Fisking the Extreme Porn Bill

This really follows on from my last post, but it was getting a tad unwieldy so I thought I'd split it. Plus writing sensibly was beginning to annoy me. These are the government's supposed reasons for bringing in the new law. Let us now peel back the foreskin of ignorance, and apply the wire brush of vitriol to their proposals.

Extreme Pornographic Images

802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

This is bollocks. The government admits that it is a breach of human rights, but hopes to get away with it. On moral grounds. God I loathe people who believe that they have a right to impose their tired old morals on others. The grounds for banning something should be demonstrable harm. Not just because its objectionable. Which leads us to:

803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people.

So fucking what? All sorts of things are abhorrent to each and every one of us, but that's no grounds to make pictures of them illegal. Unless you're a moralising cunt like John Beyer.

It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence,

Oh yes it is! under the Sexual Offences act 2003 you are allowed to give oral sex to an animal, you are allowed to fist your wife, or give your lovers breasts or genitals a good thrashing. Distasteful? maybe. But not illegal. Fucking liars.

so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place.

This is nonsense. Given that the bill includes the idea that images that are acted or fake are prosecutable, it is entirely likely that no criminal offence is occurring in a majority of cases.

The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.

This was a truly disgusting piece of legislation, in which a group of gay men were engaged in a bit of consensual BDSM, and were jailed for it. One of them died in jail. Gay clubs were raided for years, and the BDSM scene is harassed because of it to this day. For the government to regard this as a good thing shows what a bunch of moralising bastards they really are.

804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.

Ah, here we come to the actual reason. The government regards these paraphilias as "degrading". No wait. They believe that acting in a production depicting these acts is degrading, whilst in most cases actually doing them is not. Ludicrous inconsistent fuckwits.

805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it.

This entire paragraph is hearsay, with no scientific backing from any source. It will not break the supply and demand cycle, since the rest of the western world will go on supplying and demanding it. This material may be harmful, they say except that evidence shows exactly the opposite. Banning this material will be harmful, as it will increase the rate of sex crimes. How many women need to be raped or murdered before the government bothers to read the studies? Lazy, ignorant, stupid mendacious cunts.

Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.

There is absolutely no evidence that support these statements. However, contrary to my previous statements the government is not being inconsistent. They really do hate BDSM, fisting and all the rest. I'd just like to know what fucking business it is of theirs what people get up to in their own homes. The BDSM movements motto is "Safe, Sane, Consensual". I wish it was the governments motto.

806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.

Don't be so fucking stupid. England is the only country enacting this legislation. They may not even have it in Scotland. It'll all be up there, just the same. Unless, of course you want to use this as an excuse to start censoring the internet. Just like Saudi Arabia, China and all those other models of democratic freedom. You authoritarian fuckpigs.

Are you pushing it out...

...you nigger. These were the words that got Emily Parr turfed out of the Big Brother house yesterday. I heard this on Radio 4, shortly before Andy Duncan was castigated by John Humphries for broadcasting it on C4. Double standards ftw, hmm.

Funnily enough, I was working at C4 when I had a similar experience to young Emily. I have some married friends; she's from Grenada, he's from Yorkshire. He calls her 'nig' or 'nigger' all the time.

We were watching some after-dinner porn (as you do) and the thorny question of penis size came up. John Holmes was on screen, and my Yorkshire friend claimed that he was in fact King Dong. 'Nonsense', I replied, 'King Dong is a nigger!' (actually it's a film). All eyes turned to me, and silence reigned for several seconds, broken only by my partner inquiring archly 'what did you say?' 'He's a nigger, you know, a black guy.' I stuttered.

The conversation passed on, but our friendship was never quite as close from that day.

I've blogged about swearing before, and in general I think it's a bit infantile to be offended by rude words, but racially-charged epithets carry a particular connotation, i.e. that the user is themselves a racist. I feel slightly sorry for Emily Parr, as I don't think she meant to be racist, as I did not. I don't think C4 should have thrown her out. Apparently 900 people agree with me, as opposed to 86 that don't.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

UPDATE: spiked online says something sensible about this. Shock. Horror.

I just can't help myself sometimes

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer" -- Mark Twain

Christ I hate this fucking country. I was born and bred here, but I haven't hated the place so much since I was a nine year old at school being beaten with a cricket bat 'for my own good'.

Generally I'm an optimist; I tend to think that life gets better for each successive generation, but reading todays paper made me just want to vomit with rage and frustration at what a filthy fucking pestilant pool of shit our craven, pusilanimous, deceptive, lying, manipulative, self-serving, ignorant political fuckwits are turning this country into.

I remember back in 2000 or so looking out of a bus window, at the recently renovated statue of Prince Albert in Hyde Park, which had just been unveiled, after having being boxed up for the previous two decades (well, for as long as I could remember anyway) . I was filled with sense of well-being at being part of a society that was prepared, and could afford to restore, such a pointless and gaudy monument. The cold war was over, we had no enemies, the economy was good, and a feeling of cheerful liberty was in the air.

And since then, every fucking thing that the government have done has made the place worse.

Here's a small selection of stories from todays Sunday Times:

• Inland revenue to crackdown on people who have trouble filling in their tax forms, despite the government having made them almost impossible for anyone to understand.


• Britons are now the most surveilled society in the western world. One CCTV camera for every 14 people, our internet movements tracked, our phone calls recorded, our financial details shared with every fucking small-minded official that wants to see them. Our, and our children's DNA being kept on file. And now compulsory ID Cards and National Register. All 'for our own good'. Bastards, bastards, bastards.


• Alan Johnson caving in in typically pathetic fashion over the proposal to make faith based schools take a 25% quota of children of other faiths, just so that they realise that there are people who think differently to the religious zealots that are trying to indoctrinate them. What a fucking waste of space that man is.


• Council tax may double, despite the fact that the CBI says councils are wasting at least £3bn a year.


• Green parking charges in Richmond, and proposals being made for green taxes to that pension-raiding means-testing cunt Gordon Brown. Despite the fact that we emit only 1/10th as much CO2 as the US, and that CO2 may be an effect of gobal warming not a cause.


• Britain is becoming increasingly gridlocked despite that fat moron Prescott pledging to reduce congestion by 2010. At the same time, overcrowding on commuter trains into london has doubled since 1996. How do those mendacious fuckers expect us to get into work in the morning if they won't build more railways and roads? Presumably by taking taxis down the bus lanes as they do. Hypocritical wankers. I hope they all get cancer.

Enough ranting for now. Normal service will be resumed after this post.

arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks

The Devils Kitchen periodically releases a roundup of swearing blogs. These are blogs which not only use lots of profane language, but also, in general abuse the great and good of our world. Check it out for a lot of sweary gorgeousness.

Now, in normal speech with my friends, I swear as much as the next man (nsfw), and despise our leaders as much as any good card-carrying anarchist. However, I don't generally use profanities when I write. The Devils Kitchen made me wonder why not.

For example, the word 'fuck' is probably the most versatile word in the English language. There's a splendid academic paper on it here.

'Cunt' is even older; the prefix 'cu' being described as an indo-european expression of 'quintessential femininity' by the lexicographer Eric Partridge. It's thought to be the root of words like queen, cow, quim, cwm and cirque. There's a nice article about it here.

Every culture, every language has it's own swearwords, commonly related to sex, elimination, or religion. There's an interesting case study about translating the filmic profanity in South Park to Spanish here.

We censor not only a depiction of the thing, but also its name. It's as though we weren't even allowed to say the word 'Murder' because murdering people is bad and had to resort to some sort of euphemism.

So why is it that these versatile, ancient words shock some people? Why do many adults refrain from swearing in front of their children, when we know that every child over the age of 10 knows them all anyway? Why do we censor our films and TV, and occasionally even get imprisoned for swearing?

I appreciate that it's an irrational cultural taboo, but it still seems strange to me.