, milkbars and petrol stations including McDonald’s Fuelzone for who knows how long. See earlier blog 

In addition, in the six months to December 31, 2009, McDonald had called in 440 pornographic films, including incest titles. From 2008 to July 2009 he had called in 386 titles. Under our laws, distributors who fail to put their publications through the classification system have three days to respond to these notices. So, guess how many distributors have responded? 

None.

While the Classification Board notifies police about illegal publications and films, there is no reporting back on enforcement. It is possible nothing happens. No one seems to know. And bear in mind, these are only the titles that were found. How many more are out there?

Porn distributors have demonstrated that they think they can do what they want and get away with it. It seems they are right. The system is broke. It needs fixing. 

Maybe take up the whole day with it? 

“Viewing porn online becomes a major problem only when people become so preoccupied that they spend 16 to 18 hours a day doing nothing else but watching porn, with serious impacts on relationships, work, studies, and finance,” Dr Sitharthan said. 

So it’s only a problem if every waking moment is taken up with it? What about 10 hours a day?  Or eight? Or three or four?  Is porn use now so normalised that anything under 16 hours of viewing on-line porn is considered unproblematic? 

If you or someone you know is a compulsive porn user, I’d like your thoughts on when you think porn use is a problem. 

Throw in some dead prostituted women perhaps? 

In another example of pimp culture gone mainstream , a Queensland schoolboy set up a Facebook page called “Kill my hooker so you don’t have to pay her”. The site was taken down by Facebook – but not before it attracted 18,000 members. 

The principal of the school where the boy was disciplined said that education was needed about the “dangers of the internet”. 

How about starting with educating boys that violence against women is wrong? 

President of the Australian Sex Workers Association, Elena Jeffreys, took the opportunity to offer to get prostituted women into schools and educate students about the “reality of prostitution”. 

Given that the association thinks prostitution is a good career choice for women and given their moves to loosen up our visa system so that more Asian women can be prostituted here, I’m not sure how much reality the school kids would get.

For some actual reality, see Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalised Prostitution in Victoria

Oh and by the way, the Facebook site is up again, just under a different name.

It was a remarkable case of playing fast and loose with the truth – even by the standards of the Australian Sex Party (ASP).  Kids Free 2B Kids expose on ‘pseudo’ child pornography flooding corner stores, milkbars and petrol stations (including 7-Eleven and McDonald’s-Fuelzone) was turned into a claim that Australia had banned small breasted women in pornography.

This attempt to turn a very serious examination of ‘teen porn’ magazines promoting sex with little girls, rape and incest into a joke, made its way around the world before you could say ‘what the…?’ Australia was sent up for having problems with ‘itty bitty boobs’ and slammed for discriminating against women with small breasts.

Crikey was first to blow the lid of the ASP charade. It seemed no one else bothered to check the ASP’s claims against reality.

What is true is that those with small or no breasts (or with breasts airbrushed out) are deliberately used in ‘teen porn’ titles to show that young girls are desperate to be penetrated by older men. But it’s not only that they are depicted as ‘flatties’ or ‘tiny’.  While unverified claims are made that the women are over 18, even if true, they are posed as children – surrounded by soft toys, holding hand puppets, wearing pig tails, braces, bobby socks, sucking lollypops etc.

Here’s an example (deliberately cropped). This is from a magazine imported by a company owned by David Watt, an office bearer with the Eros Association, which launched the ASP.

I have written about this before in this blog, in Unleashed and On Line Opinion

These images – which the sex party wants to protect so much it flicks the spin switch to overdrive -  arouse men to sexualised images of ‘children’. Where’s the media/blogger/twitterverse concern about that?  Buried under a mound of small breasts.

Julie Gale of Kids Free 2B Kids has documented the facts that stacks of these magazines are wrongly classified by the Classification Board or never go through the classification system, in a detailed submission to the Compliance and Enforcement Working Party of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General. Ironically, the October submission hasn’t been forwarded to any members of the working party, apparently because the secretariat doesn’t want to be seen to be distributing child porn.

Relates links: see Kids Free 2B Kids statement Australian Sex Party Fakes It

Underage p-on sold in corner milk bars article- The Australian April 3, 2009

The Government announced this week plans to introduce legislation for mandatory filtering of the internet at Internet Service Provider (ISP level).

This of course brought out all those who want no restrictions to the internet, arguing that the plans will mean we’ll end up living in a place like North Korea and controlled by the Taliban.

The plan is for ISPs to block blacklisted material rated Refused Classification. This is material that is already not allowed in other mediums because it is so graphic. It includes child porn, rape porn and bestiality.

The government will also provide incentives to ISPs to offer optional ISP level filtering of X and R-rated pornography.

The UN Save the Children Fund made the ridiculous claim that it would mean parents would relax about their children’s internet use. Save the Children should be welcoming anything which might lessen the multi-billion dollar trade in children’s bodies.

Any material which depicts sexual violence against women and children or which incites crimes of violence against women and children should not be allowed. Anyone justifying it should not be called a civil libertarian but a sexual assault libertarian.

For some compelling articles in favour of filtering, see:

Clive Hamilton: Web doesn’t belong to net libertarians 

Abigail Bray: Googling S*x

Steven Conroy: The truth about net filtering

Let Stephen Conroy know you support the proposed legislation.

Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002.

senator.conroy@aph.gov.au.