Because Nothing Cures Economic Failure Quite Like....Banning Porn?!?!? The European Parliament's Grand Folly

It is usually typical that governments who have failed to serve their people with adequate polices will turn to scapegoat campaigns designed to target some group of people or some speech that the majority of citizens might find objectionable. That particular group of mode of speech might be harmful in some contexts, but totally neutral in most...but, nevertheless, the few and limited harmful effects are greatly exaggerated by the new commisars to push for censorship of the entirity of that speech or expression. All of this, of course, done for the protection of the defenseless "victims" of such speech, who need such "protection" because apparently they are incapable of speaking for themselves and need the full force of the State to enforce their stated will.

Except, of course, that it turns out that the "stated will" doesn't represent the actual beliefs of the public, but rather the expressed drive of an interest group who is more motivated with imposing their vendettas and personal myopias on everyone else...and getting themselves paid and power in the process.

It is not too surprising that adult explicit sexual media (aka "pornography") has been a standard scapegoat for governments and special interest groups alike who want to exploit confusion, shame, and self-loathing about sex to invoke socially reactionary policies. Usually, it's been the traditional forces of the Right -- religious conservatives -- who have been the most vocal and strident in calling for wiping out sexual speech and expression that they see as a threat to God/Allah/Yawheh, Country, Tradition, Family, Property, Capitalism, and all other shibboleths of "family values". They haven't gone away by any means, but now it seems that there is a similar breed of antisex censorship and sexual fascism building...but this time it comes from the putative "Left": from certain elements of the more radical fringes of the feminist movement, which have now apparently infused their ideology onto the dominant Left parties in Europe.

Most people by now know about the proposals now being enacted in Iceland, where a left-of-center majority party is attempting to impose extreme limits, if not outright bans, on the availability of adult explicit sexual media in that country. Most of you have also heard of the collorary group of laws known as the "Nordic Model" or "Swedish Model", which attempts to regulate sex work out of existence by targeting the (mostly male) clients and managers (aka, the "johns" and the "pimps") for punishment. All this comes from the same school of radical feminism that was founded by the likes of Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Kathleen Barry, Shelia Jefferys, and Catherine MacKinnon during the 1980's; and is now being further enhaced by the activism of folk like Chyng Sun, Robert Jensen, and (especially) Gail Dines today.

And this week, they got a fundamental boost, through a proposal put forth to the European Parliament that would basically expand what is now being proposed in Iceland to the entire breadth of Europe.

It would do so under the guise of not only "protecting" women from what they see as the deliberate harms of porn, but also raising the notion that the very existence of porn (especially the "violent" and "degrading" kind) in and of itself is a "violation of the human rights" of women.

The proclamations are part of a much larger proposal which seeks to undermine and eliminate "gender stereotypes" in the workplace and generally increase the number and strength of women in European society. Most of the proposals are simple common sense goals that no progressive person would object to, such as comparable pay, paid sick leave, and increasing the number of women in more powerful economic and political entities. The problem is, though, that through their radicalfeminist ideology, the creators of this proposal decided to stick in some of the most corrosive attacks on free expression via these initatives:

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism(10);

18. Calls on the EU to conduct research into the links between child pornography and adult pornography and the impacts on girls, women, boys and men, as well as the relationship between pornography and sexual violence;

19. Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls;

20. Calls on the Commission to assist Member States in combating the sexualisation of girls not only by compiling the necessary data, promoting good practices and organising information campaigns, but also by providing financial support for measures taken in the Member States, in particular for women’s organisations fighting against sexualisation and violence against women and girls;

In other words, straight out of the Gail Dines/Melissa Farley hymnal. And...straight out of the Old Testament of St. Andrea and Mother Catherine.

You may also notice that this proposal was also propsed back in 1997, but strong opposition from civil liberties groups did manage to dampen support enough to kill it back then.

And, it appears, opposition is mounting to this latest proposal now as well. One such MEP, Christian Engstrom of PiratPartiet (the Pirate Party), today posted at his own blog his reasons for opposing this initiative. He emphasizes that while he supports the concern of gender stereotyping and favors strengthing the power of women, this latest proposal sets a dangerous precedent for civil liberties and for privacy protections, especially regarding the Internet:

Magazines and cable television would presumably be considered to be ”media” by most people, but what about the internet? Without any definition of ”media” in either of the two resolutions, the answer is not obvious from reading just those two articles, at least not to me.

But the resolution we will be voting on next week has other things to say about the internet. Article 14 reads (again with my highlighting):

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere;

This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the internet service providers to start policing what citizens do on the internet, not by legislation, but by ”self-regulation”. This is something we have seen before in a number of different proposals, and which is one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.

The digital rights organisation EDRI has produced a booklet called The slide from ”self-regulation” to corporate censorship, where they point out that:

…now, increasing coercion of internet intermediaries to police and punish their own consumers is being implemented under the flag of “self-regulation” even though it is not regulation – it is policing – and it is not “self-” because it is their consumers and not themselves that are being policed.

In the battle against the ACTA treaty, the fact that ACTA contained similar ”self-regulation” proposals to get internet service providers to start policing their customers was one of the reasons why the European Parliament rejected the treaty in the end.

Many members of the parliament (including me) felt and feel that this kind of ”self-regulation” is nothing more than an attempt to circumvent the article on information freedom in the European Convention on Human rights, which says that everyone has the right to receive and impart information without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers, and that any restrictions to this right have to be prescribed by law and be necessary in a democratic society.

Next week’s resolution is a so-called ”own initiative report” by the parliament. This means that it does not automatically become law even if it is adopted, but is just a way for the European parliament to express its opinion.

But the purpose of these own initiative reports is to serve as the basis for the Commission when it decides to present legislative proposals to the parliament. If this own initiative report is adopted by the parliament, it will strengthen the Commission’s position if and when it wants to propose various ”self-regulation” schemes in the future.

Although I completely agree that eliminating outdated gender stereotypes in the EU is a worthwhile goal, I will be voting against this resolution next week.

 Of course, the proposed censorship regulations now under consideration in Iceland, which the proponents of this initiative would love to impose on all of Europe, hardly reflect the desire of "self regulation"; they exist to use the power of the state to force ISP's to filter out sexual content that would violate extreme radfem principles of 'proper" portrayals of sex involving women. And, those standards could be used just as easily against any kind of sexual speech or expression that some radfem deems to be "degrading" or "promoting violence" or otherwise "enhancing gender stereotypes".

 And when I say "any kind", I mean ANY KIND....even the type of "feminist porn" produced by the likes of Candida Royalle, Ms. Naughty, Tristian Taormino, or Cindy Gallop which actually challenges the traditional genres of male-oriented porn; or even gay male porn (which, in case you don't know, contain NO women to abuse or degrade).

One of the most interesting ironies is that the week that this initiative came to light, there was also news that the principal trade organization for supporting the British adult sexual media industry, AITA (Adult Industry Trade Association), announced that they were shutting their doors for good come March 31 due to lack of financial support. It is possible that a group like the Free Speech Coalition here in the US could ultimately fill in the gap and provide needed support for European porn performers and producers...but until that happens, the situation will remain in total flux.

The best reaction to this madness I could find at this time comes from sex worker activist Amanda Hess, who also blogs for the sex worker collective Bound, Not Gagged, who wrote this editorial for Slate today. Her comments bear special witness, especially given the tedencies of radfems to silence and make invisible the voices of women who actually do porn for a living and don't feel like they need such "protection" from their own desires and actions.

The belief that pornography, as a genre, discriminates specifically against women is one still favored by leading anti-pornography activists like Gail Dines, Shelley Lubben, and Catharine MacKinnon. In an interview for the MAKERS series, MacKinnon reiterated her view that “exposure to [porn] makes life more dangerous to women” and “promotes a range of atrocities and violence” against them. When we find gender disparities in other sectors—from literary journalism to tech—we urge industry leaders to assess the problem and encourage women to lean in. But when it comes to porn, the impulse is to just shut the whole thing down.

That’s unfortunate, because it reinforces the expectation that women can only ever be innocent bystanders to sexual material, never producers or consumers in their own right (banning all porn would mean negating the contributions of proudly feminist pornographers like Tristan Taormino, Nina Hartley, and Cindy Gallop). It glides over the experiences of female porn viewers (who have leveraged the Internet to find and distribute porn that appeals to them, even when it’s not marketed that way). It totally ignores the men who are "sexualized" in porn (if pornography discriminates against women, can we all keep watching gay porn?). And it curtails discussion about the challenges faced by some men in the industry (like Derrick Burts, who contracted HIV in 2010, and Erik Rhodes, who died from a heart attack at 30 after heavy steroid use).

Enforcing a government ban on pornography won’t actually rid the world of smut (and the proposal, which has been raised before, is unlikely to lead to a legitimately enforceable ban). But the effort does make it a lot harder to talk about porn honestly, and to advocate for better representation of women in the industry. In a misguided effort to advocate for women, these activists are negating the sexuality of women, gay men, and all the straight guys who’d like to see more diversity in the porn they’re watching, too.

And you thought that the condom mandate was the worst that could happen.

More Hot Air from the Windy City

So last month I posted about the meeting between Robert Jensen and Tom Dart, the Chicago-area sheriff and anti-prostitution crusader. This grandstanding prick is now making headlines suing Craigslist in federal court in an attempt to force them to drop its "erotic services" section entirely. Story here and here. Bound, Not Gagged posts a response from SWOP Chicago here.

His argument is that advertising prostitution online is promoting a "public nuisance" and should be banned on that basis. Evidently driving more prostitution back out onto the streets (which is what is likely to happen if internet prostitution is curbed) doesn't come under this guy's idea of "nuisance".

I also notice from one of the videos of Dart's press conference that the anti-prostitution group CAASE was part of it. And CAASE, in turn, is a group that has worked quite closely with Melissa Farley in the last few years and who's "Alliances" page is pretty much a laundry list of the usual suspects from the "progressive" anti-porn and anti-prostitution milieu.

I point to the latter, because I'm so sick of hearing how anti-porn radical feminists are a marginalized group that doesn't exercise real political power. Once again, very real links to powerful players in politics and law enforcement who are doing their bidding is revealed here. The antis, both Right and "Left", have real power in the real world (power that in the opinion of those of us here at least, does real harm to real people). Its about fucking time they owned up to that power.

And around the blogs today....

The big sex work news of the day was, of course, anti-vice New York Governor Elliot Spitzer being caught with his hand in the very same honey-pot he crusaded so publicly to keep a lid on. Of course, Bound, Not Gagged is all over it, and providing some excellent coverage and commentary. Also with spot-on commentary is this post from our own founding henchwoman Renegade Evolution, and this from Susie Bright.

Since this scandal hit the news, the media has been all over contacting high-profile sex workers for their perspective on the sex industry, especially the high-end call-girl/powerful client end of it. There was a very good interview with Audacia Ray on the New York City public radio Brian Lehrer Show. (I also have quite a bit to say in the commentary thread following the audio of the post – shameless self-plug.) However, much of the desired level of conversation by members of the mainstream media hasn't exactly been so high-minded, and in at least a few cases, the interviewers have essentially played the role of cheap johns, wanting simply some salacious statements to sell copy, and barring in advance any discussion of the bigger issues. (Readers of this and other porn and sex work blogs may recognize a pattern at work here when it comes to the relationship between sex workers and the larger media and entertainment industry.) In a rather exemplary display of principle over publicity, Audacia Ray writes that she turned down an interview with MSNBC for this very reason. Audacia, you rock!

On another topic, "Thomas", a guest blogger on Feministe has just posted on the death of Shannon Wilsey, aka Savannah. (No, its not an anniversary of any kind, just a subject he felt like talking about.) On one hand, he's pretty right on the money with his pointing out that a lot of the male celebs who she played around with couldn't be bothered with her when she was in need during her life, nor even bother to show up for her funeral after her death. (Exception: Pauly Shore, of all people – otherwise, a variation on the same pattern of behavior toward sex workers as I was talking about earlier.) The flip side of the piece is a certain moralistic tone the piece takes "These were young women with few prospects. The patriarchy dangled a wad of bills in front of them if they would put on sexual performances for men. Then it treated them like shit when they took it. Sex objects, objects of curiosity, objects of scorn. To which I would add, "objects of pity and condescension for feminists".

First, she was not completely alone toward the end of her life – she was actually pretty close to a number of other porn performers and people in the industry. (Albeit, quite a few others despised her as a prima donna.) The Feministe piece ignores this in favor of the "exploited by the porn industry she hated" angle. Second, for all of the very real demons Shannon Wilsey clearly had, the whole passive victim of The Patriarchy script we see at work here really doesn't do her story any justice. For better or worse, Shannon Wilsey played a very active role in remaking herself into Savannah, first as a celebrity groupie, then as a top porn star. Shannon/Savannah was someone with great sexual charisma, an exceptional "hottie", and like anybody with an exceptional ability or gift, had a lot of her self-image wrapped up in that. In the end, probably too much, but nonetheless, she was who she was, and those who dismiss her as a mere victim of male objectification or empty hedonism and little more do nothing to honor her memory.