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.
119 Responses
Thank you so much, Melinda, for this insightful post–it documents precisely the cluster of strategies that the sex industry is pursuing in Australia to protect itself, after coming under some (small) criticism from feminists and others in recent years. The launch of the Sex Party and the anti-internet regulation campaign are two major projects of the sex industry and its supporters at the moment. Sex industry advocates are carrying out cyber terrorism against the infrastructure of government in order to prevent anything being done about their consumption of child abuse images.
The sex industry is determined that it will continue to carry on its business in western countries outside of any laws and regulations, so that feminists and others won’t ever be able to appeal to the state to properly protect its female citizens against men’s abuse. The Sex Party’s policy to decriminalise prostitution and pornography is part of this agenda.
Another fantastic post. You really have opened my eyes Melinda, thankyou!
I clicked on over to that post on porn watching and read through the comments. According to many commentors we are now abnormal or lying if we DON’T watch porn! Looking forward to watching you on Q and A 🙂
I was appalled – aghast at the valentine poem. What sick mind puts that on facebook?
I disagree with Dr. Sitharthan that it’s only when you’re consuming porn 16-18 hours a day that you have a problem. I was sexually assaulted at a young age which led to unhealthy sexual practices as I got older. When I was 13 I came across my brother’s porn magazines. This early exposure, combined with trauma from my past, led to a disastrous 10 years. I was led into things that I now consider disturbing and disgusting. When you’re looking at porn so much, you always want the next hit and experimentation becomes normal.
I never had 16 – 18 hours a day to look at this stuff or act out my addiction, but never-the-less, I was an addict. Even short hits left you always wanting more. Porn harmed my mind and my perception of normal and what I was expected to do or be in a relationship. It has taken me years to recover and get back to a healthy life. It has taken years of re-programming, and creating new memories. Sometimes I still find it difficult to be in the moment with someone rather than being somewhere else in my mind.
Porn can easily become a problem when a person decides to turn the computer on and look for it, pick up a porn magazine or put a porn film in a DVD player etc. Life isn’t normal with porn. It becomes unrealistic, full of pretence; it is isolating, controlling and depraved. The desire for more is all-consuming and relationships become based on an agenda of what you can get, rather what you can give and share.
It takes a second to start and years to stop. Porn is a problem, regardless of how many hours you use it, full stop.
It seems to me that these advocates of porn or porn terrorists haven’t evolved very far. I’m imagining a bunch of guys that haven’t had much success with women, for whatever reason, running around looking for legs to hump.
I wonder how much time and effort they invested into hacking these websites and creating havoc. Don’t they have jobs…or lives? I think they probably spend too much time in front of a computer watching porn and the thought of having to contribute to the world in any real way frightens these scared little troglodytes.
I also think it’s kind of backwards to try and force porn on people to prove a point. All they will end up doing is strengthening the case for porn and internet censorship laws. They’re not very smart.
If people want to look at porn, then that is their prerogative, however there needs to be a major crack down on underage/child porn and porn that perpetrates violence. I wish these people would understand that it’s not about taking away their right to look at porn, it is about supporting the rights of women and children so they’re not violated, assaulted and exploited.
Everybody is so self obsessed these days, too focussed on what they should have, what they feel is their right, or how they can get what they want, not caring who they hurt in the process. People are forgetting to think about others, or to think about how their actions will effect other people.
Thank you ‘Anonymous’ and “Operation Titstorm” you’ve exposed the true nature of the porn industry – abusive and destructive against anyone who doesn’t share your ‘mission.’ And what is your mission? To turn everyone else into literal wankers just like yourselves. I’m amazed that there can be such widespread activism based around the freedom to masturbate in front of a computer. You’ve also managed to piss off everyone you’re trying to influence. Get your hand off it and go back to school anonymous. Epic Fail.
I remember years ago my ex-boyfriend, then my current boyfriend suddenly got into buying picture and people mags. It was like his whole attitude changed over night. He was using all sorts of slang to describe women’s body parts and suddenly every woman he saw was an object to evaluate and comment on. It was really disturbing actually. I remember picking up one of the mags and reading part of it, I remember reading “all the women in denmark are just dying to get their clothes off.” I asked my boyfriend, “i wonder what all the women in denmark think of such a statement?” I eventually cracked and threw the lot of them out. Eventually I ditched the boyfriend too. No woman should have to put up with that crap and I’ve never put up with it since.
Norman Doidge in his book on How the Brain Changes Itself writes about the impact of porn on the brain. If you accept the basic thesis that the brain is very plastic this makes perfect sense. Porn is a kind of addiction because it’s a repetitive and escalating mental process. Instead of increasing the number and variety of connections in the brain, it goes round and round the same circular track.
If the government is serious about an educational revolution – here’s one way to do it. Get the porn out of people’s brains!!
These porn activists are an hysterical bunch aren’t they. What are they afraid of, that they’ll never be able to view porn again if the filter is in place? What the filter means is that they’ll have to go to some effort to access it, rather than the rest of us having to go to significant effort just to avoid it. These pornophiles should turn off the computer and go outside, they might just meet a real person.
Too right! Get off the computer and meet a real person!
I find it infuriating that, after every psychologist and researcher I’ve come across have ALL said that porn is highly addictive, alters perception, and destroys intimacy in relationships, the porn mongers refuse to even engage with that information, and push the same meaningless, substance-less argument of ‘freedom of speech’, which is really just a catch cry of ‘we can do whatever we want.’
For those that struggle with the compulsiveness with porn there are some great resources. ie. theporneffect.com for example is one a friend of mine created after dealing with his own addiction. What we are offering to our society here is a freedom of intimacy and expression stemming from a love of fulfilling potential. There was a rap song recently (I forget who it’s by) and the words went something like, ‘We gained fame, we gained all the world had to offer, money, cars, houses, but the only joy we found was in sex. Don’t take that from us, it’s all we’ve got.” I believe people need to know, not just superficially, but deeply, that they can reach a love that is more than ‘all we’ve got’ but an outcome of what we’ve got.
The fact that Operation ‘Anonymous’ that shut down the Parliament website last week called it TITSTORM says it all! The proposed ‘censoring’ of websites by Senator Conroy may not be perfect but we live in a censored world NOW and have to cope with daily – and renewed – crass sexism. Would have been more honest if they had called their action a ‘cockstorm’. But that would have missed their point of unmitigated exploitation of women: even using women’s breasts for their protest slogan. I hope Conroy won’t cave in to the libertarians. Unfortunately we need this regulation. If it really worries the Porn Industry then that’s a good sign!
Porn is like smoking – there is no safe level. Ban it all. Who would be disenfranchised by a total ban? That’s right, only the perverts.
Feminists say ban all porn?
Its funny how the oppressed become the oppressors.
What a load of crap Melinda!!!!!
Maybe you should actually try doing some research into the issue before you start spouting out such drivel on national TV.
i dont understand why it should be blocked, someone please inform me?
it seemed like you took whats going on out of context or something after i have done some further reading for myself, (not on your blog), from other sources
People who support the filter primarily to protect children will potentially cause harm to the victims of child porn. Pulling a curtain over the problem with a filter does nothing to combat the problem, it just puts it out of sight and out of mind. People need to take responsibility for their own internet usage rather than taking a scatter gun approach to it all. Let me ask you this how many politicians from either side have vowed/promised that the filter could never ever be used to block political material that might be embarrassing for the government in power at the time? You wont. They wont legislate for prevention of the filter to be used that way either.
Melinda, perhaps you should partake in actual journalism and try and research your article further.
Anonymous took part in these attacks because the internet filter does not ban only porn. A black list leaked in March 2009 had links to euthanasia and abortion information pages, various church and religious organisations, regular (and legal!) gay pornography, Wikipedia links, Youtube videos, certain areas of Amazon, and video game websites. Also, the filter was ineffective at blocking pornography, with a 13 yo boy bypassing the filter within an hour, during early testing in January. Operation Titstorm has melded into a new group called Project Freeweb, and we are conducting peaceful protests and rally’s country-wide on 20th February.
I assure you, this filter will set a precedent for the Government to ban and filter EVERYTHING in this country, turning us into a psuedo-communist state like China, North Korea or Iran.
Those involved in Operation ‘Titstorm’ made a stupid juvenile mistake in their form of political protest. However Melinda, you have missed the point!
It was about the governments intention to filter the internet for ALL Australians. Not just porn, but perfectly legal material will be filtered, the internet will experience many more issue (speed and stability) and ALL internet users will bear the cost!
You need to research things before you comment on them. It means you won’t look like such an ignorant fool in the future.
For the uninformed, operation titstorm was actually a protest against the discrimination of small breasted women buy Australian Censors.
So I guess you don’t think small breasted women are real women either Melinda?
Melinda, Anonymous really does laugh at you. You fail to even remotely grasp the concept of our actions, putting it down to simply wanting our porn? No. This is not just about Porn, this is about the internet as a whole. Typical of people trying so hard to be accepted by the media. They’re willing to do anything to get a little of attention, including going on National TV talking about something they do not fully understand. Perhaps you should Educate Yourself about our causes, our motivations and our aims, before going on National TV, and embaressing not only yourself, but anyone who holds you credible.
And, for a woman who puts herself on a pedestal as an “Advocator of womens’ rights”, we laugh at your hypocrisy. You condemn our actions, yet we see nothing from you condemning the fact that this filter is extremely sexist to woman. It’s okay for men to be shown ejaculating, but not women? It’s okay for big breasted women to be shown in pornographic content, but not small breasted women.
Those how know nothing, understand nothing. Perhaps you should consider increasing your knowledge.
Yours in Protest,
Project Freeweb
“So now we have porn vigilantes demanding their entitlement to every form of pornography – which would include child sexual assault images”
Do you have a source on that unverified claim? Journalism has gone to shits now days the media being to lazy to do some homework, this is just another example of how far the media has fallen.
It’s quite funny how you can’t take a joke. The whole male gender isn’t here to oppress you. No one is demeaning you using jokes. As they are jokes! And only you take any offence to them.
And as for Anonymous? We aren’t doing this for the porn. We are doing this because the basic human right of freedom of speech is being threatened. The ACMA and the government will not release the blacklist meaning they can block any site they fancy without the public knowing.
This is not an attack you. I do respect you but you are mistaken thinking we do this for the porn.
Oh good grief person are you serious?
Nobody every claimed that small breasted women were not real women, that is the australian sex party twisting the issue to dodge the fact that they were importing magazines that depict women as little girls. Stuffed toys, braces, pig tails, all the signs of childhood and yes, this included small breasts or breasts having been airbrushed away in these magazines. Captions like “daddie’s bit d**k.” All of these factors together were deliberately combined to communicate the idea that these are children you’re masturbating over.
i guess melinda believes that women with small breasts promote pedophilia and that all women should ahve big breasts and that the female orgasm/ejaculation is just a myth and therefore inappropriate to view?
Some feminist you are. Obviously you need to do some research on the issue. And stop equating all porn users as people who support violence towards women or that they support child porn.
Do some damn research and you would find that this filter is ineffective in blocking porn (ANY PORN) and won’t do crap in protecting children. If you support this filter, you are actually endangering children, as the filters will give parents a false sense of security.
How dare you call yourself an Australian?Your hatchet job on freedom of speech speaks for itself and is a truly low point in journalism.Shame on you.This protest is about CENSORSHIP.
Such is life.
“Project Freeweb” so you didn’t do this because of the porn issue, you did this because of your “freedom.” Yet you plastered the Parliaments website with Porn? doesn’t make sense mate and there’s no freedom in turning on your computer and being bombarded with porn against your will.
so I take it you’re not familiar with the term “irony” Kelly?
Melinda, you seem to have a problem with people’s freedom of speech, right to gather and right to protest.
Since you are a woman, may I remind you that without people protesting for rights denied to them you would still be expected to marry, cook, clean, obey, be subservient to, make yourself available sexually and speak only when spoken to by men.
I am against discrimination of any kind and from what you’re saying you seem like you would prefer us to profile people by the color of their skin or where they were born, this does not endear you to me in any way.
I post things like this all the time, people hate me for it and some insult me me for it. I may not like these people for what they say and I may not support them to say it, but if anyone ever tried to stop them speaking I would stand by their side and fight against their oppressors.
Hypocrisy begets hypocrisy, but your bigotry is inexcusable.
oh yes, more misinformation from Sex party apologists. Tell me are you reading directly from their misleading press release as you type? And so many “anonymous” people. I guess it’s a bit embarrassing to use your real name when fighting for the right to masturbate in front of a computer.
Your attempts to dodge the fact that the small breasts issue was related to specific magazines that depicted women as children desperate for sex with older men is laughable.
For those who agree with the position taken by Melinda, you are truly ignorant about the true facts of the proposed internet filter. It makes me wonder if you have done any independent research on the issues.
A 13 year old boy circumvented the filter in 3 minutes
The people who the filter is trying to stop are not to be underestimated, they are tech savvy.
The filter is going to be applied to Abortion, Euthenasia, suicide, religious and cultural websites.
True democratic right of information exchange and choice will be eroded under the proposed scheme.
Don’t buy into the half-truths. Those that are against the filter are not pro-child porn. They are simply against the measures taken by the government. Measures which are innefective, costly and benign.
Dil Andau, you make some very valid points. These are major issues and we have a right to be concerned about the repercussions of such an act.
Unfortunately there are people out there who aren’t able to act responsibly and who can’t control themselves and who think that child porn and violence against women is perfectly acceptable. Obviously the problem is getting bigger, otherwise there would be no need for the crack down and all the filters. It seems to me a case of some ruining it for everybody else.
Where do we draw the line? Something needs to be done to address these very serious issues. Do we sit back and do nothing and let it continue, or do we stand up and have a go at trying to fix it? There are no perfect solutions, but to sit back and do nothing implies that society condones this behaviour and abuse against women and children and that the people responsible for the filth are not held accountable.
As a society we need to start thinking about the well being of those around us, not just focussing on ourselves and what we may or may not lose. I would happily sacrifice a few youtube videos, wikipedia links, church/religious websites etc, if it meant that even one child or one woman was spared abuse, violence or exploitation. It seems like such a small price to pay to me.
Kelly.
We are a faction of Anonymous. We do not condone the use of DDoS. However, we do not deny affiliation.
I whole heartedly agree that something needs to be done about ILLEGAL pornography. However, implementing this filter will put a stop to any kind of pornography which the Government deems “inappropriate”. Not just illegal pornography. Did you read any of the other comments? The black list contains not only pornography? I suggest you do.
Also, this filter is mandatory. No opting out for those families without children.
I can’t believe I spent 5 minutes reading this lunatic blog. Epic fail.
Melinda, pack your bags and head to the UK. I hear Germaine Greer is looking for a companion.
I wonder if you will be as supportive of the filter when it starts blocking things on subject like, oh lets say abortion?
Nicole,
The filter will not stop women or children from being abused. It will simply make it harder to find on the internet, and push it further underground. I know that sounds like a good thing, but Law enforcement can’t stop the abuse if they can’t locate it easily.
It simply hides it from view. If you think this filter will actually stop people from creating child pornography, you are seriously naive.
When this filter goes in place, you think that this child pornography will stop. You will go about your day-to-day business, happy and secure with knowledge of the fact that child pornography is no more. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. That’s fine Nicole, I’m happy for you to be oblivious.
I honestly hope that you don’t have children.
Nicole, what you’ve just said is: “We shouldn’t stop people abusing women and children, just cover it up. If we can’t see women and children being abused, they’re not being abused.”
Just because you don’t see a video of a child being molested doesn’t mean the child isn’t being molested, just because you stop videos of children being molested doesn’t mean the people molesting children stopped molesting the child.
You deleted the video off youtube, so what!? Somehow your deleting a video clip magically made the child not molested? It formed some kind of magical barrier stopping the child being molested again?
When you remove a video of child pornography, you’re not deleting child molesters, you’re just removing the evidence.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/south-australian-state-government-gags-internet-debate/story-e6frfro0-1225825750956
Or how about something like this…
Because this sort of idiocy is what we’re in for
someone said that the filter would cover up the problem of child pornography. I don’t think our resolve against child abuse is any lesser because it is more difficult for men to trade in it. At least it will limit the circulation of images of *people* who have been abused. A recent article highlighted the following issue:
“When Amy was a little girl, her uncle made her famous in the worst way: as a star in the netherworld of child pornography. Photographs and videos known as “the Misty series” depicting her abuse have circulated on the Internet for more than 10 years.”
10 years! How would you feel if images of your abuse had been circulating on the internet as masturbation material for 10 years?
Is it not ridiculously obvious to you other girls out there that the filter IS suppressing US! and OUR rights?!?
For heck sake, is it not my god given, Australian born right to research about abortions if i truly want to?
Why should i be denied this opportunity as a women, perhaps i could have been raped and did not want a baby.
IF ANYONE IS CONDONING THIS FILTER OR BLAMING IT ON PORN ADDICTS, (who are filthy, but that’s off topic) THEN YOU BEST NOT EVEN CALL YOUR SELL A TRUE MOTHER, FATHER, DAUGHTER, SON, because this WILL! affect all of us if its put in place.
Rose.
Filtering it out will not stop its distribution.
I was shocked watching your advocacy for Conroy’s web filter on Q and A. Strident over-the-top man-hating feminism is alive and well. Next you will want to ban beer and utes. We already have laws against child pornography without having to impose a wretched big brother filter. Should Australia adopt Sharia law, women in burqas obsequious to male rule, would you prefer that? Think of all the women who don’t get raped because men have access to porn to sate their lusts instead. BTW I am not addicted to porn, I only watch it 15 hours a day. That TV icecream ad with the girl saying how she doesn’t need to wear make-up and a cocktail dress should get back into the make-up and cocktail dress because it is the best part of the ad. She looks way better skanked up.
Nicole,
“I would happily sacrifice a few youtube videos, wikipedia links, church/religious websites etc, if it meant that even one child or one woman was spared abuse, violence or exploitation. It seems like such a small price to pay to me.”
Thats the thing though, it wont. The filter is completely ineffective at blocking child porn or violence or anything. Even if it was effective, all it does is block it from us seeing it, the website is still there free for the rest of the world to see, the exploitation is still happening, primarily overseas where we cant stop it.
A good analogy is that imagine you are the police in a room with a child being raped. Instead of stopping it happening, you simply pull out blindfolds and hand them out.
Want to know the funny part though? child pornographers dont use the web like we do, the filter cant block what they do. They trade their pictures using peer to peer software [think limewire etc] or in chat rooms, or using something called dark net [a version of the internet that you can only access with a username and password and is invite only]. None of this will be blocked by the filter.
So why are we throwing to bring in something completely ineffective? why are we letting the government also ban discussions on abortion, euthanasia, graffity, safe drug use or a whole host of other political topics.
The only conclusion i can draw is that the government isnt trying to ban child porn at all[ seen as the filter wouldnt stop it] thats just the side show, really the are trying to ban anything they dont like.
I hope this helped you understand a bit 🙂
Besides, 99% of illegal materials trafficked across the internet is done so via peer to peer, not websites.
So the filter isn’t going to do shit to stop the trafficking of child porn, rape or various other forms of abuse.
Clearly the only people misinformed are the woman on this blog.The fact that the ACMA is banning small breasted woman means it sets a precended for Men to be called pedophiles when looking at pictures of the 20yr old small chested girlfriend.
Also the fact that the government doesn’t recognise female as being real that its just the same as piss.The feminists movement really needs to considered the issues at hand as to not make themselves appear stupid
Anonymous is trying to fight for the right for ALL woman to be seen as equals, we are not pro porn crusaders when freedom of speech is threatened we will fight, when woman are put down we will fight.
Rogher you said”
“Think of all the women who don’t get raped because men have access to porn to sate their lusts instead.”
So your basic argument is that men who watch porn are rapists who can only restrain themselves through watching porn?
It’s the other way around, pornography fuels violence.
@ Nicole
How exactly is the filter going to help any woman or child that is the victim of abuse? You can block it but it is still happening, how is the filter going to help that child in vietnam or europe? Lets just block it and pretend it doesnt exist rather than spending the money on catching the people, enforcement and cooperation with international agencies.
The curtain is going to be drawn down on those victims, it may let the supporters of the filter sleep easier at night knowing that an adult isnt accessing porn (legal or otherwise) but it does absolutely nothing to help the victims.
Personal responsibility is the best policy, be a parent to your child rather than lazily handing over that basic responsibility to the government.
Let me ask you this, when was the last time you honestly “accidentally” came across pornography without actively searching for it? Or child pornography for that matter? Not “oh I know this friend of a friend who came across it” I’m talking about actual first hand experience. You havent? you know why? its a bogey man that is being blown up for the purpose of filter support. If you dont support the filter you’re automatically a child porn supporter, its the one argument that the censorship filter supporters cling to. Its nothing but a modern day mcarthyism.
You are what’s wrong with this country.
You need to get with the facts and understand that the technology behind the internet filter does not help any body.
Nicole, if I came up to you and said, no what your saying is illegal. And silenced YOU!! How is that any different from the filters parameters being set too high?
“Clearly the only people misinformed are the woman on this blog.The fact that the ACMA is banning small breasted woman means it sets a precended for Men to be called pedophiles when looking at pictures of the 20yr old small chested girlfriend.”
Clearly you are misinformed. Stop reading the sex party’s dodgy press release and get the facts about the issue. Everything you’ve said here is false.
“Rose
February 16th, 2010 at 12:04 am
“Clearly the only people misinformed are the woman on this blog.The fact that the ACMA is banning small breasted woman means it sets a precended for Men to be called pedophiles when looking at pictures of the 20yr old small chested girlfriend.”
Clearly you are misinformed. Stop reading the sex party’s dodgy press release and get the facts about the issue. Everything you’ve said here is false.”
Hypocrisy begets hypocrisy, idiocy is clearly contagious.
Snow, imagine if I started saying “indigenous australians are not people” and created websites around this claim and promoted it. I then bombarded websites with this message, created youtube videos called “high school musical” but actually contained racist hate messages. I mass produced magazines that depicted them as less than human and sales of these magazines skyrocketed. Violence against them increased, but hey, i’m going to claim that this has *nothing* to do with the messages and images in these magazines.
Are you going to try and silence me? OMG CENSORSHIP!!!!
@ Rose
“It’s the other way around, pornography fuels violence.”
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up that claim? How is it that 99+% of the adult male population has viewed porn, yet only a tiny proportion ever become rapists?
What about women viewing porn?
You don’t like porn, I get that, but don’t make the blind assumption that because you don’t like it, it’s evil.
Think of the children! Ban everything! PRAISE JEEBUZ!
Rose.
Please cite your sources when saying pornography fuels violence.
Also, Project Freedom is dedicating to education on the issue of this internet filter.
If you would like more information in order to stop looking like an idiot, I suggest you visit nocleanfeed.org
So you support a ‘filtering’ system that can be easily bypassed in oh, lets give them 30seconds? Wonderful use of money trying to fight a serious crime.
Firstly, the majority of child porn is distributed over p2p and chat-rooms etc not over HTTP (which is the only thing that is being ‘filtered’). Even if it were on HTTP, it gets moved around very quickly, such is the dynamic nature of websites. Slow moving bureaucrats (takes almost 2months for ACMA to classify material) working on user complaints will not be able to effectively block this stuff in any shape or form.
Refused Classification is legal to view and own in almost every state in Australia, unless of course its made ILLEGAL by a judge. Don’t conflate illegal with Refused Classification. RC is vastly more broad then just ‘child sexual abuse’ material – Video games that don’t fit under ma15+, material on euthanasia, safe drug use etc.
*freeWEB.
Heh.
@ Rose
???
Research history, before pornography their was much more rape victims then now days. but much less reports of it. it was just one of those “things” that happen.
quite disgusting, can you see how i am putting it?
Harlequin,
yeah that’s great but your previous post is still false.
You say we are wrong rose, how about some evidence to back up your opinion.
fiona patten has done more womens rights and equality then all the man-hating feminist crackpots on this site put together
If it were up to Melinda, the women of this country would all be walking in burqas and be forced to undergo forced female circumcisions.
Caity, of course rape has always been an issue. But can you explain how hardcore pornography that depicts violence against women, uses degrading language “sluts” “whores” “cum buckets” this is supposed to lessen violence against women? Men who grow up with these attitudes aren’t affected? (considering the average age of first exposure is 11 years old.)
Rose, you say there is a direct link between porn and rape…
What about places like many places in Africa or the middle-east?
Porn is rare, rape, child molestation, violence against women, all very common.
“Clearly you are misinformed. Stop reading the sex party’s dodgy press release and get the facts about the issue. Everything you’ve said here is false”
There are 2 magazines in question one was the Barely legal magazines from the US which provided records of the models being over the age of 18 and also another magazine with models in there late twenties.Both banned because the Models appear to be underage but age isn;t the factor here,because barely legal prvided documents that there models were over age and also the other magazine using older models.
Its cause the woman have A cup breasts thats the only correlation that can be made, that leads us down the slippery slop where men viewing images of woman over the age of 18 with small breasts to be labeled as pedophiles
P.S You could use your brain for once and think about the issue
“If it were up to Melinda, the women of this country would all be walking in burqas and be forced to undergo forced female circumcisions.”
Thank you person, that was hysterical.
“Its cause the woman have A cup breasts thats the only correlation that can be made, that leads us down the slippery slop where men viewing images of woman over the age of 18 with small breasts to be labeled as pedophiles”
P.S You could use your brain for once and think about the issue
No, it’s not the only issue in relation to these magazines. Are you familiar with their content? “don’t tell mom” “Daddy’s big d**k” It doesn’t matter that the women are over 18, they are made to look under 18. These mags are replicas of child pornography. It is disturbing that people are defending a man’s right to masturbate over what is essentially an image of a child.
Women don’t look under 18 just because they have small breasts, but this was merely one factor in determining that the women were intended to look underage.
Rose, pornography isn’t real. People don’t actually have sex, it’s all in your head. It’s just your imagination, pretend it doesn’t exist because really it doesn’t.
Don’t worry about what anyone here says no matter how convincing it might seem, they’re all just imaginary people trying to confuse you.
You can leave now, you know the truth.
Person – different factors combine to create a culture where rape is acceptable. It will be different issues in different cultures. But porn is not rare and you’d have to explain to me how prolific images of women abused and degraded in hard core pornography, called all sorts of horrible names, creates a culture where women are safe from rape.
Rose
Quick question.
Would you rather meet a nice man and have a healthy relationship, knowing that he watches hardcore pornography?
Or would you rather meet a nice man who takes out his fantasy’s on you, because he has no outlet?
Anonymous – so your argument is then, that men who watch porn are rapists restraining their urge to commit violence?
You would also have to convince me that men who are in prison for rape did so because they didn’t have access to porn. It’s the other way around men who rape always have loads of porn.
Your other argument is that sex is something that men “take out on women?”
Did porn give you this “healthy” view of sex?
Rose.
That was not my argument. Re-read it. I did not mention rapists.
Porn is a healthy way for men to get release. Men who can’t find a way to release their fantasies are more likely to act them out on others in a relationship. Which is why the information stated above is true. (Less porn = higher statistics of rape)
There are of course people who will have unhealthy views on sex regardless. These are dangerous men.
I am not talking about rapists. I am talking about every day Joe Blow.
And I am not talking about myself.
@ Rose
“It’s the other way around men who rape always have loads of porn.”
That’s a logical fallacy if I ever saw one.
Similarly, people who sexually abuse children ALWAYS have food somewhere in their house.
You know a study is rubbish when it starts with porn (or other media, like the effects of video games) then traces back to people, as opposed to starting with the person then finding out the possible causes of their actions.
Kelly, how familiar are you with the internet? You do realise that their are thousands of websites dedicated to racist ideologies right?
The law if you are familiar with it. Clearly identifies that it is what a ‘reasonable’ person would do…. a reasonable person would not access racist sites. Just as a reasonable person would not access child pornography.
Trust me, there is no way that you could simply stumble accross it. It takes intent and action for someone to access it.
Just for reference, when was the last time you simply stumbled accross one of these sites?
The ones who are breaking the law are doing so willingly and there is a legal system with checks and balances. How do you simply give your government the role of judge, jury and executioner in terms of internet viewing? If you are not a sheep, you would look up the conflicting viewpoints on every issue. I am less sure that this right will be protected under the proposed legislation.
I am an intellectual, not a follower. I need information from all sources to make my judgement, not a filtered hegemonic version of history and current events.
Rose, go watch some femdom. Pornography isn’t rare, and men being abused in isn’t rare either.
It’s called to drive to procreate, it’s all out little hormones saying ‘go have sex’. Masturbation (which goes hand in hand with watching porn) releases these hormones to prevent their build up over time, men don’t regularly release these hormones any other way. It’s like a drug addiction that you wont get over, the desire for the drug will just build up until you can’t control your actions.
You want to talk about pornography? Women in the porn industry can earn up to $240,000 a year and men can earn up to $60,000. Sound fair and equal?
I want to make a film about how women can have children whether or not her partner wants one then force the partner to pay child support, I want a film about how a woman can have an abortion whether or not the father wants to keep the child.
You want to come in here and talk about abused women and abused children? You know nothing about them.
Go join the national socialists.
Well lets just look at the numbers rose. Recently a University in Britain wanted to do a study on the effect of pornography on the male mind. It called for a comparison between men who had viewed porn and men who hadn’t.
Well the researches couldn’t find a single man that hadn’t watched porn.
Now are all the men in Britain women hating rapists? No, all the rapists in the country would probably account for less than 1% of the male population.
And as any rape councilor would tell you, rape is not a sexual act. Its an act of power, usually brought about by feeling of inadequacy.
There is no tangible relation between rape and porn. And study after study after study has confirmed this. This is a topic that has been debated for the past 50 years and still no credible scientific evidence has been put forward that watching porn would lead to a person raping someone.
so rose, if you were to watch porn, (yes you personally), are you telling me that you would develop violent urges?
Can someone please explain how the Christian faith, pornography and the repetative rape and molestation of children are linked? Because we all know that there have been numerous cases of priests abusing children. Maybe the church with its book containing incest, murder, genocide, etcetera should be looked at as a piece of ‘unwanted’ content and censored?
I’d like to see, um, rose answer the links question please
Harlequin, thats gold, lol
No it isn’t I’m pretending I don’t rape women, so I’ve never raped women… honest.
Oh my God! I just realized, what if someone made a fictional video of me raping and murdering women, lets call it, I dunno… a film. If someone saw a ‘film’ of me killing women and having sex with their bodies… oh God I’ve been killing and raping women all these years! But… but that would mean anyone who’s ever pretended to kill people actually kill people, zombies are real! Jews really did kill Jesus and Jesus really was the son of god!
…No!
Wait… no… oh God it can’t be true! There… are no films of me, I don’t exist!
I DON’T EXIST!!
Pornography is a vice like any other. It only harms (if it harms anybody) the person who views it.
The principle that should be followed is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want so long as they do not harm other people.
No one is advocating or condoning rape.
I would like to commend Ms Reist on her work to promote respect women’s self respect. It is very important for all people to have self respect.
Where Ms Reist loses credibility is where she attacks other groups in order to promote the group that she speaks for. Let’s assume that viewing pornography is psychologically damaging (ie it affects a person’s psychology in a negative way) — then the people who are viewing the pornography are injuring themselves. A reasonable person would not continuously self inflict psychological harm. Therefore the people who do become psychologically damaged by pornography to the point where they commit a violent crime against a woman (assuming this is even possible) were already unreasonable prior to coming into contact with the pornography, and it is inevitable that some vice or other would have led them astry. A person such as this (someone who is unreasonable) requires the care and supervision of a responsible adult (for example, children are often unreasonable by nature and thus by law they require parent consent if they are to enter a contract).
Now, if you can follow all that, it is clear that a person who destroys their life through ‘vice’ (porn, violent films, gambling addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, etc) is themselves responsible, or their parents or guardians are responsible. The Government are NOT responsible; the Government should not be making laws that will negatively affect innocent people for the purported intention of saving irrational people from themselves. The Government should not be practising prohibition as this only pushes the vice underground, and turns innocent people into criminals. Very importantly, there should be a separation of morality and the state; but even more important than that, we should follow the golden rule, ‘do unto others as you would have done unto yourself’, or as I said in the beginning, a person should be able to do whatever they like so long as they do not harm other people.
Operation titstorm is a puerile title, and the operation was carried out mostly by teenagers. The point of it was to protest the Government’s planned internet censorship regime, which would see a large variety of content blocked, not just ‘porn’ — even though, the chief argument in favour of the filter is that it protects against child pornography, that is just a smoke screen.
Nobody likes child pornography, but we have to face up to the fact that the Government shouldn’t be trying to block ANY sort of content over the internet. The internet must remain a completely open forum. As soon as we allow child pornography to be blocked, we find that many other things we didn’t expect also become blocked, as is seen from the leaked blacklist that is available on wikileaks.org .
Operation titstorm was in part prompted by the Government’s moves to ban pictures of ‘small breasted women’, claiming this was child porn. This is a clear example of where the Government starts to ban one thing, but ends up banning something else. I am not saying it is morally acceptable to view any porn, whether it be of small or large breasted women, the point is that the Government are now taking it upon themselves to restrict people’s freedoms in an authoritarian way.
Operation titstorm did not cause porn to display on government websites, it caused those sites to become temporarily unavailable to the public. No system was hacked or broken into; the sites were disabled through a technique called ‘Distributed Denial of Service’. This basically means that the websites were receiving a very large amount of traffic and they were unable to keep up with the load. You could compare this form of protest with marching down a city street and blocking traffic; yes this is an inconvenience to the people who need to use that road, but it is in no way a form of terrorism.
I would suggest to Ms Reist and others to continue to promote respect for women, and to inform people about websites/media corporations/individuals who degrade women, and direct them not to do give their money to such businesses. Coordinated consumer advocacy is a powerful tool. However, I strongly suggest that advocates of Womens rights do not lobby the government in order to have legislation passed or regulation enforced that would apply authoritarian powers against their opponents. It is never a good thing when a government increases its authoritarianship.
It has been a long time since I have seen so much ignorance, arrogance and self-serving selfishness as I have been reading in most of these blog commentaries here today.
Some of you need some therapy, at best.
When it comes to spreading some hate around, many of you take the cake.
I just wish to point out that Ms. Reist could use some time in a university class on critical thinking to avoid blatantly bad reasoning, such as that displayed in this article.
seems like these libertarian anarchist right-to-porn trolls like playing around with the c neo-liberal mantra that censorship of any kind will somehow lead to the end of democracy. The melodramtic equation: Censorship = Totalitarian Big Brother. Their free (porn) market ideologies fit really well with the economic anarchy of capitalism which is obviously not making the planet a great place to live for millions right now… But still, despite this reality, they insist on defending market deregulation as though deregulation is a sacred mechanism which guarantees freedom and happiness. And in the name of free speech they conjure all sorts of absurd images of fascist dictators, a mythic PC feminist era, etc, etc, in their defense of the market.
Yes, it is true that that many pedophiles are high-tech criminals who are currently out smarting international law enforcement agencies and governments, and have been for a long time. That doesn’t mean that an attempt to regulate the manufacturing and distribution of child sexual abuse material on the internet should be dismissed as naive, or technologically incompetent. It is difficult to see how this cynical attitude differs from the kind of corporate quietism which underpins the defense of deregulation. Yes, more needs to be done about rescuing children who are being abused and exploited by the multi-billion dollar ‘child porn’ industry but censoring online child sexual abuse material does not logically cancel out that possibility. It is not as though a government sits down and says , OK, we only have two options, regulate the online child porn industry or create justice for children who are being abused. It’s not a simple binary, with one option representing the birth of a crypto-totalitarian regime and the death of Australian democracy, and the other a real social justice intervention into organized sexual crimes against children.
Mocking feminists or indeed anyone who questions the social impact of porn, and the ri$e of porn culture in the west, for being anti-sex or anti-men is another reactionary strategy. Porn might have begun as a libertarian critique of power but those days are long past. Now porn is billion dollar global capitalist industry (with fairly questionable workplace relations) and has very little to do with challenging an oppressive hegemony. It is kind of ironic that porn was once thought to be some sort of consciousness raising device but now people who defend the capitalist porn industry claim that the only thing it raises is the desire to have fun. How come porn suddenly became so politically innocent? Or the other argument that porn is actually preventing rape etc because instead of doing it for real, they just watch it. So hard core rape porn doesn’t normalize or minimize rape, it actually prevents rape? How close is this to saying that texts which celebrate racist violence prevent racist violence? I’d like to see how the freedom of speech advocates defend that.
Kelly, you have no idea who we are. Therefore, it would be wise not to make a judgement call on our character. If you wish to have an intellegent and thought provoking debate, then stick to the censorship/filtering discussion. You are showing nothing but the most base of understanding concering the issue.
Instead of filtering everything through a simple morality. How about you combine this with rationality. Do you truly believe that 99% of the population should have their access to information (dat stuff dat makes da peeple smartar) compromised, because of the unlawful element that exists in all cultures?
I do not support child porn, nor do the people that you have attacked here. However, we do support access to information on Euthanasia, suicide, etcetera, so we as citizens can use critical interpretive perspectives and decide for ourselves where we see deficits within our socio-cultural and political institutions.
Abigail,
I gathered from your post that you are a fairly well educated woman and I thought I should do a search in google. As such, I must welcome you Dr Abigail Bray to this discussion.
I agree almost entirely with your post, and I believe that their has been a normalisation process in the porn industry. However, isn’t it also true that their has been a hyper-sexualisation of children in advertising? Why is the advertising industry allowed to place within every teen magazine, newspaper and commercial, a hyper-sexualised representation of girls? Surely, the media that is most accessible to teens in their formative stages (Cognitively speaking) would be the most serverely punished by the goverment for their destruction of socio-cultural norms… and yet they are not.
Additionally Abigail, it is imperative that I address a glaring inconsistency in your attack against those who have posted in this section and that is, we are NOT here because of pornography. We are against the flawed logic of the governments filtering technology and I don’t wish to repeat myself on this again.
Abigail, you are an educated woman, surely you understand the value of research. This issue stems into the fields of Mathematics, Information Technology, Law and Politics. Have you any knowledge of why the issues are so broad? We do not want to see the greatest free exchange of information in global history, turn out to be yet another form of hegemony.
Dear Melinda et al., I have a simple question : how do you explain that there are women supporting Project Freeweb ? How do you take that into account in your “male/rapist” theory ? Another question: does the fact that so many people _all across the globe_ (I insist on that) suddenly act together and speak with one voice make you think ? Do you really think that so many people would do that “just for porn” ? Did you even question your theory when you realized how many of us we are ?
What I mean is we do not simply fight for the right to masturbate in front of a computer. We fight for a much more fundamental right, for the Internet freedom. Our movement partly began because of porn web filtering, and that surely harmed Project Freeweb and made us look like pervert male teens. But please believe me, the majority of us is much more concerned about idea behind this decision than about porn. We would have been as cosmmitted if the Australian Government planned on filtering abortion web content, or anything else (yes, Lapland rabbits too). We are against the fact that a Goverment is trying to decide what is good or bad for us.
We believe that Internet freedom is fundamental. Think of it like an axiom. I also believe that child molesters (and people who make any videos related to such a topic available on the net) should be put in a dark jail for the rest of their life. These ideals are not at all incompatible.
Moreover, as it has been said countlessly in the above comments, filtering HTTP traffic won’t change anything. I recommend you read the following article, or at least the beginning (since the body is a bit technical) : http://phrack.org/issues.html?issue=65&id=6#article. It basically explains that you cannot rule the Internet like you would do in real life. From the article:
“The fact that the internet society is based on technical rules before that on moral ones is somehow less natural for us to believe. So it happens that computers and the Internet are subject to legislation, control and governmental based restriction, whilst the Internet and computers are by definition the same all over the world and the Internet is made by all users equally”. I urge you to read its intruduction as attentively as you can to get the full argumentation.
In my country, the ecologists have a saying, a sort of catch-phrase, a motto : what will your answer when your children will ask you: “Mum/Dad, what were you doing when they destroyed our planet ?”.
Well, what will you answer to your children when they will ask you: “What were you doing when they took our freedom ?” ? I hope my children won’t ever ask me that, and if they do, I want to be able to say that I stood and fought.
This article, and the vast majority of the discussion on it, ignores the elephant in the room.
The government’s proposed filter cannot have any significant effect on the availability of child pornography (or anything else). This is for the simple reason that there are over a trillion URLs on the web, increasing at over a billion a day (Google, July 2008). By any measure it is almost certain that available material on the web that would be “RC” is certain to be at least of the order of a billion URLs. Anyone who imagines that a blacklist of less than 10,000 can have any measurable effect in view of these numbers clearly failed to pass primary school maths.
So the government is proposing to implement a filter, that won’t work, is trivial to bypass, only covers the web and not all the other internet protocols, and will cost millions, reduce the reliability and security of the internet, introduce secret censorship of a carriage service for the first time in peacetime, blacken Australia’s name internationally, enable political censorship, and you can’t see why people would oppose it? It is opposed for these reasons by, among other organisations, the professional associations of librarians and tertiary IT lecturers. Do you regard these as supporters of pornography?
Wow. This discussion gott heated.
Some of the people outspoken against Labor’s madatory internet censorship include:
Google
Yahoo!
Australian Library and Information Association (peak body for the nation’s librarians)
Penny Sharpe (NSW Labor)
Will Briggs (anglican minister)
Save the Children’s group
UNI NSW Media research Unit
Reporters Without Borders
Retired Justice Michael Kirby
National Children’s and Youth Law Centre
Michael Flood
Canon Dr Ray Cleary (chair of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee)
You would be mistaken if you thought that Anonymous was the majority of the protest against this. I don’t think the people above are trying to defend child pornography (which is barely targeted in the policy. Not at all in a significant way)
Rose wrote: “So your basic argument is that men who watch porn are rapists who can only restrain themselves through watching porn?
It’s the other way around, pornography fuels violence.”
HA! talk about stacking up a straw man argument. I know it’s only anecdotal, but I watch porn on a fairly regular basis. So does my girlfriend. neither one of us is a violent person. There is no more evidence that porn fuels violence than video games do.
There have been violent unhinged people for the past few millennia, are you suggesting that cave drawings of naked women fuelled the first warlord’s urges to conquer neighbouring tribes?
violent people fuel violence.
FTFA “How about starting with educating boys that violence against women is wrong? ”
How about education that ANY violence is wrong? why is it that in the crazed eyes of a man hating feminist only violence against women is wrong.
I and many other people came into this debate for many things that have nothing to do with porn.
You might be surprised that opposition to Labor’s policy extends to people like church going mums who are furiously protective of their children. The mandatory filter does nothing for child protection, not even a little bit.
I’ve spoken to a number of parents who:
1) Were 100% certain that the ISP filter was for child porn only and didn’t extend to legal content (not true).
2) Were glad that the government was about to make the Internet safer for their children.
That second one is of the biggest concern. If any parents think they can relax supervision of Internet use because of this than Labor has sabotaged their own efforts on Internet safety for children. The level of vigilance and supervision needed will be exactly the same after this is done.
Like or loath porn, statements like this don’t really further your argument:
“I find it infuriating that, after every psychologist and researcher I’ve come across have ALL said that porn is highly addictive, alters perception, and destroys intimacy in relationships, the porn mongers refuse to even engage with that information, and push the same meaningless, substance-less argument of ‘freedom of speech’, which is really just a catch cry of ‘we can do whatever we want.’ ”
The opposition to this is much broader than an ideological porn battle. Also while every psychologist you have spoken to may have that opinion of pornography, I can guarantee you that it isn’t a universal view by mental health professionals (I work with a number of psychologists and other health professionals). There are issues around certain behaviours that involve pornography, but there are also serious behavioural issues that have associations with lots of every day things I’m sure you have never considered to be a problem.
Stupid people fuel violence, the ideals of idiots spreads from one fool to the next as fire jumps between blades of grass.
The internet filter will not stop child abuse, it will not stop child pornography and it’s not going to go back in time to stop children being molested as some people here seem to think it will.
Anonymous is fighting to protect freedom of speech and to prevent the government from gaining the power to censor whatever they wish, the problem is if this bill is passed they can use it as a front to bring in more censorship and restrict further our rights.
They are also attempting to ban people gathering as discussed with gangs and motorcycle clubs (bikies), that bill does not only affect bikies but all forms of gathering including religious gathering, protest gatherings an essentially the gathering of opposing political parties.
It’s not only a tactic of politics but also a tactic of warfare, first you cut off communication then prevent grouping (so as to pick off smaller/weaker groups, this is the same a bullying) and remove whatever you dislike.
Adolf Hitler used the same tactics I see here, first he passed censorship laws and anti grouping laws to prevent opposing political parties from gaining influence. After these laws were passed he had those political parties murdered giving him complete control over the government, since he was also the only man left up for election no one had any legal choice but to vote for him.
No one could form any new political parties since they could not gather and they could not speak about it due to the censor.
That is the kind of sideways attack you can expect from government, they can’t just show up and say ‘we want to censor you and give ourselves more power’, it wouldn’t get passed into law. If however they show up and say ‘we want to protect the children but forcing censorship’ they can gain support by people they blindside.
It’s a tactic that has been used for millennium, such as the abolition of slavery by William Wilberforce. Wilberforce proposed an anti french bill (since most British people hated the French) but the bill also blocked out the majority of slavery, it’s not a bad thing but it’s the same tactic. Claim you’re protecting the children and take away freedom of speech, claim you’re opposing the French and remove slavery.
Would use give nuclear weapons to North Korea or give guns to a murderer? No, because they might abuse them. So why would you give the government the power to take away our freedom? You trust they wont abuse that power? They will have the legal right to use it and all it will take it for one member to decide they want to, on a whim.
You need to wake up to these kind of things before you wake up to another holocaust.
It is made more obvious by that the filter will do nothing to stop child pornography, I know where to get it, I can download gigabytes of child porn right now if I want to and the filter wont be able to stop me.
Download Limewire, go into the video search and look for ‘pthc’. Instant peer to peer child pornography, the filter wont stop this so why push so hard to implement it unless it’s for some other purpose?
People complain about Tony Abbott being ‘anti feminist’ and overly religious, what do you think he’d do with these powers? Block out all anti-christian protesting, stop feminism spreading, stop any religious gatherings that aren’t Christian.
It has the potential for terrible consequences, don’t be fooled by propaganda.
I have posted the full internet blacklist here, it is ‘awaiting moderation’.
The law hasn’t even passed and already the list of censors is being censored… I’m feeling my freedom of speech… being shat on.
@ Harlequin
To be fair, if the full blacklist were to be posted in blog comments on my websites I’d ditch it too. If this site is hosted in Australia then the site host could be subject to a takedown notice and a fine of $10,000/ day for non compliance.
The blacklist has already been thoroughly discredited as poorly managed and of extremely broad scope. Posting the whole thing here is just going to stir people up and be counter productive. (& it’s been a while since it last leaked so it’s not current any way)
The whole thing is a wasteful political exercise to be seen to be doing something without actually improving anything.
An example of how political this thing has become…. the government declared after their trials that they could filter with no performance impact and 100% accuracy. Fantastic! The fine print is a bit of a let down though. Performance is good for a list of up to 10,000 web pages (they categorise individual pages not whole sites) and only if you don’t include content from high traffic sites like Youtube.
So it only handles web traffic of an incredibly minute percentage (& 2/3 of global internet traffic isn’t web based)
The government knows that there are already Youtube clips on the blacklist and desperation have started talking about cooperation with Google to block such content.
Alarm bells ringing yet? How much violent or child porn do you think there is on Youtube?
Not surprisingly Google have come out and said, no they won’t block RC for Australia because it’s far too broad and mandatory censorship at the ISP level is problematic for several reasons.
Google are now part of a coalition that includes the peak body for librarians and Yahoo! (a direct competitor) to campaign against the policy. Alarm bells should surely be sounding for most of you by now.
There was a time I would have supported this idea
Snow wrote:
‘We do not want to see the greatest free exchange of information in global history, turn out to be yet another form of hegemony.
But free exchange for whom and to do what? Not everyone has the same access to the net.
If it is ‘free’ then why do we have to pay for it?
If you want to argue that information demands to be free, then why not fight for free global access?
The idea that the internet is just the free exchange of information is a hegemonic position— there are millions who are being marginalized because they cant afford access to this ‘free exchange of information’.
So if a filter wont dent the child pornography industry — which a recent UN report argues is one of the fastest growing on the net — then what will?
Does Anonymous Inc have anyt
It’s a big bad scary world out there. Maybe you should crawl in a hole and hide while the rest of us live life and enjoy ourselves.
You know people can’t afford books too? Why you could go to the library and rent some books for free, but you know some people can’t afford to travel to a library? Why I could go and watch an education film, but no I can’t afford the cinema ticket. You know some people live in places that don’t have cinema’s or television?
Why I could tell people the information for free, but the phone call would be expensive. You may be shocked by this but some people don’t have phones either, hell I could tell them in person but you know some people aren’t standing next to me and they can’t afford to travel to me.
You know some people are born short and some are born tall? Why some people are born smart and some are born stupid, you know the world isn’t equal and life isn’t fair?
I pay to use the internet, I don’t pay for the information it provides me.
You know what would really stop child pornography? Stopping child molesters making films of children being raped… but we could never do something like that.
This blog has become a circular argument, haters gonna hate, stupid people gonna be stupid.
Abigail Bray said “So if a filter wont dent the child pornography industry — which a recent UN report argues is one of the fastest growing on the net — then what will?”
Oh gee I dunno, the police maybe? Abigail surely you do realise that the AFP regularly catch those who trade child porn and do so in conjunction with police agencies around the world. Check the AFP website for various press releases and info as to what they actually do and their success rate. Meanwhile it’s currently taking ACMA three months to add items to the blacklist. You’ll also note that NONE of the items on all three of the current leaked blacklists actually have any links to any child porn websites, even if you broaden the parameters to include models over 18 who happen to look as if they might pass as 17 year olds (which is highly subjective anyway).
a regular complaint by law enforcement agencies is that they do not have full cooperation from the money on the net
Sorry Abigail, you’re saying it’s better to hide the problem when found rather then to stop it? How about using the $48 million so earmarked for this filter and giving to the AFP? Wouldn’t that make much more sense?
You do release that the AFP’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team had thier budget reduced by $2.8 million by the Rudd government in 2008 and delayed the increase of 90 additional staff members of the team from 2008 to 2011.
@ Abigail Bray
Does law enforcement regularly call for nation wide ISP based filters to combat the problem?
Acting Commissioner Neil Gaughan said in December 2008 after a high profile international bust :
Neil Gaughan [Aust. Federal Police]: Peer to peer technology allows Internet users to share files without actually accessing a central network …
Philip Clark: So filters and all that sort of thing don’t work?
Neil Gaughan: They don’t work at all. …
Neil Gaughan: …we have people operating in undercover capacity who actually get online and…pose as paedophiles and assist and breakdown those barriers. … [We] use terminology to make people believe we’re actually involved in that trading and as such people will share files with us. Once that’s occurred we move forward and take the necessary action.
Child pornography production and trade is of grave concern no matter what the volume on the Internet. I understand the desire for more to be done. I’m going to resist the call to do anything to stem it particularly when some of those “anything” proposals don’t do that at all and risk damaging Internet safety promotion efforts for children.
Throwing up a small filter of broad scope and capability targeted at a network protocol that is rarely used for this trade isn’t particularly helpful except for allowing some people to feel like they did something.
In regard to the UN report, I’m increasingly discouraged by the regurgiation of false and fabricated statistics in this area. It’s entirely unnecessary. It probably wasn’t deliberate on the part of the UN, but some of these clangers made their way in. I’m not sure what the motivation for this sort of approach is…. (documented examples of fraudulent stats):
http://libertus.net/censor/resources/statistics-laundering.html
I don’t think that abusing each other based on our beliefs is particularly constructive or mature. Instead of arguing about what shouldn’t be done and how not to do it, maybe we could band together and come up with a solution. HOW can we support the police in their efforts, is there another way of controlling the situation without compromising other areas? Anger will get us nowhere!
Incedentally, I may be wrong, but I suspect that just because Melinda campaigns for the rights of women and children does not mean that she does not care about the rights of men, or is a man hater or many of the other things that have been thrown at her. You have to pick your battles – she can’t stand up for everyone!!
Those who talk about “freedom of speech” need to acknowledge that others want freedom *from* your hate speech. Racism, sexism and objectification – keep your hatred to yourself.
@ Simone…. I agree. Raging at each other in blog comments does nothing for policing or social issues.
To me the ISP filter as proposed is an unproductive distraction. We’ve been hearing from the government for 2 years now that it’s not a silver bullet (I’m assuming that’s some sort of pollie code for “it doesn’t work”).
Labor do have a broader Cyber Safety policy which is far less contentious than the mandatory filter component.
I’d love to see more resourcing going to police. Particularly for undercover and high tech crime units. I’d also like to see Internet use and safety entrenched into national school curriculum in a way that also engages parents.
What Labor is proposing doesn’t stop children from accessing inappropriate adult content. It doesn’t touch X18+ or R18+ material. By technical limitations it can only deal with a tiny percentage of RC material that’s out there (evidenced by the government’s own trial) and can’t touch content that comes from high traffic sites. It involves a slow, expensive and bureaucratic complaints process feeding into a secret blacklist.
The government’s own trial report confirmed that it’s easily bypassed by numerous methods. If you leave a child alone with Google and if they’re old enough to follow a set of step by step instructions, then they would be able to step around this type of filtering.
RC is also far broader than the examples in ministerial sound bites and is open to expansion by politicians as confirmed by the department this week. Last week Senator Conroy mysteriously claimed that the classification board determined the scope of RC independent of governments. (probably to counter fears of government expansion).
If Labor get enough Senate votes to get this dog of an idea through, I’d like to see it accompanied by a large comprehensive education campaign letting parents know that they didn’t actually make the Internet safer for children and the useful advice around supervision and computer placement etc still applies. It’s maddening talking to parents who now have the impression that they won’t have to worry so much because Labor’s cleaning up the Internet. They’re not.
Cathy, what hate speech? From whom? Hate speech doesn’t pop up on your browser like magic. You have to actively actually search for it. If you’re equating sexism to hate speech (which I don’t, I consider anti-Semitism as an example of hate speech, and sexism is in another category altogether. Misogyny and misandry, now they’re hate speech), then this is a social issues, and no amount of banning what you particularly find offensive is going to solve the problem. Social problems can’t be fixed by banning things. It’s never worked before, and it won’t work now. Education is the key.
So if the recent UN report, no less, is to be dismissed, what is the solution?
Do international law enforcement agencies have clear suggestions for national governments? Many have argued that the police are underfunded in this area.
A big increase in the take down notice fine, $100,000 instead of $10, 000, might inspire some rapid self-regulation.
The creation of substantial fines (millions) for ISPs who are in any way complicit with child pornography trafficking might also inspire self-regulation. The fines could be used to help children rebuild their lives and restore their dignity. Many kids are silent because they are economically dependent on their abusers.
Abigail, in regard to the fines, you’re talking about content hosted on Australian servers are you not? Can you please explain where there has been an instance of child porn (real child porn, not models over 18 which might look like they’re 17, depending on the person) on Australian servers? I don’t think there has been such case (except where hackers have deliberately placed images there unbeknownst to website owners and content hosts). Under Australian law you cannot host anything that would be rated MA15+ or above on servers that physically sit anywhere in Australia. It’s been that way for a decade now.
As for fining ISPs, why? If I do something illegal using a phone, does the phone company get charged by the police because of my actions? We’ve already had in the iiNet case the ruling that ISPs aren’t responsible for the actions of their customers. The customers are responsible. You seem to have this fixation that child porn can be found on webpages, and this generally untrue. According to the AFP, P2P and other encrypted channels are how the material is traded, which makes the proposed web filter utterly useless in stopping the distribution of child porn.
As I’ve written before, the AFP’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team is understaffed and under funded. You’ve stated the solution yourself. Personally I think mental health services could also be improved. Judging from the interview with a paedophile on ABC’s Hungry Beast last year, it seems some of these people want to get help, and we should let them have that help. Having first hand experience in dealing with the mental health system in getting a diagnosis for Asperger’s Syndrome, it’s a bit of nightmare. Something which really should have been done in a couple of weeks dragged on for few agonising months (due to lack of psychologists) and then there was no real support services for me anyway.
@ Abigail Bray
I don’t think that the UN report should be dismissed. I was disappointed that some false stats got in, but I wont try to argue that there isn’t a problem. It may well be an increasing problem, but dodgy inflated stats just muddy things.
The take down notices I mentioned are a bit of an odd situation in Australia stemming from changes to the Broadcasting Services Act nearly a decade ago. It’s also why a secret blacklist was already in place.
In content hosted on Australia is called Internet Prohibited and can attract takedown notices if someone submits a complaint and large fines if they don’t comply. Internet Prohibited doesn’t equal illegal though. It’s content that is:
* MA15+ offered commercially and is not behind an approved access system (access systems that guarantee against purchases by minors don’t exist though. ACMA does accept most commercial gateways that have credit card payment though)
* Material that is R18+ (commercial or not)
* Material that is X18+ (commercial or not)
* Refused Classification material which has child abuse material as a subset. It also includes video clips of graffiti
Presently the secret blacklist is only used for Internet Industry Association accredited home PC based filters that can be recommended to you by your ISP. It’s not contentious because you can use a parental password to turn it off.
After much pressure the government will not be using the full scope of the existing blacklist for mandatory filtering. It’s been wound back to RC (and no hope of blocking a significant amount of that via ISPs)
So increasing take down fines in Australia wont impact child pornography production and distribution. Internet Prohibited legislation really just stops Australian web hosts from hosting adult content. That’s not limited to pornography either. While the black list has been secret, you can look at categorisations in the ACMA reports. It includes categories like R18 – Themes.
I don’t think it’s particularly mature to try to eradicate all adult content from the Internet or the wider community (remember this isn’t all about porn). Adults shouldn’t be forced into being treated like children by their governments.
For Australian hosted content fines and take down notices are the least of a criminal’s worries if they hare hosting child abuse or other illegal material here.
If you are talking about global law enforcement for web content (these filters are only any good for web pages and they aren’t brilliant at that) then abhorrent illegal material isn’t on the open web much any more. Organisations like the Internet Watch Foundation have confirmed that such content gets taken down from the web very quickly now or it shifts location quickly.
As confirmed by law enforcement agencies rings of traffickers build up a degree of trust between individuals and share content via direct computer to computer communication (commonly referred to as Peer to Peer) and even as email attachments. I’d refer back to the quote I used from Neil Gaughan. I’d like to see guys like OCSET to be better resourced to infiltrate criminal networks.
If you could extend the filtering beyond simple web pages tomorrow, these shadowy groups would find or invent new methods the following day. By gaining trust and infiltrating such networks, police do catch people no matter what the method of exchange and I believe that they do have a real impact on making kids safer.
I’m all for avenues to be explored and I think education is critical and greater engagement between parents and kids on this stuff is important. While some of these topics might be uncomfortable for parents, we can’t assume that the government can put in some technology to make our kids safe. Governments can do lots to inform and empower parents though without treating the entire adult population like children.
I’m yet to construct thoughts on this. But I wanted to point out how pathetic it is that all of you anti-webfilter people aren’t even game to use your real names – I’m yet to see that in Melinda’s supporters. I think that’s the epitome of hiding behind the internet and really, it makes me wonder if you’re ashamed of your stance? It’s so easy to be brave, hiding behind the vale of ‘anon.’.
@ Noelle…
and you are? I see lots of first names that might or might not be real.
Should we introduce laws Sigapore (IIRC) style that make it an offence to comment online without a full real name?
There are issues around public internet use of personal details that we should also be talking to our children about.
Melinda will have my real email address via the blog back end. If you forward a request to her for it I may consider giving you more information about myself.
(btw Neil is my real name)
Yes there are some heated angry & silly comments in here. Some of them are juvenille and incendiary. Painting the whole opposition to government mandated filtering as an extension of the porn industry efforts or Anonymous is far from the truth.
btw Labor Senator Kate Lundy’s thoughts on the new group involving Google and our librarian peak body who are fighting against this might interest some:
http://www.katelundy.com.au/2010/02/16/my-thoughts-on-the-safer-internet-group-statement/
I’m disappointed to see a number of misogynistic comments in this thread. I think it’s counter productive and frankly offensive. Ultimately, I think we all share common goals:
1. That we can go about our lives without government (or anyone else) interfering in our lives as long as we’re acting safe, sane and consensually.
2. That our children grow up safe and receive a world that is better than the one we got.
I disagree that all pornography is inherently harmful. It is an outgrowth of voyeurism, and I will not judge people on what excites them. There is nothing wrong in fantasy. The point of fantasy is to explore possibilities that may not be feasible to execute in reality, whether for physical, financial or ethical reasons. I see nothing wrong in a film that explores an abuse of a power relationship, such as teacher / student, as long as all participants (including the viewers) are consenting adults.
Our culture does have a youth fetish; it isn’t surprising to see pornography catering to this. Many older women have crushes on younger celebrities, recent examples are Edward Cullen or Harry Potter. Britney Spears played a similar role to older men. There is no shame in having the crush, as long as it isn’t acted upon. Even then, that isn’t the complete story. Most people wouldn’t have any problems with a 19 year old male having a 17 year old girlfriend or vice versa. This isn’t a black and white issue. It’s complicated and nuanced.
I do not really buy the argument that pornography naturally leads to violence against women. This suggests things about humans that I’m not comfortable with. It suggests that exposure to particular kinds of media is equivalent to mind control. It ultimately takes responsibility away from those who commit acts of violence. I don’t think there is an excuse for behaving in such a manner towards anyone, let alone women. Regardless, this is an old argument in feminism and it isn’t going to be solved anytime soon.
I think the real problem of pornography is that it exposes the sorry state of sex education. Regardless of how you feel about pornography, the Internet has certainly made it easy to access. No technological solution will ever be able to filter out all pornography from the Internet. The long and the short is, ubiquitous access to pornography is here; the horse has well and truly bolted. What do we do about it?
Pornography is intended as entertainment for adults. The sexual positions and acts seen are intended to titillate the audience, not give pleasure to the performers. Camera angles and what looks good are more important than that pleasure. As was well put in a quote I read recently, “to learn about sex from pornography, is like learning to drive by watching The Fast and the Furious”. This is true regardless of whether the pornography was produced with a male or a female gaze.
Adolescents are not asexual beings. Their bodies are changing and they have questions about the previously unexperienced emotions and urges that arise. Our culture is pretty messed up. We can’t openly talk about these subjects. It embarrasses or offends us. Not being to be able to get answers from parents or schools, adolescents turn to their peers and the Internet. If they are learning that all females seem to enjoy having semen ejaculated onto their faces without evening being asked (say), there are going to be unhappy sexual relationships in the next generation.
What we need to do is stop being so juvenile and talk about what makes a healthy happy sexual relationship with our children. If you don’t feel you can do that, there are plenty of quality books that tackle the subject. The ideal, at least to me, is that all sexual relationships should be based on open communication about what makes each participant feel happy, and where their boundaries are. Pornography cannot teach this, and pretending it doesn’t exist will not solve the underlying problem.
This is about the only intersection between pornography and the proposed Internet filter. The filter too is about hiding a problem. The filter has been scaled back to only cover Refused Classification material.
This is a uniquely Australian category that is not synonymous with illegal. If someone enjoys candle wax or light spanking as part of a healthy sexual relationship that is their business alone. They should be able to get films of such acts without the government deciding that it is offensive. The Internet has been around for over 20 years now. Access to this material has clearly not collapsed society. Australia is not demonstratively better than places that do not restrict access to Refused Classification material in publications or films. There is no evidence that it serves the Australian public, and it violates an essential freedom. What I’d really like is for the Refused Classification category to be abolished. It’s continued existence is a government claim that Australians are particularly feeble minded compared to people elsewhere in the world. I don’t think that is true.
In the public sphere, I agree, I do not want overtly sexual (or violent, or religious, etc) advertisements or popular culture. However in the privacy of our own homes, or among a group of likeminded adults, we should be able to explore any ideas no matter how confronting or offensive others might find them. I do not accept that as a responsible adult there is any material that I am incapable of handling. I do not need the government to make that decision for me.
With regards to rape (child abuse is a subset of rape), there is a clear lack of consent. Both at the time the material was produced, and again when it was publicly released. Such material should be destroyed, not hidden behind some imperfect filter. It is the only ethical thing to do.
I would be happy if half the Defence budget went to law enforcement that is responsible for catching people who violate the consent of others. It seems a much better use of the money than maintaining the force necessary to annihilate another country. However, I do not agree with laws that make thoughtcrimes of victimless explorations of fantasy. I do not agree with proposals that attempt to limit information. It is for that reason that I do not support the filter.
Hey, the Q&A transcript is online – http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2811626.htm?show=transcript – when are you going to post it??
I think Melinda (and some others who have posted here) brought a number of those comments on herself to be honest. Baiting those who make up Anonymous as being part of the porn lobby, terrorist and wanting to make child porn available wasn’t a good idea. I really find it rather hypocritical of her to claim of the Sex Party being “playing fast and loose with the truth”, then she does the exact same thing as the Sex Party and crafts a fictitious history and labels on Anonymous.
Look, the demographic of Anonymous is mostly made of American upper middle class teenage boys who play games a lot. These are the people who created “lolcats” and “Rickrolling”. Geniuses they ain’t. Any type of lobby or representatives of the porn industry they ain’t. Representative of the anti censorship movement, they ain’t. Perhaps Melinda could spend about five minutes googleing “Anonymous”, “4chan” and “/b/” so she can get a proper understanding of what this whole Anonymous thing is about and why writing what she wrote about them is similar to poking a hornet’s nest with a stick repeatedly.
Matthew W, I consider speech that characterises women as “sluts” … “whores” and “c**k sockets” to be hate speech. That is not how you speak to someone you respect and care about, nor is it the way you would speak to someone you dislike. Most people don’t engage in this type of abuse, but the porn industry makes money off this. And men buy it and masturbate over it. This is how the porn industry labels and treats women, then the Australian Sex party tries to tell us about “freedom” and being “serious about sex.”
In fact many of the porn apologists on this blog have decided to do the same thing by being abusive in their posts. Coincidence? i think not. Then they complain that their opponents have “headed for the hills.” Where did they get the idea that women would want to stick around and be abused and humiliated? oh that’s right, i covered that in my previous paragraph.
Actually Matthew W, sometimes it does “pop up” on your browser, like when my son searched for cute cartoon that he had seen on youtube and the associated videos were of “horny sluts.” A search for “Dora the explorer color in” brought me to a page where “Dora” is someone who is just dying to get her gear off.
The average age of first exposure to porn is 11, how are kids growing up in an environment of “sluts” and “c**k” sockets” supposed to develop a healthy sexuality? healthy relationships? If these are the images and ideas that young people achieve orgasm over, it’s no wonder that women endure sexual harrassment and sexual assault. We’re just “c**k sockets” remember? why would we deserve any respect?
someone wrote this – “Less porn = higher statistics of rape.” There is no man in jail for rape, because he didn’t have access to porn. Contrary to this, all rapists and serial killers have a large collection of porn and often copy porn in “acting out” their sick fantasies on real women.
Of course, not all men who view porn rape women, which is fortunate for us. All people will respond to different stimuli differently, some won’t be affected, others most definitely will. However, I think when we have a proliferation of images that promote sex as something that is “done” to a woman, where women like the abusive language, the violence, the degradation with up to a dozen partners – please tell me how this doesn’t have an impact on how men view women in terms of relationships and sexuality?
How sad that some people see sex as something that a man “acts out” on his partner.
Cathy said: “This is how the porn industry labels and treats women, then the Australian Sex party tries to tell us about “freedom” and being “serious about sex.””
While I don’t have much love for Ms Patten’s little outfit, and while I do agree that a lot of the porn on the market, the so called “Gonzo” stuff from the US is pretty horrible, not all porn is like this. There are sub sections which are aimed at couples and a very small women’s market. Painting everything with the same brush and demonizing it is not helping.
One of the problems I have with some of the work Melinda’s work is if the proposed R18+ magazine change goes through, softcore titles like Mayfair, Club and even some of the US issues of Playboy can only be sold in adult shops. Seeing as adult shops generally don’t sell magazines anymore, they’ll essentially be a thing of the past. So that the hardcore stuff which isn’t really pleasant for a lot of men (me included), so you see the only type of porn that will be available is the Gonzo stuff, which is pretty much as you describe. A secondary problem is not all R18+ publications are porn. For example the acclaimed novel “American Psycho”, the comic anthology Heavy Metal Magazine and the euthanasia book “Last Exit” are all R18+ Category 1 publications. All of them will be forced into adult shops, but do you really think adult shops will sell them?
Cathy said: “In fact many of the porn apologists on this blog have decided to do the same thing by being abusive in their posts. Coincidence? i think not.”
No, as I explained before, they’re from Anonymous. Do you really expect a 15 year old kid who plays games all day and posts crap (see “lolcats”) on 4Chan to be civil? They’re idiots. They’re irrelevant. Take no notice of them.
Cathy said: “Actually Matthew W, sometimes it does “pop up” on your browser, like when my son searched for cute cartoon that he had seen on youtube and the associated videos were of “horny sluts.” A search for “Dora the explorer color in” brought me to a page where “Dora” is someone who is just dying to get her gear off.”
Seriously, you need to help yourself here. First supervise your children online. Second get yourself PC based webfilter. But most of all change your settings on Google to “Safesearch”. Have mine on moderate and could not replicate the results you got, although I got some Bob the Builder pictures mixed in with Dora.
Cathy said: “The average age of first exposure to porn is 11, how are kids growing up in an environment of “sluts” and “c**k” sockets” supposed to develop a healthy sexuality? healthy relationships?”
Funny you should say that, I had no trouble at all. I adore the women in my life despite the fact I purposely searched out porn during my teen years (as men are visually stimulated, the female form was absolutely fascinating to me, and still is). I could always determine the difference between fantasy and reality. I do find it disappointing that the only way I found out what a Vulva actually looked like and where the clitoris was via Penthouse. School and my parents really failed me in this area and in how to deal with relationships (I also had undiagnosed Aspergers syndrome, so my lack of empathy didn’t help either). There was no real education about his at all in my teenage years (mid 1980’s to very early 1990’s). You’re expected just to fumble around like an idiot and are given no guidance in this area at all. This is the REAL problem. Blaming porn and banning it doesn’t help in any regard. It’s tackling the core of issue which is preparing children for adulthood in the very important areas of relationships and sex.
We need proper sex education (not the crappy sterile biology lessons I got that treated sex as something clinical) and to teach both young men and women that surprise, surprise, they are different from each other and want different things from the relationship. Respect and negotiation skills within a relationship need to be taught, and as far as I’m aware this isn’t happening. As I said before banning stuff to fix social problems has never worked. Hey, it might make you feel good to ban something, but the core problem will still be there unsolved, and you may end up causing more problems with the ban anyway.
Cathy said “someone wrote this – “Less porn = higher statistics of rape.” There is no man in jail for rape, because he didn’t have access to porn. Contrary to this, all rapists and serial killers have a large collection of porn and often copy porn in “acting out” their sick fantasies on real women.”
Evidence please? And what about the rapists in the 1800s and the many years before that? Where was their porn?
And you should have installed a filter for your own son instead of complaining about the exposure he gets. You seem competent enough to install a filter I hope.
Tan and Matthew W, quick reply for the moment.
I do have a filter on my own computer, but sometimes my child will go to other people’s houses where they don’t have filters. It’s not fair that when I let my guard down – if we can call letting my son visit others as “letting my guard down” – they might see some of this horrific stuff that is out there. Kids also get images off their unfiltered computers, upload them onto their msn profile pics or thumbnail pics (which the filter doesn’t pick up) and send them on to kid’s mobile phones. If other kids cannot access it so easily on the net, then they can’t forward it on.
Tan, you want evidence that rapists and serial killers always have an extensive porn collection? I’m not going to write you an essay but I can give you one reference, John Douglas talks about this in his book “MindHunter” which details his extensive experience with killers and rapists.
Note that I did not say that all men who use porn rape women (thank goodness) but that those who do rape always have a porn habit. This was said to rebut the assertion that men rape because they do not have porn, which is false.
So as to your question about what men did “before porn” – there have always been manifestations of degradation and objectification of women throughout history, whether it be through porn or religious attitudes of “ownership” of women, laws that said women couldn’t own property, couldn’t leave their houses when pregnant etc. All of these rules surrounding ownership amount to the idea that women are not equal and are lesser than men.
In 2010, porn treats women as “objects” to own, use and dispose of. A study could not find one single man who hadn’t seen it, average age of first exposure is 11. A large demographic of porn users is between 11-17. The most sought after variety is “hard core” (not couples and for women varieties). How are we to expect this next generation to respect women if they’re constantly fantasising about violating these “whores” and “sluts?”
Will respond on the rest of your post later Matthew W. By the way it’s nice to finally see someone from your particular point of view engaging in discussion rather than abuse. Not convinced by the way that these “anonymous” hackers are from the states. I don’t think Q & A is broadcast there.
Cathy said “I do have a filter on my own computer, but sometimes my child will go to other people’s houses where they don’t have filters. It’s not fair that when I let my guard down”
Now seriously Cathy, if you are having this problem, I would let my children go to their houses. It’s as simple as that. Of course the problem here is that the government’s current policy allows all content from “G” rated to “X18+” and only a maximum of 10,000 urls can be filtered due to the limitations of the software (the current amount of urls on the web is in the order of 1 trillion and growing a 1 billion a day) and even worse urls on high traffic sites cause the cesonorware to crash. There are already two urls on the blacklist from Youtube (euthanasia videos) and one on Wikipedia. Google has already publicly nixed the idea of removing these videos from Youtube and Wikipedia has a no censorship policy. So already the government’s internet censorship policy is pretty much unworkable. Add in the fact that I’m an adult who has no children, so why do I have to be censored? Especially when you factor in that I’ve been on the internet since 1995 and have had no problems. But the biggest issue I really have with the policy is that it’s a massive waste of money that solves no problems, and will create a number of issues for law abiding web users such as security problems.
Cathy said “Tan, you want evidence that rapists and serial killers always have an extensive porn collection? I’m not going to write you an essay but I can give you one reference, John Douglas talks about this in his book “MindHunter” which details his extensive experience with killers and rapists”.
While rapists may have porn collections, porn is not the cause of rape. There seems to be no correlation between porn and rape. The Japanese statistics are really interesting as the amount of porn and the types, some of which do include rape fantasy and all kinds of strange and misogyny stuff (dismembering women, tentacle monsters etc, note that most of this stuff popped up over the years due to censorship laws, see Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clemments’ book “The Erotic Anime Movie Guide” for a breakdown and history of how this happened), yet they have really low rape and assault figures. Same in Australia. In the ACT where X18+ is legal, low sex assault rates, high in Queensland where R18+ publications are banned, but high in NT where X18+ and R18+ publications are legal. There‘s a lot of factors going on here that which include culture and socioeconomic backgrounds. Just saying porn causes it is really simplistic and untrue.
And one of my favourite quotes; “In Ted Bundy’s case, no serious social scientist or law enforcement officer takes the explanation that ‘pornography made me do it’ seriously. Well before Bundy turned the pages of a sexually explicit magazine or watched an adult video he was exhibiting bizarre behaviour. Dr Dorothy Lewis, who conducted multiple interviews with the killer just after his arrest, reported that Bundy was a highly disturbed child at the age of three. When Bundy was first arrested in 1978, early interviews with police and psychiatrists reveal that the killer referred to popular sexually explicit magazines as ‘normal healthy sexual stimuli’. It was only in the 1980s, when a court refused to certify him insane and to save him from the electric chair, that Bundy became a born-again Christian and reiterated the party line on pornography.”
Source: Dealing with Pornography: The Case Against Censorship, Paul Wilson, University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 1995
Cathy said “In 2010, porn treats women as “objects” to own, use and dispose of. A study could not find one single man who hadn’t seen it, average age of first exposure is 11. A large demographic of porn users is between 11-17.”
Cathy, I’m going to have to call bollocks on your 11 to 17 figure. Where on Earth does that figure come from?