At last, a sensible feminist!
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Dear Darryn Walker,
Although it didn’t cause much of a ripple in the mainstream media, the end of your court case this week concluded a rather uncomfortable saga for bloggers around the country. You were cleared of breaching the Obscene Publications Act with a story that you wrote about Girls Aloud on an internet site, which described in graphic detail the kidnap, torture, murder and mutilation of the five band members. The implications of a successful prosecution would have huge, but even though the case against you withered away it still leaves behind a slightly sour taste.
Obscenity laws are rarely used, especially for content on the internet, and where they are invoked, it is almost always images, not words, that are the subject. The standard in such cases is whether the material is likely “to deprave or corrupt those reading or viewing it”, but historically this has proved very hard to meet. The Obscene Publications Act was most famously used in 1960 against Penguin Books after it published the controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It has also been used against the editors of satirical magazine Oz in 1971 after a children’s issue was published featuring a cartoon of Rupert Bear having sex, as well as to attack the publishers of Inside Linda Lovelace – a book about the life of a porn star – in 1976 and to ban David Britton’s graphic and violent book Lord Horror in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, in each case the publishers were found not guilty or the ban was overturned within a matter of months. In fact, the Metropolitan Police reportedly gave up hopes of any future prosecutions under the Act after Inside Linda Lovelace was approved, believing that if that was not obscene then nothing was! The article that you penned was certainly not in the same mould as these previous cases, although accusations of obscenity are understandable. You prefaced your 12-page story – called Girls (Scream) Aloud – with a disclaimer, saying that your words were “imaginary descriptions” of “a world in which women are disposable sex objects that exist solely for the pleasure of men”. You also insisted his work was “strictly fictitious” and should not be “re-enacted in any way”. But, despite these disclaimers, you were arrested in February 2008 after the story was spotted by online protection charity the Internet Watch Foundation. It tipped off the police, but because the website in question was hosted overseas the foundation had no power to act. A spokeswoman explained that while there is international agreement on what is illegal when it comes to images of child sex abuse, there is no such consensus on what constitutes criminally obscene material in general.
It didn’t take long for some feminists to use your court case to remind the world how persecuted they are. Feminist campaigner Julie Bindel believes it is time to get rid of the Obscene Publications Act altogether. “What we’ve got in this country is a double standard,” she told the BBC News website. “We have laws against incitement to racial and religious hatred, but none for incitement to sexual hatred. And that’s exactly what pornography and these sorts of stories do – peddle an image of women as gagging for it, enjoying pain, and that encourages men to treat them that way. We need new legislation to protect women, then we could do away with these old-fashioned obscenity laws.” Yes, of course Julie. Women need protecting from their evil male overlords who force them into pornography against their free will, and women never watch or purchase porn nor do they ever mistreat men. *roll eyes* Actually, she was right about one thing – we do have a double standard on hatred laws. My solution? Scrap all the hatred laws, then we have no double standards. Thankfully, I was buoyed by reading the infinitely more sensible reaction from another feminist. A spokeswoman for campaign group Feminists Against Censorship, Avedon Carol, said this attempted prosecution represented a dangerous precedent and would be counter-productive if its intention was to tackle violent attitudes towards women. “Rape and murder predate the printing press by a long way. If we want to address misogyny, we need to speak about it openly and honestly. Censorship isn’t going to make it disappear.” Well said. Censorship of articles like yours would not only be impossible to enforce but would also not address the cause of such attitudes. Your defence counsel Tim Owen said that writing of the sort that you produced was “widely available in an unregulated and uncensored form. In terms of its alleged obscenity, it is frankly no better or worse than other articles.” While I’m not necessarily proud of this statement, it is undoubtedly true.
Defining what constitutes ‘obscene’ is always fraught with difficulty, be it words or images or otherwise. I can only assume that you have a few screws loose for wanting to publish something so disgusting online, but this article resulting in a criminal trial is not the way to go. I have no respect for your actions whatsoever. Even so, I am glad that this case died away for everyone’s sake. And, on a personal note, may I just add that anyone who wishes to get rid of Cheryl Cole clearly needs their head tested as she is a bona-fide smoking-hot hottie. Moron.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
‘I can only assume that you have a few screws loose for wanting to publish something so disgusting online’
Agree, sounds like one sick ***k.
‘And, on a personal note, may I just add that anyone who wishes to get rid of Cheryl Cole clearly needs their head tested as she is a bona-fide smoking-hot hottie. Moron.’
Agree, agree, agree, agree…
I get your gist LFAT, but something in me wonders how a society can consider itself ‘civilised’ on the one hand and yet implicitly approve of things that involve the total lack regard for human life.
This guy wrote about raping, torturing and murdering human beings as part of what sounds like some sick fantasy. Then made a point of making it available to other sickos. Seems to me that as a society, we’ve condoned this and as good as said ‘that’s fine by us’.
Like holding a mirror up to our society….
Dear LFAT.
I consider, “sensible feminist”, to be one of those ultimate oxymorons which are becoming ever-more prevalent in our rich and varied mother tongue. Ms.Carol and you may agree on the surface in a few areas, but most of your core beliefs would be anathema to each other. Your last paragraph accurately sums up the feelings of myself and hopefully most of your bloggers.
Unfortunately, such juvenile graffiti is sheltered in the whited cultural sepulchre built by those who laud such innovative productions as “Straw Dogs” and ” Kill Bill”. Please don’t anyone suggest that because Shakespeare used scenes of graphic violence in his plays, then violent porn is somehow justified.
I have, somewhat reluctantly, to agree that legislation is not the answer, mainly because it is impossible to prevent copies being distributed throughout the global village, and the Internet can spread the subject matter in seconds. The rapidity with which Dan Hannan’s deconstruction of Gordon sped round the world is a much happier example of this phenomenon.
I would suggest that we must hope that such offal is rejected by a public that will grow tired of such nonsense, but I suspect that will not happen in my time.
PS. Mrs Cole does cause long-banked fires to smolder a little more fiercely.
FLS, if we truly want a civilised society we need stable families and a decent education system to make sure that people don’t want to write things like this.
GOH, I think my blogs on feminism and equality always make it clear that I find many of their views distasteful and in some cases just plain ridiculous. However, this particular lady appears to have her head firmly screwed on.
‘FLS, if we truly want a civilised society we need stable families and a decent education system to make sure that people don’t want to write things like this.’
Totally agree, but where do we draw a line in the sand and say ‘this is not acceptable’?
FLS, we’re not a civilized species – we are, at our core, a bunch of tribal violent apes, with a very thin veneer of what we call civilized behaviour painted over the top in the vain hope it’ll hold. Our history of warfare, internecine battles and xenophobia show just how vain that hope is.
I grow weary of attempts to paint us as some angelic race, when we commit actual atrocities on almost daily basis. Merely writing twisted fantasies down for a section of society is prosaic in comparison.
One of my bugbears is our attempts to hide our darker natures, we all have some form of unpleasantness bubbling beneath the surface and denying them won’t make them go away. Admitting them, in some cases indulging them where its between consenting adults, and just dealing with them will make us better people than simply hoping they’ll go away if we wish hard enough.
@GOM
I would suggest that we must hope that such offal is rejected by a public that will grow tired of such nonsense, but I suspect that will not happen in my time.
And that is the core. If you don’t like something, don’t indulge, but also don’t try to deny it to those who do like it.
It’s another of my bugbears, we whine like merry hell when denied our own pleasures due to others moral outrage, yet feel it’s our duty to deny others their pleasures because they conflict with what we regard as acceptable.
If a time machine is ever built in my lifetime, I’m going to nick it so Moses can have ten commandments written by yours truly. The first shall consist of Mind Your Own Business…
The guy that wrote this and shared his warped fantasy with the world must be a bit odd to say the least but to censor the written word merely makes it more attractive for people to want to read it. e.g. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure a.k.a. Fanny Hill.
p.s. Cheryl Cole may be pretty but she has as much spine as a blow up doll! Why on Earth would you stay with a cheating lying toe-rag? She really needs some self respect – let’s face it she could do so much better.
FLS, you are assuming that someone should and could draw an appropriate line. They are already laws preventing people from telling others to be violent towards others, so I don’t see why more legislation is needed.
Ob, you have a lot of bugbears, clearly! Say hi from me to Moses.
Candid, I have no idea why she goes back to her cheating husband either. Very weird.
@FLS
Totally agree, but where do we draw a line in the sand and say ‘this is not acceptable’?
In cases like this, we don’t. Allow the individual adult to decide.
It is interesting how rulings on ‘obscene’ publications are almost always looked back upon with a disbelieving shake of the head. It seems that, generally speaking, this generation’s obscenity is next generation’s fodder. Looking back at horror movies of the 70’s and early 80’s it’s hard to see why there was such a fuss when the similar scenes could easily appear barely remarked in 15-rated (or even 12A-rated, occasionally) mainstream cinema releases.
Music is another good example – once upon a time the Sex Pistols were considered obscene and corrupting. 15 years later, The Prodigy were the ones who were beyond the pale. 5 years after that, Marilyn Manson.
The reason for this is fairly simple, I suppose – in order for something to be shocking, by definition it must go further than anything has before. Moral panics will stay with us as long as creativity pushes the boundaries of taste. And every time the boundaries of taste are pushed, the next generation needs to go just a little further.
“..“a world in which women are disposable sex objects that exist solely for the pleasure of men”…”
Or, as Harriet Harmen, Vera Baird and Cath Elliot call it, ‘Earth’..
“This guy wrote about raping, torturing and murdering human beings as part of what sounds like some sick fantasy. Then made a point of making it available to other sickos. Seems to me that as a society, we’ve condoned this and as good as said ‘that’s fine by us’.”
If we used this as a yardstick to ban things, you’d see most of the bestseller list for thrillers disappear…
And I have no opinion of the hotness (or otherwise) of Cheryl Cole
Stu, a very eloquent and helpful analysis. ‘Shock value’ is always relative and there are always going to be some attention seekers trying to push the boundaries.
Julia, Cheryl Cole is a smoking hot hottie – trust me.
“once upon a time the Sex Pistols were considered obscene and corrupting”
From “Anarchy in the UK”
“Your future dream is a shopping scheme”
Probably the most profound and prophetic lyric of the last 50 years.
Nothing to add.. except the layby where Chelsea players take their ‘new friends’ was just behind my old house. Cheryl has probably been there a few times herself.
LFAT and others, it is a difficult argument and one I personally struggle with – I agree that legislation is not going to change people.
Anti-rascist legislation doesn’t stop people being rascist, prohibition didn’t stop people drinking etc etc but I can’t escape the feeling that indulging our baser nature is not a good thing.
To me, logically, moral relativism’s end point is having no morals. We may have different moral judgements on some of these issues and moral relativism says ‘who are you to judge me (my morals)’? Fair enough. So then, a pyschopath who has no morals and then murders a member of your family is entitled to turn round to you and say ‘who are you to judge me’….
lol, sorry, feeling a bit leftfield today…
FLS: There is a huge difference between thinking something and acting on that thought. That is where morality really happens. It’s stopping yourself doing something you know to be wrong. And most people execute this to a small or large degree every day e.g. walking past the bakery section in the supermarket without succumbing to purchasing pastry products knowing that they are bad for you.
Moral people may not have moral thoughts at all but quite frankly that doesn’t matter. It is when these are acted on e.g. in cases of murder, and those instances are not acceptable.
I have a theory that everyone on the planet is technically racist in their thoughts due to evolving in a tribal system. But of course that does not mean that everyone acts on that. Mostly it is exhibited in staring rather than acts of violence but that is not to say they consider you an equal.
Maybe she believes in , ” ’til Death us do Part” There are far worse sins in a Marriage than shagging about. Mental cruelty, violence, incest, abandonment. Having been married to the same person, through thick and thin, PND and Menopause (where the woman I married was totally absent) for 37 years, I can tell you that a workable marriage is a 24/7 job. The Coles, and the Beckhams, are working out their own marriages. Maybe others should leave them alone and concentrate on the own trials.
FLS, the decision to punishing a person for the effects of their actions on another person is not a moral decision.
A psychopath who murders somebody may not personally have any morals, and we indeed we do not necessarily have the right to judge them on a moral level, but we have the right and indeed the responsibility to punish them for the effect they had on the victim and their family.
You don’t actually have to make a moral statement (‘murder is wrong’) in order to come to the conclusion that people ought to receive punishment for committing murder.
Forgetting that, though, moral relativism’s endpoint is not ‘a lack of morals’; it’s a differing morality between generations. Just because the next generation’s morality is different to yours doesn’t make it less, nor greater, than yours – just different. Whereas a century ago homosexuality may have been considered immoral because morality was focused around religion and family. Nowadays discrimination against homosexuality is considered immoral, because morality is focused around the rights and freedoms of the individual. It isn’t a decline, it’s an alteration. Doubtless in the future similar alterations will take place which will continue to alienate those who grew up with the previous generation’s morality.
If it wasn’t for moral relativism, after all, we’d still be burning witches and heretics at the stake. And we’d never have had The Beatles. Up to you to decide which of those would be a greater tragedy
We were discussing feminazis today and how increasing numbers of women are now coming out and saying, Enough!’ It’s definitely a positive sign.
I think it’s a pity that feminism evolved into what it did- the post-marxist ideological form- because feminism as an idea- that is, equality of esteem and opportunity, is a very good one. I like that equality. I like women having the same rights and opportunities as me. Women are great, and so are men, and so is everybody, except some people aren’t, both men and women, and they give everybody else a bad name. But feminism, the principle of shrugging off the restrictions of the past, is a fabulous idea and one of the Great Western Values.
THe problem is, everything is infested with post-marxist analysis and philosophy at the moment, and that is a philosophy of war between groups. Marxist feminism has to treat men as a collective enemy of women, just as marxist environmentalism has to treat mankind as a collective enemy of the earth, and marxist race theory has to treat white people as a collective enemy of the rest of humankind. It’s a terrible pity, because equal rights for women, or for different races, and a nice environment are, in themselves, very good things. It is the marxist element that leads us into the maelstrom of hate.
I would dearly love to see the end of marxist feminism, and marxist racism, and marxist environmentalism and so on. That does not mean I want women returned to their former status, nor a return to old attitudes to race, nor my local river filled with effluent and shopping trolleys. We can free ourselves of the burden of marxist legislation- such a hate legislation- only by successfully defeating the marxist elements in our society, and that is a general task, since they are everywhere. You can have equality without marxism; indeed, you can only have equality when marxism is absent.
‘You don’t actually have to make a moral statement (’murder is wrong’) in order to come to the conclusion that people ought to receive punishment for committing murder.’
Stu, interesting viewpoint but I can’t agree. If it’s not wrong to murder someone, then we shouldn’t bother punishing them.
If i steal something off you, then that’s not wrong either. So what if you’ve been deprived of your possessions – i’ve done nothing wrong.
If the hypothetical psychopath killed the hypothetical member of your family, i’d be surprised if you didn’t feel they had done something wrong.
Right and wrong are moral judgements & i’d go so far to say that moral relativism is what has turned criminals into victims ….
“If i steal something off you, then that’s not wrong either. So what if you’ve been deprived of your possessions – i’ve done nothing wrong.
Not true. Not at all. If you have taken my property without my permission, your actions have harmed me. You don’t need the Bible to say ’stealing is wrong’ in order to recognise that taking other people’s possessions without their permission will cause them grief or harm. You don’t need to ask God to recognise that you would not wish to have your own possessions stolen.
My point is that it doesn’t really matter not whether you have or haven’t done anything wrong. If you’re a psychopath and ‘don’t know right from wrong’, clearly we’re going to disagree on whether or not you’ve done wrong. The point is that me believing you’ve done something wrong is not enough for me to justify punish you.
If it was, then a person whose morals said that nobody should speak out against their spouse could punish you for speaking out against an abusive partner. Clearly, this isn’t a position most of use would agree with, but it’s still just as much of a morality position as saying ‘homosexuality is wrong’.
After you’ve murdered my family member, I could seek retribution for what you have done. On an individual level I ought to be able to decide what form that retribution might take. We know, though, that different people have different ideas on what counts as a proportionate response (that being simply another form of moral relativism), and so we created the justice system which seeks to even-handedly deal with those who harm others.
Without any need for moral absolutes or ethical codes beyond ‘you ought to treat other people as you would want to be treated yourself, because otherwise they’ll come back to get you’, the only conclusion that justice system could possibly come to is that we ought to punish people for murder, theft and causing harm.
That isn’t derived from anything greater than the need to live with other people in a community. That’s why I said, “You don’t actually have to make a moral statement (’murder is wrong’) in order to come to the conclusion that people ought to receive punishment for committing murder.” The fact that murderers should be punished stands for itself as part of a logical argument about maintaining a society/community.
Moral relativism isn’t a point of view, anyway, it’s a fact of life. Like evolution. You can argue against it till you’re blue in the face but that won’t change the fact that your morality differs from that of the generation before you (it wasn’t all that long ago that Elvis Presley was immoral, after all), and will differ from the generation afterwards. This was happening before anyone invented the term ‘moral relativism’. The older generation has bemoaned the moral decline of youth since time immemorial. Besides, how else could the old and new testaments have such wildly differing moral outlooks, if the prevailing view of morality had not changed between the writing of the two?
As for turning criminals into victims, what you really mean is that the prevailing attitude towards criminal behaviour has turned criminals into victims. That isn’t moral relativism (which is just a description of how morality changes with time). On that point, though, we find ourselves absolutely in agreement. Far too many people have an attitude which goes against the idea of taking personal responsibility for ones actions and instead encourages people to apportion blame for their own actions on others, and on circumstances, and on their past. It’s disgraceful and it flies in the face of justice. I do genuinely hope that the idea of personal responsibility is something which can be coaxed back into the justice system in the future.
Not because it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, you understand. Because it is logical, and also because it works in protecting those who need to be protected, and punishing those who require punishment.
(With apologies to LFAT for veering wildly off-topic)
@grumpy old man –
First I will admit that I am not married so I can’t talk from experience on that front. But if someone chooses to sleep with someone else rather than their devoted partner it demonstrates a complete lack of respect and love for that person. They could continue saying sorry but if that is how low they perceive the relationship then it is likely that it will happen again. If you have to work 24/7 at keeping a relationship together one would have to ask why are you in that relationship? (unless kids are onvolved of course!)
I am currently in a very good relationship and of course there are moments of disagreement but these are very few and far between and usually sorted out in minutes. The vast majority of the time is easy and we delight in just being together. I am hoping that I am not being to naive on this as I have been in rubbish relationships and had my parents living at opposite ends of the house since I was about 5. So I know what happens when it goes wrong. But they still have respect for each other and neither has ever strayed from the bond they made back in 1969.
Sorry LFAT – completely off topic again!
But it does relate to morality though and my original thought of having morals to stop committing an act that was an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors. In this case it is men and sewing seeds etc. With the law and morals in this country firmly fixed on the monogamous state of affairs it requires respect for partner and morality to not become a Mr. Casanova.
Interesting that the only ‘feminist’ that LFAT considers sensible is one that agrees with him.
Don’t think he’d like me then!!
PP, yup, that’s just about sums it up. I find that many feminists operate in a world that ignores evidence when it comes to making claims about persecution and unfair treatment, which is why I frequently (although not always) find feminists so disagreeable. Harriet Harman and equal pay is a classic example of this.