Should college networks ban porn?

 
Cherwell is the independent student newspaper of Oxford University, England. Founded in 1920 by students Cecil Binney and George Edinger, it has continued as a weekly publication during term-time to this day.Cherwell is named after a

BuzzNet Tags: bdsm porn

local river in Oxford and is published on Friday mornings when 3,000 copies of each issue are distributed around Oxford's colleges, the Oxford Union and some local cafes. The staff of Cherwell, including the Editors, changes every term.


Jennifer Brown, Anna Cooban on Monday 6th May 2013
 

Jennifer Brown and Anna Cooban go head to head.

YES

Jennifer Brown

The St Anne's Feminist Discussion Group this week mused putting a motion before their JCR to ban the use of pornography on the college network.

There are, of course, cases for the proposal. The most widely used argument is that porn is degrading to women and therefore, in allowing students to watch it, colleges are inadvertently allowing male (and female) students to be exposed to the objectification of women.

As I’m sure you will agree, using the words ‘slut’, ‘whore’ or ‘bitch’ to describe females is hardly progressive. Nor is the idea that a woman will submit to anything her male partner demands. And whilst some may argue that this is reality, that this is how some people behave during sex, it does not mean that such behaviour is right. For if that is the case, it is not just college rules which need to change but society’s perception of women also.

Furthermore, I am sure few will argue that porn which depicts women being raped, put into cages or performing oral sex on a dog, is really ‘suitable’ late night viewing.

And, yes, you may think bringing this up is all a little over the top for a matter solely concerned with students who are not generally associated with sexual abuse. . The majority of students at Oxford and indeed across the country will not delve into ‘violent’ porn like this. At least I hope not.

But the fact remains that it is available on the internet should a student wish to find it. Banning porn from its college network may seem a ridiculous idea, yet if acts such are these are socially unacceptable in some places, any desire to prevent association with them does become a little easier to digest.

The negative effects of porn do not end here. Porn engenders unrealistic physical standards for the majority. One only has to look at statistics for cosmetic surgery within the UK: 9,843 cases for ‘boob jobs’ are recorded for 2013 alone. Clearly presenting ideal archetypes has a detrimental affect on the self-esteem of individuals.

And as increased expectations not only affect notions of physical appearance, but sexual performance too, it is hardly surprising that individuals take issue with the concept of porn even prior to any discussion of college imposed bans.

Evidently, what people have failed to realise is that banning porn in colleges would be a good thing. Banning porn would be sending out the message that we wish to disassociate ourselves from porn’s link to sexual discrimination, the promotion of anti-social behaviour and out of proportion expectations.

Considering the collegiate system and heavy workload, many people in Oxford often find meeting a potential love interest a challenging task. Thus, they regress to the confines of their room, safe in the knowledge that porn will always provide an adequate alternative to social interaction and indeed, sex.

If St Anne’s adopts the potential JCR motion, then it could become the the leading light of Oxford as porn addicts come out of the woodwork and prepare themselves to find someone real rather than sitting behind their desks (where they work and eat) fixating over videos of people they’ll never meet.
 

NO

Anna Cooban
Banning porn is far too moralistic. If watching porn does provide issues for college internet connectivity then any ban on pornography hits no theoretical or moral brick wall, only a practical one.

Porn, in this context, is watched privately by adults in their rooms. What such a ban hints at is an objection to the personal use of pornographic websites, a prudish revulsion to the masturbatory indulgences of – let’s be frank – a predominantly male demographic.

Perhaps it makes some slightly queasy to know that somewhere in college a student may just be reaching their moment of ecstasy while the rest of us are poring over our textbooks.

However, the issues surrounding porn are clearly much bigger than this – it would be foolish to deny that the birth and subsequent boom of the porn industry has not in some way damaged society. The impossible scenarios depicted in these videos warp expectations of an individual’s own sexual experiences. Watching porn would make anyone feel that they had to climax within seconds and possess E-cup (and yet suspiciously perky) breasts, or a ten-inch penis that is perhaps better suited to a travelling circus than symbolising ‘true’ masculinity.

Porn is a feminist issue and to suggest otherwise is to deny the role it plays in objectifying women. Yet I find it hard to imagine that the proponents of this motion would have the same distaste for pornography if it was a widely accepted fact that men and women enjoyed watching porn to the same extent.

Porn is arguably just as much a male as a feminist issue; from increasingly younger ages, boys are pressured into following this ‘norm’ just as girls are taught to play with Barbie dolls, such that for one boy to buck this trend is an act of defiance rather than an uncontroversial personal choice.

Such a ban would be based on well-founded concerns and a debate that aims to raise awareness of porn-related issues is invaluable. However, forcing through the motion is little more than nannying.

The entire basis of modern capitalism is designed to make us all feel inadequate, encouraging us to yearn for something we do not have. To ban porn on these grounds would be to also ban any women’s fashion magazine that holds airbrushed supermodels as standards of acceptable beauty, music videos that depict pin-thin 20-somethings grinding on their 40-year-old rap overlords.

Men’s fitness magazines promote body builders as the pinnacle of masculinity, yet with hearts so fatty that the irony of the word ‘fitness’ appearing next to these specimens is inescapable.
We are constantly bombarded with reminders of the person we are supposed to be. Any student-led revolt against the porn industry is going to fall on deaf ears when it challenges a problem that is ingrained in our culture.

Porn is a destructive force of modern culture and a result of the 1960s sexual revolution that has, ironically, come full circle to produce a new kind of entrapment. Yet to restrict the personal use of pornography outright is to argue for the banning of any medium which produces the same destructive effect.

---

"Porn is not inherently misogynistic"

Simone Webb counters the arguments in last week's porn debate from Cherwell’s “Should college networks ban porn?”

Simone Webb on Thursday 9th May 2013

Photograph: Cherwell

The debate by Anna Cooban and Jennifer Brown in Cherwell on whether colleges should ban internet porn from their networks was badly argued, written and informed. Both pieces rested on dubious assumptions and a naïve approach to pornography: Brown’s article misused statistics astoundingly, while Cooban’s ignored some of the most important arguments in opposition to colleges banning porn.

Firstly, Brown showed a complete failure to differentiate ethically between consensual and non-consensual scenarios. For instance, the line “I am sure few will argue that porn which depicts women being raped, put into cages or performing oral sex on a dog, is really ‘suitable’ late night viewing” did not distinguish between the two acts which are both non-consensual and illegal (rape and bestiality) which are therefore already not permitted and require no further regulation, and an act which may well be fully consensual and part of a BDSM scenario (being put into a cage). Similarly, she states that it is not right for a woman to submit to her male partner during sex, which again erases the experiences of women who enjoy consensual BDSM activities (and assuming, as is often the way, that all BDSM involves female submission and male dominance).

Secondly, I want to touch briefly on Brown’s failure to demonstrate a causal link between the viewing of porn and cosmetic surgery: the argument essentially ran: “Porn! 9843 ‘boob jobs’ in the UK this year! Therefore porn bad!” One data point is not enough even for me to warn against assuming that correlation is causation; Brown did not even demonstrate correlation, or look at all at the break-down of that statistic.

Thirdly, Cooban’s argument against banning porn brings up, rightly, the way in which it is not just porn which affects self-image, behaviour, etc. However, she ignores two significant arguments against the banning of porn by college networks. The first is the way in which it affects students who may also choose to be sex workers, cutting off valuable sources of income. I quote from an email sent to me by a sex worker and Oxford alumna, Violet Rose: 

“Student sex workers might face loss of earnings if fewer people could view their sites and … purposely causing loss of earnings for other students seems like a wilful lack of worker solidarity between students, which may not have been apparent to more privileged (non-working) students”. (As requested, a link to her website. Largely safe for work.)

The second is just as significant: porn filters frequently block not just pornography and erotica, but also sexual health resources, particularly those for LGBTQ people: I would suggest that it would be negligent and harmful for colleges to put porn filters in place with this in mind. LGBTQ young people who require sexual information or even just wish to explore their sexuality using porn or erotica may be negatively affected.

Finally, I need to address the assumptions made by Cooban and Brown about porn. Porn is very much a feminist issue, but I take issue with the pessimism Cooban and Brown display. Much of the porn industry is misogynistic and aimed at men. But there is a burgeoning effort by many to produce ethical porn, porn which treats women as sexual agents and is female focused, queer porn (which treats transgender people with the respect often denied them by the mainstream porn industry) and feminist porn. T

here is erotica, for instance, like the Hysterical Literature video series (to be found on YouTube) which focus on women’s pleasure for its own sake, as opposed to more overtly performative displays of the female orgasm. For a college to institute porn filters banning ethically produced, non misogynistically presented and overtly consensual porn means that the filters boil down to preventing – or trying to prevent – adults making an informed decision to watch other adults engage in sexual acts, which is frankly bizarre. Porn is not inherently misogynistic and dangerous.

SOURCES: http://www.cherwell.org

Connecticut Supreme Court weighs whether severely mentally ill woman could consent to violent, sadomasochistic sex

Daily Mail: 

14 March 2013 |

The Connecticut Supreme Court is this week considering arguments over whether a severely mentally ill woman could have legally consented to violent, sadomasochistic sex.

Caroline Kendall Kortner began having sex with Greenwhich computer programmer Craig Martise when she was 32. Her mother found out when she noticed red marks and welts on her daughter's neck.

According to court documents, the relationship included Martise dragging Kortner by a leash and dog collar, slapping her with his hand and a belt, pinching and twisting body parts, tying and gagging her and dripping burning hot wax on her.

Prosecutors refused to charge Martise, but Mary Kortner sued in 2006. She claimed that a court had ruled Kendall Kortner incapable of making decisions for herself and that she could not consent to any sex - much less the kind of relationship she had with Martise.

While sadomasochism was glamorized in the popular 2011 book trilogy 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' the practice has long been on questionable legal ground.

 Some lawyers argue that no one can consent to being assaulted or abused during sex.

Appeal: Kendall Karson's mother Mary brought the case to the Supreme Court after a jury found that the sex was consensual

Others say established legal principles provide sexual rights to most people, including elderly people in nursing homes and the mentally ill.

There are few court rulings, however, dealing directly with BDSM, short for bondage, discipline, dominance/submission and sadomasochism.

Kendall Kortner had been diagnosed with clinical depression, borderline personality disorder, bulimia and anorexia. She tried to commit suicide twice and had a stroke in 2001 that left her partially paralyzed from the waist down and incontinent, court records say.

She weighed just 80 pounds and lived in an assisted-living facility, where she was learning to survive on her own.

In high school, she showed enormous promise and was accepted into Yale University and Trinity College in Hartford. Her college career, though, was soon derailed by her mental illness.

Kendall Kornter died of undisclosed causes in 2010.

Mary Kotner lost her case in 2009, when a state jury found in favor of Martise in 2009, concluding there was a sadomasochistic relationship but no proof that Kortner's daughter couldn't consent.

'This was a shocker to everybody who was watching it,' Kortner said. 'All the allegations were true. He was guilty.'

In 1994, a probate court had ruled her incapable of managing her own affairs during a period when she refused to eat and appointed her mother as her conservator.

Martise, 49, was never criminally charged. His lawyer, Philip Russell, said the relationship involved two consenting adults and there is no merit to any of Kortner's claims.

'It's like "Seinfeld." It's the case about nothing,' Russell said.

Russell accused Kortner of being upset at Martise, a married father of two, over his relationship with her daughter and trying to publicly embarrass him after losing the lawsuit and failing to persuade police to arrest Martise.

'This case is everything that's bad about the legal system,' Russell said.

Russell also said Kendall Kortner was a habitual liar who had made several unsubstantiated sexual assault claims against other men. Russell said she once appeared at a deposition in a wheelchair and neck brace, but surveillance video shows her later the same day walking happily around her neighborhood without the neck brace.

Kortner met Martise on the Internet and their physical relationship spanned several months in 2003, court documents say.

Mary Kortner alleges her daughter protested and objected to Martise's actions, but he continued the mistreatment. She said her daughter suffered physical injuries from the alleged abuse, and Mary Kortner once asked for a $500,000 judgment against Martise in the lawsuit.

Russell and other lawyers said they couldn't recall any legal precedents in the country on whether mentally ill people can consent to sex or sadomasochism. Russell said mentally ill or disabled people have the right to sexual activity under established legal principles.

But there are worries in the BDSM community about facing criminal charges because common law says people can't consent to abuse, said Valerie White, executive director of the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund in Sharon, Massachusetts.

'You have to be very, very careful,' she said.

In 2000, police in Attleboro, Massachusetts, arrested two people on assault and other charges during a raid of a sadomasochistic sex party and seized paddles, whips, chains and other paraphernalia. But a judge later threw out the evidence and dismissed most of the charges because police didn't have the right to enter the premises.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated sex-trafficking and forced labor convictions against a New York man dubbed the 'S&M Svengali.' But the court's ruling addressed technicalities and not the practice of S&M. The man, Glenn Marcus, was sentenced to nine years in prison for abusing a woman he photographed for his website dedicated to sadomasochism.

The Philpotts and the tabloids

Courtesy Of: It's just a Hobby.  Posted on April 3, 2013 by carter2011 

One of the things we’re very aware of here at Hobby Towers is that we see and experience the world through a prism that is shaped by our preconceptions.

So if the newspapers take a particular view of Mairead and Mick Philpott, it’s as much about the newspaper as it is about the Philpotts. The Daily Mail’s approach to all of this is utterly unsurprising. In fact it would be more of a surprise if the Daily Mail didn’t take such an approach.

You can draw quite a few conclusions from the case of the Philpotts.

One of them is that the criminal justice system failed Mick Philpott’s victims, all of them, from the very first woman he assaulted and tried to kill to the six children he killed. Not because of the welfare system, but because a system of fixed penalties, tariffs and assumed rehabilitation meant no-one took cognizance of the fact that Mick Philpott was a violent, abusive man entirely unchanged by his first spell in prison.

The problem of the tabloid press is that they don’t have to tell the truth, or even attempt a reasonable facsimile of it. The Daily Mail wants to use Mick Philpott, and pretend that somehow the welfare system made him a murderer. It didn’t. That particular die was cast at some point in Mick Philpott’s childhood. That personality defect contributed to the death of his children, but it almost certainly contributed to how Mick Philpott lived as well. Not for the first time, the Daily Mail has got the chain of causation wrong. The welfare system did not make Mick Philpott the way he is; the way Mick Philpott is made him a corrupt exploiter of the welfare system.

The problem is that the Daily Mail makes this mistake routinely, not because its edited and published by fools, but because its editor and journalists are not objective reporters, but activists campaigning for a particular view of the world that legitimizes inequality and unfairness.

Jeremy Kyle, on the other hand, is just a prick.

Due to lack of time when writing this post I didn’t include the comparison that needed to be made between a very similar, but in some ways worse case and the Philpotts. Here’s the link to the Mail coverage in thatcase. Mr X was a rapist and abuser. His own sister alleged that he was making his daughters pregnant to claim child benefit, but the focus of the Mail is not on benefits, or the accusation that Mr X was a baby farmer, but on attacking the social services who failed his daughters. Social services were the bete noir of the hectoring classes then, so the Mail focussed its attack on them, not the benefits system.

Now, we’re not in the business of over-analyzing the Daily Mail; that way madness lies, but we’re content to argue that if you can look at similar evidence and form different conclusions about it, you have no right to claim that you are a logical, well intentioned observer engaged in a full and frank search for truth.

We would argue that both Philpott and MR X have very similar conditions, lacking in empathy and conscience to a clinical degree that would require indeterminate sentences and a ‘presents no further risk of offending’ pre-condition for release. Based on its published output, the Mail has no similar understanding of causation, or indeed of the responsibility of the individual for their crimes.

Oh, and by the way, Jeremy Kyle is still a prick.

The Subject of Murder and Sexual Norms

21 MARCH 2013 | BY MATTHEW REISZ

SOURCE: EUGENE DOYEN

Lisa Downing explains to Matthew Reisz how society’s unspoken prejudices are given voice in the discourse surrounding killers

Drawn to the extremes: Downing argues that murder is ‘highly codified and very historically specific’

On the publication of her new book, Lisa Downing explains to Matthew Reisz how society’s unspoken prejudices are given voice in the inflammatory discourse surrounding its murderers

The idea that murderers are entirely different from the rest of us serves a very conservative function,” says Lisa Downing. “We don’t have to worry that we might be implicated because those people are other than us and we are safely within the mainstream.”

Now professor of French discourses of sexuality at the University of Birmingham, Downing has written, co-written and edited books on critical theorist Michel Foucault, film star Catherine Deneuve and director Patrice Leconte, as well as Birth and Death in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (2007), Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (2009) and Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies (2011). Coming next year is a volume of “critical essays on [sexologist] John Money’s diagnostic concepts” by her, Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan, to be titled Fuckology.

Yet, despite this striking range of subject matter, Downing believes her career has been “underpinned by an interest in questions of how subjectivity and sexuality are understood in culture, how they are formed, what value judgements are brought to bear on so-called ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ varieties of them. What unites almost all of my work is a concern with interrogating that idea of ‘normal’, questioning who gets to decide what is ‘normal’ and in whose interests.”

Yet there has also been a certain change of emphasis: “I have moved from taking the ‘abnormal’ as fascinating subject matter to be prodded and poked to yield up answers towards looking at precisely the ways in which the ‘abnormal’ subject gets constituted and what that says about the social forces doing the constituting.”

We can see this shift in the move from Downing’s first book, Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature (2003) to the recently published The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer.

So what drew her to such extreme material in the first place? Part of what makes necrophilia worth studying, she replies, is that it “remains in the sphere of psychiatry and medico-legal discourse and has not become a subject of politics in the way that LGBTQ issues obviously have, and practices like BDSM and sadomasochism, which have a whole group of defenders who say: ‘We are just like the rest of you, except that we like kinky sex’. It hasn’t been tamed by the assimilationist brigade.

“Necrophilia and other perversions that have death as part of their content are interesting because they literalise the fear underpinning the regulation of all non-normative sexuality…that any sexual practice that couldn’t lead to reproduction was dangerous and could lead to the downfall of Western civilisation. However, the very existence of so-called ‘sexual perversions’ reveals the lie that sexuality is utilitarian, that desire is naturally for a purpose - ie, reproduction.”

In describing her new book, Downing suggests that “people think of murder as this deep dark personal thing and I argue that it’s a highly codified and very historically specific phenomenon which comes from the aesthetic philosophies of Romanticism, decadence and later existentialism”.

Although there have always been homosexual and homicidal acts, specific cultural pressures turned acts into essences and created the figures of “the homosexual”, “the pervert” and “the murderer” at roughly the same time.

 To develop her argument, Downing returns to 1830s and 1840s France to examine the “gentlemanly” murderer (and poet) Pierre-François Lacenaire and the “angel of arsenic”, Marie Lafarge. Yet she soon moves on to more familiar murderers notable for “the sheer weight of representation they have provoked”: “Jack and the Rippers who came after”; Myra Hindley; Dennis Nilsen; the client-killing prostitute Aileen Wuornos; and the “kids who kill”, such as those responsible for high-school massacres, or the death of James Bulger.

Oceans of ink have been spilled in trying to understand this grim cast of characters, but Downing is adamant that she is “a cultural critic and continental philosopher” rather than a psychologist or criminologist, and so is “not qualified to do psychiatry on these people”.

Instead of providing yet more “interpretations of their motivations or their psychology”, she explains, “I’m offering analyses of the discourses produced about them, and what those discourses say about the society doing the producing”.

What emerges, as she puts it in The Subject of Murder, is that “the historical stereotypes of the Romantic figure of the outlier, the genius- criminal, the sex-beast, or the unnatural figure of the violent woman resurge in order to isolate those individuals from the rest of their culture and to maintain them as (sometimes glamorous) monsters, but never as mirrors”.

And one of the things Downing wants us to see reflected back is how murderous acts get interpreted differently according to the class, sexual orientation and (particularly) the gender of the perpetrator.

Take the response to the Moors murders of the mid-1960s.

“Hindley and [Ian] Brady are both reviled as child killers, as the lowest of the low,” acknowledges Downing, “because children are given a special status as innocent and the most in need of protection.

“However, for a woman to kill a child is seen as infinitely worse, because women are supposed to possess those qualities of maternal instinct, ethics of care and innate nurturing protection.”

In the long history of sexual double standards this might seem like a rather minor example, but Downing describes it as “a very telling form of misogyny…It’s precisely in the way that people receive news items and cultural phenomena such as murderers that we actually see misogyny at work.”

SOURCE: PA/GETTY.   Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

She adds: “When people say: ‘I can’t put my finger on it, but she bothers me’ - that’s what’s of interest. It’s in areas like crime that often unspoken prejudices are allowed to be voiced, because who’s going to defend Myra Hindley?

“And I don’t want to defend Myra Hindley, but I do want to show how the figure of Myra Hindley reveals virulent misogyny that in other spheres would probably be more hidden, because of the demands of political correctness, workplace regulations and all the rest of it.”

Perhaps even more compelling is the contrast between Peter Sutcliffe and Wuornos. When the Yorkshire Ripper killed 13 women from 1975 to 1980, he became a sort of local folk hero. Football crowds were heard to chant “Ripper 11, police nil”, while Jim Hobson, the acting chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, made a point of stating: “He has made it clear that he continues to hate prostitutes. Many people do. We as a police force will continue to arrest prostitutes…”

Why is it, asked feminist critic Nicole Ward Jouve, that “no women go about murdering ‘punters’, convinced they’re on a God-given mission to rid the city of its litter?” A possible exception to this rule is provided by Wuornos, who, at least at one point, defended herself in just such terms: “I feel like a hero. ‘Cause I’ve done some good. I’m a killer of rapists.”

Yet it was precisely this narrative that nobody wanted to hear.

“Where the (male) serial killer is an unlikely hero, a bad boy celebrity,” writes Downing, “the feminist warrior is not even articulable.” Commentary on Wuornos’ case, when it didn’t turn her simply into a “monster” (as Patty Jenkins’ 2003 Hollywood biopic is called), viewed her as mad or, at best, a victim of earlier abuse.

In every case, Downing demonstrates that the murderers, though hardly typical, were nonetheless symptomatic of wider social attitudes and problems that we often shy away from.

“Of course, people should be upset by acts of violence,” she concludes, “but they should also be upset by the violence implicit in systems and institutions - and not so keen to use these figures of exception to draw attention away from those larger systems of iniquity.”

The Party for People Who Hate People

Here is an article I discovered on Huffington....... It matches up with a slightly modified well known poem I posed on my FB some time ago.... (Below article). 

Lets blame the downfall of society & the economy on everyone except ourselves...oh wait, I can't say that because I'm not a Conservative party supporter.

The fat, thin, elderly, young, weak, poor, sick, those with or without pets and anyone who reads anything, particularly facts, are the "root of all problems", said someone in Parliament somewhere today. The government announced that these would be the targets of their new policies to lower the debt or perhaps deficit - depending on which week it is and what they said last time - for 2013.

 According to a party spokesperson there are two major factors for this fresh, new stance. Firstly they are taking into consideration that absolutely none of their plans to kick-start the economy have worked so far and they have no other ideas. Secondly they've looked at the way that countries such as Iceland and now even the US are gradually clawing their way back into the international market, and have decided to ignore their tactics as that would be too sensible and no way as fun as "just killing off the population".

 Obese people are the first to be targeted because, as the Health Secretary said "they are easy targets on account of there being more to fire at. Harder to miss you see? Why can't I just shoot them? Who makes these bloody laws anyway?"

 Anyone whose BMI scale is higher than that of any of the athletes who won gold shiny things at the Olympics, will be forced to go to the gym or have their benefits cut. The hope is that without benefits these 'money gulpers' will have less money to be able to afford to eat decent and healthy food, therefore increasing their size rapidly and dying of heart attacks before the welfare system has to deal with their ungrateful selves.

 The think tank study into this suggests that their "whale-like carcasses can be used to burn as fuel for our fancy cars and jet planes or to create more soylent green than the average impoverished orphan. This could then feed several impoverished orphans at once so they can work in factories longer." Next up are the elderly who the government suggest that it's best to just "freeze back into work". The Department of Health, working alongside the Department of Work and Pensions on this area of debt reduction say that by taking away winter fuel allowance elderly people will be more inclined to go out and work in order to stay warm via movement and heaters in the workplace.

 "Should all go to plan", said another spokesperson to the one earlier, "their homes will be too cold to return to, and they'll have to stay at work all night. Then we can repossess their flats and house and sell them to millionaires to keep those whacking great truffles in". Calling it the 'Work To Live, Until You Die As You Haven't Long Left' scheme, or WTLUYDAYHLL for short, it's hoped that this will save the government tens of pounds. Ultimately this'll mean they can definitely continue to ignore any tax not coming in from huge companies that take them to lunch, as they really do like lunch.

 All this should ensure that taxpayers money is not spent on those who "suck the life out of the tax system like poverty tramp leeches, disgusting, disgusting poor people. Urgh, urgh I feel sick thinking about them" and rather on increasing minister's salaries along a higher rate than the 121% increase they've had in the last five years. The Secretary For Work and Pensions aims to change his job title to Lord of The Strong, Damner Of The Weak and Pathetic to highlight exactly what he has to deal with. He said: "I just don't understand why these people feel they should have anything ever. We've taken away lots of jobs and now they are complaining they can't get jobs. Well, I think it's as though they aren't even trying to get the jobs that we've made sure aren't there. And if they aren't trying, then why on earth should they be allowed to eat, or stay warm, or get around or just generally not die?" 

Changing their slogan to 'The Party for People Who Hate People Who Aren't Their Friends' they are hoping this new 'honest' face will increase votes in 2015. Or at least kill off anyone who might vote against them. Over the next six months its rumoured all houses without working chimneys will have them restored so children can sweep them for sixpence and 'stop trying to learn anything, the bloody skivers' while plans to use disabled people as speed bumps in roads are still being discussed.

 The PM stated: "Look we can't just splash money on an Olympics and Jubilee every year so we've just given up trying to pretend we think you deserve to be even remotely happy. Unless someone comes up with a better idea you'll just have to knuckle down and accept 2013 is going to be crap for everyone that is too lazy to afford to go on a skiing holiday."

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for those on welfare,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't on welfare.

Then they came for the public sector workers,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a public sector worker.

Then they came for the pensioners,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a pensioner.

Then they came for the asylum seekers,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an asylum seeker.

Then they came for the foreign passport holders,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a foreign passport holder.

Then they came for those not British born,

and I didn't speak out because I was British.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

Facebook Against BDSM

Original Article

A UK BDSM club called Collared has taken on Facebook over its total ban on all kink and BDSM pages and groups, and has won a review of the policy. Last week Facebook wrote to Collared to confirm that it was actively enforcing a total ban on all fetish and BDSM content and that all fetish related groups and pages on its site will be subject to deletion without exception.

Collared had sought clarification of the policy followed the removal of the Facebook Collared Events page on February 4th. The Collared page was deleted by Facebook following a complaint from a site user.

However following extensive communication with senior staff of the company Collared has successfully lobbied the Internet giant to review the ban. Facebook is currently engaged in a wide ranging “internal dialogue” to clarify the prohibition and to determine whether a total ban is justified. Collared will be consulted throughout this process.

Facebook has reiterated that the review process will not necessarily result in a reversal of the ban. Instead it may focus on creating greater consistency, clarity and transparency in the enforcement of the prohibition.

The deletion angered and mystified many Collared members and supporters. As a community non-profit organization with a well-known and proven focus on safety and socialization the Facebook page was used merely as a means of communication between members. There was no explicit imagery or sexual content of any kind and the page was “secret”. The Page strictly followed the Facebook Terms at and especially condition (3.7);

“You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”

One of Collared’s representatives immediately contacted Richard Allan, Facebook’s Head of Policy for Europe and asked for an explanation for the action, and that the deletion decision be reviewed. To its credit, Facebook responded swiftly, but the company’s explanation was, at best unsettling and at worst institutionally discriminatory and ignorant. Richard Allan contacted the Review Team responsible for the decision and was told “Any content that is primarily related to sexual activities is deemed to be in breach whether or not the there are any overtly explicit photos on the Facebook page”. This applies whether the content is a closed or open group and whatever the nature of the sexual activity.

In other words, Facebook deleted the page on the basis of its perception of the group’s intent and motivation even though there was no sexual discussion or imagery on the page. The position is radically more severe than the Facebook terms specify, i.e. “pornographic” and “nudity”. That is, where the Facebook terms lay down guidance based on published content, the company has arbitrarily extended this prohibition to include motivation and intent.

This apparent policy shift should concern the entire fetish and BDSM community as it signals a discriminatory and inconsistent application of an unethical policy.

Facebook subsequently wrote to us arguing that: “When it comes to fetish content this is generally regarded as always sexual rather than social in nature and removed from the site.”

This position is grossly unfair. It is also deeply offensive as it assumes that anyone interested in fetish has not only no interest in socializing, but has no right to socialize through Facebook. This is an attitude we might have expected from homophobes in the 1950s. This same position was adopted by the US military in its discredited “Don’t ask, don’t tell” practice. People interested in fetish are clearly seen as soft targets for persecution.

In a subsequent email to Richard Allan of 15th February we pointed out:

“I can’t tell you that fetish has no sexual dimension because to do so would be a lie. What I can tell you is that the purpose of the Collared page was to support and communicate to people with a fetish interest in a non-sexual way – much the same as countless other groups – which is more than can be said about the countless drool pages on FB dedicated to hottest guys and hottest women. Does the Review Team concern itself over whether people masturbate over these postings and images? Or does the Review Team believe people exercise a purely academic interest over Jodie Foster’s thighs?”

We are not interested in the Collared Facebook page being reinstated under these dangerous and unfair conditions. We will instead work with Facebook to ensure that the policy is amended to guarantee that enforcement action is based on measurable content rather than a twisted moralistic perception.

You can find more info on Collared official website.

The Legal Consequences of BDSM Acts

Here is a research paper by Gary McLachlan LLB, LLM,  Ph.D Student, Exeter University.

To read the full paper, click on the link:  The Legal Consequences of BDSM Acts

Handcuffed Catholic priest was suffering from ‘stress-related self-bondage’ What does it really tell us about the views of society?

US: Handcuffed Catholic priest was suffering from ‘stress-related self-bondage’ says bishop

A Catholic priest in Illinois, who last year got stuck in a pair of handcuffs, was engaged in “non-sexual” conduct at the time, and the event was brought on by “stress” – according to a bishop.

The incident happened on 28 November when Father Tom Donovan of St Aloysius Church, Springfield, Illinois, called 911 from the rectory and told a dispatcher that he needed help getting out of handcuffs.

The Illinois Times quoted sources as suggesting the priest was also wearing some sort of gag – as his voice sounded garbled or muffled on the 911 audio recording.

Father Donovan has since taken a leave of absence from his church.

In a statement on Tuesday, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois said: “On December 8th, I met with Father Donovan and Monsignor Carl Kemme, my Vicar General, in my office at the Catholic Pastoral Center.

“Father Donovan said that he was mortified by what happened and acknowledged that the information that had been reported to me was basically accurate. He insisted that he had been alone the whole time of this incident and denied that there was any sexual component to this.”

The statement added that Father Donovan “is being treated by a clinical therapist and is receiving appropriate medical care” and that he is “suffering from a psychological condition that manifests itself in self-bondage as a response to stress.”

ARTICLE HERE

Bishop in charge of Illinois priest who called 911 after getting stuck in handcuffs defends him, releases statement:

 "The unfortunate result of such patterns of life—in no way limited to the experience of Catholic priests—is that persons often find themselves seeking patterns of 'self-medication' to soothe emotional turmoil. Alcoholism, the use of illicit drugs, compulsive gambling, sexual acting out and the use of pornography are some of the more common manifestations, none of which were present in this situation.

Instead, according to the clinical therapist, Father Donovan is suffering from a psychological condition that manifests itself in self-bondage as a response to stress.* The clinical therapist also confirms that the strict absence of illicit sexual behaviors, relationships, and patterns reveal that this self-bondage is to be understood as non-sexual in nature."

ARTICLE HERE

Bondage priest: Illinois incident raises some interesting questions

BY BARRY DUKE – JANUARY 14, 2013

WHEN police were called late last year to free father Thomas Donovan from a pair of handcuffs, they made haste to the St Aloysius Church rectory in Springfield, where they found him with his hands cuffed behind him, and a gag in his mouth.

Father Donovan and a pair of cuffs

Which begs the question: how did he manage to speak so clearly when he telephoned for help?  I can vouch for the fact that one can only issue muffled cries with a bit between your teeth.

But you can clearly hear a recording of his call for assistance on this link.

The Springfield Police Department report reveals that when officers arrived at the church at 4:45 am on November 28, they found the priest wearing an orange jumpsuit and:

A leather bondage type mask with bar in his mouth.

His hands were also cuffed BEHIND his back.

Donovan declined medical treatment after he was uncuffed by cops, who asked if anyone else was in the rectory. The priest, who said he was alone, told officers that he:

Put himself in this configuration and does this from time to time.

Donovan explained to police that:

This time he put the handcuffs on with the keyhole up instead of down.

This prevented him from freeing himself with a handcuff key (which he showed to officers). The cops left after Donovan apologised to them.

The priest, now on leave from his post with the Diocese of Springfield, did not further detail why he placed himself in such an unorthodox “configuration.”

The report opened up a floodgate of speculation from commenters:

Said one:

Begs the question as to who was there with him. If I had to take a guess: he either got double-crossed by the kid who tied him up or he met a hooker who decided to rob him instead.

Another said:

His faith was strong but he needed proof … and the summoner called in Brethren under the direction of the instrument that calleth 911 … and his chains and his bondage were cast aside …

A third said:

He certainly is not the Harry Houdini of the priesthood, but no doubt he will improve with practice.

I was rather surprised that no-one suggested that ALL priests should be bound and gagged.

FULL ARTICLE

SUMMARY BY ME......

So, Stress = Bondage = getting treated by a clinical therapist and then receiving appropriate medical care = because we are “suffering from a psychological condition.." =  which is an 'unfortunate result of such patterns of life' = so we need 'self-medication' to soothe our emotional turmoil = and choose bondage instead of Alcoholism, the use of illicit drugs, compulsive gambling, sexual acting out and the use of pornography, which are all listed in the same class.

Hmm, seems I'm done for!

Should BDSM become part of general sexual education?

Published November 9, 2012 | By Katrien Devolder  | LINK HERE

“BDSM [Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism] might be mainstream now, but it has a new PR problem. I blame Christian Grey.” writes ‘sexual submissive’ Sophie Morgan in an article in the Guardian.

I started reading E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey but didn’t get very far. It’s very badly written (guess that’s no longer a secret) and, well, I found it incredibly boring (Pride and Prejudice is more exciting, I think). In any case, the book is just a starting point for something I began thinking about after a recent conversation with a friend who is part of the ‘BDSM  community’.

The legal status of BDSM varies from country to country. In the UK, it is illegal if it results in any injury which is more than “transient or trifling”. Possessing extreme pornography is a criminal offence, which, for obvious reasons, may be problematic for those who are into SM. Moreover, those who engage in any kind of BDSM are not legally protected against discrimination on the basis of their sexual preferences (for example, they can be, and have been, fired for that reason).

I haven’t studied the issue in depth, but it seems to me that BDSM should be legal, the main reason being that it concerns a consensual sexual act by adults that doesn’t cause harm to third parties. (There’s an interesting paper by Nafsika Athanassoulis arguing why SM can be considered a consensual sexual act). But I was thinking about a further question. Should we put more effort into breaking the BDSM taboo? For example, in countries where BDSM is legal, should it be part of general sexual education?

It seems that there are many misunderstandings and misconceptions about BDSM. In the Guardian article, Morgan mentions one of the most common ones: that ‘a submissive’ prefers to experience pain and degradation in her or his everyday life. (In Fifty Shades of Grey, a young woman has a 24/7 submissive relationship with Christian Grey, a rich dominant man.) Morgan writes that “being submissive is only one facet of the person I am – and not even the most important. I’m a 33-year-old girlfriend, daughter, sister, friend, journalist, Scrabble fiend, caffeine addict and dozens of other things besides…[...]… The sexual aspect of my relationship is completely separate from other aspects of it – I am in control of my finances, my reproductive health, my career, my social life and all the other things that feminism has fought for.”

Perhaps if people knew more about BDSM, they might be less inclined to have and express negative attitudes towards those who engage in it. Perhaps it would become more difficult to fire (or not employ) people because they are into BDSM. It would definitely become easier for those who feel drawn to it to ‘come out’, or to feel comfortable with themselves. (A parallel can be drawn with the growing acceptance of homosexuality.) An obvious way to break the taboo would be to make BDSM part of general sexual education (just like pornography and homosexual sex became part of it – at least in progressive countries like Belgium).

So I was wondering: are there any good reasons against making BDSM part of general sexual education? Three potential reasons came to my mind.

(1) Including BDSM in general sexual education may open the door to unguided experimenting, which could result in (potentially permanent) physical and psychological damage to those involved. Apparently those who are interested in BDSM typically find their way to it via SM clubs. These clubs have rules that their visitors need to abide by (e.g., consent, safe words, not getting drunk so as to avoid losing control). Respect seems to be a central value within the SM scene. Newcomers are initiated – not only to techniques but also to safety measures and rules. So one concern might be that ‘popularizing’ BDSM may result in more people engaging in it without such initiation, or without the relatively safe context these clubs offer. On the other hand, sexual education could perhaps do an equally good job as BDSM clubs do now.

(2) By including BDSM in standard sexual education we may promote morally objectionable social norms, such as the objectification of women. This is the reason why some oppose (the legalisation of) prostitution. However, I believe that it is precisely a lack of information about BDSM that may lie at the heart of this concern. As Morgan points out in her article, feminism and BDSM are perfectly compatible. It’s consensual and, moreover, it is well known that it’s not necessarily the woman who is the submissive. But there’s a related concern that perhaps may not be so easily dismissed. Unlike other ‘genres’ of sexual activity, BDSM seems to involve ignoring, or dismissing important and deeply embedded social norms and values, such as autonomy, respect and ‘do no harm’. Of course, those engaging in BDSM do not really dismiss these norms and values (there may be exceptions), but they temporarily act as if they do (I assume that’s what it’s all about). Perhaps then, if BDSM were part of general sexual education, the strict line between playing a rapist and being a rapist could be blurred. I’m mainly thinking of people who are not really into kinky games, but who use the general acceptance of BDSM as an easy excuse for sexual acts that do involve disrespect for the other.

(3) Including BDSM in general sexual education may put soft pressure on young adolescents to engage with it. What I have in mind is the idea that ‘if you haven’t tried it all (or enjoy it all) you’re not a fully sexually developed individual’. While the same concern may apply to other sexual practices that are now included in sexual education, the physical and psychological consequences of engaging in BDSM under pressure may be more serious. On the other hand, we may wonder whether it is overly paternalistic to protect (young) people in this way. Also, good sexual education stresses the message that it’s fine if you like certain things, but it is equally fine if you don’t – preferences differ.

I do not have a conclusion. I think sexual education should be as inclusive as possible, but I also think that the above mentioned concerns are serious ones that need to be addressed.

References:

Athanassoulis Nafsika. The role of consent in sado-masochistic practices. Res Publica 2002;8(2): 141-55.

Morgan Sophie. ‘I like submissive sex but Fifty Shades is not about fun: it’s about abuse’. The Guardian 25 Aug 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/25/fifty-shades-submissive-sophie-morgan.

WATCH OUR TITILLATING TV SHOW!*

Courtesy of: DANNY BRODERICK LINK

*(But try not to enjoy it.)

As if it weren’t in enough trouble already over its decades-long sheltering of serial child molester Jimmy Savile (whom it also provided with opportunities for his one-sided pleasures), the BBC broadcast a simulation of a snuff movie on its main channel in its prime-time 9.00 pm slot on Sunday, leaving itself open to the charge of enabling illegal sexual activity across the nation.

In the first of a new series called Ripper Street, which trades on the mystique of the brutal murders of young women in East London in the late 1880s (a recurring motif in British crime drama – see, for example, ITV’s own recent prime-time drama series Whitechapel, about a modern day East End still absorbed in Jack The Ripper’s miasma), it centred on the activities of a fictitious aristocrat who hired young prostitutes in order to murder them during sex in various live tableau drawn from Grand Tour classical scenarios (Pharaoh strangles Egyptian nubile in front of pyramids, etc).

The episode depicted a scene being filmed by a nascent cinematographer, the resultant celluloid constituting a new art form that foreshadowed the current age of extreme internet porn. Not that a snuff movie acted out as a drama within the context of a detective fiction on TV is in any breach of the law in itself, or for that matter, good taste — if present day standards in cinema are a guide. But it provided plenty of opportunity for a breach of the law to take place. All that would be required is that a viewer copied the programme to their computer, isolated the particular segments that depicted a death taking place, and kept this for what could be considered sexual pleasure of their own (as opposed to the fictitious pleasure of the on-screen character).

The law is quite specific here. Such a segment of moving imagery contravenes Sections 63 and 64 of the Criminal Justice and Information Act 2008, which states that: “It is an offence for a person to be in possession of an extreme pornographic image … if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way … an act which threatens a person’s life”, and “if it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been extracted (whether with or without other images) solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal”.

So, can the BBC be accused of enabling such pleasure in its depiction of such an image? Dramas like this play on the allure of so-called deviant sexual behaviours (quite how deviant they actually are is for another discussion), showing gratuitous acts of sexual violence while simultaneously presenting them as evil and in need of prevention by the heroic acts of decent guardians of public probity. Mostly it concerns the recurring figure of the Damsel in Distress, a young, attractive, innocently trusting woman led into danger and graphically disabled (usually involving bondage) while subjected to the rapacious attentions of a persecuting male.

Such scenes can be played overtly or covertly, often with no hint of the sexual connotations (Ripper Street plays it straight ahead kinky), though the fact such connotations exist is suggested by the wording of the law itself (“must reasonably be assumed”). Often though, a direct nod to audience tastes is explicit. The recent success of the 50 Shades Of Grey novel franchise testifies to a widespread public appetite for the explicit power and submission elements of sexual play, something that mainstream film-makers have always acknowledged, with the bottom line of audience attendance uppermost in their artistic minds.

Recently the heroine of Channel 4′s much praised Homeland series fell into the hands of her prey, the worlds’s leading terrorist, and was subjected to death threats as she knelt bound and gagged at his feet (he was also shown being tender towards her in other scenes, underlining the erotic potential): a scene the whole series was almost committed to enact at some point or another.

Rather like the tabloid newspapers with their exposures of orgies, they are presented in a way that invites us to view them as wrong whilst deriving vicarious pleasure from graphic description and imagery. All of which is a case of mainstream culture reflecting the current climate of taste among its core audience, which in the case of Ripper Street, is pretty general. Society is not, and may never, be ready to openly acknowledge that a significant body of viewers derive libidinous pleasure from dramatic depictions of transgressive sexual behaviour, but by presenting it in contexts that temper the otherwise aggressive consumption, programme makers like the BBC can present the murder of a young woman in an explicit sex scene and not break the law. And it can do this with an implicit understanding that the programme created has a sexual allure.

So what about that law and its wording? Doesn’t it amount to the most ridiculously outmoded philosophical standpoint? Isn’t the prurient control-freak meddling in the minds of the population symptomatic of so much political confusion? Many cases have been brought to court using the law, mostly when scenes of extreme internet porn have been found in raids conducted for other offences. But so far there does not appear to have been conviction brought for the possession of scenes extracted from legally sanctioned cinema or television releases.

But look at the clip below from the film Casino Royale, a scene that plays directly to a sadomasochistic male gay audience (though it is quite likely to appeal to straight women of certain tastes too), just as the scene in the original book by Ian Fleming was overtly placed to do. And consider this: the presence of this scene on your hard drive would constitute proof enough that you wanked over it, or used it to stimulate sex with a partner. And this is illegal under present law.

For more information and relevant sections of the law see www.spannertrust.org. Find the relevant sections of the Act here and the CPS guidelines here.

James Franco & Co. Discuss the BDSM-Porn Documentary ‘Kink’ at Sundance

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.