It kinda slipped out, the analysis of the responses to the Home Office Consultation on Extreme pornography....rumours appeared on BBC South East first, that there would be an announcement, something on the radio...

The Home Office had been very coy about the release , which was supposed to come out early August...

Reading between the lines for a moment, perhaps there is an obvious conflict between this Government's certain desire to legislate in this area, for a number of reasons - it thinks it has spotted a sure-fire vote winner that appeases both the religious right and the hard left feminists, riding on popular revulsion for Graham Coutt and the opportunism of his victim's campaigning mother...of whom we cannot deny her grief, but, as she said on an interview today, the campaign has for her been therapeutic.  And that is not the basis for making good law.

Returning to the analysis of the responses, the tone is remarkably measured.  There is a subliminal note of civil servants hinting to their masters that this issue is not as clear cut as it was originally envisaged.  The promoters of the original campaign could not imagine that there might be a divergence of opinion - they saw it in terms of child pornography legislation, where no-one in their right mind would defend it.

The first piece of analysis starts to give the game away...the majority of organisations were in favour, But the majority of individuals were against.  Organisations included police forces (unsurprisingly in favour of more power to the themselves), religious groups and campaigners of the moral right, many of whom suggested that the law should proscribe all pornography.. Now that would be an interesting definition to see!

The writers of the report still utilise circular arguments, stating that there is a de facto need to control such imagery, without actually offering a coherent argument as to why.

So coming down to the nitty gritty, for there to be an offence, the material must be in the first instance ‘pornographic', i.e. primarily produced for the purpose of sexual arousal.  This definition hopes to circumvent issues of ‘art' which might be seen as erotic but not pornographic.

Of course there couple be issues were the same image could be pornographic in one instance, and erotic art in an other...but that will be another story, another tabloid headline!

Secondly it must be or clearly appear to be a ‘real' act; explicit

Finally, the content must be

A)                intercourse or oral sex with an animal

B)                 Sexual interference with a corpse

C)                 serious violence, defined as violence which appears to be life threatening or likely to result in serious disabling injury.

This latter is a radical rethink of the original proposal, moving away fro the loose catch-all definition originally proposed, and the one that gave most concern o BSDM practitioners,

Support for the proposals came from women's rights and welfare organisations, child welfare organisations, the CPS, the Police Federations and eighteen local police forces, religious groups and churches, and media monitoring groups.

Opposition came from organisations such as Unfettered, Spanner Trust, the Sexual Freedom Coalition, SM Pride and several anti-censorship organisations.

Many of the individual responses had clearly used wording or arguments from the Backlash campaign.

There were a number of letters in support of the proposals who didn't answer the questions in the consultation, but were part of a petition organised by the Longhurst campaign.

Some media organisations were more concerned with the issues of practical implementation rather that the moral debate.

However, there seemed to have been a large number of individual respondents who genuinely seemed to fear criminalisation of what they saw as consensual BDSM practices.

There also seemed to be respondents who, whilst feel repulsed by some of the images, still felt that the rights of others to possess those images was still justified.  The lack of causal evidence of the harm of pornography, being a stumbling block for many - "Beliefs held without evidence are not a sound basis for proposals to curtail civil liberties" was one quote.

The British Psychological Society did cite ‘developing research' in favour of the proposals, but it is worth noting that several of the Society's members wrote separately with dissenting views...

Several organisations still felt that the criminalisation of a form of freedom of expression on the basis that this Government fells it is abhorrent rather than evidentially harmful was in itself a harmful principle. Others queried this focus on ‘sexual violence' when there was so much extreme (non-sexual) violence in the media.

The bestially issue puzzled some, who felt that poor animal welfare in the food and fashion industries so far out weighed the proportionally very small number of incidents of bestiality nad that this was another instance on the obsession with the sexual element of every issue.

Other respondents felt that the Consultation implied that masochism doesn't exist - they could not envisage that people could choose sexual stimulation by pain without being victims requiring the protection of the law..

Many organisations were concerned that the definition of ‘realistic depictions' would be difficult..  Wearside Women in Need suggested a broadening of the offence to include ‘incitement to gender hatred'...

The issue of consent was looked at.  Many respondents felt that if ‘notional' consent would be disregarded, this would undermine the notion of consent on other areas.

The same division of extreme polarity was reflected in the ‘bundling' of child pornography issues with the extreme violence consultation, with the ‘pros' seeing a self evident similarity, and the ‘antis' seeing it as emotive manipulation.

To sum up, that bad news is that this Government seems committed to a timetable to go ahead with the legislation.  The better news is that some of the main concerns of the BDSM community have been listened to and to a certain extent addressed, with everyday BDSM imagery of spanking and bondage escaping the criminalizing net.

bobette 30 August 2006