Pornography

In I Spit On Your Grave, a young woman is gang raped in a remote woodland. She is beaten and tortured in a series of deeply disturbing scenes, before she hurls herself into a river.

She survives, comes back, and inflicts a graphic and brutal revenge on the men who so viciously attacked her.

I can’t remember why I picked up the DVD - although I love horror and was possibly overcome with swaggering bravado after seeing the ‘watch it if you dare’ sticker.

Continue reading "The humourless hysteria of the holier-than-thou" »

Artists are “appalled” at a suggestions art should get a classification scheme, similar to that used for movies, television and video games. A Senate committee has recommended one be introduced for controversial artwork such as the images of nude children produced by Bill Henson. Here, Tamara Winikoff gives us her perspective.

The question of where the visual arts should sit in a national classification scheme was one of the matters considered by the recent Senate Inquiry into the National Film and Literature Classification Scheme.

Currently, though, artworks are not required to be classified as a matter of course - the Classification Board can call in artworks, especially in response to a complaint or alternatively artists can choose to seek classification themselves if they wish to be clear about their legal status.

Continue reading "Ratings plan a kick in the arts" »

The fetishisation of the female backside reached royal heights this week with the global worship of Pippa Middleton’s bum.

The frenzied prostration before the bottom of HRH Catherine Middleton’s younger sister and bridesmaid highlights anew the objectification of women deeply entrenched in our culture.

This was in the Daily Mail: Many women admired her dress, but an army of male fans were happily distracted by her shapely rear as the procession went up the aisle.

Continue reading "Pippa’s arse has become porn for the slobbering masses" »

There is a great moment in The Simpsons where, after mounting a successful grassroots crusade against the violent Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, Marge is called upon to lead a group of concerned citizens who feel that Michelangelo’s statue of David is also not suitable for children (due to his exposed genitalia) and should not be displayed in Springfield during a nationwide tour.

Much to the frustration of Helen Lovejoy – the gossipy, ultra-conservative Reverend’s wife famous for the phrase “won’t somebody think of the children!?” – Marge does not want to participate in this campaign, because she thinks the statue is a renaissance masterpiece that all children should be encouraged to see.

It is a clever plot twist that highlights how slippery the slope of censorship really is, and how inconsistent we as a society tend to be when assessing the relative merits of art and popular culture: that one person’s art is very often another’s filth.

Continue reading "PUNCH: Kanye’s twisted fantasy is art, not filth" »

How convenient to caricature someone whose work you oppose by reducing them to a cartoon parody. Like I haven’t had enough Helen Lovejoy clichés to last a lifetime? Oh, and look, another media studies academic watching The Simpsons. Are we impressed yet?

Warning: Contains graphic violent and sexual images

Where Stephen Harrington sees “a graphic critique of post-feminist female sexuality”, I see Kanye West holding a woman’s decapitated head. Where those like Harrington see ambiguous, complicated narrative and linear narrative fantasy, I see semi-naked dead women swinging from ropes around their necks.

When I see Rick Ross in the ‘Behind the scenes’ You Tube clip tucking into a plate of raw meat before a spreadeagled dead woman on the table, I see the brutalization and degradation of female sexuality. I don’t think ‘check out that satire!’

Continue reading "Counterpunch: women aren’t playthings, slaves and bitches" »

It’s common knowledge that men like to perve on women. But what about the reverse? Do chicks want man-p*rn to stick up in their workshops and ogle over with their mates during homoerotic poker games?

Do women like to watch?

The editor of a new mag offering photos of nude men and their dangly bits answers with a resounding “you bet”.

Continue reading "Male nudity: Do women like to watch?" »

Bettina Arndt asked: “Why do men take such risks for the sake of sex?”. Novelist Philip Roth wrote: “Every mistake a man can make usually has a sexual accelerator”. What is it about men and sex?

The problem for males begins early. When a boy reaches puberty he’s almost immediately at his sexual peak: too young an age to negotiate sexual agreements with girls his own age who are likely to reject his clumsy advances with disdain, and go off to pine romantically for older boys. So it is with a sense of rejection, inordinate levels of sexual desire and accompanying guilt that he abandons himself to the sordid adolescent world of chronic masturbation - “a world of matted handkerchiefs, crumpled Kleenex and stained pyjamas”, said the famous Alexander Portnoy.

Continue reading "Men and sex: not a healthy relationship" »

Three times a week I watch porn. I’m a man of routine, so the days are always the same - Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

It’s nothing too explicit – just stocking-clad women stripping off their clothes and shaking their breasts in my face as they rub up against other women, men, poles, or whatever else they can find nearby.

When it’s not lingerie models, it’s women in a nightclub, lying on the top of the bar, near naked, while groups of men pour alcohol over their glistening bodies, to the beat of the latest dance music sensation.

Continue reading "Who needs porn when you’ve got MTV" »

Depending on which way you look at it, Australia can indeed be considered ‘the lucky country’ when it comes to internet censorship.

Our browsing has always remained the decision of the user, and an entire world of possibilities have been left open – happiness, whatever your definition, has never been further than a mouse click away.

While some of the options available on the internet are morally ambiguous, many of them are legal – you just don’t want to bring up the topics loudly at dinner parties.

Continue reading "The Net is already censored, and not by the government" »

I’ve indulged in it; I’ve taken the piss out of it; I’ve patronised the people on it; I’ve got angry about it. No, I’m not talking about the front bench of the Liberal Party; it’s pornography.

Let me say from the outset I consider myself a feminist and it’s through the prism of this theoretical perspective that I’m likely to view stuff that concerns women. But which feminism?

It’s been a long time since the dominant feminist view of porn toed the party line of radical pro-censorship campaigners like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon and their dictum that if you consume pornography you don’t have a right to your sexuality.

Continue reading "The theory and the reality of porn don’t always match" »

The NSW government have released a set of recommendations that would place responsibility for the work of a grubby network of international paedophiles and child exploiters on a handful of innocent visual artists.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday the Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said the NSW government would support new legislation that makes a “clear legal distinction between pornography and art” in order to protect victims and make it easier for police to prosecute cases of child pornography and exploitation

With plans to scrap the defence of “artistic merit” while asking artists to fork out up to $500 per image for Commonwealth classification, Hatzistergos’ recommendations are taking a stab at a group, who up until 2008 had stayed fairly shy of scrutiny in Australia.

Continue reading "Art is the not the enemy in the fight against child porn" »

One of the strongest arguments against the exploitation of children by photographers is the potential for long term damage to the child.

What a child may “consent” to when they’re 10-years-old, might make them feel incredibly uncomfortable when they’re 17. Most of the time we don’t get to ask them.

But the Tate Modern in London has just been forced to withdraw a picture of Hollywood star Brooke Shields, taken when she was 10. It’s a rare case where we can see how the subject’s life has turned out.

Continue reading "Is it child porn if the subject is famous?" »

A few weeks ago I had one of my worst days as a new MP. A woman came to see me in my office in Caringbah in southern Sydney and told me the appalling story of how her child was being exposed to pornography by the child’s own father.

The child is less than five years old. I won’t go into the other details for risk of identifying the individuals involved, but rest assured it would make the most tolerant and liberal thinking of readers angry and sick.

What is worse is that as we looked to see what remedies were available to help this mum protect her child, we found there were none – and the police confirmed as much to her.

Continue reading "Protect kids from porn in the family home" »

On the campaign trail in 2007, the ALP promised to make cyberspace a safer place for children.  Strangely, this is one election promise that has fiercely stuck its ground. 

Australia may soon enjoy the dubious honour of being the world’s first liberal democracy to legislatively mandate internet filtering.

The original proposal creates a mandatory ISP-level filter.  Recent debate suggests a ‘voluntary’ scheme, whereby ISP licensing agreements include a filtering clause.  The ALP has not updated its original documentation. Significantly, this change removes the process from legislative scrutiny (read: goodbye transparency and accountability).

In terms of what content the filter will allow end users to access, however, the difference is rhetorical: either way, ISPs will filter what users can access.

Continue reading "No web filter will stop child pornography" »