Coming For Christmas?

Politics, , , , , , , ,

Xmas Single from TVX and Pornhub

Buy it, and help fund Sex & Censorship!

Christmas singles cum and go… they’re usually cheesy, and most are quickly forgotten: this year is no different. This year’s batch includes the (dire) Band Aid 30 year update, and a single to support anti-boobs campaign, No More Page 3.

For the first time, there’s a porn contender: Television X and Pornhub have united to release Coming For Christmas, a tongue-in-cheek (or tongue-in-something, anyway) take on the genre. The single features an all-porn cast, including veteran stud Ben Dover on drums. Wouldn’t it be nice, at a time when UK regulators are introducing tough censorship controls, to get it into the charts, and make a Radio 1 DJ cringe as they explain why they can’t read out the title on-air?

TVX have agreed to make a donation to the Sex & Censorship campaign if the single reaches the charts. Can you spare less than a pound, to help fund the campaign going into 2015? If you’re on Spotify or another streaming service, you don’t even need to buy it – just play it.

Coming For Christmas is available on: iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify and other music services. You can also watch the clean version on YouTube and the unclean one on Pornhub (NSFW!)

Please buy and spread the word!

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Mistress Tytania vs ATVOD (audio)

Audio, Legal, , , , ,

A lot has been written over the past week about the new law that empowers ATVOD to regulate British video-on-demand sites. Not all is lost, however: one woman took on, and defeated the regulator. Mistress Tytania runs the only adult website that is currently allowed to operate outside of ATVOD’s censorship regime. I interviewed her to find out more.

With thanks to the Naked Truth Guy for editing and publishing this podcast. You can follow him on Twitter.

Click here to hear the interview (27:41).

Can Sex-Positive Feminism Exist?

Comment, Politics, , ,

When I tell people I am a feminist, I get a wrinkle of the nose. Their face screws up, like they have smelled something bad; it is the expression I pull when the milk has soured.

“But you’re so sensible,” they protest. As though feminism requires the loss of brain cells for participation.

For a while, I even shunned the term myself. “It’s too gendered,” I’d say, feeling that my views were about gender equality, and therefore should not be posed as something one-sided. I’d phrase my views awkwardly – I’d call myself a “gender egalitarian”, for instance. I justified that it didn’t have the same ring to it, the same catchy title, but at least it was more precise in representing my views. Then, when I graduated, I sat through an eye-opening speech by feminist writer and critic Linda Grant. Grant had written books on politics and sex, and novels to boot. She was the woman I always wanted to be. And she was a feminist.

“I tried to get a store card in 1984,” she told the audience. “I was declined, because I didn’t have my father or husband present to sign off on the transaction. That’s when I became interested in feminism,” she said. Sitting there, in my mortar board and robes, I felt suddenly far too naïve to be in the ceremony.

I was born only 4 years after Grant’s anecdote took place. I had always considered feminism to be an archaic thing, a movement that brought us the vote and then went off the deep end with fits of misandry, censorship and sex-hating, and that wasn’t me. When I thought of feminism, I thought of Andrea Dworkin. I didn’t think of Linda Grant. I had simplified a complex political movement into a handful of successes and a whole heap of crazy. I had resisted identifying with anything feminist, because I was sex-positive, anti-censorship, totally behind the idea of sex as a fun recreation, someone who enjoyed pornography and vocally supported sex workers. I was someone who saw society’s next goal involving better protection for sex work of all varieties, who wanted consent to be respected by law regardless of whether money or cameras were involved. All this time, I thought that meant I wasn’t a feminist. And all this time, I realised in that audience, I was wrong.

Feminism is a complicated set of ideas, with an equally complicated set of people behind it. Like any complicated ideology, feminism is riddled with nuance and debate, and it isn’t stagnant: there are revelations and evolutions in ideas all the time. I don’t agree with all feminists; I want gender equality, both between the binary sexes and for those who don’t identify in those terms, but I don’t always agree on what that means. For some, it means that removing the idea that women are sex objects means removing women from sex, especially in public expression, and on that note I heartily disagree. For me, and – I assure you, readers who are still scowling, still wondering how such a nice girl ended up here, many people just like me – feminism is about claiming our right to consent. For me, feminism protects my ability to have sex, to enjoy it, and not be shamed; but equally, it protects me from being forced to explain my lack of consent in other situations. Feminism is about my right to say yes or no without being threatened, either by the society that would deem me a slut, or the rejected party who is angered by my audacity to decline.

I am a sex-positive feminist, and I can tell you, we are not on the verge of non-existence – we are not lost dinosaurs, wandering around in a wasteland, looking for creatures of our kind. We are real women, trying to express our views without being shouted down for being “feminist.” If you really want to help gender equality and the progression of society’s view on sex, judge feminists on the quality of their individual content, not the merit of the banner of feminism. Maybe then we can start to get somewhere.

It’s About Censorship, Not Sexism

Comment, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

A year ago, the hideous ISP filters came into force. Although they had been sold as “porn filters”, they ended up blocking all sorts of things that had nothing to do with porn, from drug and self-harm information to nudity, even in non-sexual contexts. Initially, there was a spike of public outrage, but quickly the issue fell into the swamp of identity politics. On discovering that various gay and trans sites were blocked, the outrage became about homophobia and transphobia. ISPs moved to quickly unblock sites that had been identified by the press, and the media lost interest. The filters remained in place, and still today, up to 20% of sites are blocked by them. What could have become a broad-based movement for free speech fizzled out.

On Monday, a new law came into place, extending DVD censorship controls on to Internet videos. None of this was new or unexpected. The censorship rules which have caused so much outrage this week have been in place for many years.

The new law – which I explained on this blog – is probably the greatest attack on free expression that the UK has seen since the BBFC was empowered, in 1984, to censor all video works before they could be released. One of the BBFC’s first policy decisions was to ban all explicit sex on video. And so, the UK became one of the few democratic countries whose population was banned from legally buying porn on DVD, until this rule was eventually challenged by the porn industry in 2000. Forced to accept explicit sex acts, the BBFC (along with the police and CPS) clung to as much power as possible, and still refused to approve many, many “niche” sex acts on DVD.

By mid-decade, this barely mattered any more. Broadband Internet connections made DVD increasingly redundant, and likewise the BBFC, which saw its revenues steadily fall. Pete Johnson, a BBFC manager, tried to reverse this decline by introducing the BBFC Online scheme in 2007. But this had no statutory backing, and never took off.

In 2010, Johnson moved from the BBFC to head a new regulator, ATVOD, and (via a complex use/misuse of EU law), was empowered to implement regulations for VoD sites. His first – and only significant – action was to implement onerous age-verification requirements for UK porn sites: rules that were not implemented anywhere else in Europe. As a result, many businesses (including my own) closed, and others (such as Playboy’s UK operation) moved overseas, shedding jobs in the UK.

The new law adds power to ATVOD’s existing regulations, and for the first time, enforces the BBFC’s R18 rules online. This year’s fashion among the new-left has been to label everything sexist: toys are sexist, and computer games are sexist, and that comedian is sexist, and he’s sexist, and you’re sexist, and that tree is sexist… and so of course, by cherry-picking BBFC rules, the new law was also deemed to be sexist. Not a huge step towards Chinese-style Internet censorship that will harm everybody’s right to access information. Sexist.

So yes, it’s true (as well as ludicrous) that female ejaculation – aka squirting – is one of the many acts now banned, and easy to assume this is sexism (since, of course, male ejaculation is still allowed to be seen). In fact, within the BBFC’s reasoning process – which makes sense within its own, screwed-up logic – this makes perfect sense. The powers-that-be have deemed urination in a sexual context to be unacceptable, and since the evidence as to the nature of squirting is still far from conclusive, they have also banned that. Commentators have also complained that gagging on cocks is still approved; but in fact, the BBFC will cut such scenes if they are deemed to be “potentially life-threatening”. And they will allow similar acts to be carried out by a woman with a strap-on. And the ban on face-sitting isn’t an attempt by The Patriarchy to attack female domination, any more than the ban on strangulation of female models is an attack on male domination. The rules may be extremely stupid, but they’re not sexist.

Although the most immediate casualties of the law will be fetish sites, it’s not especially about targeting fetish either – that just happens to be the first thing in the way of the bulldozer. As already mentioned, the BBFC tried as hard to ban “vanilla” sex as it did to ban kink. It’s just that it lost that particular battle in court.

So what is this about? As the name of our campaign suggests, it’s about both Sex and Censorship. It’s odd that almost nobody noticed what actually happened on Monday: well over 99% of the world’s websites are now technically illegal here in the UK. Not because of the R18 thing, but the other part: the one requiring sites to validate a visitor’s age before they’re allowed to see any naughty bit.

There are multiple interests here: anti-sex moralists (of both religious and feminist varieties) who are truly outraged by sex, and want it all banned; vested interests that stand to earn money and power from censorship (ATVOD and the BBFC, for example); and authoritarian interests that are looking to find excuses to block online content. In the latter case, porn is just one of a number of excuses, as are terrorism and copyright theft. Those familiar with Orwell will recognise that the British state, liberal on the surface, is deeply authoritarian beneath.

This week’s public outrage is an opportunity to build the movement for free expression to a new level, and it would be a shame if certain “It’s all about meeeee!” narratives were allowed to distract from that.

The new law is actually a means to an end, not an end in itself. A process that began (suitably) in 1984 is still rolling along. If you would like to support as we build the case against censorship, please join our list or even send a donation, large or small. Next year is going to be “interesting” for the UK, and not in a good way.

Feminism, free speech and keeping your enemy in plain sight

Comment, , ,

Journalist Nichi Hodgson takes a look at a feminism that justifies censorship in the name of fighting sexism. This article was originally posted on her blog, and is republished here with her permission.

If you’ve been thinking about feminism and free speech in the wake of the Julien Blanc debacle, I recommend you read Helen Lewis’ article for the Guardian on free speech and trolling. In it, she makes the little-mentioned point that the way we broadcast on social media is leading to ‘context collapse’. Yet to some extent this applies to Blanc too. The context for the PUA movement’s performative braggodocio is a country where the Westboro Baptist Church can caw for the death of homosexuals in the name of true faith in God, and where the right of abortion protestors to shout in the face of vulnerable womenleaving clinics is effectively a constitutional right.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we have to accept Blanc’s feckless brand of manipulation (as manipulative of men as it is women) out of some kind of culturally relative sympathy.  But it does help to explain how Blanc could establish his expensive workshops and get his stomp on in the grounds of maligned masculinity.

Lewis argues that it was right to deny Blanc a visa because his free speech is inciteful of violence against women. The problem, as ever, is proving incitement. It’s not impossible to do, of course, (although it raises serious questions about personal responsibility). But what the wider debate about free speech vs sexism is demonstrating is that it may be time to broaden our hate speech laws if we want to make it an offence to incite gender-based violence. To do that could throw up some interesting results – such as whether OBJECT constitutes a hate group, for example (here’s an interesting post from Sex and Censorship on the topic). After all, feminists against misogynistic language need to be careful. Labelling men rapists, where they have not been charged with a criminal offence, is defamatory.

Lewis’ argument is astute and articulate. But it is also unfortunately an argument diluted to censorship by campaigning feminists in their war against sexism. No More Page 3 have managed to persuade Tesco to censor the covers of tabloid papers on the basis of their sexism and so-called ‘harm’ against women. Yet they cite no independent, empirical research to back up their claims.

What’s more, they need to watch out that they don’t inadvertently curtail women’s sexual freedom. I’ve just been told that my next book won’t be for sale in supermarkets unless I tone down the title, for example. Guess what it’s about? Yep – female sexual liberation. Incidentally, there’ll be no scantily clad anything on the cover.

What’s more, the war against sexism is at risk of mis-serving its  most serious victims. We talk of ‘rape culture’ but seem to ignore the real details, causes and context of the 85,000s rape that take place in England and Wales. We harp on about the assault that is a street-side ‘hey baby’ while it’s revealed that Margaret Thatcher knew of the Westminster paedophile ring. Sexism and harassment manifest at every social level. Of course the government is going to round on individuals like Blanc – it helps deflect from their own multifarious abuses. But is Blanc really who we should be getting aerated about over a prime minster who turned a blind eye to eye – watering sexual assault, alleged murder and the abuse of scores of young men?

Personally, I’d rather be able to hear Julien Blanc. Milton’s argument in Areopagitica is that the broader the range if views we are privy to, the better we can crystallise our own. Keep your enemies in plain sight, especially when they are misogynists.

As the American academic Stanley Fish has it, “Free speech is what’s left over when you have determined which kinds of speech cannot be permitted to flourish”. Fish, of course, like Lewis, also believes that’s a good thing.

But that’s the thing about the internet. You can’t round on its dark, anti-social, hateful voices the way you can out there in civic society.

Nor can they hide.

That too, is a good thing.

Queen's Speech Promises State Censorship

Alert: New ATVOD Anti-Porn Censorship Law to Arrive 1st December

Legal, News, , , , , ,

On 1st December a new law governing online porn will come into force in the UK. This is known as the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014, and amends the 2003 Communications Act.

The law applies to VoD services regulated by ATVOD, and imposes restrictions on the types of content that can be legally sold by UK VoD providers.

There has been much confusion over what this law means: this post is an attempt to provide some clarity.

Effects on Consumers

There are no (direct) implications for porn consumers. The law affects UK-based providers only. Consumers are still at liberty to access any online porn they want, and will only be affected if their favourite British website happens to be censored by the new law. Of course, existing laws (like the 2008 “extreme porn law”) still apply. However, see further implications below.

Effects on Providers

The new law only affects providers of On Demand Programme Services (ODPS) that are regulated by ATVOD. ATVOD’s power comes from the EU AVMS regulations, which relate only to “TV-like” services. In most European countries, most websites (including adult websites) are not considered to be TV-like. However, in the UK, ATVOD has chosen to apply the regulations far more broadly, and encompass a wide range of services, including adult sites. This gives ATVOD the power to regulate, and control, any website it decides is TV-like.

Note that ATVOD has repeatedly been struck down by Ofcom regarding its broad definition of TV-like. The Sun newspaper, the BBC, and a number of others, have successfully appealed that various services cannot be considered TV-like, and so have escaped regulation by ATVOD. Recently, a dominatrix also appealed that her site, Urban Chick Supremacy Cell (NSFW), was not TV-like, and won. Sites that have removed themselves from ATVOD regulation in this way are not bound by the new law.

What Does the Law Change?

The new law puts a restriction on the strength of porn that can be sold on regulated services. Previously, any pornographic content that did not breach existing content laws (for example “obscene” material, and child abuse imagery) could be sold. Now, only content equivalent to the BBFC’s R18 rating can be sold: this brings VoD services into line with DVD.

R18 is a strange thing: it is a set of weird and arbitrary censorship rules decided between the BBFC, the police and the CPS. There appear to be no rational explanations for most of the R18 rules – they are simply a set of moral judgements designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography.

In practise, this means that video of various fetish activities can no longer be sold by regulated UK services – the people most affected will be those running fetish sites of various types. This may explain ATVOD’s apparent obsession with chasing down dommes who sell their own videos: most femdom sites would now be illegal to run in the UK (at least, if they are “TV-like”).

The list of rules governing R18 is long and often vague, but they include:

  • Urination in various sexual contexts is banned, as is female ejaculation
  • Spanking, caning and whipping beyond a gentle level are not allowed
  • “Life-endangering activities” such as strangulation and facesitting cannot be carried out
  • Fisting is banned (if all knuckles are inserted), as are other large insertions
  • Bound and gagged models may not be featured, as there needs to be a clear way in which the model can withdraw consent

Why Has This Been Done?

The introduction of the R18 standard into law is essentially a way to circumvent European standards. The EU’s AVMS directive specifies that content that “might seriously impair minors” should be restricted so that under-18s cannot normally  view it. However, this is a test to be answered by psychologists, not government censors. The UK media regulator Ofcom looked at the results of research by 20 European governments, and stated: “No country found evidence that sexually explicit material harms minors”.

This is inconvenient for a government that wants an excuse to censor pornography, regardless of any evidence of harm. Introducing the R18 test removes the need for objective evidence, and instead allows censors to make arbitrary decisions.

Although the law is introduced under the pretext of “protecting children”, it actually affects adults and children alike.

Implications

In practise, very few people are directly affected: most businesses selling strong fetish material online left the UK years ago for other European countries or the United States (the well-known fetish site kink.com (NSFW) is run by a Briton who moved to San Francisco to escape our ludicrously censorious climate).

However, this law was clearly introduced to further ATVOD’s plans to restrict what sexual content can be accessed by UK citizens, and will doubtless be used to justify further censorship in various forms. ATVOD have long wanted to stop banks from processing payments for services that don’t meet their tight regulations, and have tried (and failed so far) to introduce licensing of non-UK sites. Watch this space for more news at it emerges (please join our mailing list for updates).

News Roundup: 2014-11-17

News

This week’s news includes;

  • Two leading supermarkets give in to pressure from campaign groups
  • Aeveral changes to the regulation of video and on demand content in the UK are set to come into force December 1st and,
  • Online retailer accused of selling “pro-rape” and “sexualised” clothing

Two leading supermarkets buckle under pressure from No More Page 3 and Child Eyes.

Tesco and Waitrose have conceded defeat and have announced that they will cover-up or remove from a ‘child’s line of vision’ tabloid newspapers.

Tesco told the BBC that their ‘news cubes’ would be redesigned so that only the mastheads would be visible to customers. While Waitrose said they would remove the tabloids from the eye level of small children.

The announcements come after months of campaigning by No More Page 3 and Child Eyes.

Tesco have claimed that they listened to both customers and campaigners (clearly only campaigners from one side of the debate) and wanted to “strike the right balance for everyone”.

Customer Experience & Insight Director Tracey Clements told the BBC:

“We are first and foremost a family retailer and it’s important we do everything we can to promote the right environment in store.”

Tesco says the changes to the display of tabloid newspapers (nothing about those celebrity mags that highlight cellulite on beach photos of celebrities though) will come into effect by the end of November, meaning newspapers will no longer be displayed vertically.

Waitrose tweeted:

“We’ve been working on this for some time and will soon be changing our newspaper fixtures so we can display some newspaper covers out of the eye line of children.”

No More Page 3 said it was “absolutely thrilled”  the group added on their blog;

“It sends a very strong message to the tabloids that Tesco don’t think their front covers are appropriate material for display in a family-friendly environment, and that can only be a good thing in the long term.”

BBFC shakeup content classification guidelines ahead of amendments to the Audio Visual Media Services regulations.

The BBFC are to update the content classification guidelines and aim to define what they will and will not allow in a video works – online or off.

A dedicated post regarding the changes will follow soon.

Naturally there are some dubious clarifications such as face sitting is not allowed about choking on a penis will be.

As always, the guidelines are open to vast interpretation and mis-interpretation by both producers and BBFC examiners themselves.

They are essential reading for everyone involved in the production of video content, but especially for those producing adult content and more niche works such as BDSM and fetish video.

The guidelines will feed into what other regulatory bodies find acceptable such as ATVOD and OFCOM as they typically use ‘R-18 equivalent’ as the standard by which they judge.

Audio Visual Media Services (AVMS) regulations are to be amended, amendments will be enforceable from December 1st 2014.

The AVMS regulations which sets out statutory and legal obligations for media distributors has been amended to cap the content that can be distributed at R-18 level.

There are those in the adult entertainment industry who believe it has always been mandatory and a legal responsibility to put R-18  content behind a credit card only or age verification enabled pay wall. It has not been. It has only been mandatory for on demand service providers as determined by ATVOD.

Those deemed to not be an ODPS, such as those who have won an appeal based on their content not being TV-like, ATVOD’s initial judging criterion, were free to continue to distribute R-18 content without such a strict paywall or verification procedure.

This law now enshrines in law, for the first time, the responsibility for any person or company with editorial control in the UK distributing R-18 content. Not just those notified with ATVOD as an ODPS.

The amendments also introduce a new level of content deemed ‘unclassifiable’.

The regulations will make it a criminal offence to not adequately restrict access to R18 content.

So while – “Big Anal Hos Volume 76″ will be heavily restricted; Saw, Hostel, American Pie, Basic Instinct etc etc… will be freely available to under 18s.

From the act;

“(2) An on-demand programme service must not contain any prohibited material.

(3) “Prohibited material” means—

(a)a video work which the video works authority has determined for the purposes of the 1984 Act not to be suitable for a classification certificate to be issued in respect of it, or

(b)material whose nature is such that it is reasonable to expect that, if the material were contained in a video work submitted to the video works authority for a classification certificate, the video works authority would determine for those purposes that the video work was not suitable for a classification certificate to be issued in respect of it.

(4) An on-demand programme service must not contain any specially restricted material unless the material is made available in a manner which secures that persons under the age of 18 will not normally see or hear it.

(5) “Specially restricted material” means—

(a)a video work in respect of which the video works authority has issued a R18 classification certificate,

(b)material whose nature is such that it is reasonable to expect that, if the material were contained in a video work submitted to the video works authority for a classification certificate, the video works authority would issue a R18 classification certificate, or

(c)other material that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of persons under the age of 18.

You can read the full document here: http://legislation.data.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.htm?wrap=true

Online retailer, CafePress, criticised for selling ‘unacceptable’ and ‘sexualised’ baby clothing.

CafePress, an online retail site, stock clothing and other merchandise that have either been customised by a previous customer or which customers can customise for themselves.

They have been criticised for selling clothing that is apparently unacceptable and calls for it to be removed .

Some of the customised clothing available online includes; a bib with “F*** like a porn star” embroidered across it and a baby blanket with “Awesome masturbating” written across it.

Australian quality campaigners appear to be leading the objections and have said that they contacted Cafe Press over a year ago regarding similar clothing.

Campaigner Caitlin Roper, of women’s rights/religious group Collective Shout, told The Independent:

“This content serves to reinforce women’s second class status, as less than men, as mere objects for men’s entertainment and gratification.”

and she continues;

“I can’t believe I even have to argue that sexualised or porn-inspired imagery and slogans on baby clothes and merchandise is unacceptable,”

also adding that Cafe Press’s “pro-rape ‘humour’ trivialises crimes of violence against women,” and reduces such an issue to just a “punch line of a joke”.

The British version of the site currently offers 132 different baby clothing products under the category of ‘Adult Sex XXX Porn’.

The Australian version of the site offers many more different t-shirts and slogans, including a babygrow with “Porn star in training” written across it.

The site had previously offered a mug and T-Shirt with “no means yes, yes means anal” transcribed in large print across it. However that product seems to have now been removed.

Roper contacted Café Press on Twitter and claims their attitude was “staggering”. Saying;

“They suggested I redirect my energy and instead of tweeting I should fill out reports. I countered that they should exercise some corporate social responsibility and asked if they were going to pay me to do their job for them.”

The Daily Mail also picked up this story and published images of some of the ‘unacceptable’ clothing claiming them to be promoting peadophilia.

Video: Is Object a Hate Group?

Moral Panic, Politics, , , ,

In October, I wrote to Object to question their accusations of sexual violence against the sex entertainment industry, and their behaviour during a recent protest. Although they tweeted that they would be responding to the “false” allegations, we have heard nothing more from them.

We have now exclusively obtained a video of Object’s protest outside Spearmint Rhino in London on 27th September – watch it below:

For those that had any doubts, this demonstrates hateful, harassing behaviour by Object supporters towards both men and women – bizarrely, men were labelled “scum” and “rapist”, while women entering the club were called “loser”. We have also heard from strippers claiming to have experienced harassment by Object supporters.

And yet, Object claims to be a human rights organisation, takes funding from the National Lottery and other sources, and receives strong, positive coverage from the Guardian and other publications. We believe Object is a hate group: how and why are they gaining access to these funds?

ShirtGate: Fascism Cloaked as Liberalism

News, Politics, , , , , ,

For those with a love of science, the story of the week was, of course, the landing of a robot – launched 10 and a half years ago – on a faraway comet. As someone who is still amazed that I can instantly publish an article from a computer in London, that can then be read globally, I lack the words to express my jaw-dropped amazement at this latest accomplishment of mankind.

The mastermind of the mission was Dr Matt Taylor. Like many ultra-intelligent people, Taylor clearly possesses an offbeat personality and quirky outlook on life. Conformity is for the dull of mind. It was hardly unexpected then, that Taylor chose not to wear a grey suit and tie, but instead appeared at a press conference in a bright shirt made for him by an artist friend – a woman. The shirt featured cartoon images of scantily-clad women brandishing guns.

If Taylor had been paying more attention to politics over the past decade, he’d have witnessed the final stages in the collapse of the progressive left, and its replacement with a new set of intolerant, dogmatic, anti-sex, pro-censorship attitudes. But he clearly had more important things to worry about, so he’d missed the rise of a clique of online bullies using feminist language to achieve a very non-feminist goal: the suppression of the idea that women can be sexual beings if they so choose.

During the attacks on Taylor – referred to online as ShirtGate – the online mob made use of a now-standard logical fallacy to attack the shirt: the idea that an image of any woman is an attack on the rights of all women, and thus, any woman who is offended by an image of another woman has the right to attack the image and call for it to be censored. It was also implied – equally ludicrously – that the shortage of female scientists might somehow be linked to such “sexist” shirts – suggesting that women are incredibly weak individuals (and ignoring the fact that anyway, sex isn’t sexist). The tendency for women to attack women-who-dare-to-be-sexual (brilliantly written about this week by a female journalist) is well known – only the language changes to keep up with the times.

To the rest of us who haven’t had to worry about landing a tiny probe on a small, fast comet, the wave of media bullying that Taylor experienced came as no surprise. Anti-sex feminists have been busy in recent years: closing down strip venues, working with religious fundamentalists to strip all rights from sex workers, advising governments to censor the Internet (because, you know, OBJECTIFICATION), and attacking proudly-sexual womanhood in every medium, from pornography to music videos. The left is guilty of attacks on sexuality that the religious right would once have been proud of.

Online witch-hunts by the new, conservative feminism have become popular in the past year or two: where once, “witch” or “communist” were slurs that meant the end of a career or a life, now “misogynist” and “rape apologist” are labels to avoid at all costs. I myself was labelled a “rape apologist” on Twitter for defending the free speech rights of a comedian this week; but I knew I was opening myself to such slurs when I started this campaign. To fight for free expression is to offend those who hate it.

And so we were treated to a sight that brought to my mind the struggle sessions of the Chinese cultural revolution: an intelligent, gentle man reduced to tears as he made a forced apology on TV (this time wearing a plain hoodie. Fascism hates bright colours).

Once a standard bearer for free expression and reason, the left is now increasingly the home of a rising anti-intellectualism, as well as the most puritanical anti-sex attitudes. The sight of a crying scientist confessing to crimes against the sacred purity of womanhood is symbolic of wider attacks on science from the new left, rather than the  right. This week also saw a scientist (this time, a women, Professor Kate Glover) sacked for simply stating a scientific fact: namely, that there is no evidence that genetically-modified organisms are harmful. Calls for her sacking were orchestrated by left MEPs, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. George Orwell, as ever, understood the nature of fascism better than anyone: “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. As if to illustrate the blur as to what “left” and “right” mean any more, a right-wing commentator mockingly compared the intolerant, puritanical attitudes of today’s left with the religious right’s most ludicrous character: When did the left turn into Rick Santorum?

The only silver lining in this is that Dr Taylor, unlike previous victims of the combined feminist-fundamentalist mob, has attracted great sympathy and support from many women and men. Perhaps this time, the “objectification” bullies have overreached themselves. One of the reactions has been a crowd-funding campaign to buy Matt Taylor a gift: click here to donate, and help demonstrate that most people are not nearly as stupid or hateful as ShirtGate might have implied.

Those of us who consider ourselves liberals in the true sense – pro-liberty, free expression and science – must realise that the political spectrum as we knew it has become meaningless. A new, pro-liberty, pro-reason left needs to be built if we are to stop the slide into intolerance, censorship and authoritarianism being pursued with equal vigour by both left and right.

News Roundup: 2014-11-10

News

Malmaison, Manchester covers up…

Malmaison gave in and covered their ‘soft-porn babes’ hoarding after pressure from the BBC, Daily Mail and Jeanette Winterson, a University of Manchester lecturer and author.

The ‘Mal’ held strong until the BBC and Construction Industry Training Board cried “sexism” and have now strewn a banner stating ‘we were asked to cover these up while we were changing’.

I walk past the Malmaison on the way home and I admit I was a little more than sad when I saw they had buckled to what amounted to very little pressure at all.

The Turkish Army has banned Game of Thrones and forces Officers to take course on Islam

The Turkish Army has outlawed Game of Thrones as part of its new “protection of students” regulations and require that Officers take lessons on Islam instead.

The Jerusalem Post reports;

The military has been instructed to cease watching the show as part of its new “protection of students” regulations that ban “sexual exploitation, pornography, exhibitionism, abuse, harassment, and all negative behaviour.”

According to the report, Turkish army officers were kicked out of a military academy in Istanbul in 2012 for permitting cadets to watch Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones’ third season (2013) was named the most illegally downloaded TV programme internationally, accounting for a quarter of all pirated downloads from 100 torrent sites. The programme was downloaded over 1.4 million times between January and February this year – nearly 50 per cent more than its nearest rival The Walking Dead.

An advert that may have passed unnoticed…

Well. It seems the BBC and all mainstream outlets have been out in force to demonstrate the power of the Streisand effect.

The first ever advert featuring an e-cig may well have passed unnoticed had the mainstream media not played the drums of outrage and indignation.

The BBC reports that experts are concerned that the ad appearing on TV could lead to “a normalisation of smoking”. Maybe e-cigs could promote a freedom to choose what an individual would like to do with his or her mouth…

ITV chose to air the ad after 21:00 after the video was ruled ‘too sexual’ for broadcast before the watershed.