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
9 Responses
Wow… this is shocking! I had seen the “small breasted” comments in the media however did not realise the significance of this and the ASP’s efforts to trivalise the issue and reframe concerns as in such an insulting way. Even worse is that some people might have bought it- however I think ASP’s claim is so pathetic that anyone who actually did believe advocates were wanting small breasts to be removed would have to be pretty dumb!
It’s been interesting reading some of the comments in response to the article in Crikey that Melinda Tankard Reist has referenced in this blog. Many of the male commentators have defended their ‘right’ to access pornography that promotes the idea of having sex with underage girls.
Their key arguments include the idea that removing access to such pornography would be the equivalent of assuming a position of the ‘thought’ police, and that accessing such porn by no means will turn men into child molesters. Some have even argued that this type of pornography might actually prevent men from committing sexual crimes against girls, which is a popular myth.
As a psychologist I am aware that while the shaping of sexual desire/attraction is highly complex, and that each individual exists with a unique set of predispositions and resiliencies, it is true that sexual desire/attraction is also significantly shaped by the environment.
For example, Nick Broomfield, internationally acclaimed documentarian, interviewed several men at a boutique brothel in New York, known as ‘Pandora’s Box.’ In here, several of the Jewish men could only ‘get off’ by having women dressed in Nazi uniforms, and re-enacting Holocaust fantasies. There were African American men who could only ‘get off’ re-enacting Rodney King scenarios. If these socio-political traumas had not happened, these fetishes/fantasies could not exist.
Racial preferences can also be shaped through pornographic representations.
Research into neuroplasticity suggests that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together.’ When you pair a physiologically rewarding response (ie masturbation) with a particular set of images or narratives (idea of having sex with underage girl or image of girl who looks underage) – you reinforce and strengthen these neural pathways. You are literally, shaping the brain. Men who already prefer underage girls, have this predilection reinforced, while those who don’t have a particular preference for them, can learn to do so.
Whether or not this drives a person to commit an act of sexual violence against another is one thing. But for those who are prone to sexual abuse and violence, this predilection for those who are most vulnerable in our community – children – is dangerous. Until we have safeguards in place, I find it abhorrent to privilege adults’ sexual desires above the safety of kids.
Lydia,
I think your final statement “I find it abhorrent to privilege adults’ sexual desires above the safety of kids” is really what it comes down to for me.
Even if it doesn’t lead to sexual abuse or violence, just walking down the street and seeing a young girl that reminds them of pornographic material in any way, reinforces the idea that it’s okay to view children as an object of sexual desire. The repercussions of the individual cases are scary enough to think about, let along the broader mindset that it encourages.
I’d be interested to know the correlation between men subscribing to this kind of pornography and stamps in their passports to Asia for “travel tours”….
I’m so bewildered that the Australian Sex Party tried this. One of their defences was “whether the woman appears to be under 18 is subjective, and therefore the guideline should be that they are confirmed as being 18.”
Well regarding subjective, I’d like to know their alternative interpretation of pig tails, stuffed toys, hand puppets etc.
The readership of these mags are pretty clear about the girls looking under 18, that’s why they buy them. The sex party cannot say that they are concerned about child abuse and child pornography when they import material that promotes child abuse.
I agree, it is abhorrent to privilege some men’s sexual desires for girls above the safety of kids. I’m not sure how anyone could defend the image above and the millions of similar images that circulate now.
Why does the ASP thinks it is intelligent or politically radical to defend the right to masturbate to porn? (Australian Ejeculation Party, where you ‘come’ first?… oh dear…)
Most porn is targeted to men, so really they are defending the right of men to masturbate to porn. Having a woman in charge, as it were, masks the real gender politics of this ‘party’. If they had a pimp or a male pornographer as their leader it would look very different. It is amazing that all it takes is a couple of pro-porn women (consumers or workers) for the entire history of this industry to be drowned out by irrational claims about porn as a really radical new form of women’s sexual self-empowerment…
The libertarian position poses as left wing but it merely defends capitalism – in this case the massive male dominated global porn industry, which obviously exploits people (mainly women and children) and is involved in numerous human rights abuses (of women and children) across the world – by using neoliberal rhetoric about free choice etc etc.
Normalising pedophilic desire is about as low as it gets…
ASP opportunistic policy:
“Develop global approaches to tackling child pornography which focus on detection and apprehension of the producers of the material.”
Easily said…
A really radical approach would be to also fine the porn industry and force them to substantially compensate all of the children and tweens who are exploited and abused.
It is just so offensive. What are we doing to our children?
I wasn’t aware that there was an Australian Sex Party! I am concerned about every aspect of these magazines and that there are peope who defend them. Our society has lost the reality of right and wrong. Simply because some men (and obviously some women) think that these magazines and images are acceptable is not a defence and does not make them right. Again i am left wondering do these people involved in this want their daughters or sisters viewed by others in this way?!