Periodical Political Post *9

@max & doug… there was no metal pole in her vagina, but that the viewer’s attention was drawn to that area of the photograph by a crack in the glass

It now, of course, becomes problematic to even talk about the image in this way but… I have checked it out (it is still available all over the Internet but Amazon is no longer using it on any of its sites, .com, .co.uk or .de). From the thumbnails that I have seen I would say that I can see no way in which it can be an indecen photograph of a child. A family taking pictures on a nudist beach could easily find they have a photo of a nude girl in more or less the same position.

In the Channel 4 video Josh added to the post, John Carr says that the IWF made a judement based on their opinion as to wheher that image would be found to be an indecent photo of a child by an English jury… So that means that, in England and elsewhere where the IWF’s approach and opinion are respected, when asking “is this an indecent photograph of a child?” you have to ask “Is it possible to find 12 people who would find this image to be indecent?” and the answer to that is more or less certainly, “yes you will be able to”. There was a case involving complaints about an Armani advert that was run in the Sunday Times Magazine, showing a boy in jeans. It appears that many considered that image to be child porn.

I suspect they are not asking themselves “would i be horrified if i saw a child dressed like this on the beach and want the parents prosecuted for child neglect/abuse?” but “would a paedophile ‘like’ this picture?” They obviously answer yes, and I don’t know if this says much about them, but they are NOT aplying the law correctly. IF if it IS possible that a jury in England could find an image such as this indecent (even disregarding its 30 year history), then the law is being used solely as a way of punishing people considered to be different, not as a way of protecting children

And if it is possible that such a photo can be classified as child porn, then blogs like this are already in danger.. or rather, users in places like England are already in danger.

@ the “ban” being lifted

I really don’t know what to say. All they have done is take the Wikipedia page off their “blacklist”….

… but they say that if they find any websites hosting the Scorpions’ image in the UK, they will act in their normal way – i.e. issue a take down notice. This presumably means that they still think the image is indecent, and that they expect a jury would find the image indecent.

However, there must be many people who would NOT find the image indecent- and it is even possible (no, likely now that the IWF has generated so much publicity for the image) – that jury members asked to make an assessment of indecency will have seen the image of their own free will (i.e. sought it out = committed an offence) and maybe even possessed it (without having committed the offence against decency of buying the Scorpions album).

the Grauniad article goes on to make some silly remarks about an image being illegal in the UK and not illegal in the US – that is already the case, the English CP laws are applied a much more trigger-happy way than the American ones.

I’m stunned that such an abject display of confusion and stupidity does not leave the whol edifice of silly laws ready to crumble

@ Jonathan, who asked “how do does one advertise holidays in England? No kids in pictures or do you just make trips to cold countries where that kind of indecensy is not feasible?”

I understand that the Finns go in for nudity in cold places, as too do the Swedes (but it seems not quite so enthusiastically) and the Russians.

I remember when I was a boy the only source of “porn” that I had was my mother’s catalogues, in which could be found sections of boy’s clothing including swimwear (my fave) and underwear (normally playing a secondary role to swimwear). There were some exceptionally cute boys more or less naked in those catalogues and my 10-11 year old imagination got a lot of satisfaction from them. I have little opportunity to look at catalogues these days, but on the occasions I have I have noticed that the boys clothing section only ever shows fully-clothed boys with the swimwear and underwear photographed merely as items of clothing.

@David, who asked “is it more pornographic now??”

That’s the fun part of the law here in the UK. There is NO definition of what indecent means. They justify this by saying that it allows a community to protect its own values. What it really means is that it is impossible to know what is illegal. I do not find it in me to say that the Scorpions image is legally indecent, even though I find it and the band in bad taste, and thus “indecent”. But there are plenty of people who would say that it is indecent, and I suspect their motivation for doing so is not any desire to protect the girl in the photo (somehow) or other children (because the album cover somehow gave their c*ck something like CPR and turned them towards the dark side of desire?), but a simple, emotional hatred of someone who MIGHT find children sexually arousing.
That situation MUST mean that some juries, or juries in some areas, will NOT find the image indecent, while other juries WILL find it indecent. So in judging whether you are within the law or not in any particular event, it seems that you have to ask can SOMEONE find this indecent.

It also means that you can set CP hysteria in motion by talking about images showing 18-month old babies or even newly born babies being sexually abused and then sit back and watch your bushlit rot down until it’s even possible for some people to consider a photo of a boy in jeans on a beach child porn.

CP, or rather the hatred of CP, becomes a way to define the other, the external, the outsider. But because our societies are much more complex than they used to be (we live alongside other races, other nationalities, people from other areas of the same country, gay people, lesbians, christians, muslims, jews, buddhists, etc) it’s no longer easy to spot an outsider, so we make some obvious mark which, in reality, is not so obvious at all. The target is moveable, so we can use it to hit anyone. Then we can say “anyone who is for this is evil” and not one of us.

And that is the fate of modern politics, I’m afraid.