Wednesday, November 11, 2015 

Pornageddon: nope, still isn't upon us.

As alluded to on Friday, last Thursday saw the House of Lords discuss pornography.  Generally, the near cliche that the Lords is a more urbane place with a higher standard of debate is mostly correct.  Party politics rears its ugly head far less often, and the fact some members of the other place have been appointed due to their expertise in one field or another does mean those debates at least are often more evidence based.

Obviously there are exceptions, and last Thursday was one.  It couldn't really be otherwise when the venerable Bishop of Chester opened the debate and confessed that tempted as he has been on occasion, he was not especially familiar with pornography.  Two of his clergy have in the past been prosecuted for downloading images of child sexual abuse, he felt it necessary to admit, but rest assured they won't be practising their Christian faith again.  Despite this lack of hands-on experience with porn, he nevertheless knew that it was bad for the soul, as indeed did the majority of other participants in the debate.  Both he and Baroness Uddin (best known for being suspended from the Lords for 18 months over her "made wrongly and in bad faith" expenses claims) quoted the charity Naked Truth, which helps those who have become "addicted" to pornography.  Evidence you really can become addicted to porn isn't easy to come by, but Naked Truth, predictably enough run by God-botherers (or more pertinently by the God-bothering son of a child abuse image downloading God-bothering charity boss), know better.

Indeed, anyone looking for evidence in the debate beyond the anecdotal for all the evils ascribed to pornography would do so in vain, but when those anecdotes are so colourful and so potentially worrying it's difficult to get beyond them.  Lord Farmer woke anyone who might still have been snoozing up with his insistence that teenage girls, from the Home Counties no less, not some "inner city urban jungle", were presenting to at least one GP with incontinence as a consequence of being unable to say no to demands for anal sex.  It was pretty much left to Baroness Murphy (and Lord Scriven, to give him credit also), a cross-bencher and academic psychiatrist, to point out that definitive proof of harm caused by violent pornography, let alone the humble garden soft or hard varieties remains lacking.  The studies that have been carried out were often the equivalent of cold laboratory tests, not involving the raison d'etre of pornography, masturbation.  A recent meta-analysis of not always very good data suggested some young men already predisposed to violence would watch correspondingly violent porn, but that in itself was not evidence of causality.

Those, as they say, are the facts.  We know very little about any negative effects porn has, and even less about the impact post the internet making it available to everyone, the vast majority of it free.  At the same time, it's a reasonable conclusion to draw that the effects of violent pornography, and other violent media in general for that matter have been fairly minimal, considering how violent crime has fallen across the Western world in the past 20 years, criminologists having failed to reach any overarching reason as to why.

When newspapers then attempt to draw a link between hard cases involving both children and adults on the basis that the perpetrators all used violent pornography and/or child abuse images, they ought at the very least be highly cautious.  First that they are mixing up the viewing of material that is illegal with that which might not be, and second that it is all but impossible to quantify the true role, if any, the material had on the perpetrator.  Both the criminal and the police often look for something to blame or explain, when the more prosaic truth might be they were always inclined to such acts.  Jamie Reynolds, the killer of Georgia Williams, had clearly long had a strangulation fetish.  Whether his use of pornography that depicted similar encouraged or drove his desire to turn fantasy into reality only he can answer, and it is not always wise to trust the word of a killer.  What we do know is that others with similar fetishes, which include women just as much as it does men, view the same material and do not ever want to turn a fantasy into consensual reality, let alone go further.  Just as important in Reynolds' case would be that he repeatedly wrote short stories about killing and then violating women, and that he had also written a script which to a certain extent he followed when murdering Georgia.  Rather than just consuming extreme images, he had been actively projecting himself as someone who could commit such a crime by putting it down on paper.

The same caution must be urged when it comes to claims of a "dramatic proliferation of online images of abuse and violent sexual acts" and "the huge increase in individuals who are accessing it".  Unlike with drugs, where there have long been reliable surveys alongside statistics on arrests and convictions, we don't have any real baseline figure of those accessing images of abuse, and so nothing solid on which to compare the numbers now being presented as showing a huge increase.  Even the merest scratching of the surface of online paedophilia necessitates visiting the dark web, and beyond that outright illegality lies.  The suggestion there are 50,000 to 60,000 individuals in the UK sharing abuse images online sounds as though it could be right, but there is no reason to believe that is any more or less than the number that have been involved for years.  More creditable is there has been a proliferation of images of abuse, but this is understandable when digital cameras and smartphones have made capturing abuse all the easier.  We should be equally critical about the alarm over "sexting" among teenagers, but the sharing of those images and the rise of "revenge porn" adds another possible explanation to the reported increase.

It would of course be lovely if we could, in the words of Baroness Murphy, not be so "virulent about an issue that we hardly know anything about".  We could also quote Myles Jackman, as Lord Scriven did, that “Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die".  That has more than a ring of truth to it, but it's also the case that bad as the current law against "extreme" pornography is, it would be futile if not impossible for the government to follow through on its pledge during the election campaign to block porn sites that refuse to put in place age verification.  Pornageddon, whether it be in the form of good middle class teenage girls from Tunbridge Wells becoming incontinent from anal sex, or the construction of a great filth firewall, is not about to descend on us.  What we could do with is more in the way of evidence, but then as a nation we've always preferred to have a panic rather than take a step back.  Video nasty, anyone?

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11/11/2015 11:33:00 pm | |

Wednesday, August 19, 2015 

Trigger warnings and sexual fluidity? Yeah, this is going to go well.

Trigger warnings, doncha love 'em?  Well no, not really.  To Lindy West, they are merely the equivalent of a newsreader warning that the next item contains "scenes you might find upsetting or distressing".  It's basic human decency.  Not everyone wants to see images of starving, crying children, corpses washed up on the Libyan coast or blood-stained pavements where the injured after a bombing are screaming in agony, and I wouldn't for a second force anyone to see such things.  I would argue though that within reason we should look at such things, precisely because like it or not, such images depict life, not as we want it to be but as it is.

West objects strongly to the idea that asking for such warnings to be included on college syllabuses might be about censorship or not wanting to engage with ideas that students rather wouldn't.  On the whole she's likely to be right, and so long as professors themselves are making the choice to include the warnings, there's little to be concerned about.  The Oberlin case she swiftly brushes over though didn't involve the teaching staff, and more than gives the impression the aim of the students, consciously or not, was to avoid discussing subjects they disliked as a result of their political views.  Such a position is worrying regardless of the politics of those involved, as the Oberlin professors made clear in getting the proposals thrown out.  You don't need to be an opponent of "cultural Marxism" or "SJWs" as the new online right present themselves to worry for instance that the great giving and taking offence wars have gone too far, as the reaction to the attack on Charlie Hebdo surely demonstrated.  Political correctness, as far as such a thing actually exists, should be as West argues about common courtesy; it has the potential to stop being that however when the privileged affect to speak on behalf of minorities, something that both the right and left are equally capable of doing.

Concluding, West states that "People hate trigger warnings because they bring up something most don’t like to remember: that the world is not currently a safe or just place, and people you love are almost certainly harbouring secrets that would break your heart."  She's right, only she's got it completely back to front: people dislike the idea of trigger warnings because however much we want the world to change, we still have to deal with it as is.  Life does not come with a trigger warning, regardless of how corny that sounds, as abuse victims will know all too well.  Not confronting difficult subjects isn't a solution, rather the opposite.

Somewhat related are the reports on a YouGov poll from the weekend on how we're all sexually fluid now, or rather that 1 in 2 young people say they are not 100% heterosexual.  This is rather less surprising when you dig further down into the poll (PDF): 1 in 2 young people might not say they are definitively either straight or gay on the Kinsey scale, where you rate yourself between 0 and 6, but when specifically asked if they are heterosexual, gay, bisexual, other or prefer not to say, the results are almost boringly as you'd expect.  The original Kinsey surveys suggested 1 in 10 were gay (the ONS by contrast suggested that only 1.5% of the population was gay in 2013), and this poll pretty much backs that up: 81% and 83% of the young (18-24s and 25-39s) say they're heterosexual, while 10% and 11% say gay (2% and 4% say bi).  I know I wouldn't put myself as 0 on the Kinsey scale, despite sadly being as straight as they come, for instance.  The obvious explanation for the difference between the young and old when it comes to the Kinsey scale is again, rather dull: there's no reason whatsoever to believe that older generations are any different in terms of sexual preference, they're just not as comfortable in saying so.

More interesting is why some continue to believe that regardless of this evidence, their own sexual identity or rather lack of wouldn't be welcomed or understood back in their home town, despite everything suggesting that we've never been so tolerant.  Some of it might be down to just how silly the labels themselves are: Alice, 23, from Sussex is apparently a "bisexual homoromantic".  Or translated, "It means I like sex with men and women, but I only fall in love with women. I wouldn’t say something wishy-washy like, ‘It’s all about the person,’ because more often it’s just that I sometimes like a penis."  Some others might more succinctly call it having your cake and eating it, although that has often been the judgemental accusation thrown at bisexuals.  Alice's description of her sexuality does nonetheless seem a recipe for more than the usual amount of hurt feelings and misunderstandings, at least outside of a close social group, while also hinting towards narcissism.  Does the owner of the penis have a say, for instance?  When Alice then talks of feeling entitled to be who she is in London, but doesn't feel the same way in the small town in the home counties she hails from, where she never experienced discrimination but puts this down purely to "passing" as straight, you do have to wonder.

This isn't to pretend that there isn't still prejudice, or lack of understanding, it's more that it's likely to become more and more confined to specific sub-cultures and localised areas.  Keegan Hirst no doubt genuinely thought that he couldn't be from Batley, be a rugby player and be gay, and no doubt it's why despite having always been gay he went down the path he did, but it often takes just the one breach for the whole dam to burst.  The belief that you need to move away from "backwaters" in order to be yourself, that anywhere outside of the major cities is the equivalent of social death or likely to be homophobia central just doesn't ring true any more.  It is however an eerily familiar way of thinking: just like we tend on the whole to say crime is low and public services are decent in our local area, we imagine that everywhere else there be monsters.  It might well be the case there will be more snorts of derision should someone declare themselves to be a "bisexual homoromantic" outside of the M25, but err, is that necessarily a bad thing?

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8/19/2015 10:55:00 pm | |

Thursday, October 09, 2014 

Perpetuating abuse?

And there is no point saying this again / There is no point saying this again / But I forgive you, I forgive you / Always I do forgive you

There comes a time in every man's life where he has to sit down and ask himself: am I a rapist?  Not am I a potential rapist, as in the age old formulation not all men are rapists, but all rapists are men, like you know, the just as accurate not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims.  No, have I without realising it committed hundreds, possibly thousands of sex crimes?

Horrified as I am to admit, it seems to be the case.  According to Jennifer Lawrence, by so much as looking at her stolen naked self-shots I have perpetuated a sexual offence.  I don't know her, she certainly doesn't know me, and yet without her knowledge I have violated her.  Nor is this limited just to Lawrence.  I have raped dozens of other celebrities, and by extension hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women and men.  Some may well have consented to or even been paid to appear in the images and videos I've seen of them, but what if they later regretted it, they were doing it only to feed a habit, or were even coerced, as some have said they were?

But even this doesn't begin to scratch the surface of my depravity.  Should I find someone attractive while going about my everyday life, there is no way for them to consent to what might be going through my mind.  Of course, all the liaisons in my head are consensual, and I don't imagine having sex with every attractive woman I see, but they can't know what I'm thinking and so therefore can't tell me to stop.  Just how many people is it I've abused?  Did the Bible have it right in suggesting you merely have to look at a married woman in a lustful way to have committed adultery?

We have been, to drop the pretence, thrust right back into the old and increasingly hoary question of complicity.  Despite its decrepitude, it still bears examining and in politics if nothing else it remains a vital one.  Just this week the Sun has been urging those of faiths and none to come together to condemn Islamic State, with the usual edge of steel just beneath the surface as there always is.  "Their imams must ceaselessly condemn IS", the paper intones, with the use of "their" perhaps a bit of a giveaway.  There's also more than a certain irony in the recycling of the "not in my name" slogan some took up during the protests against the Iraq war of 11 years ago, this time with even less meaning than the last.  More pertinent questions could be asked concerning how government policy encouraged the growth of IS in the first place, but first Muslims ought to deny responsibility for something they have no control over.

Have us ordinary mortals transgressed then for merely looking at Lawrence and the other celebrities as they only wanted themselves or partners to see them?  Quite simply, no.  I say this despite pretty much agreeing with Lawrence on every other point she made in the interview with Vanity Fair.  She doesn't have a thing to apologise for, and the people who broke into her iCloud or however they obtained the images quite possibly are detached from humanity.  This was beyond mere "revenge porn", where an embittered ex releases images shared with them in confidence; it was targeted and criminal.  All the same, when there's nothing you can do to get the images taken down, not least when they existed in the "cloud" in the first place, looking for yourself does not perpetuate the offence.  The abuse has already occurred; you can't make things any worse unless you join in by attempting to profit from the crime.  Watching something that has already occurred does not make you complicit in it; as previously argued, it's only when it goes beyond the looking for the unusual into something darker, to the point where you're changed by it that we need to start worrying.

I don't recall for instance anyone having a problem with Caitlin Moran relating how she felt after watching the leaked video of the "Dnepropetrovsk maniacs" murdering Sergei Yatzenko.  It probably encouraged more than a few other people to go and watch it, just as it was a passing craze to show the infamous "2 girls 1 cup" clip to someone unsuspecting and film their reaction.  Few pointed out the women in the video most likely earned a relative pittance, at least by American porn standards for their performance, nor worried about how it becoming a minor phenomenon could have affected them personally.  Ex-porn actors in the US have come under pressure to quit positions they've merely volunteered for, so you can only ponder how difficult it could have made life in Brazil for the women.  As a porn producer related in the Graun just this week, there are still those who might shoot perhaps one scene without realising that once it's online it's next to impossible to remove, even if the producer themselves acquiesces to their request to take it down.  The internet, if you want it to be, is a test of morals in itself.

The question to ask is where such a standpoint leads, and then there's the paradox within it, as Lawrence hints at.  You can't properly comment on something without seeing it, unless that is you're Mary Whitehouse or a politician.  At the same time, to look is to perpetuate the abuse.  Presumably the Vanity Fair interviewer had seen them prior to conducting the interview, and if Jessica Valenti hasn't also I'd be extremely surprised.

To give Lawrence the last word, in the interview she expresses disappointment rather than anger at how those she knows and loves had also looked at the pictures, which gives a better indication of how our minds work than anything else.  When even those closest to her, the most likely to empathise with her plight couldn't resist temptation, what chance the rest of us?

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10/09/2014 10:08:00 pm | |

Wednesday, September 03, 2014 

Of walking abortion.

(Excuse the lack of source links in this post, for apparent reasons.  You without a doubt know the sites I'm talking about anyway.)

Loser / liar / fake or phoney, no one cares / everyone is guilty / fucked up, dunno why, you poor little boy

Do you really need me to point out the almost myriad hypocrisies, ironies and contradictions involved in the new and old media coverage of the leaked celebrity pictures, or "the fappening", as it was quickly christened (please don't ask me to explain what fapping is, as if you either don't know or can't guess we'll all be better off in the long run)?  Probably not.  The most obvious, as this blog is nothing if not obvious, was running articles about how so much as looking at the pictures is to perpetuate the abuse, a position in itself which has been examined and argued over, addressed in horror films, pornography and often come up found wanting, while at the same time hosting news stories explaining precisely where it was you needed to go if you wanted to find them.  If indeed, dear reader, you had not already sought them out, had them posted in your social media timeline or found out about them on a forum or elsewhere.  The BBC's report last night even included a picture of the front page of the site in question, for crying out loud.

Instead, let's start off with some of the basic inaccuracies which are still appearing in many of the articles on the leak.  Some give the impression that stolen images of around 100 celebrities have been posted.  They have not, or haven't been as yet.  Rather, a list of the names of around 100 celebrities/famous women was posted alongside the images, with the implication being that if images/videos of them hadn't been released, they would be shortly, or could be as on some forums the poster was asking for bitcoins to be paid to their account, whereafter they would then release more images.  Instead, images of around 25 celebrities have been released, not all of which are explicit, and in some cases there have only been one or two pictures of the celebrity posted.  By far the largest caches were of files stolen/hacked from either the iClouds or phones of Ali Michael and Kate Upton, or to be precise in Upton's case, from her partner Justin Verlander's account.  Contrary to some of the reports, there have been no images posted of Rhianna, Kim Kardashian or Scarlett Johansson to name but three, despite their appearing on the list.  Simply down to how their names are among the most recognisable, they seem to have been included.  All three have also had explicit images and or videos leaked in the past, which might have added to the confusion.

The main problem has been that as of yet we still don't definitively know how the images were acquired, what method was used or whether there was a "gang" in the real sense involved or rather just a few individuals who then swapped files with each other.  The most compelling explanation for how the leak happened so far is there was a group of people who individually had gained access to the cloud accounts of celebrities, who then started exchanging their finds with others who had also managed to "rip" the accounts of famous women.  To gain access to more of the cache you had to provide new material, or "wins".

Whether one of these individuals then went rogue, or gave the files to a friend, on Sunday afternoon a thread was posted on a well known image board that contained most of the pictures since available everywhere.  Others were posted later on Sunday, with a couple of new images shared on Monday, but there's been nothing since.  This could mean there's nothing else to release, the list of names was a masturbatory fabrication, and that screengrabs of folders containing censored thumbnails of as yet unreleased further images/videos posted were also fake, or that in time they will also be leaked.  What we do know is that on other boards prior to last Sunday there had been people saying they could rip iCloud accounts in exchange for either other images or bitcoins, and also talk of specific celebrities, of whom images were then leaked.  Whether as Apple claims an exploit wasn't used, and this was "hacking" of the old, brute force method, with an element of "social engineering" (which in the context of phone hacking we called blagging), also isn't as yet fully clear.

If there wasn't then enough dissonance around how it happened, there's much, more more about the ethics of all concerned.  It would be easier to just say we're all guilty, and we are, but that doesn't begin to cover it.  Obviously, the hacking itself is reprehensible; the images and videos leaked are the personal, intensely private and intimate record of the celebrities' lives.  At the same time however, that doesn't make the crime any worse than ripping the accounts of ordinary people in the search for explicit images, or a bitter, jealous ex-boyfriend or girlfriend posting the images shared with them in confidence, as part of a relationship, as "revenge".  The FBI have got involved entirely down to whom the victims are; if they were to do so in every case of "revenge porn" they wouldn't have time to keep entrapping American Muslims.

As we have to accept, once something is online it's incredibly difficult to get it removed. The European Court of Justice ruling on the "right to be forgotten", as welcome in principle as it is, will be and has already been abused by the rich and famous.  The argument is often made in the case of child abuse images, to so much as seek them out is to abuse that child and to encourage the people who produced that image to abuse others.  This is questionable when child pornography is not made to order; it is not marketed or produced by an industry; it is made by abusers for abusers yes, but once out in the wild it does not as porn does, make stars out of those depicted in it; quite the contrary in fact.  The more people who view it, the more likely it is the child will be rescued or the perpetrators will be caught.  This is why, unlike with ordinary porn, images that have existed for decades are still exchanged far more often than newly produced material is.  Vintage porn is a niche for those who get nostalgic for the so-called "golden age", in fact a time when despite the higher production values, the women were treated abysmally and the industry was riddled with criminals and chancers.  There are still instances of both today, but nowhere near to the same extent.

When explicit images of the already famous or the almost famous are leaked, it can go one of two ways.  It can make the person even more famous, such as in the case of the aforementioned Kim Kardashian, or it can ruin them, destroying their career, resilience and confidence.  Despite the initially supportive reaction when an explicit video of Tulisa Contostavlos was posted online, she was then targeted by Mazher Mahmood, in a despicable instance of someone already down on their luck being abused to sell newspapers.  By the same token, the newspapers and news sites pretending to be disgusted and outraged by this most base invasion of privacy fall over themselves to buy long-lens shots of celebrities either in bikinis or topless on holiday, and fill their columns with instances of "side-boob" or "wardrobe malfunctions", when that is the paparazzi aren't sticking their cameras right up the skirts of starlets.  They ridicule their fashion sense, or alternatively praise them when they get it "right".  Not so long ago Emma Watson tweeted a photo of her make-up bag, filled with all the beauty products she uses to get the "perfect" look demanded of her, the kind of quiet act of rebellion that ought to shame those invested at every level of the fame game and surrounding culture, but doesn't.

There is something additionally transgressive in seeing the famous as they want their partners to see them, rather than the public, just as some of it also as much about the modern need to record everything.  Taking naked self-shots has become entirely ordinary; when Jennifer Lawrence also does, an actress who doesn't so much as have a Twitter account, the urge to see behind the facade is easy to understand.  The vast majority of the stars also have nothing to be embarrassed about, beyond how they will undoubtedly blame themselves for not realising their photos were in the cloud, or their passwords weren't secure enough, regardless of how it's not their fault.  The more explicit images of Lawrence circulating are not her; the ones that are simply show a beautiful young woman, confident in her sexuality.  Only those she trusted should have seen them; it would be a further abuse if this was to shatter that confidence.

The hope has to be none of those caught up in the leak suffer a similar fate to Contostavlos, victory over Mahmood in court notwithstanding, although frankly it's difficult not to fear for Jessica Brown Findlay, something best left at that.  Looking at or for the outré, the unusual, is normal; it's when it goes beyond that into the unhealthy, the obsessional, the genuinely degrading and abusive that we have to worry and make judgements.

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9/03/2014 11:07:00 pm | |

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 

This is a post about sex and porn.

It's always a danger to write about things you know next to nothing about.  Not that that's stopped me in the past obviously, or indeed stops pretty much anyone from giving their keyboard a damn good slamming about pretty much everything.  One great example was this post from last year, which was cross-posted over on Lib Con, and where it quickly became clear that I was perhaps a bit old-fashioned in my views on the amount of flesh on display in music videos and also knew absolutely nothing about Justin Bieber or One Direction.  Ahem.

That post was partially in response to a comment piece by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, and here we are again.  I know next to nothing about how people my age and younger are conducting themselves sexually, except to say I'm not getting enough of it.  Whatever it is.  Cosslett however says she does know, and that many women are increasingly submitting to the requests of their partners which they are certain are influenced by pornography as they don't know how to say no or aren't confident enough to.  It's a topic we have broached before, and it would be to ignore the wide availability of hardcore porn and the potential for it to have made some young people believe the things depicted in it are normal and average to completely dismiss the anecdotal evidence we have.

At the same time, it's also difficult not to think that Cosslett is either exaggerating for effect, or is taking a few examples and stretching them to absolute breaking point.  I am more than happy to accept that, as Cosslett says, some men seem to think sex ends once they've ejaculated onto their partner's breasts or face.  The latter is after all overwhelmingly how most porn scenes now end.  Although this is somewhat to do with how the "money shot" in hardcore porn has always signalled the end of that particular sex scene, it doesn't explain why the "facial" has become so dominant over the more prosaic pulling out and coming which once sufficed.  In part it is about male power, without doubt, and in some scenes it's more than clear that the supposed star has no choice over how the scene ends, even if she clearly hates what's about to happen.  This is exacerbated further when "cum dodging" as it's referred to is mocked and belittled, as it sometimes is in behind the scenes sections of gonzo films, as though a woman not wanting to have semen sprayed into her mouth, all over her face or into her eyes or hair is pathetic and/or hilarious.

When Cosslett focuses twice on women having their hair ejaculated on though and fingers porn as being responsible you do have to wonder.  I honestly cannot recall a single instance in any porn scene I've watched where the male actor has specifically came on his co-star's hair, and her hair only.  It seems more likely that the woman she's spoken to has been unfortunate enough to have had a relationship with someone with this particular unusual fetish than it being indicative of something else.

Then we have "seagulling", which I most certainly hadn't heard of before.  Apparently once confined to boarding schools, it's supposedly spread to some universities, and involves the friends of someone bursting in on their pal once he's finished having sex with his girlfriend, and them ejaculating all over her.  There are some obvious problems with this having happened rather than being an exaggeration of an exaggeration: despite what porn might suggest, men generally cannot ejaculate all at the same time or one after the other.  Second, where are they hiding so that the unaware victim doesn't know of their presence?  Are they all in the room next door pulling themselves off without going off early or missing the moment?  Third, while I don't doubt that the alumni of boarding schools have and do get up to some otherwise unusual antics with each other, teenagers don't usually masturbate together.  That would most certainly be "gay".  It all sounds extremely familiar to the also apocryphal biscuit game, at least when it comes to all those involved taking part voluntarily, or a more recent supposed "thing" in America, rainbow parties, a gathering where a group of girls would all wear a different shade of lipstick and take it in turns to fellate their male school friends.

It's also difficult not to be sceptical about just how many women have been asked on a first date for anal sex.  Again, anal sex in porn is all but ubiquitous, although arguably it has in fact been in decline in porn over the last few years due to the internet free-for-all having had such an impact on the niche producers.  Are we though talking about first dates as in actual first dates, or first dates in the Tinder sense?  Searching for examples of women being asked for it on a first date turned up this piece, which as anecdote does suggest it might be happening, but only in the no-strings, one and done, dating sense (and in Australia).  Which it must be said, isn't wholly surprising.

None of this is to deny that porn certainly can be a problem amongst the impressionable, and that Cosslett is absolutely right in arguing that sex education desperately needs reform to address something that just 15 years ago wasn't anywhere near as big of an issue.  As Flying Rodent says though, sex education is not going to be a panacea.  Some of it ought to be pure common sense: if kids really do think the back bottom is as pliable as some porn makes it look and accessing it is also as painless, they've clearly never tried to stick a finger up their own passage or indeed took a dump, and I honestly don't believe anything other than a tiny minority do believe such, err, crap.  They might get the impression that heterosexual anal sex is normal, or that women universally enjoy it when they most certainly do not, but even that latter assertion seems dubious when plenty of porn does not suggest that at all.  The more honest makers will often include interviews with the stars where some have made clear they either don't like it or only do it because of the money.  Some of it is also about how to empower women to say no (and for some men to know that no means no): why do some whom as Cosslett puts it mock and deride their partners for asking for such things when with their friends feel unable to do so in the bedroom?

As Cosslett also says, what we really need is some proper research into sexual attitudes among the young, and also some facts on just how many really do watch porn and to what extent.  This is difficult precisely because of the age of those involved and due to the potential for lying and boasting which goes hand in hand with the discussion of sex, but clearly we need to go beyond anecdotes and a discussion based around them when no one really knows the reality.  One suspects it isn't as bad as Cosslett suggests, but there will be a minority who have been affected.  We won't know that however until we can talk about it, and that also seems as difficult as ever without descending into hyperbole.

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1/29/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 

This is a post about sex.

Treacherous as it may be to comment on subjects I know little about (although that's hardly stopped me in the past), the position taken by Peter and Hazel Bull, the devout Christian couple who have been found to have acted unlawfully in denying a double room to Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy at their private hotel in Cornwall does seem to have more than a few flaws in it.

If Fawlty Towers taught us anything, it was that hoteliers seem to have incredibly arbitrary rules as well as more than a few quirks, something more than reflected here. The Bull's case was that, rather than discriminating on the grounds that Hall and Preddy were gay, their long-held stance was that only married couples were allowed to rent rooms with a double bed. As the ruling, which is worth reading in full makes clear, this was stated on their website on the booking form. Preddy found the Bull's hotel on the internet, but booked by phoned. Mrs Bull happened to be feeling ill on the day she took the booking and so didn't make clear the rule on double rooms as she would normally have. Believers in fate will doubtless reach the conclusion this was simply meant to happen.

What soon becomes clear is that the whole debacle is just as much about the apparent sacred nature of the marital bed, whether it's at home or on holiday as it is about pre-marital or homosexual intercourse. The Bull's beliefs, quoted by Judge Andrew Rutherford as

monogamous heterosexual marriage is the form of partnership uniquely intended for full sexual relations between persons and that homosexual sexual relations (as opposed to homosexual orientation), and heterosexual sexual relations outside marriage, are sinful

are somewhat undermined by the fact that they have apparently never had any problem with unmarried or even gay couples renting a room with two single beds. It certainly isn't impossible to have sex in a single bed, or for instance, in the bath or in the shower, especially if the rooms are en-suite and so avoiding the chance of being caught in flagrante, or even on the floor, standing up in the room or perhaps, if a couple were feeling really adventurous, in the wardrobe. None of these may be as comfortable or as conducive to a extended session as a double bed with a sturdy structure, the mattress kitted out in clean linen, yet there's definitely far worse places where coitus has been interrupted.

This is of course if we believe the Bull's. The judge at the outset says that the case was in one sense a pleasure to try as he didn't think any of the five individuals directly involved were deliberately setting out to mislead the court. The only point of real doubt is the mentioning of a newspaper article back in 1996 which made clear the Bull's views on "their refusal to allow unmarried couples to share the same room". They could have become less strict since then, or it could be an issue of semantics, as the whole use of "double room" to mean a room with a double bed rather than a room with two single beds is.

Then there's this to consider. Just how many couples actually do have sex while staying at a small private hotel for only one or two nights, especially one where it's clear that their hosts hold traditional views on the matter? The answer I would hazard, and I'm really engaging in uneducated guesswork here, is not all that many. While it's understandable that they don't want their guests to even have the opportunity to commit an act of "sin" in a hotel they run on Christian principles (although apparently they're willing to take the chance with those who rent twin singles), doesn't that say more about their preoccupations and neuroses than it does about the potential for their guests to start breaking out the dutch caps, KY jelly and love eggs? Traditional, orthodox and good decent people they certainly are, but there's still something self-defeating going on beneath the surface.

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1/19/2011 11:10:00 pm | |

Tuesday, December 09, 2008 

Wikipaedia part 2.

Almost as quickly as it was imposed, the blocking of the Wikipedia entry on the Scorpions' Virgin Killer album has been lifted. Don't imagine however that this is because the Internet Watch Foundation has suddenly decided that the image after all isn't indecent, or that regarding the context of it, it's ridiculous to now declare 32 years after its original release that it is. Their statement again says it all:

Following representations from Wikipedia, IWF invoked its Appeals Procedure and has given careful consideration to the issues involved in this case. The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list.
Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted in the UK will be assessed in line with IWF procedures.
IWF’s overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users. Wikipedia have been informed of the outcome of this procedure and IWF Board’s subsequent decision.

In other words, the only mistake the IWF is owning up to is that they overreached themselves in blocking a site that was always likely to stand up to them. While admitting that they flagrantly failed to consider the contextual and extenuating circumstances surrounding the image, they make quite clear that if the image was hosted on a server in the UK that they reserve the right to demand that it either be taken down, and/or blocked. It is, after all, in their view, in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. That the "child" didn't object at the time and still doesn't object today is irrelevant, as is the context of the image when it isn't hosted on a encyclopaedic or shopping website.

The entire case highlights the secretive and undemocratic nature of the way the IWF operates. If, rather than Wikipedia, they had simply blocked a page on a Scorpions fan site, no one would probably have been any the wiser, and even if it had been noticed, seems unlikely to have spread beyond the tech based sites. It's only because they overreached themselves and completely failed to think through the consequences of blocking a site of the size of Wikipedia that they have come so unstuck.

It also highlights the disparity between the increasing tenor of our laws and those of our peers abroad. Once the ban on "extreme pornography" comes in, our own smut purveyors which dabble in such material will be essentially out of a job, unable to know what is and isn't illegal without running up obscene legal costs. Similarly, the same reason why there isn't much of a porn industry in this country is because of the draconian and ridiculous laws on, if you'll excuse the expression, "hard" copy distribution of the finished product. The only place you can legally buy a hardcore DVD from is a council sanctioned sex shop, again usually for an obscene price. This doesn't stop mail-order or internet companies from existing, but essentially they are breaking the law by operating in such a way. There is however no such ban on you importing hardcore material from abroad, although customs can still be sniffy about the more extreme material - meaning that our overseas cousins have a monopoly on the market. Some will think there's nothing wrong with that, as after all, pornography is without doubt exploitative, but it still seems ludicrous in this day and age.

The entire episode has also shown the haphazard way in the which the IWF was founded, and its rather curious legal position. As noted by Richard Jones in the comments on the previous post, the IWF or rather its predecessor, SafetyNet, came about primarily as an invention of ISPs to avoid direct government censorship, which our ever prurient media and police were advocating once it became public knowledge the delights that the internet could offer, with the Met threatening to raid an ISP over the contents of 132 newsgroups which it considered the ISP to be personally publishing by carrying. As laudatory as this was, this also means that there is no specific legislation concerning the IWF's legal status. Agreements between the government and the ISPs themselves effectively govern its entire being and what is and isn't censored. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has said that his first intention was to send in the lawyers - until they informed him that because the IWF isn't a statutory body it isn't even clear that they can be sued. That is remarkable in itself.

Moreover, the IWF has just more or less admitted that there is very little it can do about large foreign opponents complaining and attempting to get around the bans which it might well impose, come the 26th of January. They'll have no problems banning "extreme pornography" from UK servers, but considering very little of it exists as it is in this country, Longhurst's win might well turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. If the IWF shows the same level of intellect in blocking the likes of "Necrobabes" or other such sites as it has Wikipedia, it might well find itself being shown up as ineffective as well as unaccountable. That the IWF's blocks can easily be circumvented using anonymiser websites or open proxy servers should be irrelevant.

Again, it's worth stating that this is not primarily about child pornography, or "child sexual abuse images", as the IWF term them. No one has any real problem with what are clearly abusive images of children being either censored or removed from the internet, as images or video above the "level 2" scale are, with images at the "level 1" scale being very carefully considered before they are similarly removed. It's with the IWF's extending mandate and their apparent inability to exercise what appears to good common sense. After all, shouldn't a court establish what is and isn't material which incites racial hatred before they block it, especially when the IWF has no solid legal basis? You can argue that this is what it is doing in the Darryn Walker case, but should any fictional textual material now be considered to be potentially obscene in the first place? The IWF's whole existence is based on a compromise, one that we ought to be careful before we challenge, considering the potential to make things a whole lot worse rather than better, but shouldn't there at least be legislation put forward which sets up the organisation as a separate independent legal body, like the BBFC, which can be challenged and held to something approaching account, and so the organisation's current set-up can be discussed in parliament? By bringing itself into disrepute over something so apparently inconsequential, a whole hornet's nest has been opened up.

Related:
Wardman Wire - Privatised censorship
Frank Fisher - A nasty sting in the censors' tail

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12/09/2008 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, December 08, 2008 

Wikipaedia.

Another erotic album cover pose?

It occasionally takes a decision made ultimately by an underling to expose the stupidity that often underlies some of the laws which govern us - and the moronic, for it can only be described as moronic, decision by someone simply doing their job at the Internet Watch Foundation that an album cover by an otherwise almost forgotten metal band from the 70s amounts to child pornography, although of the very lowest level, resulting in the blocking of the editing of Wikipedia for sections of the UK deserves to be one of those.

The Internet Watch Foundation's main work is blocking images of "child sexual abuse images" (according to them, terms such as child pornography "are not acceptable", as apparently the "use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused", which suggests they don't just want to censor images but words also) which for the most part, with the exception more than ably illustrated today, is uncontroversial. Less well-known however is that they also block material which incites "racial hatred", although again how much of it they actually do block is impossible to know, but also material which potentially breaches the Obscene Publications Act. The OPA, notoriously, defines an obscene publication as something which is liable to both "deprave and corrupt", something wholly subjective and which juries, notably during the 1980s, could not decide upon when the "video nasties" were prosecuted. Some found some of the films brought before them to be obscene; others decided that the exact same films were in fact, not obscene. Most recently this remit resulted in the prosecution of Darryn Walker, author of a short story depicting the kidnap, rape and murder of the pop group Girls Aloud, apparently first reported to them and passed by them onto the police. His trial is upcoming.

That decision was one of the first to alert us to the vagaries of an apparently unaccountable organisation which still deigns fiction to be liable to bring out the inner Daily Mail reader in us all, but the blocking of the "Virgin Killer" cover is far more instructive of what might be yet to come. According to the IWF, the Virgin Killer cover amounts to level 1 indecent image of a child, as defined by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Level 1 images depict "erotic posing with no sexual activity". Whilst all the successive levels involve actual sexual activity of one variety or another, level 1 is, like the OPA definition, utterly subjective. Is the girl in the image posing erotically? Quite possibly. Even if she is however, surely the extenuating circumstances surrounding the image should have been taken into consideration. Not only is the image over 30 years old, been available on the high street without causing any real high profile attention, but a tiny amount of background reading from the controversy that had arisen over it would have shown that the girl depicted was someone related to those behind the cover design, that she had posed willingly at the time and has no objections to it now still being used. That the image is not just available on Wikipedia, but also on Amazon (or at least was) and a dozen other places via a Google search, ought to have suggested that this should be a special case.

Instead what we have is an organisation which thinks that using a sledgehammer to crack a nut is both a good idea, and one which is only concerned by doing things entirely by the rules as set out before them. Image is, according to their thinking, obscene, therefore it must be blocked. As it isn't hosted in this country and therefore the ISP responsible cannot be ordered (surely asked politely? Ed.) to take it down, proxy servers and fake 404 pages are set-up to do the job. No thought is given to how this might affect what is after all a rather larger endeavour than a Scorpions album cover repository. The statement from the organisation doesn't even begin to delve into how the decision was came to be made in detail: instead, all they've done is added the URL to the list "provided to ISPs and other companies in the online sector to protect their customers from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child". Protect is the key word; that's after all what they're doing. It doesn't matter that no one would ever be prosecuted over a single image, especially one in such wide circulation; the general public but most of all their customers needs to be saved from potential "inadvertent exposure".

Where after all does all of this end? As others have already pointed out, children have throughout art history been depicted naked, perhaps, it deserves to be pointed out, in more innocent, less hysterical times. Recently the London Underground briefly banned the image of a nude Venus lest anyone be sexually aroused by the advert for an exhibition. If someone for instance posted images of their children online in a photo album (not advisable by any yardstick), and one of these was reported by the same apparent busybody that reported this one to the IWF, and was decided by one of their employees to involve an "erotic pose", would that find itself being blocked too? If "Klara and Edda Belly Dancing" was reported to the IWF, would they demure from the police decision not to prosecute after it was seized from an exhibition and potentially suggest that it also involved erotic posing?

The real concern here though is not over idiotic individual decisions, but rather that from the end of January next year the IWF will also have the power to block "extreme pornography", the kind recently outlawed after parliament abjectly failed to prevent the campaign by Liz Longhurst reaching its ultimate conclusion. This will potentially lead to the blocking of any pornographic material, which is again subjective, which portrays the threatening of a person's life or which results or is likely to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitalia, to say nothing of the ban it also places on apparent necrophilia or bestiality. The Heresiarch noted at the time of the Brand-Ross frenzy that the fragrant Georgina Baillie had appeared in material which could well find itself falling foul of the law and which the Daily Mail had republished. To suggest that the law in this case is nonsensical is perhaps to be too kind; the contradictions and lunacy of banning out and out pornographic material featuring necrophilia, for example, when "art" films such as Visitor Q, which features a man killing and then having sex with the corpse of his victim (although that's not by any means an adequate explanation of what goes on and it is a rather excellent film by the consistently outrageous Takashi Miike), Kissed and Love Me Deadly are considered fine to be seen by those over 18, despite the fact that what one man deems culture another deems beating off material have to literally (or ought to be) be seen to be believed. Who has any confidence whatsoever in the IWF making sensible decisions based on the current performance?

It would be nice to imagine that it ends there. But it doesn't. There are plans to ban drawn material which depicts "abuse" or sex between child and adult, which sounds fair enough, but which is likely to be used not just to ban "lolicon", as such anime-type material is known, but hentai and other anime where the age of those involved is not so obvious. Having therefore made those predisposed to sadomasochistic material potentially breach the law to otherwise further their perfectly legal personal habits, the government seems to wish to criminalise those that enjoy the likes of La Blue Girl (already admittedly banned or heavily cut when submitted to the BBFC) or other fantastical hentai as well. Along with the plans to prosecute those who have sex with prostitutes "controlled by others" with rape, with ignorance not being an excuse, you'd similarly be excused for imagining that the government was determined to diminish sexual freedom as a whole by stealth, all so that one-off campaigners and tabloid newspapers can sleep secure in their beds knowing that perverts aren't masturbating and potentially incubating deviant thoughts which they will subsequently carry out on others. Although whether someone will ever successfully create a tentacle monster remains to be seen.

If this sounds like a slippery slope argument, suggesting that child pornography isn't so bad really honest, then it isn't. It does however come down to whether you think that the likes of the Scorpion album cover is an image of abuse, as the IWF does. If you don't, then you have reason to be concerned not just that an organisation like the IWF which claims to be self-regulating has such a potentially chilling control over the internet in this country, but also that the government seems convinced that far less exploitative imagery must also be banned for all our sakes. Then we won't just that IWF to blame and attack, but ourselves also.

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12/08/2008 09:47:00 pm | |

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 

Gentlemen, get your dicks out!

There are few constants in life. Benjamin Franklin famously suggested that all we had to be certain of was death and taxes. To that can be added a more modern and media-oriented certainty: sex sells. Even if an initial invention was not thought up with the possibilities of how it could be used to either record, display, document or assist in the pursuit of sexual congress, it quickly becomes subverted to do so. From the royals shown the first moving pictures that quickly enquired whether the makers could move from more worthy subjects onto the very first hardcore shoot involving street prostitutes, to the role of the American porn industry in condemning Betamax to obsolescence, right up to how the internet has not only vastly increased the easy access to every conceivable fetish and perversion but also made it far easier for individuals themselves to meet up to partake in such activities, innovation and technology coupled with sexuality equals a licence to print money.

Where then does that other old institution, the newspaper industry fit into all this? Long ago, a newspaper moved beyond the more subtle shots of nubile teenagers and those in their early-twenties displaying their assets covered by skimpy clothing and decided there was little difference in said willing participants taking their tops off. Who knows how effective in the long-term page 3 was in establishing the popularity of the fledgling Sun, but it's one that was widely copied by the Daily Mirror (long since abolished), and taken to new depths in both the Daily Star and Sport. Today it's been further brought right up to date, with the yearly ordeal which is Page 3 Idol, and unfortunate unforeseen occurrences like this year's winner committing suicide are unlikely to bring an end to it.

For the mid-market tabloids though, such clearly lower-order obsessions are distasteful. Until recently the Daily Mail had a policy where if there was images of individuals in states of undress printed, their more private parts tended to blanked over, which included women's nipples mysteriously disappearing, lest any middle-Englanders get over-excited at breakfast and end up walking around the rest of the day quite literally half-cocked. No, the Daily Mail more than understands that sex sells, it just tries to be ever so more slightly subtle about it.

One of the most popular ways to do this is also one of the most downright odd. Nothing moves more people than the deaths or disappearances of young people, especially attractive young white females. Look back through the cases that have gained the most media attention in recent years and it's no coincidence that most will name at the top of their lists Madeleine McCann (even creepier), Rachel Nickell, Sally Anne Bowman, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and Amanda "Milly" Dowler, all of which can be ably illustrated with numerous photographs alongside the walls of text. So noticed and prevalent has this become that it's been formally called missing white woman syndrome. Probably not foremost in the minds of the responsible editors and journalists is that some will be so turned on by such images that they will masturbate to them, but it can't be denied that in some cases that is the ultimate conclusion, amply shown by the details of the Bowman case:

When Dixie was arrested, nine months after the murder, police found a digital camera among his possessions. On it, they found a video file showing a pornographic film being played on a television, while a man records himself masturbating over a copy of the Daily Mail bearing a photograph of Bowman.

Police later discovered a copy of the Daily Mail of March 22 2006 which had a "sticky substance" on the front page featuring Bowman.


The Daily Mail itself strangely didn't mention that it had the honour of providing the image of Bowman which her killer had performed an act of onanism to.

No surprises then that the Mail's website is currently leading with the hugely important news story that the first photographs of the two young sisters murdered in Birmingham have been released or found. It's doubly good news because the photographs of them show what must have been deeply hoped for: that both women were suitably fruity, and despite being Algerian, they're not of the "dusky hue" which the Mail imagines that its readers won't warm to. Who's willing to bet that tomorrow's front page is occupied by the main photograph?

The same sort of contradictory relationship goes on over paedophilia. Paedophiles are of course the most evil individuals to ever walk the planet, and very few tabloids will ever suggest that measures such as Sarah's Law, even diluted versions such as those now being trialled, are likely to increase the danger to children rather than contain it. When it comes to young stars growing up however, they tend to be fair game. There's the infamous Daily Star double-page spread, on one side marvelling at how Charlotte Church had "become a big girl" at the age of 15, while on the other decrying the sick Brass Eye paedophilia special. The Daily Mail earlier had a somewhat similar moment. First up on the sidebar was the paper ogling the 14-year old Dakota Fanning:

My, hasn't she grown! Dakota Fanning passes the awkward phase with flying colours

Child actress Dakota Fanning seems to have come through her awkward younger years just fine.

At the premiere for her controversial new film Hounddog, the 14-year-old unveiled a mature new look showing she's well on her way to being all grown up.

Whilst further down the Mail was reporting the outrage of the BBC daring to dramatise a 15-year-old being "groomed" by an older man on EastEnders:

Scores of complaints as EastEnders shows scenes of a paedophile grooming a teenager

If we want to be more accurate, then attraction to underage but post-pubescent children is not strictly paedophilia but ephebophilia, but that very distinction has been lost in the general paedophile panic, ruthlessly encouraged by the self-same tabloid newspapers that are now horrified when park attendants decide their latest role should be asking lone adults what their intentions are in wandering through our green and pleasant land.

There's only one way to try to further sell sex, and that's to combine it with violence. The murder of Meredith Kercher then has been a god-send. Not just involving one attractive young but sadly dead woman, it involves another: the American Amanda Knox, or as she's known to every tabloid, Foxy Knoxy, the moniker she rather unfortunately chose to describe herself as on MySpace. It really doesn't get much better than this, not just for the tabloids, but for also the priapic Roger Alton over at the Independent. Not only is this happening in Italy, meaning that journalists don't have to be worried about little things like contempt of court or not demonising suspects that have not even been charged yet, but the Italian judicial system is so long-winded and elongated that the whole case has been dragged out for almost a year, and probably will for at least another yet.

The matters and details of the case though don't really matter so much: it's all about Foxy Knoxy. Not since Carla Bruni visited British shores have newspaper editors and journalists left so wide open their carnal desires: no bones about it, they desperately want to fuck Miss Knox. Not only is she according to the Mail's hatchet jobs the kind of liberated young woman that they so love to hate while actually deeply envying, she might be dangerous with it! If right-wingers are deeply turned on by the idea of Sarah Palin, and some were more than open that they were, then Knox is a similar fantasy made large. What news editor can possibly resist the evil American libertine with the smouldering beauty that might well have slain our delicate but also blossoming, gorgeous English flower? Why, she's even playing up to the role; look at the little minx, daring to coquettishly wear that white lace-edged blouse as though she's the innocent party! Oh, she so *wants* it!

That Knox is probably absolutely nothing like the caricature which has been painted of her in the gutter press is of no consequence, much like how the relatives of the murdered and missing often come to resent the media for their constant intrusion and refusal to let things go. Nickell's boyfriend deeply wanted her killer to be caught, but he moved to France purposefully to get away from the repeated use of her image and the constant enquiries with no thought whatsoever for his personal feelings. Everything is infinitesimally more tragic when you're beautiful and your image can be sold, whether you're a page 3 girl, an aspiring model, a missing child or an accused murderer. In the words of Viz magazine, gentlemen, start your nuts.

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9/17/2008 08:41:00 pm | |

Wednesday, April 02, 2008 

Up all night with Nick Clegg.

Being not the most frequent user of pubs, the closest I get to the bar room bores are their equivalent on public transport. Of the three most annoying things and behaviour which goes on while aboard them, third is the increasing tendency for people to not just listen to their music at a volume that the entire bus can hear on their headphones, but to actually broadcast it to everyone through their mobile phone itself, music which is always the least likely stuff you would ever listen to, let alone share with the rest of the class. Second is those who take it upon themselves to talk as loud as they possibly can about their sex life, in intimate detail, which has previously involved someone's predilection for being fisted. First though is taking it into the physical dimension, when couples just can't leave each other alone for ten seconds and spend their entire time with their faces wrapped around each others, or going further and indulging in heavy petting. That this means you haven't got the slightest idea where to look and that they tend to embarrass everyone around them doesn't seem to matter.

As you can tell, I'm a miserable fucking bastard. I'm sure I'm not alone though in finding just how many different sex partners someone has had as about as interesting and essential as being err, fisted on public transport. Hence why I couldn't be less fascinated in learning that Nick Clegg has apparently had between 20 and 30 different partners. Hey ho, congrats old man. What exactly I'm supposed to do with this information or whether it's more likely to make me vote Liberal Democrat or not I'm not sure, but it was obviously important enough for Clegg to not shrug off the question when asked by Piers Moron in his GQ interview. We could debate exactly why he answered the question instead of telling Moron to mind his own business until the cows come home, but nonetheless he answered it.

The key fact should be is that it doesn't make any difference. Would someone reading this blog think less of me if I'd slept with over 100 or if I hadn't slept with any? I would hope not. It's as irrelevant as what I look like, whether I've done drugs in the past or what colour my skin is. What matters is what they believe, what they think and in Clegg's case, how he intends to lead his party and potentially change their policies. Strangely, as Paul Linford points out, to Clegg it seems his sex life is more easily discussed and a legitimate question than being asked about his previous drug use is, a question to which he said he had the right to having a private past, something I'd readily agree with. The point is though that if politicians had nothing they thought they ought to hide, they'd answer it. Again, it shouldn't matter whether someone's used drugs in the past or not: what matters is their views on it now. This however seems to pale into insignificance when the right-wing especially continues to see drug use as a matter of both morals and mental strength, hence why Cameron never owned up to his own previous drug use, nor has his shadow chancellor, George Osbourne. Having smoked a joint, and even more threatening, having enjoyed it, is still seen as either setting a bad example or even condoning its use now. That no politician that doesn't want to bring the remaining rump of the moral majority down on their head means that any admission of previous use must be condemned as youthful exuberance or as completely different now that said drug is 20,000 times more dangerous.

This can't possibly be expanded to youthful overuse of the loins though, surely? According to Amanda Platell, oh yes it can:

But that's precisely my point. It's all very well for Mr Clegg, by all accounts a devoted and loyal family man, to dismiss his early excesses as the indiscretions of youth.

But that is the same defence used again and again by politicians about drugs. "Yeah I did it, but I got over it."

Alas, many young people in our most broken communities don't "get over it".

For many of them, lacking Mr Clegg's privileged background and supportive family, casual sex becomes a way of life, just as casual cannabis use slides into lifelong drug dependency.

And the dangers for society are only too obvious to behold.


Ah yes, it's all right for Clegg and his highly sexed liberal university chums to bang each other in cyclical, but introduce such behaviour to the lower classes and it all gets out of hand. Before you know it you've moved from casual sex use into the use of harder sex, such as fisting, rampant rabbits and domination, just as casual cannabis use slides into the inevitability of shooting up and err, sucking dick for crack. That this comes from Platell, who in the past has written an extra chapter of Sex in the City, where the continuing joke is that Samantha has an affair with a different man each week, and also wrote the thinly-veiled attack on some of those she encountered in the newsroom in Scandal, which she herself freely admits was a "bonkbuster", satirised at the time by Private Eye as "Scanties" with Platell trying to seduce William Hague, is maybe ever so slightly rich.

The unspoken fact here is that like walking in on your parents having sex, or even hearing the noises through the wall, politicians discussing sex is about the most likely thing to turn everyone else off it that you could possibly imagine. The entire nation reached for its collective sick bag when back in 2005 Blair boasted in the Sun's pages of having Cherie five times a night, and the thought of Brown going at it hammer and tongs is possibly even worse. Jonathan Ross was vehemently attacked when he asked Cameron whether he'd masturbated to the thought of Thatcher, which Cameron refused to answer, but it is hard to imagine exactly what the average red-blooded young male in the 80s did see in the prime minister; perhaps it was that everlasting aphrodisiac, power itself. That power is something that Clegg is highly unlikely to ever yield, yet at the same time he's displayed that quality we supposedly want most from our politicians: honesty, or at least answering a straight question with a straight answer. He should now discuss his past drug use if any, but let's not attack him for his conquests themselves, even if they are as tedious as the Liberal Democrat party itself is.

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4/02/2008 10:17:00 pm | |

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