Everyone else seems to be talking about sex this week, so I’ll devote a dedicated post to a topic raised by Luton Ian on the last thread.
I’m going to try to avoid sniggering here about New Zealand and the proclivities with which its citizens are frequently associated—pace Farmerbraun—but there is a serious side here, which directly impacts on the principles of Liberty, not to mention the stability of society.
OK, so if you haven’t yet read Ian’s link, a New Zealand court last week sentenced one Ronald Clark to three months’ imprisonment for downloading Japanese hentai drawings of pixies, elves and other human-like creatures engaging in various sexual acts. Clark’s actions apparently violated New Zealand’s law on possessing “objectionable material”, even though the images were clearly drawings and not of human beings. From the article,
They weren’t even depictions of people – Clark’s lawyer Roger Bowden described them as “pixies and trolls” that “you knew at a glance weren’t human”.
Bowden said the conviction for possessing objectionable material was “the law gone mad”.
However, while the cartoon characters were elves and pixies, they were also clearly young elves and pixies, which led to concerns the images were linked to child sexual abuse.
Anti-child pornography group ECPAT Child Alert director Alan Bell said the images were illegal because they encouraged people “to migrate from there to the real thing”.
“The distribution of it is damaging. You have to ask what impact does it have even if it’s not harming [an individual child].”
Bell said it had to be conceded that no child was harmed in the images’ production but “it’s all part of that spectrum”. Cartoon images of child abuse were a “huge” problem in Japan and the practice had started finding its way into computer games, he said
Lincoln University philosophy lecturer Grant Tavinor, who writes on the aesthetics of video games, said the case raised two key questions: Did producing the pictures harm anyone, and could their viewing and distribution be injurious to the public good?
“The worry is that viewing or distributing such images could support the sexual exploitation of children even if the production of the images did not actually involve the exploitation of any children,” Tavinor said. It’s not enough that no one was harmed in the making of the videos, the law takes a protective role and says there are some things we just don’t want circulating in society, he said.
Two competing issues here. Firstly, what business is it of the state if one adult produces a drawing and sells it to another adult—a voluntary transaction involving, and therefore potentially harming, no third parties? If we’re going to pass laws against that, then why not also for any stories that canvass the same subject matter? It’s all part of a spectrum, we’ve just been assured. One thing leads to the other. Trust us.
Where is the evidence for this? Where are the studies that demonstrate a causative link (as opposed to merely a correlation) between viewing smutty drawings and perpetration of child abuse? Of course paedophiles will be drawn to such things. But will an average person who chances upon it on the internet be drawn into paedophilia as well?
If, on the other hand, you don’t have laws against such things, several consequences impend. Technology has advanced to the point where there is a continuum between artwork which is clearly hand-drawn and fantasy, as in this case, to extremely life-like animation (à la Shrek, Toy Story and other recent Hollywood productions), all the way to digitally-created images that are indistinguishable from real-life photography.
If you don’t have a law against sexualized images depicting children in such formats, then you are, to all intents and purposes, green-lighting child pornography, as you would then be putting the state in the position of having to prove in each case that the creation of the image (usually in some foreign country) involved an actual child—an impossible task. Strict Libertarians are in the invidious position here of appearing as though they are supporting child porn, and need to explain themselves very carefully indeed if they are proposing an open-slather approach to this issue.
If your aim is to stop feeding the lusts of the perverted, then you are on a hopeless mission and may as well give up now, for who the hell knows what turns who on? And in most cases, who cares? In Victorian times, they shrouded piano legs (or so I’ve always been told; a brief search around the web shows a consensus that it’s an urban myth). Don’t show any images of feet either, or clothed individuals, or rubber hoses, or rabbits, or…
Gotham City’s richest citizen liked to get around at night dressed in a body stocking and leather bondage mask, squiring around town a teenage boy known only as “dick”. Yeah, nothing to see here folks.
See what I mean? Unless we revert to a stultifying puritanism, and basically dismantle the internet, you aren’t going to do it. On the other hand, if you stand on ceremony as a Libertarian, not only do you have to consider the law of unintended consequences, but you’re putting yourself in some pretty nasty company, many of whom hide behind the Libertarian banner while carelessly destroying the lives of unknown numbers of children.
There’s no pat answer to this one. Over to you.
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
Geez, Oz. I had always thought of Batman and Robin as innocent. After your description, I’ll never think of them the same way again….
This seems to have gone under the radar in Godzone, but perhaps that was intentional. The article seems to be obviously wrong on this point –
“A man has been jailed for watching cartoon videos of elves, pixies and other fantasy creatures having sex. ” Clearly that was not an offence ; watching real people having sex is not an offence either. It wasn’t about “normal” sex; it appears that some of the cartoon characters were “youthful”.
Further down it says that he was charged with possession of objectionable material; this implies that he was storing the material, as opposed to watching it on a single occasion.
It would be surprising if this did not go to appeal, but without reading the definition of “objectionable” in the relevant act, it is difficult to form an opinion on the chances of a successful appeal.
As to the issue of the material being objectionable; who was objecting? It’s a tricky one.
I’m interested in why this wasn’t news, particularly legal news (which I follow) , in Godzone. I googled it and was amazed to see that there are pages and pages and pages on this incident from all over the world; mostly not newspapers, but net-based, and few from NZ.
What I was looking for was an accurate report of the legal proceedings; in particular , given the defendant’s past record , whether he was breaking a court order in possessing these comics; which would explain the outcome. Otherwise it makes no sense; or we really do have such ridiculous laws.
Possibly a suppression order? Remember last year I described the same thing down here with regards to a local parliamentarian – Oz
F.B.
I think the bloke did have “form”, but unless he was infringing parole or license conditions while still within the term of a sentence – that should be irrelevant to judging guilt or innocence in a separate incident.
The gradient between obvious cartoon characters and photo shopped creations is something of a “sorites paradox” where there are no clear boundaries. I want to give the obviously drawn and the literary a little exploration first.
About a decade ago, most of the handful of adult males from Pitcairn island (descendants of the mutiny on the Bounty) were convicted of kiddy fiddling with under age girls.
Defense please that this was a cultural tradition (whether from Tahiti, where the mutineers picked up their womenfolk, or one which had become custom and practice on Pitcairn itself) were rejected.
Clearly, Pitcairn was an example of practice, rather than just a depiction, however, the precedent is set – cultural tradition is no excuse.
The current case, is based on a fictional depiction. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the scenes depicted are referring to events which actually happened.
Does this just apply to overt pictures?
What if the description is literary, and instead of passively absorbing someone else’s imagining of the scene, each reader actively creates their own scene within their own mind?
I’ve still to read Nabokov’s “Lolita”
Friends who have, and who are into writing, theatre and film production, say it’s really cleverly done, and being written in the first person, you get about half way through finding you are sympathizing with the narration, before you realize what is happening and recoil in horror from your earlier sympathy with the creepy fictional character…
Nabokov is already established as literature – is precedent acceptance more of an excuse than cultural tradition?
I think you can see where I’m heading with this Oh yes – Oz
What of an (allegedly) true life story of a 58 year old man marrying a six year old child, then raping her when she was nine…
(but wait, there’s more…)
and citing that man, his life and his actions as the ultimate ideal to be emulated by all?
and such actions are emulated, I knew by sight, one guy who caused a bit of a stir in the eighties when he brought his nine year old wife to Britain.
I must cut this short, but my parting shot to the prudes in Kiwi land is;
Are you going to be principled and logical in application or abandonment of such rules, or are you going to be a bunch of dirty fudging and fiddling little pragmatists?
I’ve read Lolita a number of times.
Anyone – no matter how prudish – who has read it, would be forced to admit that the initial and pivotal “sex” scene in the motel is executed so brilliantly, and – yes – even tastefully, there could be no objection to it on any grounds other than Dolores’ age (only one year shy of the age of consent at the time in the state where it is set – how’s that for a Sorites Paradox). You were right in your previous comments that it is the reader, not Dolores, who is seduced, and is invariably shocked to discover he or she has been – as I was – Oz
Oz, you did an excellent job in your intro of covering the well founded doubt (or indeed impossibility of ever proving) a link between pornographic images / erotic literature – and actually indulging in acts which abuse other individuals.
acts which are by definition – non consensual acts.
I want to try to work through what I think would be a Natural Law / customary law approach to “age of consent” based on self ownership and being prepared to care for any “fallout” resulting from the encounters…
I also want to try to delve into the subject of porn and other erotic “art”, whether of the rather expensive sort; various marble sculptures frescoes and paintings of venus [her norse name]-ing herself – whether lying on a couch or in the rigging
deception and bestiality – Lydia and the swan
and various depictions of rapes – including by centaurs
and of course, that adornment of medieval and earlier churches – the sheela na gig (link contains images of stone carvings with exagerated genitals) – http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&hs=AyZ&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&q=sheela+na+gig&spell=1&sa=X&ei=nsF-Ue2yIenI0AW99YD4DA&ved=0CFAQvwUoAA&biw=1280&bih=635
and the rather lower cost:
teenage vampire romance
Mills and Boon
Anime
and of course photos and videos of actual people
and wonder why the hell some people might get so upset about someone else looking (and other things) at it.
I’m not sure of the date bracket for the invention of “childhood”, as opposed to young people gradually assuming responsibilities as they became capable of fulfilling them – For Britain, I’m guessing early to mid 19th century – when the effects of the industrial revolution were becoming apparent in terms of increased material well being, and food and other resources were for the first time in human history becoming sufficeintly affordable to ordinary people, that the labour of children was no longer essential for survival – they could have childhoods.
With increasingly reliable food supplies, availability of heating fuel and increasing specialization in the division of labour – and the efficeincies and material wealth that brought – ordinary people’s children were surviving in large enough numbers for the population to increase (Malthus, may you burn brightly in hell!), and within a generation or two (most places) average family sizes declined to what we think of as normal today, yet more of them than ever before were surviving to adulthood.
some of the old local parish records went on the net about 10 years ago, and I remember seeing one family (from a rural slum) which buried an infant each year for about 10 years, and I think it was Adam Smith in “wealth of…” who described all the children to be seen playing around army garrisons, yet so few survived that the regiments couldn’t even keep themselves in home bred drummer boys.
Anyhow… whether your livelihood is scavenging stuff from a steaming landfill in some place with a government which is cleptocratic enough to have mired the population in third world poverty, or working 9 to 5 in an office –
raising a sprog takes a lot of investment in time, effort, emotions and other scarce resources
so the idea of getting one just into its teens and getting lumbered with a grandchild (or five) by it – is not the most welcome idea.
Even more so – as a sprog is a turn off for lots of potential partners (by no means all of them, but it does reduce the choice available), even more so in cultures where virgin daughters are the only sort a father can afford to pay the dowry for.
It therefore makes some sense to reciprocate:
“you don’t seduce my teenage daughter and I won’t seduce yours”
and to coerce – cue voice of the matriarch of a clan of Irish travelers:
“You drop your knickers an me an all 35 of yer aunties’ ll kick the feckin shite out of yers – an we’ll cut his feckin bollocks off with a rusty bean tin lid”
and she means it – Irish travellers still have arranged marriages, usually to a cousin, and pity help a girl who’s not a virgin on her wedding night – their teenage daughters might dress like whoores – they don’t act like whoores.
I’m not sure what form the English debate over a state coerced “age of consent” took, but there is the lovely (and possibly apocryphal) tale of queen Victoria refusing to sign the act until reference to lesbians was removed.
so, England ended up with marriage (and bonking) for girls with parental consent at 16, without parental consent at 18, and male gay sex (eventually legalized for over 21s), but no age of consent for lesbians, and not really one for boys bonking with over 18 girls either.
How a “one size fits all” piece of coercion is supposed to work – except coercively, I’ve still to hear.
I can’t do any better than linking to Tucci from September 2012 on the age of consent and self ownwership: https://libertygibbert.com/2012/09/02/the-rainbow-connection/#comment-29181
Somewhere back about that time we were also discussing the thirty something male school teacher and his 15 year old pupil who’d eloped to France, and the panic the British fat blue line were having over something which isn’t a crime in France.
I seem to remember suggesting that her elopement was her beginning to assert her self ownership (even if neither of them had managed to say to the other “I’ll still be here for you when we’re legal”)
Thus wrote someone on your side of the Channel, over four hundred years ago – about a thirteen-year-old girl, no less.
Though let’s not conflate age of consent with the topic at hand – Oz
The 15 year old eloping school girl came up 26th sept 2012
Without a statutory age of consent, it is hard to maintain the position that some of the kiddie prawn should be banned, but, point taken.
Can anyone think of an empirical example of a place where kiddie prawn is not restricted, any idea of whether it’s a major thing in such a place? – or is it exactly as in places where it is restricted -a very minority interest for a few (imho) creepy individuals?
Outside of the genre of animae where artists provide deliberately provocative school girl characters, I wouldn’t have thought that there’d be much of a market for images of real life kiddies – but for it being illicit .
But, that said, I also have difficulty imagining how people can be interested in a soccer match.
You’re right about the contradiction regarding age of consent.
Remember what I said back here about gradually “normalizing” what we regard today as aberrant behaviour, as a precursor to legalization? That’s why I happen to believe that paedophilia will be normalized before the end of the century, even before it’s eventually legalized.
If Rome isn’t sacked and burned first, that is. Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius. I’m glad I won’t live to see it – Oz
As for the teacher and the 15 year old girl he clearly forgot that he could have crossed the Scottish border and married the young woman at Gretna Green as the age of consent is 15 in Scotland.
Speaking of Scotland they invented golf to take the shepherds mind off his flock.
Ozboy as for normalization it will happen in your lifetime we are in the end game stages of social marxism and totalitarianism will be imposed with full consent of the sheeple. I shall of course be applying for a job as a kamp kommandant where I shall enjoy my task of explaining to the useful idiots “I told you so”.
As for prawn having played company gatekeeper blocking it at work all I can say there is something for everyone and if you want a high class hooker it was cheaper to go to Moscow than Las Vegas. As for taste the Russians are definitely some twisted mofo’s literally. The Japanese are insane, the Brazilians like the ladyboys but top marks to the Hungarians for showing the most taste. It was a tough job but someone had to do it and tracking one man’s stocking fetish was an eye opener.
Kitler, you’ve remeinded me, an ex had a friend who was married to a cop.
Cop’s job for several years was sifting through the filth that those arrested for pervy activities kept on their computers and stashed in cupboards and wardrobes, for prosecution purposes.
One of his colleagues was getting married and some of the others had begged him for some porn for the stag night…
I think they’d started feeling ill pretty soon after they’d started watching it, and it was all returned first thing the next morning, with sullen comments about its content.
quite aside of the one law for them – another for us aspect, I think it had served its purpose well, no one wanted to keep it for a little longer and he was never asked again.
The golf comment has given me an idea.
Jetsam from the village accumulates in a corner of one of our fields – including kiddies footballs.
I think I’ll take one for my swine – things have been a little bit political in the pig pen lately – the sows have been coming into season, and are way too friendly, and the old boar is downright stroppy – bugger tried to swipe me with his tusks the other day.
I always keep my legs well clear of him, and he’s old and slow too – but that was a nasty surprise from a normally very placid animal that comes to get stroked, and he got a nasty surprise too, when I clapped his nearest ear.
which reminds me -I need to ring the vet – the boar needs sedating while I deal with his tusks and toe nails.
Following on from the piggy post
The bits of the brain which deal with sex, are the bits we have in common with slugs and snails (except they actually were made bi)
seemingly, a truffle smells like a boar’s willy (presumably it synthesises some sorts of androgen pheromones) so the pig taken to look for them isn’t just any pig -it’s a sow on heat.
that she thinks she’s going to find romance in something she roots out of the ground, shows how little cognitive processing goes into sexual attraction.
Which is probably why so much advertizing uses sexualized references – it goes straight into a deep part of the brain which doesn’t do any thinking.
Regarding the relationship (if any) between prawn and reality. On a long drive in Ireland – some time ago, the guest on a radio show as a part time page 3 model (she’s a post doc pharmacologist or something like that for the day job).
One of the listeners had texted the show asking if models like her were creating an impossible standard for normal women to be compared to, and making young women feel insecure (like they need excuses for feeling insecure).
The model’s response was that she’d shared undressing facilities with all of the current page 3 models “and we all have spots, pimples, stretch marks, cellulite and red marks from clothing, That’s what photoshop is for”
I vaguely remember from when I was learning to use a camera, that the advice was to use quite a strong red filter for black and white female portrait work, as it hid zits, even if it did result in anemic looking lips.
while back on the subject of pink parts of the anatomy, I wonder how many insecure teenagers have looked at pictures to reassure themselves about what the normal range of physical appearances is?
The moral evil at issue here is the exploitation of one person by another with vastly unequal power and authority, or even just physical strength. The extreme example of this is peadophilia with an adult male imposing their wishes on a female{or male} child.
But it is an extreme on a continuum of human sexual behaviour. There is a rather nasty, atavistic element in male sexuality that derives pleasure from the domination of a submissive subject. Most egregiously where that enables the imposition of pain and humiliation of the sub for the excitement and pleasure of the dom. All this is the opposite of the mutual, and equal pursuit of pleasure by two consenting adults…
However the dubious moral status of such sub/dom behavior is not a simple gender issue with males as the bad and females as the unwilling. It is not black and white, there are {at least fifty!} shades of grey.
The argument against allowing the dissemination of pornography that depicts the extremes of sub/dom sexuality, especially involving children, is that it desensitises people to the ethical wrong involved. Which may lead to a greater chance that susceptible persons will feel able to indulge in such acts.
I am not sure the evidence supports that. Anyone who has encountered Japanese pornography will be aware that it is often quite extreme in its depiction of the imposition of pain and humiliation on the subject for the pleasure of the dominant participant. The Hentai, Anime stuff is able to go even further down that path than any real action.
That certainly throws a dubious light on Japanese attitudes to women, but I am not sure that it is reflected in a greater incidence of rape or child sexual abuse. Lower incidence figures may be because of lack of reporting given the tacit acceptability granted by extreme images and behaviour depicted in fantasy erotica.
In this particular case there may be a back history that justifies the legal sanction imposed. Known sex offenders are often prohibited from possessing any dubious images because the failure to avoid such material is a significant sign that they are failing to control or avoid their particular deviancy.
There is of course a lot of slippery slopes on thin end of wedges in all this. If simple possession of images or literature on a specific subject can be illegal when it concerns child sexual abuse what about images or literature that society comes to regard as similarly heinous. Like religious blasphemy or ideological deviance from the social norms….
G’day Izen,
Very well put. A couple of caveats though:
Well, that’s certainly the issue at the production end, but the moral dilemma is that at the distribution end, that responsibility has evaporated, as the ultimate consumer of the image almost certainly has had no contact with the child, and in all likelihood never will. It’s not even enough to claim “if no-one accessed these images, people would stop making them”, as we all know that’s not true. Nor is it valid to try to pin some sort of vicarious, shared liability with the consumer; as we saw last year in the Finnigan case, the images were so old that their subjects were in all likelihood older than the accused.
It’s strange, we don’t think twice about permitting books or movies that depict acts of murder, enslavement, torture, battery, grand theft, you name it. No-one out there is claiming that viewing a depiction of murder will entice “susceptible persons” to go out and commit one themselves. Yet the minute you throw sex into the equation, the moralists go into paroxysms. Perhaps if they were more consistent, they would see the absurdity of their position. Captured bank robbers, for example, don’t show any particular history of having obsessively watched “Bonnie and Clyde” or “Point Break”.
I realise the above is coming dangerously close to the strict Libertarian position I referred to at the top. But it’s the logic of the position of banning child porn, and we shouldn’t be afraid to see where the logic takes us. Perhaps at some point, we need to trade consistency for self-preservation. As I said earlier, there’s no pat answer here – Oz
Izen: interesting comment. What I find amazing is that people in general, over time and over space, seem so often to want to make sexual behaviour even more extreme than it already is. In that way, it could be said that the familiarity of sex itself ‘desensitizes’ people to its inherently extreme nature. (The fact that it’s extreme is one major reason why it must be private, or why flouting the privacy protocol can be titillating.)
To a certain extent, humans have a problem with appetite management, in a way that animals don’t, simply because we are more resourceful than animals in finding ways to meet our needs, and being luxurious creatures, our needs once met tend to grow. (Think also of the supposed obesity epidemic.) Sometimes it takes a kind of fasting to gain clarity, to pull the telescope back sufficiently from the subject, to see it. As I say, from where I’m standing, on Planet Chastity, sex already seems extreme and intense enough, even and especially when it is ‘equal pursuit of pleasure by two consenting adults’. Perhaps the sex-extremists would be turned on by less if they didn’t gorge themselves so much.
@- Ozboy
“It’s strange, we don’t think twice about permitting books or movies that depict acts of murder, enslavement, torture, battery, grand theft, you name it. No-one out there is claiming that viewing a depiction of murder will entice “susceptible persons” to go out and commit one themselves. ”
Actually…
Occasionally there IS a moral panic about depictions of violence. Video ‘nasties’ and the age rating of films and video games indicates the way societies feel a need to get all ‘parental’ about the sort of behaviours that can be depicted in fictional work. the justification is often that the young are not equipped to consume that sort of pictorial representation with being affected because they have no stable, established moral sense to enjoy the drama without it moulding their ethical insight. By extension child prawn can be classified as something that even adults are unable to consume without damage to their moral sense.
Much of this is social convention. it is noticable that at least in the UK the depiction of violence is now much less extreme in mainstream drama than it was a few decades ago. Compare early episodes of ‘Minder’ with the later series. There is also the way that real violence in news reports is quite heavily censored in the English speaking societies compared with the East or even Spanish speaking cultures. They don’t cut away from the dead and injured, or photoshop clothes over serious injuries as happened with photos of people in the Boston bombing.
But you are right, there is a double standard about sex and violence. I occasionally look at American liberal christian blogs, mainly for their reports of the inanities of the religious right. recently one highlighted the different responses of conservative evangelical groups to gay marriage, contraception and carrying concealed weapons amongst other issues. They headlined the post with the question ‘Why does Jesus love guns but hate sex?’
@-” The moral evil at issue here is the exploitation of one person by another with vastly unequal power and authority…
Well, that’s certainly the issue at the production end, but the moral dilemma is that at the distribution end, …”
One of the ‘pat’ answers in this is that unless you can show that someone has actually committed a specific moral evil, almost always involving an interaction between people in which one party suffers harm, there IS no crime that warrants legal control or punishment. Of course that is a ‘dangerous’ ethical position because it removes any logical moral sanction from a whole range of purely symbolic and private behaviours that many societies feel a strong need to control.
Again a story from the US christian forums. It seems a prof at a bible collage was attempting to show how the idea of blasphemy and the extreme response from islamic groups to cartoons or koran burning was a cultural norm. So he asked a class to write the name ‘Jesus’ on a piece of paper, place it on the ground and stand on it. Many were reluctant, but presumably got the point. Perhaps inevitably one student refused, and after the class approached the prof making verbal threats of physical violence, complete with hand gestures. For which he was sanctioned. Subsequently as the story spread, (and the details mutated) the prof has received numerous death threats including that he should be hanged from a tree – lynched as he is black.
The point is that what a society or culture {and the individuals within it} regards as acceptable or a matter for authoritarian control and punishment extends far beyond the scope of purely rational ethics.
Slippery slopes, indeed:
http://www.news.com.au/national-news/ad-campaign-for-foxtels-studio-channel-features-man-having-sex-with-a-pig/story-fncynjr2-1226632926325
Izen you do realize that there female paedophiles as well.
@- Kitler
“Izen you do realize that there female paedophiles as well.”
Indeed.
Any general statement about human sexual behaviour should be accompanied by the caveat that there is likely to be a sizeable minority that deviate from those common patterns.
Izen it just seems that an awful lot of female teachers think it’s a good idea to have sex with their male and female pupils in their teens which is not paedophilia but the term escapes me. Not that any of my female teachers thought that was a good idea when I was growing up not even the hot one in her mid twenties.
It will happen in our lifetimes, you reckon? Check out this (warning – for strong stomachs only) – Oz
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
…Robert A. Heinlein
Oz,
I followed your link to the A day article. creepy gits.
Interestingly, I know a guy who’s in a book of faces group, sharing info on where convicted kiddie fiddlers are being re-homed, so that that their new neighbors know that the alert has gone from situation normal – the random background probability of a kiddie fiddler – to having a known risk amongst them.
several of the founders have had irate cops calling at their doors to shout in their faces at three in the morning – go figure.
I think there is serious and reasonable doubt that C L Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) actually was a kiddie fiddler. Photographing nude children seems to have been something of a Victorian genre, and I can think of at least a couple of victorian buildings with friezes of chubby little cherubs with little dangly bits, as supporting evidence.
The alice in the books also appeared to be a composite of several little girls, including one who lived a couple hundred metres from where a big sinkhole had appeared suddenly (collapse into caves in gypsum – it’s in the trees here 1°30’51.85″W 54° 8’52.43″N) was this the rabbit hole (its about 10m across at the surface 30 m down to water and widens as it goes down).
reminder for self:Non Aggression Principal
must go -work to do.
an american behaving like a —-, but all done in the best possible taste 😉
You know Ian, there are days when I wonder whether LibertyGibbert shouldn’t just switch to celebrity gossip or something easy.
You’ve just made today one of those days – Oz 🙄
A certain friend’s compatriots explained….
Again, I really wonder about the mindless willingness of some people to be slaves to their body chemistry. And don’t tell me, in that agonized ‘oh the humanity!’ voice, about hormones. I know all about those: I wasn’t born yesterday. That’s not the point. Point is, as a human being you’re above and beyond your hormones (chemical messengers), enzymes, eyelid wildlife, dental plaque. You ought to be something more. I have so much dog-love, mental inquiry, book-love, dolphin-watching and washing-up in my life, that it makes the hormones positively dispirited. (‘Look, Frank, she’s ignoring us again. Did you try singing ‘Stormy Weather’ to her? That never works. Try: ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’.)
The song that gets me, if they want to get me — not that it ever does them or me any good — is the one I’ll post now to the Juke Box.
Lewis Carroll based Alice on Alice Liddell mainly and today social services would have had him locked up. Or more probably allowed to adopt as many young children as they could steal from other people….allegedly.
As for the video domestic sheep rearing has it’s hazards.
Ok Oz, point taken:
Celeb gossip: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/02/stuart-hall-admits-sexual-abuse-girls
he’s a has been, he presented a crappy fill-gap show (what else do we expect but fill-gap, when the Beeb gets paid up front and uses coercion to get it?)
and he’s yet another sexual predator who infested the BBC –
difference is, this one’s had the lights shone on him while he’s still twitching.
What is it with the BBC (and the ABC down here) that produces so many perverts and sexual predators who see themselves as being above the law? There must be a component of organisational culture that accepts and promotes these characters while overlooking their peccadillos. I fear I may need a new instalment of my “What Is Libertarianism” series, for blanket toleration of aberrant human behaviour, particularly that which is destructive to others, is not Libertarianism but Libertinism, and thence anarchy; and that way lies the fall of Rome – Oz
A quick thought on “Toleration”.
Should we only “tolerate” what we approve of?
Isn’t that the position of the taliban, or of the 17th century ultra puritan rulers of Massachusetts colony? they may not have approved of many things, but what they did approve of, they tolerated.
Toleration, therefore does not necessarily imply approval.
Perhaps I can tolerate that some individuals choose to rape livestock?
with the caveats, that it’s their own livestock that they’re raping, and that I don’t have to watch, listen or condone,
I can “tolerate” despite thinking they’re creepy sad little perverts.
As for the “Animal rights” aspect, I don’t rape livestock, but I do murder it and eat the dead bodies, is shagging it worse than murdering it?
Incidentally, I think the late Khomeini wrote a treatise on the correct etiquette for his “flock” to follow when raping livestock
I’ve spent most of the last month with randy sows shoving their arses in my face, my answer to them is “no” and I suspect that the late Ayatollah Khomeini, would share that view with me (at least as far as swine are concerned) – one of the few things we would be likely to agree upon.
state made toddler prawn?
As a toddler Lindsey was photographed or examined for signs of sexual abuse 17 times, according to her own medical records. In fact, it may have been many more – she will never know. For, mysteriously, the official files on the Cleveland debacle, provoked by Dr Higgs’s blind faith in an unproven medical technique to prove child abuse, have since been destroyed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-438208/The-women-went-ordeal-belief.html
Why does the state sanction and approve of some individuals possessing stashes of pictures of kiddies bits, often taken while the kiddies had been forcibly kidnapped and held –
yet presents the substantially similar taking and possession of such images by others as one of the hideous crimes that the same state claims to exist to “protect” us from?
at least the stereotyped creepy git in the pink shirt, bag of sweets in hand and offer of “Hello little girl would you like to see some puppies?” is likely using his own funds to further his perversion – not OPM.
Oz
Libertarian versus libertine, just to get it out of the way first.
First libertarian principal, the non aggression principal – rape, kiddie fiddling, theft, fraud, – all are aggression, all open the way to use of defensive restitutional and if they fail, retributive action against those initiating them.
so long as libertines are not engaging in aggressive actions – I’m not saying that we need approve of them, or refrain from criticizing them and refusing to have any dealings with them, but to coerce them would be aggression on our part.
No victim, – no crime.
Those who do engage in libertinism, are high time preference types, and they will rapidly come up against the negative consequences of their choices – ostracism, loss of earnings and trading options etc
Without a coercive state to bail them out (by stealing from others), they’re either going to have to mend their ways or become poor and isolated.
re BBC culture;
Kiddie fiddlers try to get themselves into positions where they get access to kiddies and have power over them.
Over here, swimming coaches were the first lot to be cleared out – they had access to kids and power over them, but had no power over the parents and no political cover.
Priests had power over the kiddies and used to have power over the parents, and places like Ireland, they had serious political clout too – that cover went, and the kiddie fiddlers are being cleaned out of the priesthood.
State sector broadcasters had power over the kiddies (“Hello little kiddie, would you like to be on telly?” trumps “would you like to see some puppies?”) and they had political cover – so long as they were getting viewer numbers for statist memes they were covered
Any child or parent complaining was likely to be either intimidated “do you know what you’re saying about a very important person who brings happiness to millions?” or fobbed off; “we’ll look into it… sorry, no evidence”.
The same factors are also present within the political establishment (Your post on “getting the government we deserve”) and with bells and whistles for the fat blue line http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/29/guardian-investigation-abuse-power-police
The same perverse incentives apply with any of those statist institutions (and especially with the cops – who have a license to screw your life over – or even to take your life)
There is neither market accountability – we don’t have the choice of taking our pennies else where
nor is there personal accountability; the state claims it is “us” it is “society” and that “the electorate” decides what it does (now go find who in “the electorate” is personally responsible).
– it’s the antithesis of what I wrote above about libertines soon coming up against the long term downside of their hedonistic high time preference.
With no chain of responsible persons, complaints can easily be ignored or lost.
If a complaint does manage to stick (as they didn’t in, for examples, Saville’s or cyril Smith’s life times) an eyewash report can be issued (like the IPCC report referred to in the link), showing that the “few bad apples” have been dealt with and “procedures have been put in place”
which I’m coming to interpret as “now take your soma, and watch Jim’ll fix it”
alternatively
http://scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/never-go-with-strange-children-public.html
That blogger must have received a bad dose of the 1970s leak from Windscale – the one which turned all the dog turds in britain white…
Behold the normalization process taking place in the mainstream media, even as we speak. It’s only a matter of time, it would seem – Oz
On a completely unrelated topic, I’ve recommenced work on LibertyGibbert’s long-promised article on firearms control, which should be out sometime in the next few weeks.
Great, looking forward to the gun control.
Just read through the Grauniad piece you linked to
What a crowd of feckin rent seekers (I’d be interested to see if Izen gets that impression too) but then the graun’s main readership are state sector rent…
There are points underlying the article, there are the sorites paradoxes of deciding on which day between birth and being un-deniably an adult (I’m in my late 40s so hesitate to put the time of being undeniably adult close to me – let’s say age 65 to be sure), someone becomes:
a)ok for an adult to find sexually attractive – or sexually repellant (when I was 15, it wasn’t completely unknown for me to snog 14 year old girls, I found plenty of them attractive back then – and the odd one reciprocated – emphasis on “odd”).
b) at what stage (between birth and retirement age) someone has achieved sufficeint maturity to take responsibility for the mistakes they make.
do we ever (honestly) forget how much some early break ups hurt?
I don’t have kids (all the women I had long term relationships were allergic to the idea of having kids (especially with me as the father!)) and I guess I’d probably be slow to catch on that they’d reached the stage of self ownership, but I’d certainly be very wary of another adult spending unusual amounts of time with a young teenager
sixteen or 17 years old, not so much
Ian: It isn’t personal. A lot of women are ‘allergic’ to having ‘kids’ (yuck: I greatly prefer the word ‘children’: at least it sounds like something more than a goat’s offspring, more than a tacky, rather vulgar acquisition). When I was a student living in a shared house, with a high-testosterone boyfriend I had to protect myself against (sperm as toxic substance, life-wrecker), one of my man co-inhabitants asked me, in sincere tones: ‘Why do women want children?’ I said I didn’t know, but I thought it was visceral, sexual. Wanting a man was never the same as wanting anything from him, for me. He was asking the wrong person.
All of us have trodden long and varied paths from across the world to reach this spot, and we’ve shared much of them with each other right here. And all of our life’s stories are equally valid. Remember that when I do my thread on family and children, because I’m concerned it may come out sounding otherwise – Oz
Next week is International Clitoris Awareness week I kid you not…..
http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2013/05/03/human-rights-organization-debuts-international-clitoris-awareness-week/
Ahhh… Liberty, FGM and Islam. We’ll look in on it here sometime – Oz
I could do with finding a friendly one – one with a large pre-frontal cortex attached. 😉
Oz, you might like this for the obsolescence of one or two laws which try to proscribe victimless activities
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/04/the-printable-gun-has-arrived/
Seen it the other week.
To the best of my knowledge, no-one so far has died at the hands of a 3D printed gun. So right now, regardless of where you stand on gun control, creating them is quite literally a victimless crime – Oz
Oz: That’s a cryptic message you wrote there. I’ll just say that I am anything but anti-man, and my dog is my child, so I’m not someone to scoff at the parental instinct, despite my early and ultimate decisions. But the fact is that the most significant things are often double-edged swords. And men are dangerous bodies for women — just ask any doctor (they exaggerate!).
@- Luton Ian
” What a crowd of feckin rent seekers (I’d be interested to see if Izen gets that impression too) ”
Izen thinks he had better check we are talking about the same article and utilise the same meaning for rent-seekers…
The Guraniad article seemed the usual mish mash of ‘On the one hand…’-waving with little attempt to do more than edit a selection of quotes ripped from any context from different ‘sides’ in the debate to contrive a controversial juxtaposition. The writer(s) of the article and the various people quoted have a number of different roles and positions, I am not sure which of them qualify as rent-seekers… some may be media friendly rent-a-quotes trying to increase the public viability of their work.
Rent-seekers are usually defined as groups who manipulate government regulation for their own gain without any gain in productivity in the provision of the product or service in question. The licensing of taxi cabs and copyright are classic examples. But the root of the concept is Marxist from the analysis of the rentier class.
I agree that Ian might have chosen a more apt epithet than “rent-seekers”; though I understand the sentiment behind the words, and wholeheartedly endorse it – Oz
New brief sensible post….
Hi Kitler,
left you a comment, I just saw the biggest (frighteningly big) meteor of my life tonight about 21:50 british summer time.
Very big – not as big as the Russian one, but still big, and it was very green.
WordPress has just reminded me that today is LibertyGibbert’s third birthday. Many thanks to all the community here who have made it what it is.
Hey, Ozboy! Congratulations! There are very few blogs — or websites — that I have bothered to come to consistently for that length of time. In fact, your blog is nearly coeval with my (blush) addiction to the blogging phenomenon. I love the connection with people the world over, the sloshing about of ideas (to make it sound really highbrow!), and the meeting of people in mind that I could never encounter in the flesh. A slight corrective to your thanks: without you and your very humane and brainy hospitality, we’d all have nowhere to come. Thank YOU! :^)
Many happy returns!
both to you Oz, and to the crew.
Statist censorship trying to bite in the united state, Joel has the story;
Careful what we wish for when we’re being nasty towards kiddie fiddlers…
Wendy McElroy has a very well reasoned piece up,
http://tdvmedia.com/getblog.php?id=205&ac=83GY0Z1T
she also has a more recent piece up about printable guns
oooooooops
wrong Wendy post, they’re all good though.
This is the one I meant to post about careful what you wish done to kiddie fiddlers – you could be next:
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.2290
I don’t think anyone here is advocating a too-lenient sentencing protocol, followed by indefinite detention beyond the lapsing of the sentence. That would indeed be illiberal – Oz
Χρόνια Πολλά Oz, and many more of them.
Sorry I’ve been a bit absent lately – just had our fourth lot of people staying since the middle of April so I’ve been a bit tied up!! Son and family arrive next Wednesday so there’s a bit of a lull today and I’m playing couch-potatoes and catching up with everything.
Ευχαριστούμε Mel, and don’t worry – so have I – Oz
a couple of interesting ones from the UK
I’m not sure what colour shirt the National Socialist Scottish Welfare Dependency Party’s thugs wear, tartan perhaps? or maybe just fake burberry, anyway, it seems Farage escaped without getting a kicking or a dosing with olio di castori
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22566183 free speech is alive and well amongst the Irn Bru drinkers.
Different parts of the British state actually failed to agree a whitewash over the trivial matter of a state sector homicide. Despite all being paid by the same institutionalized theif, it seems that the missing ingredient in the coroner’s court was its not being staffed entirely by ex cops, all adhering to the canteen culture oath of secrecy http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ipcc-to-reexamine-custody-death-of-sean-rigg-as-review-criticises-initial-investigation-8619815.html
I got forwarded an email a few days back by a martial arts pal – reminding followers of that art not to keep people restrained in a manner which restricts their air ways rib cage or diaphragm, or they’d risk killing the person and facing the consequences (trial for manslaughter or murder), unlike doughnut munchers, who might (perhaps, if they are very unlucky) face a reprimand for not following “proper procedures”
Totally irrelevant, but I still wonder if any of those brave and accessorized chubbies in blue costume was a fan of the kiddies comic character “Punisher”?
Link to the blog piece warning those who can’t rely on the canteen culture of the entirely ex cop staff of the “independant police complaints commission” whitewashing their incidental killing of tax producing pee-ons
http://combatlab.russianmartialart.org.uk/blog.asp?blogid=104
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10064787/EU-to-ban-olive-oil-jugs-from-restaurants.html
OMG (as they say) …what are we going to do?
Hasn’t the EU got anything better to worry about?
(I could always carry my own I suppose, I’ve still got 20 litres left from the last harvest)
Hi Mel,
Rothbard had an exact parallel from the depths of the great depression in NY city.
The firm which was the major supplier of bottled milk had sponsored the head of an obscure health committee which pushed through a ban on selling un bottled milk, on spurious “health” grounds. That firm still sponsors all sorts of medical school positions
I’ve had a look for a written reference, Rothbard certainly covers it in one of his recorded lectures.
It’s mussolini style compulsory cartellization.
I’ve just polluted knotted prop with some crap about the even crappier eurofascism song contest, especially the Greek entry – ripping off british ska band, Bad Manners
I WAS going to leave a comment on ‘Knotted Prop’ but comments are closed!
I’ve obviously been here too long, I didn’t think the Greek entry was too bad, although I did wonder what Warren Mitchell was doing singing it? Also why were they all wearing kilts?
Anyway, take it from me, “Alcohol is (most definitely) NOT Free” here, more’s the pity.
G’day Mel,
New thread out in a few hours – Oz
Here you go: