Brief Analysis of Anti-porn responses to CJLB

Posted by skyfox on Tue 19 May 2009 to skyfox's blog

April 29 marked the dead line for submitting written evidence to the Justice Committee for the CJLB. The resulting collection of written evidence has been posted to the Scottish Government website.

Regarding Section 34 (the Extreme Pornography ban), 24 different submissions mentioned or focussed on the Extreme Pornography Section. By my count (and please feel free to double check this one and debate), 5 submissions were against or had strong reservations towards the law, 17 were in favour of the law, and two were mixed reviews (though both are in favour of the spirit of the law).

Of the anti-porn submissions in favour of the law, some clear patterns arose. First, it was plain to see that there had been some intense coordination on that side of the battle in order to get as many submissions in as possible: several were exactly the same.

It appears that Rape Crisis Scotland and the Women's Support Project were instrumental in gathering submissions as 3 submissions reference them directly. The joint nature of the two groups is also apparent in the verbatim statements made by each in regards to the reasons to focus on "cultural harm".

Other submissions that were eeiryly identical included Zero Tolerance and the South Ayrshire Multi-Agency Partnership. Only the distinction of a few pronouns distinguishes the two arguments from eachother. Zero Tolerance is also backed up by a woman who cannot even bear to spell "p-nography".

Similarity of arguments also suggests a unified censorship front. Most common were the following:

• change "is likely to" to "threaten to" (I'm still not clear what the difference is)
• include non-photographic material such as Second Life (how this will be accomplished, I don't know)
• include incest in the list of offences ("Welcome to Daddy's Whore" website, featuring "18 year old daughters")
• possession should be defined (either to be more specific or more vague depending on the writer)

Other common complaints are that "obscene" is too subjective and changeable, all pornography should be banned, and that "my views are not based on moralistic judgements but on the harm of pornography". The issue of how all this was to be accomplished was pretty much ignored except by (submission CJL8) Professor Clare McGlynn and Dr Erika Rackley who called for "a pro-active prosecutorial policy", whatever that is.

But Prof. McGlynn and Dr. Rackley did have a fair submission, if you'd like to read something that isn't foaming at the mouth. They seem as genuinely offended by the use of words like "disgust", "abhorrent" and "obscene" as any of us. However, it is not clear why they dislike these words so much. The only conclusion I could come to is that they don't like the "disgust" argument because it takes away from the "cultural harm" issue.

"Cultural harm" is the idea that pornography creates an atmosphere of tolerance towards sexual violence, making it harder to prosecute actual sex crimes like rape and sexual assault. McGlynn & Rackley dismiss the "Direct harm" arguments (that porn causes people to be violent) on the grounds that all studies are inconclusive. (This last fact must have been lost on the Central Scotland Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Centre who maintains that people continue to seek out more extreme porn and more extreme real-life thrills.)In defending the "cultural harm" theory, McGlynn & Rackley reference the 1986 US Meese Report, which has been debunked by many including Bill Thompson in his book Softcore. Their submission has the most references and is the most academically credible out of all of the anti-porn pro-censorship submissions (but that's not saying much).

Overall, the pro-censorship crowd has shown a level of organisation rivalling the Mormons in California. The move against ageplay is most disturbing, especially given our reluctance to bring it up in the first place. But give them an inch... However, in their rush to get as many people to speak up for them, they were not bothered by encouraging people to speak up for themselves. I am much comforted by the fact that all of the 5 submissions opposing the law were different. It would have been nice to have representation from other groups, businesses and individuals, but silence is better than the bleating of a herd of sheep.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.