Tuesday 12 March 2013

Freedom is the Freedom to Enjoy Pornography


Do you think the world has gone mad?  I don’t.  I know it’s gone mad.  More and more the human race resembles a heard of lemmings, rushing towards that final precipice.  I am the little girl looking at life’s absurdities, shouting, as the parade passes by, that the emperor is naked.  Nonsense, the mass response comes: he is just beautifully dressed!
Speaking of nakedness, I have porn on my mind at the moment, specifically the dire Fifty Shades of Grey by the talentless E. L. James.  Who buys this appalling rubbish, I wonder?  What purpose does it serve?  Is its bewildering success a measure of just how empty the emotional and sexual life of middle aged women has become?  Is it an indictment of middle-aged men?  Alas, I fear it must be.  More than that, I fear its commercial success shows just how stupidly gullible a great many people are, how stupidly gullible most women are, particularly women of a certain age.  These are the people who look before and after and pine for what is not.  Actually they pine for what has never been, for what they have never had, true erotic fulfilment.  All they can do is feast on it vicariously, dining on fifty shades of boredom. 
E. L James is really Julia come to life.  Surely you remember Julia?  A pledged member of the Anti-Sex League, she is Winston Smith’s lover in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  When she’s not having extra Anti-Sex League sex she works in Pornosec, Muck House, as it’s colloquially known, a sub-section of the Ministry of Truth, which produces erotica for the masses.  Specifically she works on the novel writing machines, turning out boring, ghastly rubbish, as she puts it. 
Still, it’s important to recognise that rubbish, particularly pornography, serves a purpose.  It’s often a way of mopping up all sorts of residuals energies and frustrated libidos.  How prescient Orwell was to make an outwardly orthodox member of the Anti-Sex League a functionary in the manufacturing of muck!  For porn, it might be said, is really just a form of anti-sex, judging real sex to be contact between real people, people who are emotionally and physically engaged with one another.  Who knows?  Without porn to compensate for vacuous sterility hordes of frustrated and under-fulfilled proles might cause social chaos.  “The people have such empty lives”, the queen is told.  “Let them read Fifty Shades of Grey”, she responds.
The underemployed members of the European Parliament really should be told that they close down Muck House at their own peril.  This week, you see, they will be voting to ‘ban all forms of pornography.’  This will include yet more censorship of the internet in an attempt to “eliminate gender stereotypes” that demean women. 
Our MEPs, the dear old things, are also proposing the establishment of an Anti-Sex League.  No; what they actually want is for governments to set up state sex censors with “a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls.”  Would that include girls, I wonder, promoting their own sexualisation? 
The charge is being led by Kartika Liotard, a left-wing Dutch feminist MEP, bedecked with the characteristic red sash of the Anti-Sex League, who wants "statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism.”  So, Amsterdam’s red light specials can - excuse the profanity - get fucked! 
There are of course unenlightened people (aren’t there always?) who see this as just another erosion of free speech.  The accusation has been given added weight by the fact that the parliament has blocked the orgasmic rush of protest emails that followed when news of the measure emerged.  Criticism in any form, the vox populi itself, is being treated like so much rubbish, dumped straight into the Memory Hole by the spam filters. 
Yes, indeed, we move ever forward into a modern version of Orwell’s super state.  It is not governed by malign forces, though, just those who act for our own good; those who know what is best for us in their magnificent condescension.  The anti-porn drive comes soon after a report urging tighter press regulations, including the right of Brussels officials to control and supervise national media, with powers to enforce fines or sack journalists.  Censorship is clearly the wave of the future in our brave new – sexless - Europe that has such people in it.
I have little or no interest in porn.  I agree with Julia - though not E. L. James - that commercial erotica is boring and predictable.  I do not want to read about sex, still less watch other people having sex.  I’m far too hands-on for that.  No empty and unfulfilling fantasies for me, thanks ever so much; I leave that for the mummies and all others who are past it, assuming that they ever drew alongside it in the first place.  No, I could not care less about porn, but I do care more about freedom. I will speak as often and as loudly as I can against Big Brother, or Sister, in Brussels, whose creeping tyranny does not creep any more.  Freedom is the freedom to enjoy pornography, even if it is something as banal and lifeless as Fifty Shades of Grey.  


20 comments:

  1. The Emperor Caligula was one of my favorite soft porn films... Perhaps chastity belts will come back in fashion with the EU? The fashion designers in London, Paris and Milan can come up with some interesting modernized products...

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  2. The US was attacked by our extreme lovers of God in the Middle East. Not that they do not have their own Bollywood, but American media is shown in many places. Point being, our music, our t.v. is all morally degrading, I am against them taking our guns here (something u tea taxers can't relate to overseas) regardless of crime rate, but when it comes to pornography in the media, possibly, out of respect for other cultures, its not such a bad step. I just figure with the moral subversion that our society is used to, a step in the other direction is not going to result in a slippery slope. In fact, its a step up. Though, I do fear too much government. Anyways, I grew up watching Disney. wanting the pretty girl, the perfect life. Things that I wouldnt appreciate if I did have them anyways. Still, porn, namely, interent porn, was something I was exposed to at a very young age (like with the invent of the internet, talk about a cock tease, just try waiting five minutes for one picture to load), and not only does it create an unrealistic standard for potential mates, but when you do get one, it can be harmful if you revert back to your old porn browsing habits. Anyways, in my opinion I think respecting those who do not want to see lewd images is the right thing to do. Rather than making lewd images rampant for those who do not care.

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    1. It's a reasonable view, Alan. My objection is to censoriousness, in whatever guise it comes. Above all I object to the censors, those who believe that they have a God-given right to determine what is good for the rest of us. Freedom dies, you see, by degrees.

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  3. The left and the other assorted loons have got their caring society but at what a price. To be fair to them they got it by peddling good intentions but then the road to Hell is paved with them. Being an atheist I know Hell does not exist in another life but that it certainly can in this one and we are just about entering it. We are all going to pay dearly for our gullibility and greed because our societies caring clothing is as real as that of the Emperor's.

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    1. Yes, Antisthenes, as Schopenhauer wrote, this is hell and we are the devils in it.

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  4. Pornography (whatever it is) seems to be very popular in the places where it is banned. I'm curious, though, how it is that religious zealots and politicians have so much detailed knowledge, while I know almost nothing about it.

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    1. AH, Calvin, your reading,and your viewing, is clearly far too limited. :-)

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    2. Perhaps I see it all the time without recognizing it.

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    3. You certainly do, at least according to certain MEPs. :-)

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  5. I'm so sorry, my brain short circuited at the thought of you discussing porn =blush=

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  6. Okay, Ana, I still think that at some point we should stay civilized and proper. What is next by the way? Legalized child pornography?

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    1. Alan, I believe in free speech but nothing is absolute.

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  7. Okay forgive the loaded question, I guess child pornography could involve then, sexual acts with children, though those who believe that they have a God-given right to determine what is good for the rest of us might recognize the reason why those laws came to be. How men were, I guess, throughout history, and what laws and restrictions were needed to be put into place to form civilization as we know it. We are given freedom and it is balanced between Islam and a savage garden. When it comes to censorship, I guess I don't care, but then again, is there sin? Is there a God that has the right to be worshiped for giving us this life, and does he have laws? If so, then should we make it hard for those who want to follow them. Like I know I should "lower my gaze," but can I watch a football game without seeing boobs, or go to the grocery store without seeing a maxim magazine? And I guess it does not matter if God does not care. So God, whether he and his laws were invented or not, has laws, and if I try to see the framers intent, then the laws were, to protect us, from "sin" though sin is more than harming each other. Sin is being of this flesh. We should only love God, and seek to please him, by following his laws. That is what I believe, so out of respect shouldn't I at least be spared seeing somebodies junk on t.v. Or can my child be spared? but honestly, I guess the question then is does God really care, is there actually sin, and with these laws in order that we are fighting about between liberal and conservative, what happens when we go to the other extreme> One is Islam. that I see. Hijab, girls in full covering. The other? Might be very close to the book I wrote Nastena Malysh

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    1. Alan, it's really a question of degree. I do not like pornography any more than you do. But what I dislike even more is those who think they have a God-given right to act as absolute moral arbiters. None of us are victims in the sense that we all have choice, the choice to ignore rubbish. God certainly recognised that, because if He did not sin would not exist because it would, quite simply, be inconceivable.

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  8. Hell is being a slave to the flesh by the way. I do not know what laws are like over there, but here we are supposed to protect the minority while not infringing on anyone else's pursuit to happiness. Nevermind our guns, in fact, that is fear of tyranny. Even if we formed private militias, an army could easily take over the armory set up to supply the private militia. I find its best to just be armed at home. So that is a weakness no doubt with our homicide rate. Which most killings are probably drug related. Drugs are not legal because they harm the person doing them. Any children that the person has suffers to. Suffers poverty, I guess, even without the drugs, they can be victim to poverty because of gambling or lack of a work ethic, or just pure misfortune. I wasn't dealt the best hand, and I didnt do very well with the king deuce I had. After the draw I'm jack king. So I guess we gta play double draw and the deuce is wild, aside the point. Actually, its sad, because America spends so much money on national defense and drugs are very easy to find in our streets. Our laws are a mess. I will point out that religion teaches a person not to be material, and greed has a hand in corrupting everything. And on top of it all our poor factory farmed animals are destroying the environment. Lessons of the heart.

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    1. Ah, Alan, certain drugs are illegal and I understand, at least in some states, that may soon no longer be the case.

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  9. My art is being driven to the brim of a precipice and taught not to jump
    An Aunt Sally to frigid stoners
    Comical, curlicue-like mokomoki

    This city fell a long time ago
    Taken (not by impercipiently asking octogenarians)
    By Blairian barbarians
    Search now in vain for her lime green bowers
    Try to convince yourself they do not know
    Try not to cough in case it notices

    This city is too big for you
    Its current crop is rotten to the core
    Its streets are being cleared of the remains
    So then why this constant need for companionship?
    I cannot say

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