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Roasting Sacred Cows
Hans Gilde writes: "Pedophilia has been a big topic in the UK lately, there have been riots, beatings and vandalism resulting from [pedophile witchhunts]. In an attempt "to ask hard questions about the way society and the media deal with its most difficult problems" and point out "that famous people have a habit of denouncing things without knowing much about them", a comedian in the UK produced a TV show, described in an article in the NY Times, in which he actually got a member of Parliament to say the following, on the air, in all seriousness: "Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible."" This show is frankly hilarious, and the reaction to it is even better. You probably want to see the show, eh? It's available in .avi or Real and DivX.
> We're giving too much attention to a TV show with the intelligence of a prank phone call.
Hardly. If there's a single, take-home message from the series, it's that charities, parliamentarians, government, the press and mass media collude to make rational public debate impossible: "major news topics" derive their sole significance from the extent to which they afford lobbyists, parliamentarians and the news media a pretext for creating mutually self-serving moral panics.
So, in a programme that dealt with the social and media hypocrisy surrounding child sex abuse, the point was made that anyone dissenting from the current hysteria (and suggesting, say, that paedophiles require treatment rather than demonization) would be either ignored or vilified.
Funnily enough, within a day of transmission Morris was vilified in the tabloid press and the programme condemned -- sight unseen -- by three government ministers.
Compared with the rest of a brilliant series, the programme was arguably below par. But to conclude from the fact it was under-written that Morris is somehow a "hack" is frankly stupid.
I never said the effect of the two crimes was the same. I said in my view, both are equally wrong: rape/molestment is a form of torture, and torture, imo, is just as morally wrong as murder. Nor did I ever say the victim's life was over, and nor is it in America -- there are numerous groups to help people who've been raped.
If you convince government to equate rape/molestment with murder then the victim's life is very likely to be over. Since they might feel they have less risk of being caught without a live witness against them.
A rapist or child molestor is really a man who keeps his victim alive, so he can torture her/him
Not all rapists and child molestors have a penis. Given the sexist surrounding the whole issue its impossible to tell how many are men and how many are women however.
are you a post-natal mother? apparently new mothers have uncontrollable urges to pick up babies with their butts sticking way in the air. probably something to do with the fact that if they're in that situation, then the baby is probably on it's way out of the cave, see darwin for the rest...
He was also making fun about people with attitudes like yours. You seemed to miss that part.
I'd like to see you try that in London without getting mown down by a battered looking Datsun Sunny.
She read about it. How's that for detailed and useful knowledge of a topic you will be deciding on?
Hello, kettle.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
>So we should wonder: what was the point inthe
>history of Western culture where pedophilia
>switched from white to black? And why?
Easy: With the introduction of christianity....
Read the site policy. Trolls are not allowed. The editors there had no problem with removing comments written to just get a hysterical reaction.
This comment says it well, from the end of the article:
`"How Mr. Morris must be laughing," Harry Owen of Horley, Surrey, wrote in a letter to The Daily Telegraph. "Perhaps Channel 4, instead of apologizing, should have simply said, `We rest our case.' "'
It's funny how satire becomes reality in that way. It's kind of like the South Park movie; the whole thing parodied, prior to the fact, the reaction of everyone to the movie after it was released.
Such satire is the most brilliant kind -- when a satire makes fun of the very reaction people have tot he satire. It's when you know that the satire's creators have hit their target right in the center of the bullseye.
The difficulty with fiction is that murder can have lots of motives, and in the realm of comedy, there's often the joke that someone deserved to get murdered, or that someone was accidentally killed. It's a lot different to "accidentally" rape a five year old, or have a legitimate motive for doing so that enthralls the reader/viewer/etc.
Our current ideas of age of consent (mixed as they are) are hardly universal through out history. What was the age of consent in ancient Rome, the Egyptian empire or the various American peoples 1,000 years ago?
Alternativly you can have a sci-fi culture which has any rules you'd like to invent about sexuality.
"can" leave scars...what if it doesn't? What are the percentages of those that are scarred vs. those that aren't, and who decides who is scarred or not?
Also when this does happen what is actually causing the "scaring"
Are there controlled studies?
Odds on if anyone attempted to carry them out then they'd receive death threats. (In the same way that reseach in to domestic violence generated death threats when the results made a nonsense of feminist dogma.)
Why don't you?!! I want to see it too.
I just got freenet and I'm still trying to figure out how to use it. I *think* I just inserted the two 12-minute segments under the keys
brass eye special part 1 of 2 (divx)
brass eye special part 2 of 2 (divx)
How can I find out whether I successfully inserted the files?
The shareholder is always right.
In fact, British Airways has an official policy of not seating young children next to men when children fly alone.
Oh, yeah, that sounds like a *real* problem. I would actually request that the airline NOT seat an unsupervised young child next to me on an airplane. Do you really want a mommy-less brat dripping snot and whining next to you for X hours?
It's only recently, evolutionarily speaking, that sex has been restricted to "adults." To add insult to injury, the growth hormones that we put in our chickens and our cows are being passed through to the kitchen table, and are causing children to mature faster.
Use of such hormones is very recent. The actual factor is better nutrition.
What's been happening over the last 200 or so years is that whilst the age of physical maturity has been going down the age of legal adulthood has been going up (in the case of places like the US this is 21).
Thus you end up with a large number of sexually mature people legally considered "children".
ah, meta-satire! brilliant.
> Sure, it is a horrible subject: grown people should nothave sex with children.
Says who?
How dare you foist your moral view point on other people!
Look, you can't go around asking people to defend their positions logically like that. They are likely to hurt their little brains.
Well then, you had best not read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Boy will you be in for a shock...
You're right, it is the stupid pedestrian's fault, they should have used a crosswalk. In my state (FL), if you hit someone who is crossing the street illegaly it isn't (necessarily) your fault.
Which highlights a notable cultural difference between the US and the UK (indeed most of Europe). In the UK a pedestrian always has right of way on a public road (after all they were using them a thousand years before cars were invented.)
At worst, its an example of predatory behavior by adults against weaker, inexperienced and immature children.
You can get this happening with any age groups. Even where the predator is younger than their "prey".
It's not the kids fault for being idiots and talking ot people online that they never knew and then going out behind their parents backs and getting molested. And it's certainly not the parents fault for not watching their kids internet habits. IT's all the pedophiles and their evil toxic vapors. Just like Microsoft is really good but open source has been drugging the water and making us think GPL is good.
--End Sarcasm--
I am !amused.
Wow, you missed the point entirely. They just keep whizzing over your head, huh?
Sacrificing *your* freedom and *your* liberty for *your* children is fine. However, you cross the line when you -- through support of politicians and/or legislation -- that remove somebody else's freedoms or liberty for unspecified and unknown children is wrong.
It is fundamentally the same as restricting the freedoms and liberty of blacks for the sake of white people.
No, I do not have children -- thank goodness. I'm not married yet. I do plan to have children, and will provide a good, moral, healthy home and family for them.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The Independent Television Commission ... said that 411 calls had come in to support the program.
Okay, i'm not going to say people should be forbidden from expressing their opinions on such issues, but is this really the right avenue?
"Hello, Information."
"Hi, i've got a bone to pick with you. The recent witch hunt against pedophiles is going too far. If we don't get a grip on this hysteria, we're--"
"Sir, i really believe this goes beyond my training as a telephone operator."
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Point is, _none_ of them were in on the joke. Every one of them had been set up. The humour isn't in what they said, but in the fact that you could get them to say it bcos they thought it would make them look good and get them publicity.
And it isn't quite humour, although some of it was funny. It's a serious issue, when you can demonstrate that leading social figures will bang on about something they know nothing about, given very little encouragement. It makes you think a bit more about the pronouncements that the politicians come out with on policing, drugs, etc - how much of these have they actually thought about themselves, or how much are they simply doing for self-publicity at the instigation of one or other single-issue pressure group?
If you want plain hilarious, then Dom Joly will do. But there's nothing significant in the results of that. Half an hour after Dom Joly, you'll have forgotten it, unless there's a particularly good bit to tell your friends the next day - you certainly won't think about it any deeper. Brass Eye sets out to make you think about it.
An even better program was one done by a leading stand-up comedian (Lee Evans, IIRC), which involved exposing various major social political institutions. For instance, reporters won't actually ask politicians hard questions at a press conference, bcos then they won't get invited to the next press conference. When this guy got up at a press conference and actually asked the hard questions, there was a look of horror and embarrassment from all the reporters, like the reaction to someone telling a fart joke loudly in a posh restaurant. Like "how dare he, doesn't he know what the rules are here?"
These may be funny in that they show up leading figures, but the real issues underlying them are not at all amusing.
Grab.
Shouldn't that be Paedant?
Find funky gifts
She masturbated to it. The point is that on camera she has to put up a big show of not watching.
It's like on IRC or AOL when you say you are putting someone on ignore by announcing that. Everyone knows damn well you did no such thing because you just have to know what's going on but at the same time you have to make believe you really did...even when the person makes a statements and you can totally think of the perfect zinger so you end up logging in as a second person and then repeating the comment with a joking laugh so you can feign surprise and deliver the zinger and thus make up for all those times the person outspoke you and thus caused you to put the idiot on ignore in the first place
oh bloody 'ell you've gone and ignore me now.
We could also touch on the porn side of the issue. Should looking at pornographic (that is images depicting overtly sexual situations, not just nudes) pictures of under-age models be illegal?
Definitions of "under age" are highly variable though. Would you mean "under age" where the picture was taken, where the viewer is now, where the picture is now, wheer the subject is now, etc, etc.
What if they are simply fictional illistrations? Computer models? Extremely realistic computer models? Computer generated movies.
Stautes tend to make these equally illegal, but their are loopholes. e.g. Star Trek Voyager isn't "child pornography" even with a character aged between 2 and 5 nor is the movie "The Fly II" even with a lead character aged 5. Being a big corporate probably helps though.
The tabloid press in the UK has, for the past few years, been using paedophiles as the new bogey men, and at one point there seemed to be almost a revulsion race to see which paper could revile them the most. One of them ("The News of the World") came up with the most disturbing: they would print photographs and addresses of known paedophiles. This seems reasonable, and it was defended by the NoW as such, but it lead directly the the aforementioned riots and, as the article says, witchhunts. This was entirely predictable.
The problem with the violence and the witchhunts is that things got out of hand, as they do when a mob tries to think. In one town they forced out a paediatrician by daubing "Paedo out" slogans on her house (see this). In other locations the naming of people a "Paedos" was enough to get them beaten up - there was a fair bit of score settling going on at the time - here is the BBC about Paulsgrove, the main estate where such things were happening.
There was also a bit of feedback going between the sections of press, hand wringing about the violence whilst implicitly condoning it - after all no one could be for paedophilia. So all was good in the world of the press - circulations were up, they were protecting children from evil, and they were secure in the knowledge that nobody could successfully attack them because that would mean that they were for paedophilia, and could instantly be slurred.
Enter Brass Eye. The press were livid, and instantly attacked. In fact, they attacked before the program went out, and the program was delayed for two weeks whilst the legalities were sorted out - Mr Collins was upset for some reason. The reaction to the show was amazing: every news bulletin, every newspaper, every channel reported it. And reported it negatively at first.
Then the press belated realised that a large section of the public were just not buying the story - see this for a fairly typical cross-section.
Certainly no one I know who has seen it thought it in anyway glorified paedophila. No one was particularly offended by it either. It wasn't about paedophilia - it was about media manipulation. It is vastly amusing to see the very same things that were so effectively satirised in the show wheeled out to attack it. This includes government ministers saying "I haven't seen the show but..." (I will except David Blunkett, the Home Secretary from this as he is blind).
...ummm that I believe is the point.
Have a look at this picture - it pretty much sums it up.
The internet ISN'T taking care of this problem by itself. And people are making money off of the rape of children. This is wrong. and if you think this is acceptable (i don't care what Ginsburg did) then YOU are wrong.
this isn't a "but what about the CHILDREN" sort of thing. We don't let children drive because given the time of development for the human mind, it's a crapshoot risk. we don't allow children to make sexual decisions with adults for the same reason. Yes, in the roman period, women and men were often married in their teens. guess what, this isn't the roman period. deal.
go to andrew vachss site for more info about predatory pedophiles.
Please prove you exist without resorting to a priori premises.
My opposition to pedophilia rests on one a priori assumption, which is fairly fundamental to my values: that imposing your will on others carries a high potential for evil. Another relevant assumption I make is that children, in general have underdeveloped choice-making capacity. This is not an a priori assumption, though proving that rhetorically is tedious and demanding. I would beg your indulgance on the point. (In fact, I will ignore you if you challenge me on it, as I have real work to do today. 8)
In the case of pedophilia, the potential evil attendant upon forcing one's will upon a person with limited capacity for choice is the disruption of normal human development caused by the untimly exposure to a powerful human drive that even adults have a hard time coping with psychologically. The potential for damage increases the younger the victim, and the closer the relation of the perpetrator.
In philosophical terms, the above argument has lots of holes. In common-sense terms, I believe it is nearly bullet-proof.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Pedophiles do not make for a funny subject, neither does the ignorance of elected officials when it comes to technology, or any other topic, for that matter. Sure, we all get a chuckle from hearing how dumb people can be, but these elected officials are there to make laws, and if they're clueless about certain facts, we end up with stuff like the DMCA.
I'm off to put my troll-mod suit on.
This is overlooked by almost everyone.
The point of the show, and of many of Morris' other shows, is that is an attack on self serving publicity hungry semi-celebritys. For example - Phil Collins in a "Nonce Sense" T-shirt (Nonce being an English slang word for paedophile) going to schools, and blindly repeating absolute gibberish fed to him by Morris.
Most people will say that Phil was doing a good thing, by trying to educate children. I side with Morris, that it was a self-publicising act on his behalf, and that if he had any real interest in protecting children he would have easily spotted it as a spoof. As Eammon Holmes (UK daytime TV presenter) did.
Other sections included a news report on how children were being crammed into football stadiums to "Keep them safe". How far is this from the truth? Media hysteria makes parents (Like myself) believe that it is impossible to allow children safely out at night, whereas attacks on children are at a relatively constant rate (Can't link to a newspaper - sorry).
Chris Morris has attacked not children with this show, but he has attacked the misleading media, and attention craving celebrities. For this he has been denounced, his actions upset the status quo - by showing celebrities as fools, by lambasting the newspapers who terrify us with exaggerations of how unsafe we are.
He is even described in the UK media as "Elitist" , a bludgeoning attempt to ensure people will not try to understand his comedy, for fear that they will be associated with such a negative connotation.
The UK viewing figures for this programme were 2 million at the start, 1 million at the end. Yet everyone cannot wait to tell each-other "How disgusting it was", in a ferocious attempt to prove that they too are not paedophiles. As though the very act of laughing at, or even watching the show inspires one to go out and attack children.
Mainstream media hates this man for exposing them as liars and fools.
That just makes me like him more ;-]
I don't think I'm very happy. I always fall asleep to the sound of my own screams.
Pedophilia on te other hand is a taboo; today's taboo. Taboo subjects are subjects "not legitimate for discussion". "Taboo" implies a certain amount of irrationality. This should worry free thinking people. Past taboos have included non-Catholic religion, madness, witchcraft, sexuality, nudity, homosexuality (male and female), the earth turning around the sun, women having the same number of teeth as men, and so on.
Note that some of these "past taboos" are still very much current. Also the paedophilia definitly overlaps with sexuality in terms of things such as ages of consent. Especially in the "first world" where people now routinely reach biological maturity whilst they are legally considered "childern".
When a subject is taboo, it is legitimate to investigate it. I would say, it is crucial. It is how progress in society is made.
Yes, sometimes that means investigating distasteful subjects. But the alternative is worse: a society run on the basis of fear, superstition, and unstated interests. That's not where I want to live.
Roving bands of viglantee thugs certainly dosn't help society.
I think the points made in that thread (about code red) also apply here...
This TV program was headline news for like 3 days. Haven't they got something better to report?
Nonetheless, the program was as funny as f*ck. I am glad that alot of the Americans enjoyed it. This suprised me, as I have had embarrising incidents using sarcasm/satire with americans.....
You just made the assumption that such sexual activity is actually damage. What about parents who force shots on their kids? How traumatic is that yet they are told to be good little boys and girls and endure it. Or force them to eat their vegetables and punish them when they don't?
:)
Or even chopping bits of babies' genitals. Which happens very often in the USA...
There's that Star Trek TNG episode where everyone runs around in skimpy outfits and it happy and carefree. The underlying message, though the closest they could come to saying it was have a bunch of teenage girls half naked, was that giving pleasure was considered a noble deed in their society. So women went out of their way to pleasure the male Federation officers and vice versa.
A problem with popular sci-fi (IMHO) is that all too often supposed "aliens" act far too much like contempoary American humans... Certainly in terms of interpersonal relationships. Such that situations like this are very noticable.
If you were to raise a child alone on a desert island and taught that child to fulfill your every sexual desire where would the child acquire any sense of wrong or damage? Wouldn't it seem a natural and pleasurable action? The giving and receiving of pleasure?
In the US and UK right now sex purely for exchange and sharing of pleasure would probably be considered highly abnormal anyway
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It's not that I would rather have my kid killed than raped. It's the thought that the rape of my kid will inflict generations of people--my kid's wife, their kids, and perhaps their kids' kids. That's the case with sex crimes. They suck. Particularly when they're done to the young.
And, in case you're wondering, I have been the victim of a sex crime, when I was 12. It sucks. It has taken years to be functional in relationships (I'm 30 now). And I know there are ways that I will be messed up for life. And I'm one of the lucky ones. My case was a fairly mild one, as far as sex crimes are concerned. On top of that, I have a wonderful, loving family, and I was very emotionally strong and mature when the event happened.
The cynical among us would tell me, "then why don't you kill yourself". Well, that would be adding one bad thing to another. It wouldn't make it right. I can say that I think the punishment for this crime should be at least as great--no, in fact, greater--than the punishment for murder. Of course, I also don't believe in the death penalty. But, that's neither here nor there.
I stand by my original statement. As far as crimes go, sex crimes are more reprehensible, IMHO, than murder.
--Be human.
What's "wrong" with someone raping, murdering or abusing someone else? Who says that shouldn't be the order of things?
Something being "wrong" probably should not prevent it being part of the plot of a novel or movie.
- It is very much a taboo. Even a show about it raises moral objections from the masses. A murderer gets complimented in jail; a pedophile gets murdered. My simple reply (in which btw I said I though pedophilia was distasteful!) elicited a "you sick fuck child rapist" response. Need I say more?
- There is a LOT to discuss. Is it indeed harmful? To whom? Can we minimise its incidenmce? Can we minimise its harm? Why are some people pedophiles? HOw can we minimise any harm caused? How should released pedophiles return to society? What therapies work best? Is the Internet bad for allwoing free communication? Should the Internet be banned becuase it contains child sex pictures? Is the harm partly or wholly culturally caused? I could go on for a while - and all these questions are taboo, as they generally just receive reactions like that one response to my post I saw that just saud "you sick fuck child rapist". That was a typical reponse not to a pedophile but to someone merely responding to a post ABOUT the subject! And that is what we should fix, and that is what the show no doubt hopes to achieve.
Michael---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
The general view (and law) is that a person under the legal age _cannot_ consent.
The basic problem here is that legal ages vary so wildly that it makes more sense to suppose that the whole thing is based of circular reasoning. Rather than an age being derived from any kind of objective study.
I think most societies are in broad agreement that sexual contact between adults and children is hurtful to both parties at best and can leave long-lasting scars on all parties involved.
But is the issue age or "power". Currently the law does not distinguish between a teacher or babysitter (who may themselves be a "child" taking advantage of the person they are entrusted with and someone meeting a young person at a party/bar/club/etc.
I just have to take issue with one of your statements. "But pedophilia is by no means worse than murder." I cannot disagree with this more.
With murder, the act is over and done with. The damage is done, and no more damage is incurred. With pedophilia, the crime continues to inflict pain and damage, often for generations. Victims of pedophilia (or, for that matter, just about all sex crimes) are significantly more likely to have disfunctional sex lives and relationships for the remainder of their lives. This means that not only does the victim get punished, but that victim's lovers, and children, and so on. It is a pain that continues to inflict long after the initial damage is done.
That said, I applaud the work of the satirist. There is a level of witch hunts going on for all sorts of crimes, including pedophilia, rape, and drugs. All that it takes in today's world to absolutely ruin a person's life is to accuse that person of one of these crimes.
--Be human.
...whose military practices were so notoriously cruel that they garnered disaproval even among the Roman Senate. I found a good, if short, history of the Gaulish conquest here: http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar04.html
Sure, it is a horrible subject: grown people should nothave sex with children. But pedophilia is by no means worse than murder. Yet murder is a legitimate subject for satire, comedy, thrillers, whodunnits: a whole industry has sprung up around it. Ask P.D. James, or read about Kinsey Millhone.
Pedophilia on te other hand is a taboo; today's taboo. Taboo subjects are subjects "not legitimate for discussion". "Taboo" implies a certain amount of irrationality. This should worry free thinking people. Past taboos have included non-Catholic religion, madness, witchcraft, sexuality, nudity, homosexuality (male and female), the earth turning around the sun, women having the same number of teeth as men, and so on.
When a subject is taboo, it is legitimate to investigate it. I would say, it is crucial. It is how progress in society is made.
Yes, sometimes that means investigating distasteful subjects. But the alternative is worse: a society run on the basis of fear, superstition, and unstated interests. That's not where I want to live.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
I think the idea behind this show is great. The specific issue (in this case, pedophilia) is really rather unimportant. I'd love to see a similar show done in the US, outing celebrities and politicians on both sides of an issue who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when discussing Intellectual Property and Copyright Law, environmental issues like global warming, internet law, energy concerns, and the like. In fact, I have a fledgeling site running Slash called Simon Jester where I'm trying to do just that... on a smaller scale and in a much less sensational manner. www.simonjester.com
woof!
Most of them do look suspiciously like adults.. umm ooops, i mean, i would think they do... not like i look at child pr0n.. oh dear i'll shut up now.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
here
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I honestly can't tell. Or is is 'more of the same', ie a spoof of these people. Is Chris Morris actually behind it?
The 'Open Letter to Channel 4' is fucking hilarious, it had me pissing myself.
Humour Is Subjective (i.e., do not tell other people what constitutes a funny subject)
Take an example: If I were to make a joke regarding Rome annihilating Gaul, would you respond in disgust and anger? Probably not. If I were to make a joke about the Holocaust, would you, then? Probably, yes, indeed. Why? Because you feel more of a close personal attachment to the event of the Holocaust than to the even of the conquering of Gaul. They're both tragic genocides on a similar scale. One is not greater than the other, but we have more personal, emotional interest in tip-toeing around the issue of the Holocaust. That doesn't make it rational in any way shape or form, however.
neither does the ignorance of elected officials when it comes to technology, or any other topic, for that matter. Sure, we all get a chuckle from hearing how dumb people can be, but these elected officials are there to make laws, and if they're clueless about certain facts, we end up with stuff like the DMCA.
So because legislation is a "serious issue", it should not be joked about? Are you saying that any joke that involves circumstances that are less than beneficial should not be made? Making fun of our misfortunes is nothing if not the basis for comedy itself. Generally, I find that people who refuse to view the world with any sense of humour become extremely cynical.
No, _you're_ wrong. The internet isn't some sort of evil robot that grabs children and puts them in porno films. Its just a place to view information that has already been acquired. When you solve a problem you don't attack it at the widest point. you attack it at a bottle-neck. The internet is the widest point where a large number of people view a relatively small number of things. If you want to get rid of child pornography, stop the _small_ number of people that create it not the _large_ number of people that host and view it.
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
Who's follies are he ridiculing. Collins and Blackwood. That might fit a dictionary definition, but it certainly isn't hard hitting.
That may well be the point and its certainly the point of good satire, but Morris isn't even close. If he had induced the politicians to say the dumbass things they've said about his show as part of his programme, it might have been good satirical fare.All Morris shows is that minor celebs will do anything for exposure. Stop the fucking presses.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The climate in the UK is very hostile towards men. In fact, British Airways has an official policy of not seating young children next to men when children fly alone. This is discrimination and stereotyping of men - could you imagine if blacks were treated this way?
2 30 206.shtml
I know this is offtopic, but Slashdot has a brother web site (based on Slash) that covers news on men's rights issues:
http://www.mensactivism.org
They deal with the decline of men's civil liberties with regard to sex crimes, and many other topics.
An Anony Mouse
PS - the BritAir source can be found at:
http://www.mensactivism.org/articles/01/03/17/0
Want to see some good kiddie porn? Check out the makeup/lighting/clothing/hairstyles of young girls in television commercials. How about Britanny Spears?
If people woke up to the fact that there are sexual images of children, all around them, maybe I would take this whole 'save the children' thing a little more seriously.
It is ok for the RIAA to parade a 'pre-teen-appearing' Britanny Spears in the media to sell product? It is okay for them to do it to sell clothing or shampoo?
Marketing and Advertising uses not so-subtle techniques like these with abandon, just because it is not seedy and badly-lite dosnt mean it is acceptable.... or does it?????
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Save questioning what, exactly, makes paedophilia tantamount to child abuse? Any scars left on the child are solely a product of the society's reaction to such an affair, disregarding rape. A newborn child is a blank slate by default, everything is imprinted.
(Admittedly, I have no kids. I also do not lust after children or possess any religious beliefs. I consider myself rather objective on the entire issue.)
Also, I note the use of the word "morals" in your post. Morals are irrelevant. They are naught but societal imprinting.
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
>1.Sexually explicit images of children, which were even classified on-air as being "obscene" by a former head of the Obscene >Publications Branch, were shown to the >unsuspecting viewing public. Broadcasting this foul artwork must surely have provided >cheap titillation to any perverts watching the programme.
The FORMER head was giving snap judgements. This section was showing how the people who decide what's obscene simply pull arbitrary judgements from thin air (for instance, a barbie doll with a penis attached to it isn't unacceptable, a womens naked body with a childs head grafted on isn't unacceptable, but a barbie doll with a penis attached and a childs head is)
>* Mockery was made of last summer's anti-paedopile protests by concerned mothers. It is simply unacceptable to criticise the >genuine fears of honest law-abiding citizens in this >manner.
These protests were absolutely disgusting. They were made by ill-informed people (banners used often had peadophile spelt incorrectly), their fears were totally illegitimate, and the hysteria came to such heights that a peadiatritcian was chased from her home my a mob. It is perfectly acceptable to mock peoples fears if they are ill advised fears that harmed innocent people. (We do not still respect the fears of the German people during krystallnacht for instance)
>* The sickening music of the notorious American paedophile rap musician "JLb-8" was openly promoted on this programme.
Is this letter a joke? (If so I shall continue writing as I'm rather enjoying this). Anyhow, JLb-8 is entirely ficticious, and this section of the programme satirised both the tabloid media's sensationalist views of rappers, and how young, middle class children buy music by people like eminem, despite it not being to do with anything they have, or will ever, experience.
>Numerous celebrities, including members of parliament, newscasters and a musician were ridiculed by their unsuspecting >involvement with this programme.
Celebrities thrust themselves into the public eye deliberatly, and as such are liable to be ridiculed, if they wanted to avoid such ridicule, they could have done the tiniest bit of reaserch into what they were saying. This section also made a valid point; that celebrities will endorse anything, so we cannot trust them alone to 'sell' a charity.
> Worst of all, real children appeared in this programme. It is clearly wrong to expose them to this sinister subject matter at such a >tender age. The experiences of this programme may permanently damage these poor infants.
This is a disgusting attitude in my opinion. Surely we should expose children in order to educate them about peadophilla, sex and other taboo subjects, rather than keep them in the dark (to maintain the victorian notion of childhood innocence). Knowledge of peadophillia means the child is more likely to report this crime in the unlikely event that they expereince it.
Futhermore this 'crusade for innocence' has resulted in Britain having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in europe, as when this innocent child becomes a teenager they will be pressured to have sex, and because they know so little about it (contraception, and how to say 'no') they do it, and ruin their lives by becoming pregnant. This is why the final thing in the programme is a young teenager saying she will lose her virginity 'tomorrow, maybe'.
That's all I can think of right now, and this as been written pretty hastily so don't be suprised if there are copious spelling mistakes
P.S. I'm pretty sure that this 'open letter' was one big joke.
Rape is assault. The victim lives (and in countries where the culture is NOT as hopelessly sexually fucked up as in Amerika and Gross Britain) eventually recovers, as from any other brutal assault
However it is not politically correct to consider so, indeed attempting to do so tends to be regarded as "trivialising it".Morons who equate rape with murder trivialize both, and are part of the problem that causes rape victims to be set apart culturally. Do you give a shit about rape victims? Then stop making them feel like their life is over. Stop insisting that they've been irreparably harmed.
Not all of these people are "morons", some of them appear to be very smart in milking the whole issue for their own (typically sexist) political kudos.
How do you separate the Greek men from the boys?
With a crowbar.
And truthfully, most poeple really don't care about "saving the children", it's just a cause to talk about.
But it's one which works well...
If we really cared about our children we'd stop the child on child abuse that's rampant in our schools, or hell, even bother to install seat belts in the school buses that take our children to school.
Also build the bus so that it won't go anywhere unless all passengers are belted in. Maybe also prevent parents from acting as a taxi service to school children, creating dangeous congestion and air pollution in an area full of pedestrians.
She read about it. How's that for detailed and useful knowledge of a topic you will be deciding on?
"Rape can be funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd."
From there he did a radio show which became the BBC show The Day Today, which offered surreal news stories combined with the best parody of news reportage as stands in the Western world I've ever seen. His vaguely threatening goodnight, the use of insane graphics and pounding music... But then he got Brass Eye.
In the UK, humor and sex aren't as big a deal as violence, and you'd be amazed at what's shown on television here compared to the US. Before Brass Eye was even aired it became a news story, as several celebrities and politicians complained to the commisioning network, Channel 4, that he had gone too far.
During the height of Ecstacy hysteria in the UK, he had gotten politicans and celebrities to denounce the evils of a dangerous new drug ruining our children, called CAKE. As in, "We must ban cake." He did it so brilliantly that one of the Members of Parliament who he recorded denouncing cake ("which affects the part of the brain known as Shatner's Bassoon, which affects perception of time - cake is a made up drug, made up of chemicals") asked questions about it in Parliament. The then head of Channel 4 tried to get Morris to tone down the show's vitriol and abuse of celebrities. In the Science on Trial episode he had several UK celebrities talking about the dangers of "heavy electricity" which was killing people in the Far East. So Morris put a subliminal message in the final episode, calling his boss a cunt, which led to statements that he would never work for Channel 4 again. He returned to radio.
Until this year, when changes at Channel 4 led to a rebroadcast of the series and the commisioning of the new one off special on pedophilia. He had a famous London radio DJ stating that pedophiles had more genes in common with crabs than you or I, and there's no evidence for it, but it's a scientific fact! It went on. The result was instant, knee jerk tabloid hysteria, I think best represented in this picture. What you should know is that earlier this year, thanks to a name and shame campaign a major UK tabloid did on paedophiles, a paedatrician was attacked by an angry mob and had her car firebombed. A few days after airing of the programme, several politicans got in on the act, admitting they hadn't seen the show. One of them is even blind!
But thankfully the British public have shown their sense of good humor and more calls of support were received on Channel 4's complaints line then actual complaints, so the entire issue is now being hushed up.
I think what really grates about Morris is that he deigned to show that you cannot trust any of the mainstream media you partake of, that celebrity endorsements count for nothing. My favorite moment on the paedophilia special was a presenter for the BBC's technology show stating that internet padeophiles can use penis shaped sound waves to molest children. I think it's far more frightening to the public to know that those people that put a comforting, sickly gloss on the world as it is today are patently full of shit. The result of Morris' work may be greater than any piece of culture I've had all year, because it's made me question everything. I can no longer watch the news without laughing and being shocked by the idiocy and dramatics of it all. For that he deserves to be knighted.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
I was actually a pretty sexually active child at around age 6, with my own peers. Children are sexually active, it's just not a subject that's ever brought up.
Now I don't think a child/adult relationship would ever be healthly. There's too much a power/mental gap for such a relationship to ever be anything other than coercive. But the subject is way blown out of porportion in today's media.
And truthfully, most poeple really don't care about "saving the children", it's just a cause to talk about. If we really cared about our children we'd stop the child on child abuse that's rampant in our schools, or hell, even bother to install seat belts in the school buses that take our children to school.
It's a hostile world for children, but not because of Evil Pedophiles lurking behind every corner.
Adequacy.org ran the article Open Letter to Channel 4: Brass Eye Was Unacceptable , denouncing Channel4 and BrassEye for these escapades.
If you want a good summary of the opposition, then I'd suggest reading it. It's a good read in any event.
I'm not sure that there's as much of a taboo against discussing pedophilia as much as there is a taboo against participating in it. I think most societies are in broad agreement that sexual contact between adults and children is hurtful to both parties at best and can leave long-lasting scars on all parties involved. At worst, its an example of predatory behavior by adults against weaker, inexperienced and immature children.
So when you say there's a taboo against discussing pedophilia, I think most people would respond "What's there to discuss?" I doubt there's any room at all for change in attitudes without endorsing what is tanatamount to child abuse.
I think the only space for any exploration is "When does mature sexuality begin?" and there's probably sincere people who think that in the special, unique contexts an adult-sexually mature teen relationship is possible. But beyond that sphere, there's little moral or practical room for movement on the issue of pedophilia, which is why people get cranky when you talk about it.
Maybe you should try to think differently. I mean, make an effort. Sure,. Try to understand foreign cultures. It opens your mind.
To be fair, there is a lot of stuff in the Brass Eyes that really requires you to be British, or live there, to get. Trust me, many of the jokes are even funnier when you recognise the strange intonation on the voices during the narration. A simple "Yes", delivered by Morris shoots right over the head of non-Brits... whereas most Brits hear it as a near-perfect piss-take of Jeremy Paxman and his interviewing style.
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
Later on, when you realize it's true, it makes you cry.
The problem with elected officials is that people tend to put them on a pedestal. They assume that all the words coming out of that official's mouth are blessed by God and unarguably true. Showing the people, dramatically and unarguably, that this is false is an absolute necessity. If the official is such a plonker that he must be reminded to breathe upon occasion, calling peoples' attention to that fact is also a good thing. Maybe then he won't remain an elected official for much longer.
Elected officials can not be expected to be experts on everything any more than you can. The fact that they are not the least bit informed about something that touches as many of their constituents as the internet does should be worrying a lot of people. I also expect my elected officials to get help from experts when they are going into territory with which they are completely unfamiliar. You'd think there'd be some little alarm bells in their head going "I know nothing on this topic; maybe I'd better ask someone before I go shooting my mouth off..."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, if you were british, you would know that it should be, "I wish I were british." It's subjunctive. As in abutebaris modo subjunctivo.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
The DivX downloads dies a few hours ago.
The site has now been updated... now displays 'Closed for legal reasons', with a BBC test page...
Shame... Suppose I'll just have to borrow a VHS copy from a mate at work...
Ye gods, anytime someone claims to do something "For the children", you know we're in trouble.
Look, a child-worshipping culture is just as bad as one that worships nobility. You teach children, you educate children, you do not sacrifice freedom or liberty for children.
An exemplary quote. In other words, Mr. Rapson, in a fit of "for the children", read something he did not understand or know anything about. The fact that he read it, no questions, based entirely on the claim that it was "for the children" ought to prove the satirist's case.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I was surprised that the original poster missed that element of the picture -- I thought that the comparison of a 15 year old's breasts and the outrage over Morris' "sick" show was the whole point!
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
This guy had concerned and serious public spokesmen warning the public solemnly about:
This is the funniest thing I've heard of for _decades_. When I read the few details about the 'Cake' show in another thread, my brain sort of went 'gleep!' and shorted out. There's a difference between stupid and unbearably, gloriously loony- and not even the Goons had _real_ _people_ mouthing this sort of thing in all earnestness.
Oh, how wrong you are :) it's a terrible shame Peter Sellers didn't live to see this :)
The people that run the site have emphatically said that the videos and the site being down has NOTHING to do with "The Slashdot Effect". It is for legal reasons which they have hinted that they cannot explain without getting into deeper trouble. So far, 90% of the assumptions are that Channel 4 is probably pretty pissed that everyone is seeing the show on the web instead of watching their reruns, which is understandable, except for the fact that msot of the people watching it on the web are Americans that have no chance of seeing it in a non-pirated/copied manner.
When the cookdandbombd .avi mirrors were first linked to from the Plastic forums, they were immediately unavailable due to high demand. I was able to download the first avi from mirror4 and the second avi from mirror5 (only mirrors 1-3 had been linked to from the main page), but most Plastic readers probably didn't think of that. Now, cookdandbombd has stopped distributing the avis, and their front page says "closed for legal reasons" (copyright?).
What if, instead of hosting the avis themselves, they had put the avis on freenet and given out the key on their web site? That would have taken care of the Plastic effect (which, btw, is an order of magnitude weaker than the Slashdot effect) and also any legal problems arising from distributing the copyrighted show.
The shareholder is always right.
Paedophilla is one of those things people go into hysteria about without understanding it. Paedophiles are people (usually male, age 15 or older) who are attracted soly, or almost soly, to pre-pubescencants (not 'children'). Much of this internet-paedophilla hype is bogas because the under-14s simply don't chat on the internet unattended.
I am unable to go into the prefession (speech-therapy) that I wanted because people in this country have an attitude that if any male shows any disire to work with children (teaching or otherwise), then they must be a *paedophile*. Teachers are banned from hugging children (even if they are hurt) because it could be 'paedophilic behaviour", men receive dirty looks if they go anywhere near a swimming-pool with children in it, 3 & 4 year olds are given instructions at kindergarten about how to beware of paedophilic men, fathers are sometimes afraid to hug their own children in public, men are afraid to help out at school & school events, 17 year old boys who make love to their 15 year old girlfriends are charged with 'rape' (for being 'paedophiles'), hysterical news reports go on TV about 'paedophiles' molesting 15 year olds, & so on & so on.
The hysteria that surrounds paedophilla does infinately more harm to society than actual paedophilla does. All the means of protection society uses are doing more harm than good, and don't work anyhow. Paedophiles are actually quite rare, most perverted idiots who molest children aren't even paedophiles!
Out of curiosity, why do you assume that any sex with a person under the legal age is going to be non-consenting?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Remember, PLEASE share them back out once you get them! I've had 73 ppl download these from me already and there's only like 3 ppl on this section of gnet sharing this. Thanks.
-Jade E.
You just made the assumption that such sexual activity is actually damage.
No, I made no such blanket assumption. I assumed that imposing your will on someone without their consent has the potential for damage, and that children, in general, have a limited capacity to make choices. An unspoken assumption is that the younger the child, the less capacity for consent, the greater the potential damage.
It's my experience that people tend to hold hysterical and extreme views on human sexuality. Issues surrounding sex also seem to elicit a great deal of black and white thinking. I deliberately couched my comments in non-absolute terms, yet several responders read them that way anyway.
What about parents who force shots on their kids? How traumatic is that yet they are told to be good little boys and girls and endure it. Or force them to eat their vegetables and punish them when they don't?
Potential for evil. Next?
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Out of curiosity, why do you assume that any sex with a person under the legal age is going to be non-consenting?
I made no such blanket assumption. I asserted, without proving it, that children have a limited capacity to choose. This means that I beleive they in general have a limited capacity for consent, in the manner that adults may consent.
There will always be particular cases that contradict general rules like this. Nonetheless I feel that my generalization stands up.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
What people simply don't realize is that the exploitation of little kids is all around us. People are just too nieve to realize it. I saw a show on HBO (I believe) 3-4 months back about this little girl that professionally starred in beauty pagents. Her mother grilled her constantly over walking right, talking right, smiling right, sticking out her chest ("strut it like you'll have it in 10 years"), her numerous dance routines and memorized lines, etc... The demand put on that little girl was extreme. I believe the mother home schooled her as well so they could spend more time in training. The mother would pay professional makeup artists to literally make this girl look like a little Barbie Doll. They made this little girl (eight years old I think) look like a miniature whore. It was sickening. The girl made a mistake on stage during a speaking part and started bawling when she got off stage. The mother ripped her for messing up her lines and now her makeup. It was disguisting. The mother was exploting the little girl. Hell I heard Shirley Temple was viewed as crude by many because of her short dresses and scenes with black men (tap dancing and what not). This shit is nothing more than a witchhunt and the media is doing nothing more than fueling the fire. School shootings are the same way. The media make it out to be a disease that is spreading across the nation and getting wirse every day. That's total bullshit. The number of violent incidents on school campus is dropping every year. It's less than half what it was in in the late 70's. The media will never tell you that. Blood and guts sell. Controversy sells. Early in my mother's teaching career she worked at a school in southern Kansas. A girl (known as a slut to everyone) accused the woodshop teacher of something (touching, sexual assault, I don't remember). She had no proof he did it. He had know that he didn't. Her story kept changing every time she was questioned. Never the less he was suspended. There was a big public outcry against him. Blah blah blah. You've heard it all before. Finally he left and went elsewhere. Shortly after that the girl confessed that she made it up because he gave her a bad grade in his class. It didn't matter. If you go to that town today and bring up his name with a parent around the age of say 55 now they'll probably remember his name and go on and on about his sexual misconduct and shit like that. The truth came out. No one listened. He was still run off. Hmm, I'm starting to rant now. Well, let me close with something I've long since believed. The media should be held accountable for everything they speak or write. If they accuse a teacher of sexual misconduct, they should be held legally accountable if that person is found to be innocent. Now that doesn't mean I don't think they can't print something that's not proven to be true. Say for example someone is hauled into court on sexual charges. State that. Don't print something weeks before on how some kid said person X did something to me. Kids say things. Wait until there is an actual fact. Then print it. Someone being hauled into court is a fact. It's not a fact that they did something but it is a fact that there is enough reason to let a jury or judge decide. Also, if that story is put on the front page with a 72 point headline, the retraction should be just as big and on the front page. It shouldn't be hidden back under the Classifides. It should be given just as much importance as the original story was given. Well, enough of my ramblings. We now return you to your regularly scheduled force-fed media hype.
- "Children have an underdeveloped choice-making capacity"
- Pedophilia is wrong
- Ergo: Children who choose pedophilia are wrong
That's not what I said. I said that forcing your will on someone has the potential for evil. Not all instances of force are evil in my opinion. In the case of pedophilia, there is a clinical history of psychological trauma in children "forced" (note the quotes) to have sex with adults. Is it unavoidable that such damage should occur in every instance of adult/child sexual intercourse? Of course not. However, it happens often enough so that it has to be a matter of serious concern. Unfortunately, people tend toward hysteria on this and other topics. Extreme measures such as outlawing images that appear to depict adult/child sexual activity get made into law in this country. Pedophilia is held up as the main reason for all sorts of bad proposals to control this or that information source. But don't react by assuming that whatever is being held up as the red herring du jour must actually be good for you! (It may be. But don't assume.)"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Your core a priori assumption, then, can be shortened to 'Pedophilia is wrong because it disrupts normal human development', an assumption which relies on a deeper assumption, that there is a 'normal human development'. Your closing phrase is itself another assumption, one which resets on the notion of a family, a pervasive notion in the western world.
;-) to my efforts to come up with practical responses to real world problems. I believe there is such a thing as "normal human development," though it may vary from culture to culture. I'm willing to entertain the idea that a culture that is supportive of pedophilia (let's say between individuals above the normative age of consent and minors younger than 10 or so, culturally adjusted) may produce normatively healthy adults who have participated as children. It's a tad theoretical, however, since we don't live in such a culture. There are norms that exclude pedophilia for a variety of reasons, and children are damaged (in culturally normalized ways, if you insist) by the practice. I therefore call on my culturally inculcated, arbitrary value system, which says "damaging (in culturally normalized fashion) children is evil." For evil substitute whatever vague, culturally overloaded, arbitrary pejorative synonym for "bad" you choose.
Incisive analysis. I'd shorten core assumption to "Pedophilia is wrong in those cases where it does damage to the child."
Yup, "damage" is a term freighted with a ton of eurocentric baggage.. However, I'm not really interested in deconstructing it to the point of meaninglessness. I find such exercises damaging
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Call me a hardcore liberal, but I support every word you said, and I find it rather sad that you were modded down to 0.
I just happen to support people's rights to do anything they want when people aren't being harmed. I must be a sick, sick person, right?
-= rei =-
*Kid Rock runs for Senate* Democrats: We must run Kid Scissors.