The Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill 1994 is Undemocratic, Unjustifiable and Dangerous: Submission by Feminists Against Censorship to the Commons Home Affairs Committee By Avedon Carol

Libertarian Alliance Pamphlet No. 25 ISSN 0953-7783 * ISBN 1 85637 248 0 A Joint Libertarian Alliance & British Association of Libertarian Feminists Publication © 1994: Libertarian Alliance; British Association of Libertarian Feminists; Avedon Carol. Avedon Carol is a member of Feminists Against Censorship, and is not a free market capitalist. She is co-editor, with Alison Assiter, of Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures: The Challenge to Reclaim Feminism, Pluto Press, London, 1993. Feminists Against Censorship can be contacted at: BM Box 207, London WC1N 3XX. * Tel: 081-552 4405. * Fax: 071-731 5950. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers.

British Association Of Libertarian Feminists Chairwoman: Judy Tame

25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke Street, London SW1P 4NN. Director: Chris R. Tame * Editorial Director: Brian Micklethwait For Life, Liberty and Property

Introduction

Among the changes to be brought in under the bill are provisions weakening the right to silence and banning "raves" (defined so broadly that any party with more than ten people could be illegal), travellers, right to protest -- the list is remarkably long. Civil libertarian organizations are absolutely snowed under dealing with just those measures, and Part VII, which is worded in such a way that it appears to be only about child porn and extending obscenity laws to include computerized material, is being overlooked. It is, in fact, a great deal more ominous than that, and actually extends police powers remarkably in regard to any non-certificated videos, sexually arousing or violent material.

Particularly frightening is that, in the wake of "computer porn" scares promoted by the Obscene Publications Squad over the last several months, the police are being given free reign to walk into people's homes and confiscate videos and computers. Computer illiterates are on the scene who seem to think that kids can down-load high-resolution, feature-length porn films onto their Game Boys, or who imagine that any PC, with or without a modem (or even a hard disk) is capable of the most a

It should be recalled that at the time this was written, polls of the public were showing no support for further censorship, and most people were expressing surprise when told just how much was illegal. The general public expressed the view (by 85% or more) that explicit depictions of ordinary adult sexual acts should be available to adults who wish to see them, that what is shown on terrestrial television is not offensive to them at all, and that explicit materials should not be banned from paid TV. All this changed with the increasing promotion of false allegations that videos were implicated in the murder of Jamie Bulger.

What follows is the hastily-written submission Feminists Against Censorship sent to the Commons Home Affairs Committee and some other MPs in regard to the bill in the hope that we could influence debate on this section; but the Commons never even bothered to debate this at all. However, all that was before David Alton managed to get press attention for his ridiculous amendment to ban any video that contained "inappropriate" role models for children. Alton is forever introducing bills to ban pornography, restrict abortion, and so on. He has made clear that among the "inappropriate" models he wishes to see banned are positive gay images. Weirdly, the Labour Party went to Downing Street to plead that Alton's concerns be taken on board. Even the government had recognized that the amendment was really going too far, but it's amazing what a well-placed bit of alleged "science" will do.

The FAC Submission

This law is undemocratic, unjustifiable and dangerous.

An Absence Of Democracy

In fact, most members of the British public believe that adults should be allowed to watch or see ordinary pornographic materials (i.e., showing erections, genital contact, sexual intercourse or other common and ordinary sex acts) in the privacy of their own homes should they so choose. Women have increasingly expressed anger that existing censorship prevents the production of materials that could specifically appeal to women -- explicit video pornography, in particular, has been shown to appeal to women in roughly equal numbers with men. Performance art and pornographic materials produced by and for women, such as Candida Royalle's Femme Productions videos, have been so heavily cut that their appeal to women is lost; cuts to Annie Sprinkle's autobiographical performance video were so extensive that it had to be withdrawn from the British market altogether. Women's lives are being censored. The prohibition on the depiction of erections is specifically sexist. It is a rare person who agrees that such interference with erotic or other sexual depictions is desirable.

Polls taken over the last several years have consistently revealed that the vast majority of the people of Britain have no desire to see tax money and police time wasted on censorship of such materials. Under the circumstances, even the existing restrictions are undemocratic, and extension of them even more so.

The Law And Harm

The second half of the 20th century has seen much concentration on attempts to establish both the harm of pornographic materials and the actual backgrounds of sex offenders and other violent offenders. Laboratory research on sexual material has failed to locate any causal relationship between pornography and violence. Research on actual offenders has revealed that there is no causal relationship between pornography and violence; rather, childhood backgrounds of sexual repression and violence appear to be causal to later adult violence and abuse.

The Michigan police, in America, have the oldest and largest database on violent crime in the world, and say they have been unable to find any correlation between pornography and violence. Treatment centres for abusers report that abusers are no more likely than other citizens to use pornography, and may often be less likely to possess or use pornography. Contrary to the myth popularized by anti-porn agitators, serial killer Ted Bundy had no pornography in his possession when he was arrested in Florida.

The literature from prisons, academic institutions, abuse centres and psychological treatment is now extensive, and pornography has been consistently exonerated, despite numerous attempts to associate it with violent or abusive behaviour. It is therefore abundantly clear that there is no good reason to criminalize the display, satellite broadcast, sale or distribution of pornographic materials, let alone to make possession of such materials arrestable.

Children And Computer Porn

It is true that nude photographs of children may have sexual appeal to paedophiles. It is also true that clothed photographs of children may have the same appeal, however, and thus any law meant to prohibit materials that may be arousing to paedophiles would have to ban all representations of children equally, whether they are sexual in nature or not, and whether they are nude or not. Most individuals are not paedophiles, however, and the vast majority of people do not

It has also recently been claimed that video materials involving feature-length, high-resolution motion picture pornographic representations are being traded on floppy disks between children in the schoolyard. Leaving aside the absence of any evidence of the vast children's trade in pornography (of any kind) that is claimed to exist, the simple fact is that the technology to place feature-length, high-resolution motion picture representations on floppy disks does not currently exist. Moreover, the hardware and software for use of high-resolution motion picture computer-graphic representations is quite costly and not widely available to young people.

It is further claimed that children will be harmed by seeing pornographic representations. There is absolutely no substantiation for such a belief. It is assumed that children will be shocked by graphic portrayals of sex in the sometimes tacky mode of pornographic materials; the argument is made that this is an inappropriate first exposure for a child to the fact of sex. There is no evidence that this is so, but we do know that it would be very easy to protect children from a situation in which pornography would represent a first exposure to sex by the simple expedient of giving children early sex education. Most experts have recommended early sex education for a variety of reasons, e.g.: that children who understand sex early are less prone to emotional problems regarding sex; that children who know the facts and responsibilities about sex are less likely to become involved in sex before they are ready, are less likely to become teenage parents, and are more likely to use responsible protective methods when they do have sex; that children who understand sex are less vulnerable to sexual abuse and more able to cope with sexual abuse when it does occur, and are better able to report abuse; that children who receive positive sex education are less likely to believe rape myths or to become rapists or abusers themselves; etc.

There are many good reasons to give young children early sex education and there is no good reason not to. It is plainly obvious that children so educated will not only have better sexual help and protection, but that once so educated they can never in future be shocked by some other first exposure to sexual content. In light of this, it is curious that the government has actually been engaged in moves to reduce sex education to young people and has vehemently opposed early sex education.

It is assumed by some that paedophilia and child pornography play an overwhelmingly important role in child abuse. On the contrary, experts on paedophilia and experts on child abuse agree that most abuse is performed by people who have no interest in child pornography and are not paedophiles. It has been found that the presence of child pornography does not correlate with child abuse, and that abusers in general are less likely to possess commercial pornography than are other men in the general population. There is absolutely no evidence that child pornography causes child abuse. Claims to the contrary are based on rumour alone and are contradicted by all documented clinical, law enforcement or academic evidence.

There is a clear presumption by the government that exposure to erotic materials necessarily constitutes harm to people under the age of 16. This apparently rests on the unsubstantiated belief that both knowledge and sexual arousal may be harmful to children. In plain language, this is an indictment of masturbation. This attitude is in itself dangerous and should not be projected onto children. There is a clear association between punitive attitudes toward masturbation and pornography and later violent sexual behaviour; that is, young people who have been punished for masturbation and use of pornography, or who have been taught that these things are "bad", are far more likely to engage in violent sexual acts later in life than are others.

Laws based on such falsehoods have already been used to victimize harmless individuals and involve people who are neither paedophiles nor abusers of any kind in horrific and destructive investigations and prosecutions. Even more unsettling is the fact that such laws and attitudes have actually been responsible for the victimization of children who are the presumed "victims" of this innocent behaviour. Intensification of such efforts is dangerously misguided.

Legal Abuse

It is particularly alarming to find materials that most people believe should be legal being used as an excuse to violate the privacy of our homes. Many people will be in possession of such items without having any knowledge of their contraband status. They have no reason to suspect that they are illegal, since any sensible person recognizes that they are harmless. Many people bring erotic materials in from other countries where they are openly on sale, in all innocence. Many women also take photographs of their partners and make videos of their own love-making for private, romantic purposes, and such collections can be extensive. For this reason, the law can easily be selectively enforced against many law-abiding people who just happen to meet with the disapproval of the authorities for reasons having nothing to do with criminal activities: gays, social activists, and so on. Historically, it has usually been the case that such laws are enforced against such groups. The so-called "feminist" anti-pornography law in Canada has not been used to censor genuinely sexist materials, but rather has been used first against gays -- the first prosecution was of a lesbian magazine -- and then against student bookshops and radical bookshops. Existing censorship of "obscenity" in the United Kingdom has already been used to censor gay, feminist, and educational materials, including reproductive and safer sex information.

None of this, of course, is of any benefit to the people of this country.

It is therefore manifestly inappropriate for the government to introduce strengthened enforcement for a law that is not needed in the first place and contradicts the reasonable desires of the British people. The law itself is harmful; greater enforcement promises nothing but greater violations of our civil liberties at social and economic costs to us that we have no desire to bear.

Notes

2. See the works of Ronald Langevin, of Goldstein and Kant and of John Money, as well as those cited above, for extensive evidence of the irrelevance of pornography to sexual violence and to child abuse.

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