GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Please get interfering government ministers out of our bedrooms

Please get interfering government ministers out of our bedrooms

The proposal to legislate against violent pornography is not only unworkable, but fundamentally intrusive, putting government where we least want it - in our bedrooms - writes Carol Sarler
Carol Sarler
Sunday September 3, 2006

Observer
Think: have you ever met a 'necrobabe'? A 'hanging bitch', perhaps? Someone whose idea of a night out is a decent shag, spiced up with a good throttling? Me neither, at least, not as far as I know. As for the idea of watching such specialist practitioners strut their snuff, it holds even less appeal than does the idea of watching anybody engage in just the most conventional of sexual intercourse, whose graceless contortions have always struck me as one of evolution's sillier japes.

But enough about the tragic limitations of my potential for voyeurism. They matter rather less than does the decision by the government to legislate on yours; not just on what you do, but on what you watch and, by extension, what you think while watching it. 'Whatever turns you on takes' yet another kicking as Home Office minister Vernon Coaker denounces violent pornography as 'abhorrent', with which we might mostly agree and therefore, by direct consequence, proposes a law allowing those who indulge to be imprisoned for up to three years, with which we might mostly not.

His declaration has been hailed as a victory for Liz Longhurst, who has campaigned for such a move since her daughter, Jane, was strangled during sex in 2003 by her lover, Graham Coutts, a man much taken with violent internet pornography sites.

Mrs Longhurst's passion is as understandable as it is forgivable. The only understanding that one might afford the Home Office, however, is that it proves itself once more unable to pass by an opportunity for vote-grabbing legislation based on little more than the politics of 'obvious, innit?' - it's horrid, ergo, we ban it.

Actually, it's not obvious at all. For a start, nobody has offered proof beyond the circumstantial that there is any cause and effect to lay at the feet of these websites. The Home Office itself acknowledges that there is no definitive evidence about the impact of the material, either on the population at large or on those predisposed to peculiar behaviour. Mrs Longhurst has said: 'If the furniture of peoples' minds is polluted with this stuff, they can become very dangerous.' Yet she then admits: 'I don't think we can ever prove that 100 per cent.'

A year ago, when legislation on this matter was first mooted, I wrote on these pages: 'It is equally likely that the weirdo is drawn to the internet images because he's a weirdo.' I even wonder, sometimes, whether the wretched images help keep the sad bastards sated and, thus, the rest of us out of harm's way.

Nevertheless, flying in the face of all useful reason, the unstoppable train of crowd-pleasing lurches on. It knows well which buttons to push: the favourite all along has been the desire to bring violent pornography 'in line with' child pornography, for all the world as if there is a tangential connection. There isn't. No children, by definition, can consent to play a part in pornography, therefore legal protection for them is clearly required. Some adults, however, may consent to their role in pornography; only where they do not, where coercion of any form is applied, do they need similar protection.

But then, they already have it. It may not be as rigorously applied as we would wish; still, the production, distribution and possession for gain in this unsavoury industry is legally verboten in this as in many countries.

We already know the difference between the producers within a market and the consumers of it. What is new about the announcement last week is the bundling of the two together to make a criminal of the man or woman who downloads grisly material in the privacy of their own home, to absorb within the privacy of their own mind.

Which leaves us where? Confused, certainly. I once watched, for instance, a video of I Spit on Your Grave (you sometimes have to do odd things in this business) and I once watched Michael Winner's Dirty Weekend (ditto). The theme was similar: abused woman gets revenge, involving severed erect penises and impossibly vigorous spouts of blood, and they were both truly disgusting. Yet the first failed to make it past the British film censor, the second scraped through. So am I to be jailed for my viewing of the first but acquitted for the - marginally worse - second?

What shall we do with the frisky couple who record an evening of consensual bondage and then replay it another night? Shall we add to their sentence if they invite the neighbours around to watch it? Will their fake pain be allowed - but real pain not? What, then, for my friend Kate who positively relishes pain, in a way that I cannot understand but do accept; will her penalty for a recording of her choice of consensual sex pull a sentence harsher still?

For some reason, we tolerate a government greatly given to the creation of new laws. Many (most?) of them have proved to be unworkable, but if they are designed to clean up our streets, you might be generous enough to say that they tried. This proposed law, however, is not only equally unworkable, but is fundamentally intrusive, putting government where we least want it - in our bedrooms - and is designed less to clean up our streets than our minds. For that, we might come to prefer that they hadn't even tried in the first place.