Posts by Emma Hart
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The legality of doing it is utterly irrelevant.
Oddly, when I asked this question, child pornography wasn't my focus. That's why I asked this question. My own personal concern is more related to consensual BDSM material, which runs into problems with different areas of the "offensive material" definition.
Is it sensible for laws to deal with "alleged" effects?
Yeah, see... sometimes the actual effect of something turns out to be quite counter-intuitive. Home VHS caused a huge rise in the availability of porn - for the first time, you didn't have to go out to an X-rated theatre and sit in a crowd of "like-minded individuals - and yet there was no corresponding rise in sexual violence. Instead, there was a decrease. (And let me say, again, that I don't think porn causes that.)
I went to an excellent chat at Foo Camp about evidence-based policy making, and it struck me how completely our censorship laws aren't evidence-based. I'd like to see a complete, unemotive, evidence-based re-examination of the basis for everything on the ban list. Now, sometimes that isn't going to be possible because some of the experiments would simply be unconscionable, but does that mean we should keep punishing people on the grounds of how gicky we find something?
Effects that aren't "alleged" are those of the people convicted for owning things like the Simpsons cartoons, or teenagers convicted for taking photographs of themselves, or people who wrote stories in which the age of the participants was unclear.
Watching and disseminating kiddie porn is illegal because of the (alleged) effects it has on the viewers.
So... watching lolicon turns a 'normal' person into a paedophile? We're back there?
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Take a look at what David Gauntlett is offering on his media theory site, at www.theory.org.uk/cards.htm
Quoth the raven, 404, dude.
Okay, I last looked quite a few years ago, and the biggest problem was card-stock. The places doing it for not-gougy were using those cards we used to buy from UBS when we were right out, and they'd last one game of Bastard Gin and then split apart. What we were after was something of Carta Mundi quality at least. Because if you're going to, say, work out what the whole PAS deck should be, get artwork, agree what goes on the backs and then get them printed up for Ussellrae's irthdaybae, you wanna do it right.
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Yup: the Tour de France.
We're practically half-way there already.
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The provider would only be funded two-thirds of the cost of the child's course, with the final third paid as a performance bonus when the child succeeded.
Okay, I think I've got past the incoherent swearing. If I get sent to do somebody's supermarket shopping with only 2/3 of what their list is going to cost me, and have to bring the groceries home to get the other third, that is NOT a performance bonus. That appears to be a school loaning money to the government.
My second, larger problem: WTF does "succeed" mean in this context? Are the success criteria set by the person who only gets paid properly if the child "passes"?
Closing special schools, national standards, and now this: schools are just going to be queueing up for those expensive special needs kids, aren't they?
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I think I'd prefer either 'top trumps', or something like the Iraq 'most wanted' playing cards.
This idea came up during the interview David H and I did with Wammo during the book tour. Custom-printing playing cards is, I have had reason to learn, hugely expensive and a massive PITA.
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Emma could say more about werewolf - but you might have to buy her a drink somewhere real first.
*sigh* There was a game in which people failed to heed my advice to kill Keith as soon as possible, just to be on the safe side. Oh the humanity, etc.
Also, if anyone refers to me as the Angel of Death, don't panic, it's just a werewolf thing. (It should be a cocktail, though.)
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And they've been back a whole day and haven't spilled any of the goss'
makes ya think they don't love us no more.
Chatham House rules ensure that information can only be passed on in the same circumstances in which it was acquired: face to face, inebriated, popping out for a smoke.
So, see me in Wellington in March.
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I get the feeling from comments that I'm the only one out here feeling very disturbed by the idea of porn using child like actors.
Dinah, an eighteen year old can be made to look under-age, but "child-like"? How would you make an eighteen year old look like an eight year old?
I'd prefer to completely separate the ideas of depicting sex with a pre-pubescent child (paedophilia) and depicting sex with an adolescent (possibly pederasty but not necessarily). It's not possible because we're talking about a grey continuum, but it's kind of tiresome when you're talking about sixteen year olds to suddenly find someone assuming you're talking about little children.
So Dinah, once you get to absolute nevers, the question becomes this: do you think it's okay for an 18 year old to prosecuted for child pornography for taking photos of herself?
Not so sure about peeing etc, is that illegal in NZ?
Depicting it is definitely illegal. Doing it is definitely not.
Unfortunately, one of the problems is that much of this commercial pornography features women who aren't ejaculating, but are instead using a bag filled with liquid to create the appearance of ejaculation.
You mean.., exactly like they do with male ejaculation?
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I must say, I'm a bit amazed that this is controversial.
Consider: many diagrams of female genitalia used in sex education omit the clitoris - it not being involved in reproduction. Male pleasure is innately involved in the process of making babies but female pleasure isn't, so the organs and physical processes involved get left out - otherwise you end up talking about sex as pleasure, not function.
It's also rare, so perhaps not widely understood in the same way that people don't seem to be aware than men can both ejaculate without orgasm, and vice versa.
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Well, that's the theory. There's a debate over whether "squirting" is ejaculation at all, or just a peeing trick. Or so I am told.
Anna Span recently got a British court to rule that yes, female ejaculation is a real thing. And here's the New Scientist explaining how it works.
Fascinating quote?
According to Whipple, when Philadelphia gynaecologist Martin Weisberg saw their report he said: "Bull... I spend half my waking hours examining, cutting apart, putting together, removing or rearranging female reproductive organs... Women don't ejaculate."
Silly women. Hush now, the grown-ups are talking.