Double standards as usual
Pornography apparently "leads men to objectify women". Anyone who's ever seen a diet coke ad knows that this works both ways but they don't seem to want to point that bit out.
A new charity, SaferMedia, has been launched to combat the menace of the sexualisation of society. Its demands for cleaning up the internet are likely to be fed into an official government review of sexualisation in childhood later this year. Around 70 delegates from a range of concerned organisations met in the Grand …
This is from their site: http://www.mediamarch.org.uk/ourfaith.htm
"Our Faith
mediamarch heartily endorses the Christian aspirations which have been publicly displayed, ever since 1931, at BBC Broadcasting House in London. We recognise that these are in accordance with Philippians 4:8, and the wording used is as follows:
"This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, (Sir John Reith being Director General). It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace and purity may be banished from this house and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful, and honest and of good report, may tread a path of wisdom and uprightness."
mediamarch and its supporters are committed to campaigning on behalf of all those who are being harmed as a result of the increasingly explicit violence, sex and bad language in media content. Those affected range from both the victims and the perpetrators of media-fuelled crime, through to couples struggling with dysfunctional relationships, and to young girls who become anorexic in their pursuit of stick-thin 'beauty'.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12)
That the people may tread a path of wisdom and uprightness"
May I put in a request for a Mary Whitehouse icon?
In this respect, one speaker cited an ad for Mikado chocolate biscuits, which was described as a "pre-pubescent girl having her fanny photographed".
In which world is a 20 year old or more girl considered "pre-pubescent". I have to assume the use of Fanny is the American one. Unless the original commentator is privy to footage that was not broadcast.
Whoever that speaker was, I think the fact they perceived a fully-grown adult as a pre-pubescent girl says more about them than it does about anyone else. Perhaps they doth protest too much?
And this brings up the question: how does repressed paedophilia manifest itself?
It's a serious question that does need to be considered, lest we make the mistake of entrusting children's safety to repressed paedophiles who are parading around as "think of the children" extremists.
Paris, because she was pre-pubescent once. I needn't explain the rest.
I thought we'd shipped all the bloody puritans off the the colonies?
Working in a office predominantly staffed by women I can tell you one thing - they're as bad (if not worse) than most men - how many posters of a half-naked "Jacob from Twilight" do you think there are here? Yeah.
As for "Sexualisation of Society" - I'm fairly convinced that society is getting tamer by the generation. The Victorians were a bunch of smutty monkeys (despite their claims to the contrary) - I dread to think what our grandparent got up to "during the war" - or our parents in the 60s. Go back far enough - read some Chaucer for instance - and it's just filth I tells ya!
Sexualised society? Pffff - it gets tamer by the generation.
'In this respect, one speaker cited an ad for Mikado chocolate biscuits, which was described as a "pre-pubescent girl having her fanny photographed".'
That speaker is clearly a complete bell-end. Even the half sighted could surely see that the "girl" is clearly in her twenties, and has the accompanying "tattybojangles" (to quote Russell Howard) - definitely not items of pre-pubescence.
Just keep anyone under the age of 18 off of the net. Simple. Give the kids back their sandboxes and let them play outdoors. This reminds me of the Wild West. It was the cowboys and the rest of the neer-do-wells that settled the west. When it become safe enough, the do-good-ers moved in. Same with the web. It was created by adults for adults, and it's Madison Avenue that "lusts in their hearts" to have children on the web so they can sell them stuff. Now THAT is perversion.
I rather suspect they are speaking from experience.
It has been my experience in life that the more table thumping and moralising a person is the more likely that they have a guilty conscience. Just look at how many of the politicians which shout about “family values” have been then caught doing the nanny/secretary/neighbour etc etc.
That’s not to say that some aspects of the media may have got a little over the top but I don’t see quite the problem these folks seem to.
As someone else said – if you’ve ever worked in an office full of women you will have heard conversations which would put builders in the pub to shame! The idea that women are being picked on exclusively is just wrong.
Finally – if you don’t like what your kids can see on the internet then put a filter on, monitor what they do – it’s your job as a parent. It (At least that way they have to work for the dirty stuff – it gives a much better sense of satisfaction :) )
I started laughing around this part: "...acting as a massive drain on time available for commitment" and didn't stop until the end. Loathsome as I find such groups, they're still fun to hear about. They're invariably indistinguishable from parodies of themselves.
Honestly, any parsing of this I could come up with amounted to some combination of "ZOMG he's getting aroused by someone who isn't me!" and "Somebody think about the kiddies! Think about the kiddies now because we told you to! ...hey, you thought about the kiddies. You sick pervert pedo."
"with children frequently and accidentally exposed to wholly inappropriate material, such as bestiality and child abuse, speakers explained."
I don't know what kind of websites they've been browsing, maybe children are more 'vulnerable' somehow, but I've never been accidentally (or deliberately) exposed to any bestiality or child abuse... Hysterical much, I think so.
firstly i would like to point out that the child's access to the internet is the parents responsibly no the governments. What they are saying here is they would like a communist society which, if u wanted i would move to china, and im still here in the uk.
Porn have labels on it saying that this will damage your health?? im sorry but i really cant think of anything that is really going to happen if you look at it. well except maybe this one .
WARNING this product if found by your partner might cause you to be hit over head with a frying pan!
lastly the best way to sort people who think like this, the best thing to do is to get them laid and im sure that will help with them all.
Another group demonising the internet. Why can't such people see that the internet is purely a communication medium. What the medium is used for is a reflection of what people want. If it's mostly used for content of a sexual nature it's because that's what people want.
If you don't like it, don't use it.
Cave walls, paintings, books, videos, dvds
Whenever a new communication medium is developed it's almost instantly used to reproduce smut.
Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, each new medium is smaller and easier to hide from your mum or partner.
(can you imagine trying to read a cave wall under the duvet at night...)
Just slap a R18 on the whole internet and be done with it. The sooner we get those fucking kids off our lawn (and according to the tabloids, that is *exactly* what the kids are doing, and recording it on their own phones) the better. Time to take back the internet for adults, and to leave those of sensitive dispositions (e.g. children, the mentally frail, politicians, whackjob religious factions...) to dream of shiny happy things in their own little worlds.
Don't think this is quite R18 rated yet, so to the stroppy little toe-jobs that make up the committee, please go and sexually pleasure a dead horse and then blow your own head off in a violent and messy way.
"However, there was also some concern that the establishment focus on sex education was leading to sexualisation by the back door."
Are these the same people that believe that only nasty things happen to the deserving, and the best way to avoid being mugged is to never attend self defence classes.
What a load of [redacted for sexualising the debate]
...when he said 'I'm pretty sure that if you were to take all the porn off the internet there would be one site left...and that would be called 'Bring Back the Porn'.
I'm taking this as just another hysterical denunciation by another group that wants to be noticed and likely get grants to pay for them to live rich lives. Screw them and screw their demands.
We can watch what we want, when we want, how we want. We don't need or necessarily want some materials, but I'll be damned if we lose the right to go and view what we want to, as adults.
If it's children you want to protect - perhaps you should take care of your damn kids instead of foisting your incompetence as parents on the rest of the world.
'Child abuse is not some stand-alone activity "enjoyed" by a small sub-set of the population: rather, adult porn usage is frequently a gateway to an interest in such material.'
Wait what? Watching regular porno turns makes you want to look at child porn? With the not so subtle implication that it also makes you want to abuse kids directly? Cite your sources matey.
And the 'cigarette style warning'? What the fuck is that?
'WARNING: UNEXPECTED CLOSE UPS OF RON JEREMY'S GURNING MOUSTACHIOED FACE MAY LEAD TO ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION.'
"Woods' figures - which he later described as "just figures""
So, another bunch of idiots pulling numbers out of their asses.
"children frequently and accidentally exposed to wholly inappropriate material, such as bestiality and child abuse"
frequently and accidentally? What a load of crap!
I've been using the internet since day 0 and I've hit bestiality once (a typo landed me on a horse blowjob page) and I've never hit a child abuse site, maybe a few pictures of girls that could have been 17 and lied about their age. What I have been exposed to frequently is sensational "news porn" about such sites.
"gateway to an interest in such material"
The gateway argument... we don't like this but can't even make up a reason why it's bad, so it's a gateway to something bad.
"leading men to objectify women" - of course we're always to blame, let's ignore the vast number of adverts that paint us as stupid, ugly, smelly, social inadequates that are just on the planet to open jars for women.
Bestiality - I've seen more bestiality courtesy of David Attenborough and his cronies than from any porn sites.
Mikado - how many "pre-pubescent girls" do you know that work in offices? She's clearly at least 20.
If I was in charge I'd round up people like this and have them shot. But, I do have a terrible human rights record.
Your hell, you burn in it.
I've been using online communities, BBSes and the internet for 16 years now. Not once have I encountered bestiality, not once have I encountered child abuse. Utter utter Godswallop of the worst kind.
As for "children frequently and accidentally exposed to wholly inappropriate material, such as bestiality and child abuse", if they're suggesting my partner or I allow our lad to be exposed to anything *we* consider inappropriate then they're welcome to come round and meet me and my cricket bat.
As parents it is *our* decision what is right and proper for our lad to see, not theirs. Perhaps they should start to exercise the same judgements on their offspring.
As Bill Hicks said "I find it ironic that people who are against things that cause sexual thoughts are generally fundamentalist Christians who also believe you should be fruitful and multiply."
The internet is full of porn because the first thing men do with a new technology is use it for porn. You can't "sexualise" society because the Homo sapiens is a mammal which must reproduce sexually and individuals of the species tend to feel an urge to do this -- this is somewhat tempered by the ability to think logically and practice self denial where procreation may not be optimal.
As for the whole adverts lead to porn, porn leads to child porn, child porn leads to child abuse -- give me a fucking break! Child abuse is generally the result of a sick individual taking a sexual interest in their own children or those in their care -- step parents of serial mums etc. seem to be pretty good at raping and killing children, for example. It also has to be said that in some sections of society girls as young as 15 are encouraged to become pregnant in order to be paid more money for fags and booze -- this, again, has fuck all to do with porn or the internet.
Still, these people get paid good money, some of which is paid by us tax payers no doubt, to justify their own existence by using the latest in Daily-Fail style buzzwords. Actually, thinking about it, sick fucks like Miranda Suit are the ones making money from child pornography.
There is clear evidence that one thing leads to another - smoke a single joint and within months you'll be a crazed coke addict, mugging old ladies to feed your habit. Read page 3 of the Sun and a week or two later you'll be off to Thailand to find a child brothel - and don't talk to be about Agatha Christie! There is indisputable evidence that every time a new Aggie Christie came out that there were several thousand extra murders throughout Middle England - and every Morse episode on TV statistically correlates with mass slaughter of Oxford academics - fact! I have figures to prove it! [okay, they're just figures...]
Children are their parent's responsibility. A good parent should not allow childen to have unsupervised access to the internet or even unrestricted access to mobile phones. Such access is a privilage that should be earnt with trust. Government's role should be to encourage good parenting - no more.
As for adults watching porn - that is down to the individual. Warnings won't stop anyone that wants to from doing so. Anyone that thinks the government stance should be more like the Chinese on these issues (and think things like individual's rights are so outdated) should think about applying to emmigrate there instead. The rest of us could even start up a fund to buy their tickets...
It unclear from the article what exactly the gov attitude is towards these people - I'm getting a hint of "slightly dismissive". If so then good job ! keep it up. Maybe try for "completely dismissive" next time...
"Sexualisation" - of culture - What comple BS!!
Humans are inherently sexual creatures. Sex, desire, lust, polygamy, multiple partners, homosexuality, masturbation etc are all perfectly natural, so much so that they all occur naturally in many many other animal species. What REALLY happened is that human culture has been DE-sexualised through some perverse ( mostly religious ) definitions of 'morality' . Thank goodness that we're gradually (albeit with great difficulty thanks to antedeluvian attitudes such as described in this article) returning to the sexual fredom that is our true nature.
"the establishment focus on sex education was leading to sexualisation by the back door."
I saw what you did there - and yes you're right, it does, because sex ed causes kids to know enough about biology to utilize (shall we say) alternative ports ;) in order to avoid pregnancy.
Same as for BJ's etc.
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, well the latter one anyway... the first one wouldn't interest me (risky + presumably uncomfortable, dunno haven't tried it).
Ms. Obvious says: Note to any kiddies reading this: Neither of those techniques prevent you from catching some embarassing incurable disease or other, so you might as well go buy/steal that box of rubbers (condoms or whatever they're called in England) and do things the usual way.
In any case, abstinence and ignorance are *not* effective techniques of dealing with much of *anything*, whether sexuality or sex ed or anything else.
That said, porn would have a much greater acceptance among conservative adults if more of the porn participants looked like they were actually *enjoying* themselves. Too many of them don't. At least the stuff I've seen while stumbling around trying to find non-porn stuff via Google.
And yes, some of that has included a half-dozen or so webpages of bestiality - I find it hard to imagine that if a person uses search engines a lot for year after year, they wouldn't have accidentally found such sites. I'm better at recognizing such pages now *before* clicking on them (I'm not offended by those sites, but they do seem predictable and [no pun intended] boring and a waste of my time and bandwidth), but people in a big hurry could easily click away and land on such a page without intending to. Maybe it would help if I used the 'safe' search filtering thingie but that would require me to keep Google cookies or something and I'm insufficiently motivated to bother with setting it up.
As a straight lady who is not turned on by visuals and pictures (rather stereotypically, I prefer the written word on the very rare occasions when I feel in need of such non-personal titillation), I can assure you that when I say I found those bestiality-picture sites by "accident", it was exactly that.
However I might use search engines more than the norm when doing research on strictly non-sexual things, so that increases the exposure likelihood.
...Vivid memories of that man with his arm up the animal's bottom.
BBC1. 'All Creatures Great and Small'
I survived mentally unsullied.
Ms. Suit and her fellow cronies bring legitimate child protection movements into disrepute and should be ashamed of themselves. No, we don't want to be more like China. If she likes it so much, maybe she should move there.
Can't wait for the official government warning. 'Wanking over this can seriously...' Any suggestions?
>Pornography, speakers claimed, is harmful in and of itself.
I'm sure I recall detailed research by the Canadian Government to find out if the Customs Officers who were "forced" to watch the tug-fodder they confiscated from people were suffering harm concluded that there were no adverse affects at all.
>creating unsustainable expectations of female sexuality.
You sexist ********! My girlfriend enjoys porn just as much as I do and wants sex at least as much. How dare you say that she is inferior or that she is a victim because she's a woman.
>frequently and accidentally exposed to wholly inappropriate material
I can't remember the last time I "accidentally" found porn.
>From the floor, John Carr, a United Kingdom government adviser on Internet safety policy
>for children and Secretary of the UK's Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety,
>highlighted the US First Amendment as possibly the greatest obstacle faced by those
>wishing to clean up the internet.
Yes, Mr.Carr. That's exactly what it's for. To protect the people of America from people like you who think they should have the right to ban all adult material because of the problem of child porn. I think it's to our shame that we don't have a similar law here.
>pre-pubescent girl
Already covered... If you class her as under-age start building lots more jails.
>arguments about freedom of speech and “artistic expression” were now... outdated.
Why stop there? Aren't the laws that say you can't have people arbitrarily locked up because you don't like the idea of what they might be doing in the privacy of their own homes outdated too? While you're at it, why don't we go back to the old days when unmarried girls caught having sex were locked up in asylums under the "Mental Defectives Act" as women weren't supposed to enjoy sex?
Look at all the people from Government departments who were at this presentation. I think these people are going to be listened to at least to an extent. Hearing these people go on make me so sad for what our country is turning into.
Another day, another load of over-hyped and unsubstantiated assertions passed off as facts, bolstered by "evidence" or "examples" that even a child of 5 could see was not what was claimed (the WOMAN in the advert was clearly not a child or even likely to be an older teenager). What these moral crusaders need is a course on critical thinking and rational argument techniques. The problem is that if they did complete such a course and benefit from it, then their whole loopy religious bases for their delusions here would probably be cut from under their feet. I am not surprised that this kind of attempted meddling in other people's lives goes on by such groups (after all, it helps them never consider their own morals), but I am surprised that they are given even the benefit of faint support from any other agencies.
A case might be made that children are not given the best environments in which to grow up in in the Uk at the moment, and that this can sometimes mean they have to mature psychologically and emotionally much more quickly than might be best for them; but it is not clear-cut that this IS the case, and it would require hard evidence for this if any large-scale legislation were contemplated to deal with the problem (after all, it may not exist when examined scientifically). In any case, I strongly suspect that any results would point out the need for society to re-emphasize the responsibilities of parents towards their own children more, and for society to try to be more positive to the notion of education as a route for improvement, which isn't an issue about sexualisation at all!
so we have 2 options, either wait for some charity or politician to come with *their* solution, or we (as IT people) could come with our own solution.
here is my proposal to the problem,
many of us already know about OpenDNS and how it works, we could ask all ISPs to host 2 type of DNS servers, an open server that will resolve all site and a restricted one that block many sites by default (while providing an OpenDNS type panel to each connection).
At the time of signing up, you can select which type of DNS you would like your connection to use. Those with no worries can opt for the (default) open DNS, those who are worried can opt for the restricted DNS. The ISP can even charge the parent an extra few pounds to allow the parent to use a proxy server that allow the parent to do what they want with the connection, while to kids have to use the connection without the proxy.
Yes, the problem with this idea is that the kids can change the default DNS on their connection to use some other DNS. But there is *accident* about that.
this is my idea of how to give the politicians what they want while leaving the internet alone.
anyone have any other idea?
"More perniciously pornography, or the "pornification" of culture, was directly harmful to children. Sexual predators use it to groom, to erode boundaries and to normalise the abnormal "
NONONONONO the sickos have got Facebook, Twitter et al do THAT with !
the video after the Mikado ad is a peach http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsguOk4xinI&NR=1
"most women aren't going to be able to live up to any expectation or self expectation that they might apply about their sexuality"
Not to be argumentative or anything, but a lot of it depends on what stage of life the woman is in.
If I may speak openly for a moment - anonymity is helpful here - when I hit 31 (I'm female) holy shit the hormones went through the roof and I was so goddamned horny *ALL* the time that I just about wore out my boyfriend, although he never complained. :) Fortunately for him, I am monogamous (only one lover at a time), so I never strayed, although I certainly kept him busy.
It was a temporary phase though, lasted for only about 10 years. I'd moved on to another guy by then, for totally unrelated reasons, and by then I was back to what society regards as "normal" among womenkind.
This is not unusual and certainly not uncommon.
Although, if you're of the male persuasion, you might not get too many women to admit to it. Some women don't like to talk about that sort of thing, or else they're not old enough to have experienced it yet, or maybe their 30s were spent on The Pill which seriously reduces sex-drive sometimes almost to zero. Or, if they have serious "female problems" or if they've had problems related to childbirth or other medical issues, that can wipe out the sex drive too. So *not* every 30-something woman will rock your world like that, but it certainly does apply to some women.
The fact that birth-control pills can reduce the lady's sex-drive to practically nil, is a total bummer, because the whole friggin' point of being on the pill in the first place, is to be able to f#!k like rabbits (or at least once in a while anyway), but after getting on the pill, the desire for sex pretty much goes away. Yeah, libido can be slightly artifically-revived via, um, toys and things, to some extent, but it's not really the same when the guy has to work too hard to get her interested, and if she's not really interested, the sex is not very good for *him* (he's better off doing a solo act than trying to get it on with a disinterested female). The medical establishment really needs to work on that - pretty sure that if such a thing affected males (more directly than not getting laid very often that is), there would have been some better system invented years ago.
Anyhow, sans birth-control etc., a lot of women in their 30s are about the same sexually as a stereotypical raging-hormone 17-year-old boy - so I've heard anyway since I have no personal experience of being a teenage boy although I recall what a lot of the boys were like in high-school, total horndogs, "one-track minds."
It's just one of the cruel jokes that nature plays on us humans, the way the age-related sexual peaks are so different between women and men. There's probably some evolutionary reason for it, although can't think what it might be. (Probably something bad.)
On the other hand, being horny *all* the time can be like a handicap, because it can interfere with other aspects of life when one has to go f#!k or jack (jill?) off a bunch of times every day. (Yes, plenty of women do that too - if God hadn't intended males *and* females to jack off s/he wouldn't have put the relevant bits on the outside within easy reach.)
TMI? Hey, information is power :) ... use it wisely. ;)
Having developed a charity and worked with several charities I find it very suspicious that it took this group 10 years before officially forming as a charity. However that is beside the point.
As a parent, I am responsible for educating my child in the safe usage of the internet and to educate my child how to spot and avoid sites that have dangerous or malicious content or objectionable material. Every parent is responsible for their own children.
The government, ISPs or dubious charities, have no right in creating a blanket censorship under the banner of "will someone think of the children". As a parent I am always thinking about the safety of my child, thank you very much.
The charity (official but still dubious) is a very fundamentalist group and only targeting the internet as it is an easy target to get them widespread media attention. They are targeting not just pornagraphy but violence as well and in all media forms, TV, multimedia games, magazines, papers, and the internet.
As someone else mentioned, where is the Mary Whitehouse icon?