Microsoft's Bing search engine has
become the first to introduce pop-up warnings for people in the UK who seek out
online images of child abuse.
The notification will tell them the content is illegal and provide details of
a counselling service. It comes after the prime minister said internet companies needed to do more to block access to such images.
BBC News.
Well that's sexual abuse of children sorted out once and for all then.
This silly season has got so stupid - tis the age of the pointless apolitical gesture.
A bit cross about Russian homophobia?
Don't drink some (Latvian) vodka you weren't drinking anyway!
Angry about sexism on Twitter?
Don't go on Twitter for a whole day!*
That'll learn 'em.
It's a sign of how depoliticised our culture has become that NOT doing something can be seen as "campaigning".
Anyway I've started an online petition about this and hope you'll take two seconds to click on it.
PS Tomorrow I will be showing how I don't like stuff I don't like by not extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Please join me - OR DON'T YOU CARE!!?
Update: Dana Garavelli on the flaws and fuck-ups in Cameron's anti-porn "crusade".
* A report button will not solve Twitter's misogyny problem - Jennie Rigg.
Posts
But sometimes even doing something can be shallow and meaningless such as the Live 8 concert a few years back - all those attending a free pop concert thought of themselves as activists against world hunger just by standing there and watching !
ReplyDeleteYou're right.
DeletePassive "activism" defined.
I can't help feeling that it is partly or indirectly related to the recent gay marriage thing - not that in itself, but this necessary emphasis on "love" above all.
ReplyDeleteIt relegates sex; and as the clamour on the gay right for respectability gathered pace, then anything that might jeopardise that, like sex etc, was brushed under the carpet.
This is one of the many reasons I respect Scott Long - he's always fought, for instance, for the rights of sex workers and linked descrimination and criminalisation in that area with, in part, a concomitant attack on gay people all over, who are often I think arrested under the same laws.
He;s written very eloquently about the recent legitimisation of "love" and "equality" above all over concerns for gay rights.
This attack on porn and by extension sex itself - or maybe sex outside of marriage - as something shameful; feels like an extension of this largely conservative movement as a whole.
Does any of that seem true to you?
KInda.
DeleteI think this is down to his new adviser Lynton Crosby who wants him to return to right-wing populism.
He thought the whole gay marriage debate was a distraction, but likes this as a silly "moral crusade".
I think Crosby had a lot to do with the u-turns on fag packets and booze pricing, too.
Cause that's what your Sun reader wants etc.
Though I thought they were dumb in the first place.
Although I -like most people with the slightest bit of moral sense- find child sexual images abhorrent and have zero objection to those who stop it, when it comes to consensual adult pornography, I am opposed to any attempt to stop it.
DeleteIt seems to me that consensual adult images are being targetted in some kind of moral crusade.
So I think you've made a legitimate link: airbrushing sex and replacing it with 'committed relationships'.
The government has an interest in coupling people up. It saves them money- if a person becomes sick/unemployed? their civil partner/spouse can pay for them. Sickening really when taxation is individual. My guess is that cohabitation will be regulated next.
The trouble is that gay men-being men- are more into casual sex than women. Nothing to do with gay men being naturally more promiscuous at all; just the obvious opportunities for sex are more if you've got two creatures of a like mind.
This is why I think the tories are stupid-do they not realise that men are different to women. No amount of gay marriage is going to persuade the average gay guy to settle down. Why would he? He hasn't got the 'want babies' biological clock. He's not a woman.
Also, there may be a backlash when the gay guys don't toe the line; a subtle backlash-but it'll be there.
I really do like and admire Benjamin Cohen - even though we're on opposite political spectrum - but one of the funniest things I ever saw him tweet was when he said he didn't think people in prison should be allowed to have sex.
ReplyDeleteI respect his opinion, of course - just seemed like an odd thing to say, given the reality of the situation.