egafd.com

Frontline Does a Job On Porn

A worrying piece: the corporate bullying (via the usual calling-in of Government markers) doesn't really surprise me. The A-G's new-in, and has to make a mark somewhere: 'extreme' porn is seen as an essy target. Big business and Government hand-in-glove: so far, so predictable. This stuff always goes down well in white-picket-fence America.
What these cheesebrains never learn is that:
a) censorship is a continuum: if you ban naughty films one day, the next administration will outlaw screen violence (perfectly reasonable, you might say), and the next will ban depictions of sex in literature (getting the drift now?), and the next any discussion at all of sex in the media. And all of a sudden we find ourselves asking: 'How did we end up in a dictatorship?'
b) any attempt at banning this such material will simply drive it underground, where control will be impossible. See the Volstead Act and the current schizophrenic approach to drugs for two particularly pathetic examples.
........I cannot conceive of any logical position which says it's OK to depict simulated rape in a mainstream movie (as it has been many times), but not with the sex shown in detail.
Either both can be deemed prurient, or neither. A nation which can pass 'Straw Dogs' as fit for public consumption is in no position to dictate to Seymore Butts.
I personally find the simulated depiction of sexual violence disturbing: that does not mean that the significant proportion
of both sexes which finds such role-playing arousing should be prevented from pursuing their interest.
An administration has to legislate on the assumption that its citizens are adults who will not go and commit mass-rape or murder in imitation of what they see on a TV screen. Those who act in this way need punsihment and/or treatment, not the rest of us.


Besides which, the legislature is NOT responsible for the tiny percentage of morons who imitate what they see in the media: punish or treat THEM, by all means: that is not an excuse to tar the rest of us with the same brush.
I personally find depictions of sexual violence disturbing: I would not however outlaw it for those who do not, as long as it is made clear at all times that it is simulated. Feminists can piss and moan all they like, but the simple truth is that a siginificant proportion of both sexes find this sort of sex-play arousing. And that's reason enough to leave it alone.

Nice that so many people seem to care.............