sayno4kids

See also: "Pornography and the Celebrity Bestiality Report - Economic trends today" of 21 Aug 09, "Would you like porn with that?" by Catherine Manning of 7 May 09, Federal Government threatens Internet censorship of 16 Nov 08, "Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration" of 26 Jun 09 by Frosty Woodridge.

Sheila Newman's article "Pornography and the Celebrity Bestiality Report - Economic trends today" of 21 Aug 09 and, before that Catherine Manning's article, "Would you like porn with that?" of 7 May 09 have caused me to evaluate my attitudes to pornography and prostitution.

As with prostitution, of which pornography seems to be merely another form, it has become increasingly exploitative in our dysfunctional 21st century world.

How Australian women are being forced to turn to prostitution

One story I heard, maybe roughly 18 months ago now, on Radio National was how a woman, ironically, employed in a 'Human Resources' department, needed to go to University in order to get the degree necessary to get her past the glass ceiling that blocked career advancement for uncredentialled employees.

Unsurprisingly, once she left full-time employment, she didn't have the funds necessary to pay her living expenses. So, like many others in equivalent circumstances, she turned to prostitution.

This kind of story has become so commonplace that many of us don't give it a second thought, but if we do, it is clearly a damning indictment of just what kind of society we have become in the past thirty years, courtesy of the 'free market' 'revolution', as well as high immigration, imposed upon this country by the likes of Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard and, now, Rudd, Gillard and Immigration Minister Evans.

Before this 'revolution', nearly all capable and talented people could expect to find relatively easy paths to rise in their chosen career_#main-fn1">1. People who did not have degrees could still eventually expect to be promoted, and on a few celebrated occasions, all the way to the very top without even having completed High School.

Now that has become practically impossible for nearly everyone who has not had the good fortune to have had parents able to pay their way through University, and have chosen all the correct career moves at the correct moments, without their careers suddenly being set back by retrenchments or other personal misfortune.

Instead, they must not only obtain degrees, but, often, also, a succession of post-graduate qualifications that are deemed current and applicable to their narrow area of expertise, in their own time and at their own expense, and so they are often faced with no choice but to pay for it all by selling their bodies.

About a year before I heard the story of the HR employee who turned to prostitution, I heard another documentary_#main-fn2">2 on the ABC Radio National featuring a woman in Kalgoorlie. She would have been entitled to a disability pension before John Howard's 'reform' of our Social Security system. After that 'reform' she chose prostitution rather than jumping through all the stupid and demeaning hoops that unemployment benefit recipients are expected to jump through.

On 28 Jun 09,one site visitor, TrueFire commented in response to the article "Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration" by Frosty Wooldridge:

"It's all over the world news about Aussie women now working as prostitutes in record numbers to get by. How gutless can Aussies get? Does anything matter to you? Stand up to your politicians and their backdoor lobbyists."

Will censorship and prohibition make pornography and prostitution any less exploitative?

Prostitution and pornography are only two of many ways that vulnerable women are exploited. The fact that many women choose those livelihoods over working in sweatshop occupations is surely confirmation of that.

Far from reducing exploitation, outlawing or curtailing porn and prostitution is only likely to either force women back into occupations even less acceptable or to make earning a living through prostitution more difficult and hazardous.

A far more effective way to reduce the sexual exploitation of women is to give them back the economic choices that more than a generation of 'free market' ideology and population growth have taken away._#main-fn3">3

Is Porn inherently good or bad?

This brings us to that vexed question as to whether we should regard pornography and prostitution as inherently good or bad under more ideal economic and social conditions.

Clearly it meets a need, particularly for people who may be lonely, isolated or socially inept.

As long as no-one is physically or psychologically harmed and no-one is coerced to take part, and as long as children are protected from exposure to it, we should not cast judgement on those adults who choose to either make use of those services or provide those services.

However, about two years ago I found myself nodding in agreement with Clive Hamilton when he argued, as Catherine Manning also rightly does now, that our society has become over-sexualised and that our children, in particular, are exposed to far too much sexual imagery to allow their normal development into adulthood. In a debate on ABC Radio National over the controversy surrounding Bill Henson's exhibition of photos of naked, pre-pubescent children, he posed the question: "Does anyone here seriously believe that we are fighting the same old battles against censorship?" He went on to ridicule any suggestion that we might be faced with a re-run of the old fights to end the ban on "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and implied that those objecting to the ban on the exhibition of Bill Henson's photos of children had exaggerated views of the importance of the issue and of themselves._#main-fn4">4

At the time, I, too, found the suggestion ridiculous.

How reasonable objections to the over-sexualisation of our society can be used to increase control over us

However, a few months later in November 2008,I was incensed to learn that Clive Hamilton had, in fact, given his total and uncritical support to Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's plan to impose Communist Chinese style mandatory filtering upon the whole of the Internet in Australia_#main-fn5">5, ostensibly to prevent access to child pornography. In order to prevent anyone accessing child pornography, every single request for any page anywhere on the Internet, that occured every time someone clicked on a link on a web page, would first have to be compared with a secret database of banned sites. The fact that there were ways that people with more money and/or knowledge could easily evade the filter and the enormous peformance costs that all of us would need to pay did not appear to concern either Hamilton or Conroy.

It turned out that the blacklist could well have included sites containing pornographic material that is currently legal, sites advocating euthanisa, as well as sites deemed 'terrorist' or anything else that the Government considered undesirable.

So, the answer to Hamilton's rhetorical question turned out to be, indeed, 'Yes', after all. We are, indeed, in a sense re-fighting those old battles. This time what is at stake is our freedom to access not just sexually explicit material on the Internet, but potentially any content which a Government might, at some futere date prefer that we do not see.

How could Clive Hamilton, the same person who co-edited the 2007 book Silencing Dissent_#main-fn6">6, which exposed the Howard Government's systematic suppression of dissenting views, then turn around and push for the adoption of laws to give secretive Government bureaucrats unlimited powers to tell us what we can and cannot view on the Internet? The Internet is the only mass media not currently dominated by corporations.

Clive Hamilton's embrace of the Federal Government's plans for a Communist Chinese_#main-fn7">7 style Internet firewall demonstrates how reasonable community concerns about the sexual exploitation of women and children can be twisted around in order to allow our Government to extend its control over all of our lives.

This example illustrates how, if we are not very careful, reasonable stances, such as Catherine Manning's objections to children being exposed to pornographic material at corner stores and newsagents, can be seized upon to justify censorship and control way beyond what is actually necessary to fix the problem.

I therefore think it vital that, whenever concerned citizens fight to protect children and to mitigate the exploitation of women, it be made clear that this does not entail support for measures to take away from adults their current rights to access sexually explicit material (as Catherine Manning has in her article).

See also: "Pornography and the Celebrity Bestiality Report - Economic trends today" of 21 Aug 09, "Would you like porn with that?" by Catherine Manning of 7 May 09, Federal Government threatens Internet censorship of 16 Nov 08, "Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration" of 26 Jun 09 by Frosty Woodridge.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ In fact, this is a simplification. Before the neo-liberal economic 'revolution', which roughly coincided with the removal of many forms of legal discrimination against women, many women's career choices were limited. Nevertheless, even given the supposed additional freedoms that feminism has brought, many women, now working hard at their paid occupations in order to help their husbands meet massively increased living expenses, particularly housing, as well as attending to household chores, see themselves as worse off, rather than better off, than were their mothers and grandmothers.

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ Street Stories "Here for the Money" episode of 24 June 2007 currently, as of 22 Aug 09, available as a 14M MP3 file downloadable from here.

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ See #main-fn1">1.

#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ The words I write are to the best of my recollection. They may not be precisely a video version of the debate I thought I heard is "Art Censorship And Pornography" dated 26 Jun 08 on the ABC Fora web site.

#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ See "Federal Government threatens Internet censorship" of 16 Nov 08.

#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ Silencing Dissent (2007) edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison, Allen & Unwin.

#main-fn7" id="main-fn7">7. #main-fn7-txt">↑ I should acknowledge here that my disparaging use of the adjectives 'Communist Chinese', in the teaser to refer to the Government's planned Internet filtering, was opportunistic. The Government's mandatory Internet filtering plans modeled on the Chinese government's existing Internet filtering system would be more accurately described as 'Stalinist'. In fact a true 'communist' society, whether of the variety that existed prior to the emergence of agriculture, or the form that may have been theoretically possible if the Russian Revolution had not been so thoroughly corrupted by Stalin, would have little need to control its citizens in the way that mandatory Internet filtering appears intended to do.

This article comes from the background research for the Freewaves Feminist Magazine Show on 3RPP Radio Port Phillip, Victoria, Thursday, 20 August 2009. On the show with me was Catherine Manning, who wrote “Would you like porn with that?” for Candobetter, who has started up an internet site focused on removing porn from children’s eye level in stores.

Before we did the show together, I did a bit of research into the nature of pornography and why it might be good, or bad. I had difficulty coming to grips with the subject at all for some strange reason. I think that, like a lot of people, I have learned to tune out from the skin-marketing all around me, so focusing on the subject and related issues required an effort. I found a lot of very interesting writing and some very funny blogs.

This is what I came up with.

What is pornography anyhow?

Pornography is not just about getting naked, or having sex, or even recording, depicting or describing it.

The word pornography is made up of the Greek word for ‘prostitute’or ‘sex slave’ – porne- and the word for ‘writing’ graphein. The word pornographos designated a person who writes about prostitutes. Women in Ancient Greek society did not have the status of citizens and slaves had no status at all.

Pornography as we know it today still contains the ingredients of body sale and slavery. Slavery, in many instances these days, is commuted to objectification rather than frank chattel status.

‘Commuted’ in the sense of being paid for. Now you are not owned as a performing slave, but you rent yourself out. The person giving their body to pornography is assumed to be doing so from freedom of choice in order to make money.

Initially the pay for pornography, as in prostitution, may be higher than for other jobs available. Or the pornography may carry, falsely or really, some acting or modelling component and may be seen as an opportunity to get into something more skilled.

Pornography offers the vendors profits where none might otherwise exist. The ability to turn the girl next door, the schoolgirls on the bus-stop, your wife, daughter or girlfriend into cash may be very hard to knock back.

In the absence of women taking more control of their own incomes, including ownership of land and assets, the only thing stopping third parties from making a living this way would be a moral code to resist assisting the exploitation of women and their public exhibition of their bodies, which is generally deemed to be demeaning and damaging, unless it is artistic, which is to say, not titillating.

Some women would say that pornographic work is only damaging because women are seen to be objects owned by men and renting their bodies out for any purpose lowers the value of the object.

Can a woman enjoy displaying her body in a provocative pose to an unknown range of anonymous magazine browsers? The associated notoriety has become more and more apparently acceptable in public mores, possibly due to the expansion of visual media and the associated expansion of profit opportunities.

Who makes the money out of pornography?

So, why don’t men do it with their bodies too? Or is their main role as agents, salesmen and owners?

Who makes the most money out of pornography – the women who pose or the men who sell it? Obviously the employer has to stand to make more than the subject of the picture or there would be no profit in it.

It is said that one of the richest men in the world, Rupert Murdoch, made a lot of his money out of his famous ‘Page 3’ girlie photos at a time when the print media were constantly expanding.

The divisions and oppositions by gender in our species are political and economic

Steve Biddulpf writes that:

“Boys have many positive impulses around sexuality. Deep down most teenage boys are deeply romantic, capable of quite spiritual feelings towards women and girls.” (Steve Biddupf, “How we turn boys into creeps.”)

But the domination driven culture of capitalism undoes them.

A man with a big car and a couple of semi-naked young women sitting on it looks rich and successful to other men, according to Ape and marketing logic.

A woman surrounded by young naked men would also look rich and successful, as if accompanied by slaves, but we don’t see this so much. This is probably because our society is dominated by men who reject the popularization of women with male slaves. Why? Because we are against male slavery and its portrayal. But not that of women.

Catherine Manning’s concern that young girls will early identify as inevitable the public sexualisation of their gender as objects has deeper significance than ‘mere’ psychological trauma. With the huge expansion in volume and exposure of pornography, the risk is of the perpetuation and exacerbation of the attitudes that underlay the slave societies of Ancient Greece and England and her colonies before the 20th century, where women had no rights to property or citizenship and could not even have custody of their children in the event of a divorce.

Does it seem too way out to imagine our society being prepared for such a future? Think of how Russia has become a source of prostitution for the world with the simultaneous arrival of the capitalist press and economic decline. And South East Asia.

Mr Murdoch as a porn hustler; more than just an industry

Consider the influence that Mr Murdoch, the man who designed the Page 3 girls to become our social norm, now has on the production of political parties and leaders in Australia and throughout the English-speaking world, and even, more and more, in Europe.

Consider his influence on our dogma of economic and population growth, commodification and privatization, his impact on food habits and acquired cultures and values.

Could this kindly old man, solid patriarch and deliverer of Boyer Lectures really be the same man who brought the English-speaking world the Page 3 soft porn? Well, if that’s the worst he can do, is it any big deal?

I wonder if, however, in his vast network empire, Murdoch ever thought about investing in something a little more sophisticated?
Well, as it happens, Newshounds Are Us at www.newshounds.us/ (an online news-site which arose with the original researchers for the film Outfoxed about Fox TV) report in 2009 that Rupert Murdoch,

“… the born-again Christian who chairs media giant News Corporation, has been secretly building a stable of wholly-owned pornographic channels for his BSkyB subsidiary. The Business has learnt that BSkyB now owns and operates its own pornographic channels – the 18+ Movies selection – after years of hosting third-party content only. The company has also been entering into partnerships with companies that broadcast pornographic television channels on BSkyB, such as Sport XXX Babes, XXX Housewive and Playboy. BSkYB has agreed retail distribution agreements with these companies. With Playboy, for instance, BSkyB now not only hosts the channel but sells its service, and collects and shares in the revenues from Playboy customers.”

They further inform us of another old man who owns newspapers and made a fortune from pornography, saying that,

“For years the Murdoch press has labelled rival newspaper baron Richard Desmond a pornographer in articles charting his business which has included pornographic magazines and TV channels.” http://www.newshounds.us/2006/02/12/rupert_murdochs_pornography_profiteering.php

Desmond owns the Daily Express and OK magazine.
Silvio Berlusconi’s personal control over Italy’s ideas is even more direct. He is the Prime Minister of Italy, in the first place, but has been estimated to have personally

[…]The hallmarks of Mediaset television are blizzards of commercials, interspersed with AC Milan soccer matches – Berlusconi is the team's owner – game shows, "reality TV" serials and vaudeville extravaganzas featuring leggy troupes of scantily-clad young women.”

Berlusconi also

“controls more than a third of all book and magazine publishing and a leading national newspaper.”
Source: Frank Viviano, CBS5, “The Resurrection Of Silvio Berlusconi.”

But wait, there’s more: A report called, “The Porn Standard, Children and Pornography on the internet”, found that the “large and lucrative internet pornography industry is flooding the Web and seeking mainstream acceptance.”

It also found that

“The online pornography industry generates $12 billion in annual revenue roughly equal to the annual revenue of ABC, NBC, and CBS combined”[…], and, that “The two largest purchasers of [internet] bandwidth [space] are companies in the adult entertainment industry.

Household names in manufacturing own these global investments in Porn:

“The report found that, already in the year 2000, “General Motors Corporation (through its subsidiary DirecTV®) was selling more pornographic films each year than Larry Flynt of Hustler®. EchoStar Communications, which is heavily backed by Rupert Murdoch, now generates more revenue from pornography than Playboy®.

Other major players in the pornography business today include AT&T®, Hilton®, Marriott International. [Source: Sean Barney, “The Porn Standard: Children and pornography on the internet,” http://www.thirdway.org/products/14]

Maybe we looking at a porn-led international economic recovery?

So is this where the banks and big corporations are investing our funds now? Are they aiming for a porn-led global financial recovery?

If this phenomenon is so pervasive, so irrestistible, and it relies so much on women’s bodies, how come we are still letting a bunch of old men run our show?

If there is so much money in pornography, shouldn’t the women and children who wear the costs at least get control of the profits – not to mention the industry? Go here for the Celebrity Bestiality report on making money out of porn. That report concludes that only the big investors get anything out of the business.

Corporations and governments in the old-fashioned role of pimps

This is where we came in: Female gender slavery and prostitution make money for the masters, not for the individuals who perform the work.

Pimps tend to be men who are able to attract a few women by fair or foul means, but who are not too fussed about renting them out for sex. Perhaps this is one of the ways in which capitalism began.

Did the case ever happen where women were able to attract men and then were not too fussed about renting them out for sex? To whom? In capitalist societies women generally did not own anything, whereas men were able to own them. It therefore seems that the tendency for many more women to be prostitutes than men probably resulted from women’s marginalization and then further marginalized them.

But are women’s bodies the only ones objectified like this? No, pornographic objectification happens to men and to children of both sexes, although in the latter case it is not yet deemed acceptable.

Male gender slavery and objectification in war

And there is another way in which men are objectified by the same kinds of commercially organized forces which is just as demeaning and destructive – and that is in war. In war young men are convinced or forced to risk their bodies, minds and lives for the sake of profits, yet told that what they are doing is honorable.

And women and children suffer in war of course as well, often in pornographic ways that are beyond ordinary imagination.

Porn and war seem to be human issues of economic and political disenfranchisement in contexts of removal of power to distant locations and persons who do not have to face the people who wear the consequences.

Another argument in favour of relocalisation.
.

That’s not the end of it, but here’s a good song to pause on – “JPEG Baby”. It's sung by the writer of the Celebrity Bestiality report.

Send us your thoughts in a comment.
And maybe take a look at http://www.sayno4kids.com/blog/ - Catherine Manning’s page proposing simply moving pornographic magazine displays to above children’s eye-level.

Article written by Catherine Manning

I am not a prude, but my children have a right to childhood

I am not a prude. (I know, it's a shame that women have to clarify that point before commenting on pornography, but just before you grab your keyboard to type a response, I am not opposed to adults accessing legal pornography.) What I am opposed to, is children being exposed to pornographic images in milk bars, service stations and newsagents.

We have a great local store. The vendor takes the time to serve the children of our community one by one as they choose their lollies the 'old fashioned way', and as if they're making the biggest decision they'll ever make in their lives. My kids look forward to their once a week treat, and I enjoy helping to foster what I think will one day be a positive childhood memory.
However, last week as I stood waiting for an order with my four year old son, I noticed at children's eye level two magazines with almost naked, unnaturally busty, spread legged, pubeless 'women', faces with parted glossy lips wantonly staring out as they pull down their knickers, just beside the icecream freezer right in front of us. With headlines such as 'Fit to F*#K', World's Oldest Porn Star', 'Keep on F*#king','Porn star goes down on chopper pilot's chopper', etc., there wasn't much left to the imagination. (hey, if you're freaking out reading this, imagine how I felt with my child in tow.)

Does the right to make money cancel out my children's rights?

I spoke with the storekeeper about this, and although he understood my concerns, his job was to make money. In fact, he informed me that many of his clients, the truckies passing through who park out the front of our primary school, actually think he should stock more of the 'hardcore stuff'. (gee, that's comforting I say as I push my stomach back down from the back of my throat....). Apparently, according to the storekeeper, less offensive magazines such as Ralph and FMH do come covered, but these two, which have progressively become more explicit, have escaped the same censorship. Therefore, the storekeeper (and anyone else) can have these magazines sitting anywhere in their shop and as in our case, right between the lollies and icecreams about half a metre from the floor. (Have an icecream kids, and would you like porn with that?)

Our children are victims of pornography

Our children are victims of pornography. They are being exposed to images of a sexual nature long before they can comprehend their meaning, but these images make an impression. It tells boys what to expect of girls and tells girls how they should act. We have a society full of girls and young women with eating disorders and serious body image problems, and a fast growing cosmetic surgery industry (which cashes in unashamedly on those with body image issues). We have what seems like an 'epidemic' of paedophilia, with more and more men accessing sexual images of children. The news is full of stories about footballers physically and sexually assaulting women, yet society still allows our kids to be brainwashed with pornographic images at an early age.

I'd like to know that when my kids go in to the local store for a bag of lollies or some milk, that they are safe and not exposed to things they shouldn't and wouldn't see at home. Sadly, I've come to learn it's something I shouldn't 'expect', but surely it's not too much to ask.

About the author:

This article is by Catherine Manning, President of the Southern Victorian Community Action Group Inc, and the newly formed Cardinia Township Association, and an ordinary parent/citizen concerned about the future for our children, in this case, the impacts of inappropriate exposure to pornography.