Misty Media Sex Blog

September 5th 2005, 10:42 Jeff Sela

The UK government has announced plans to ban certain types of pornography after the family of Jane Longhurst, who was murdered by a psychopath who was apparently obsessed with violent sexual images, presented a petition to the home secretary.

English and Scottish MPs, as well as the House of Lords, seem keen to take action, but a poll run by the BBC and comments from the public would seem to indicate that many people are less than enthusiastic about the government getting involved.

Home Office minister Paul Goggins lead the charge:

This is material which is extremely offensive to the vast majority of people, and it should have no place in our society. The fact that it is available over the Internet should in no way legitimise it. These forms of violent and abusive pornography go far beyond what we allow to be shown in films or even sold in licensed sex shops in the U.K., so they should not be available online either.

As the law stands, it's illegal to publish material in the UK that would be likely to “deprave and corrupt” those who saw it. That rather vague wording has allowed the law to evolve over the years since the current version of the Obscene Publications Act was introduced in 1959. Where once a work of literature that used rude words would have been considered obscene, it's now seen as OK for films to have hardcore sex in, providing they're only sold in licenced sex shops. Currently the law only specifically criminalizes indecent pictures of children, and certain types of blasphemy and material that might incite racial hatred.

What with this new proposal, and the imminent law against inciting religious hatred, the government seems to be picking off whichever corners of free speech it can get away with banning. According to the Home Office consultation paper (PDF)::

The material under consideration does not depict consensual sexual activity, nor even the milder forms of bondage and humiliation which are common place in pornographic material. It depicts suffering, pain, torture and degradation of a kind which we believe most people would find abhorrent. The underlying premise of this document is that this material should have no place in our society.

There's a large gap between what they call “milder forms of bondage and humiliation” and actual violence. This law, if the government goes ahead with it, could well end up banning home-made kinky videos. The sort of things they're trying to ban are already illegal to publish, but criminalizing possession could put people in prison for filming their own perfectly legal sex. By the same token, owning an imported DVD version of a film that has been cut for UK release might fall foul of this law. Is it really such a problem if you bring back a copy of Ichi the Killer from holiday? Certainly some of Japan's Hentai films would be considered violent porn.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this whole situation is that the government's action seems to have come about entirely because of one particularly nasty crime. Carol Sarler summed it up nicely in the Observer:

This is just cheap, gissa-vote populist politics: ‘Bring it into line with laws on child pornography’ is a kneejerk special, but doesn't address the issue of consent: adults can consent to play a part in the images; children, by definition, cannot.

She points out that the depictions of sexual violence in popular literary thrillers, many of them written by women, are often at least as bad as the pictures the government is getting hysterical about. Brendan O'Neill, on Spiked-online, is also concerned about the government's motivations:

The murder of Jane Longhurst is mentioned three times in the document—every time a reference is made to ‘increasing public concern’, in fact. It would be more accurate to describe this consultation as a kneejerk response to a horrible, isolated murder than a consideration of the public's concern about violent porn. The authorities are proposing new legislation in response to the actions of one demented individual; they have transformed an exceptionally rare incident into a gruesome morality tale about the alleged impact of extreme porn on people's volatile minds, and reserved the role of protector of public safety for themselves.

I would urge anyone concerned about further restrictions on free speech in the already highly censorious United Kingdom, to respond to the Home Office consultation paper before the deadline of Friday 2nd December 2005.

3 Comments

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1. ::: Jessica, February 28th 2007, 20:25:

   you people suck...hentai is great but what can i really expect from the same government that wants to ban tag in school yards as it's apparently too violent

2. ::: Steven M. Dorif, March 8th 2007, 14:14:

   Just to be clear, the images to be banned are NOT already illegal to publish in the UK.

   The obscene publications act requires each image or descrete collection of images to be declared obscene by a jury.

   This may seem a technical objection, but we know in recent years fewer and fewer juries have been finding material obscene and the defense that material is restricted behind a pay barrier (only those who pay will see it) has been allowed.

   This new law tries to bypass that defense.

3. ::: Jeff Sela, March 8th 2007, 16:06:

   Hi Steven,

   You're right about the OPA, there is no exact definition of what should count as being obscene, so the line shifts over time as opinions change about what should be allowed. Also, certain factors can be taken in to account, such as the context the work appears in. An image which is obscene on a website might not be obscene if it's part of a collection of challenging images in an art gallery.

   I think these are good things, in that they allow someone charged with publishing obscene material the chance to justify what they were doing. That's an important safeguard to have if we're to prevent judges locking people up for things which are simply controversial or in bad taste.

   The things covered by the extreme porn proposal would almost certainly get a conviction under the OPA (I'm not a lawyer, but that's my impression). Leaving it up to a jury to make the final decision though allows the whole situation to be taken in to account, which will help to avoid unreasonable judgements in tricky cases.

   Finally, the OPA only applies to people who actually publish porn, not simply people who have some. That's good, because we don't want the police looking through the magazines stashed under our beds trying to decide what's too disturbing.