Comments on: Ban on violent porn imminent

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:54:52 +0000

This is typicial reationary behavior .
It can be seen after every incident right now there are calls in canada to shut down Vampire freaks website because the montreal shooter happened to blog there.
there are constantly calls after some violent incident to ban violent video games movies and music.
there were calls to ban porn afrer Bundy did his killings even though in truth Bundys porn was dime store detective and cheer leaders mags.
These people show their complete lack of touch with reality porn and games don’t kill people people do
.
Normal people don’t play video games or view violent porn and then want to turn that into reality and anyone with a mind as insane and truly violent that images could set them off is already insane and if not those images then something else would set them of.
I wish people would start using some sense and logic for a change rather than jumping on hype and trying to ban things there is already far to much government control over what people can chose to view or not view the government already has to much control over everyday life already.
Anyone that has made a real study and has any real intellegence can see that viewing violent porn has no relation at all to real life sex crimes.
Japan has some of the most violent sex fantasy images around but also has the the lowest amount of real life sex crimes the same is true of holland so if anything the facts suggest the opposite view that the abilty to view these images may in fact reduce crime since both of those nations have far lower sex crime rates dispite having far freer sex fantasy pornography laws.
Also there was no internet or hardcore porn in victorian London.
And yet far more sex crimes murders.
I wish people would try to study facts and use logic instead of supporting reactionary lobbyists like the unfortunate girls mother and allowing the government to exert even more control over what people can and can’t do than it already does.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 23:50:59 +0000

This is just another example of the drip-drip-drip erosion of our freedoms. This isn’t about
making things better: it’s about government control and its need to be seen to be in control.

By: Shaun Hollingworth

Shaun Hollingworth — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:47:22 +0000

Martin Salter MP said:

“This campaign has taken a huge amount of time and effort but it has struck a chord right across the country.”

Oh it’s struck a chord all right. If you look round most folk are completely AGAINST it, including Daily Mail readers:

http://tinyurl.com/zur6a

and BBC web site users:
http://tinyurl.com/gep3y

If they go ahead with this, then British democracy is just a fading illusion….

Even some of my elderly churchgoing relatives are completely against this proposed new law.

By: Monitor

Monitor — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 10:49:59 +0000

Sunny, I think he does use the lack-of-correlation argument as the basis for his derision. From the concluding paragraph:
Despite its self-confessed lack of evidence that extreme porn provokes extreme behaviour, it still justifies its proposal as an attempt to ‘protect society’ from material ‘which may encourage interest in violent or aberrant sexual activity’
But you are right – he could have made more of it than he does.

The Northwestern University research (above) is interesting on the negative correlation evidence. Obvious really – the availability of pornography has risen exponentially in the past 10 years. If there is a correlation, why isn’t everyone raping each other?

By: Graham Deans Williamson

Graham Deans Williamson — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:31:41 +0000

I oppose this law on the same grounds that I opposed Section 28; quite aside from any personal moral feelings on the matter, the wording of the law is so painfully vague that it’s little more than a blackmailers’ charter.

I am reminded of a previous attempt to outlaw pornography – the proposal put forward by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon in the 1980s. Mackinnon was a lawyer, yet she didn’t see anything wrong with breathtakingly POV definitions like “Pornography is centred around the degradation of women”. Based on the Dworkin/Mackinnon definition, there are several episodes of EastEnders would qualify as pornography – after all, I’ve always thought that soap takes a perverse delight in having its female characters beaten and raped.

It’s the whole problem with legislating pornography – what actually constitutes pornography is an “I know it when I see it” issue. I, personally, don’t find BDSM sexually exciting, but I do have DVD copies of Secretary and Blue Velvet on my shelves, simply because I think they’re damn good films. No doubt to a John Beyer type, both those films would fit his or her personal definition of “pornography”. Does this mean I’m eligible for prosecution now?

By: Sunny

Sunny — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 22:05:16 +0000

To be honest David, I didn’t think much of Brendan’s article, having just read it now. He says society is losing its moral bearings and thus is clinging to violent porn as its last taboo. Which is exactly what’s happening…. but then he goes on to deride… on the basis of? I’m not so sure.

A better argument to make would be to say that there is no correlation found between people who consume violent porn and those who then go out and commit those crimes. What if there is a correlation? Or maybe there is something to suggest that by watching violent porn, people who are potentially like to go out and commit violent acts are satisfied consuming porn instead, thus saving some people.

I didn’t think the spiked article was that rigorous.

By: Andy Gilmour

Andy Gilmour — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 22:00:24 +0000

Hate to say this, but ever since the European Court of Human Rights (in 1997) upheld the Law Lords final verdict in the “Spanner Trial” (Regina v Brown, 1994), S&M doesn’t get an exception to the “consent is no defence” stance when it comes to assault against the person…

So we don’t (even remotely) own our bodies…

It also established a degree of harm that was acceptable (very, very little), so the government already has a legal definition of violent sexual activity they can apply…

So this law against “violent porn” might not be so hard to apply.

Handy summary of s&m law at:

http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/gt/gay_law.asp?a=Article&aid=884

It’ll be interesting to see how far a defense of “well, the people on the DVD are only pretending to…” will go.

By: Marc Draco

Marc Draco — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:11:04 +0000

One man’s meat is another man’s pussy. I don’t like to watch “violent” porn because it turns me off, Russ Meyer’s work left me feeling queasy: and it’s mild by comparison. It did not make me want to go out and hurt anyone though – the link just isn’t there.

I guess the problem is that SOME people will use it as an excuse to explain their actions – and that’s what we have here. The “Chucky” movies (which I found hilarious) were blamed similarly for acts of wanton violence.

I suspect in the end it comes down to one thing: bad people do bad things and good people don’t.

I like the comment about the half-naked guy nailed to a cross though. Nice counterpoint that.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:35:05 +0000

One other thing comment which may put the ‘how violent is violent’: technically, if a married, loving couple were into a bit of consensual kinky goings on which left marks which were more than transitory e.g. bruises or welts on the skin they are breaking the law. It is almost impossible to apply this law (unless videos are made like the case many years ago by a grop of gay guys nailing stuff to wood) however it is still law and thus the government has, at some point, decided we as free, adults can not partake in this sort of activity even if consensual.

By: Andrew Nixon

Andrew Nixon — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:34:47 +0000

As you may have missed it with it being on an old post, see this comment: http://www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/?p=216#comment-19971

Quite interesting question in there, where does this leave churches, some of whom have a picture/statue of a naked guy being crucified.