What is Child Porn?

[morgan_dhu]

Well, now that we have to be able to defend any cultural product, whether it depicts a real or an imagined sexual act involving a person under 18 years of age, I figured that I'd have a look and see what I might need to defend ownership of.

I know that some people will tell me, and all those members of the Canadian artists community, that I'm exaggerating, making a big fuss about nothing, because the law has some phrases in it that would surely prevent them from challenging the status of real "art."

After all, the work has to have "as its dominant characteristic the description, presentation or representation, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years."

And "No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section if the act that is alleged to constitute the offence (a) has a legitimate purpose related to the administration of justice or to science, medicine, education or art; and (b) does not pose an undue risk of harm to persons under the age of eighteen years.

One of the big problems with this is that the onus is now on the originator, distributor or owner of "any written material, visual representation or audio recording" that contains representations of sexual activiy involving someone under 18 to prove:

1. that the sexual activity is not its dominant characteristic
2. that it does not have a sexual purpose
3. that it has a legitimate purpose related to one of the specified areas
4. that it does not pose an undue risk of harm to persons under 18

Now I agree that if the nature of the sexual activity is heterosexual and vanilla, and there's a plot in it somewhere, you will likely get a pass - in fact, if there's enough of a plot, it might not even be challenged.

But let's talk about work that involves kink, or queer sex. You really think that a book about a baby leatherdyke finding herself and coming to terms with her sexuality can easily prove, in this society, it does not have a sexual purpose (whatever that means), that does it has a legitimate purpose and that it does not pose an undue risk of harm to minors? Because the Canadian public and their elected legislators may have just barely agreed queers can get married, but lots of them still don't want to think about what queers do in bed (or on the kitchen table, or in the dungeon), and they don't want their kids finding out about it either, lest their kids realise that it sounds interesting.

And who says that a work in which the dominant characteristic is sexual activity involving minors is automatically TEH EVOL? Can anyone honestly argue that Romeo and Juliet aren't filled with teenage lust right up to the very tragic end?

And who decides what is a legitimate purpose? Obviously, the legislation presupposes that auto-eroticism is not a legitimate purpose. Would a book that helps young women who have decided to have sex (as is their right if they're over 14) develop skills for negotiating safe sex issues with their partners be a legitimate purpose? Is writing a political rant that mentions a book about young women aged 14 to 18 who have decided to have sex a legitimate purpose?

Many people are going to tell me, I expect, that these new restirctions are necessary because of the Supreme Court rulings in the case of John Robin Sharpe (more details here). Yes, the Supreme Court found that under the old law people can't be prosecuted for producing written or visual of their own imagination, for their own use.

And you know what? That was fine by me. It was illegal to show these works to a minor. It was illegal to use these works to persuade a minor to agree to sexual acts with an adult or another minor. It was illegal to use representations of real minors in creating these works. And it was certainly illegal to try to do any of the things in these works if a minor was involved. Making it illegal to even create the works is censorship and creation of a thoughtcrime. It may well be regugnant to most of us, but there's nothing demonstrably harmful about anyone wanking off in private to kiddie porn he or she made themselves without any exploitation of a minor person.

We didn't need laws about creative works to convict John robin Sharpe. He was also using porn produced through the exploitation of minors. That was illegal, and rightfully so. But it was his acts that invovled minors, not his solitary use of written porn, that caused harm.

And if you believe that only people who commit acts of pedophillia with minors would ever get off on kiddie porn, think again. Think about all those people who like to do sexual role-playing involving schoolgirls, or infantilism, or want to be leather daddies, or imagine initiating the hot young pizza boy. Think about people who use porn that depicts teenage sexuality (without actually using tennager to produce it) in order to regain the rush of their own adolescent sexual explorations. If people were only honest about it, there would be a great many people who include some sort of fantasy ageplay in their sex lives. Very few of them ever commit sexual acts with minors. Why? Because they know that what they're into is a fantasy. They don't want to really have sex with a minor of any age. They know that would be wrong. They just want the fantasy. Laws like this are trying to turn fantasies into thoughtcrimes.

So I thought about what I own that might make me guilty of thoughtcrime. My partner and I took a casual glance at a couple of our close to 50 shelves of books, and started making a list of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that depict some sexual activity involving a minor or minors. We don't know what "dominant characteristic" means, nor are we sure about "sexual purpose," because we can think of lots of sexual purposes that have nothing to do with wanking.

Here, in no particular order, is the first installment of the books I own that could be determined to be works of child pornography.

Dorothy Allison - Bastard out of Carolina
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Rita Mae Brown - Rubyfruit Jungle
Michelle Cliff - Abeng
Moyra Caldecott - Guardians of the Tall Stones, Daughter of Ra
Frankie Hucklenbroich - A Crystal Diary
Anita Diamant - The Red Tent
Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
Alice Walker - The Color Purple
Anne Rice - Belinda
Anne Marie McDonald - Fall on Your Knees
Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon
Lauren Greenfield - Girl Culture, Fast Forward
Bernard Lefkowitz - Our Guys
Susan Faludi - Stiffed
Pat Califia - Public Sex
Susan Hemmings (ed.) - Girls Are Powerful: Young Women's Writings from spare Rib

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, I'm such a thoughtcrimer.

Comments

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I just checked. I own a work of "child pornography." It's the movie The Lover, based on the novel of the same name by Marguerite Duras. It's about a teenage girl in Indochina who has an affair with an older Chinese man. In the book she's 15, and I assume that in the movie she's supposed to be the same age. I was planning to get a copy of the book from the library, but maybe now I could be arrested for borrowing it -- that is, if the book and others such as the ones you mention above aren't pulled from the libraries.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Hopefully publishers, libraries, and bookstores will come together to resist the chilling effect of wondering whether certain books are going to be challenged under the law.

Odds are the worst problems will be experienced by queer writers, queer presses and queer bookstores, just as the bizarre laws we have on pornograpgy in general allow customs officials to seize Mexican cookbooks going to queer bookstores but not bother with most shipments going to mainstream bookstores no matter what's in them.

And of course, there will be people scrutinising anything in school curricula or libraries just in case there's any sex in them.

[hothead.livejournal.com]

I bought this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0893815233/qid=1121949643/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-0280802-1159924?v=glance&s=books&n=507846") after taking an Art Law course last year. It was on U.S. law but they seem similar to me, ours being the more vague. Basically anything showing a naked child could be considered child porn, and people have been arrested/charged/acquitted with their lives ruined for taking pictures of their children in the bathtub, running around naked, etc.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

people have been arrested/charged/acquitted with their lives ruined for taking pictures of their children in the bathtub, running around naked, etc.

Yes, this has happened here, too, under the previous legislation. I think one of the cases was mentioned in one of the links in my previous journal entry.

North American culture has never been comfortable with the idea of sex, let alone children's sexuality, but when and how did we get to the point where any nudity by or around children is considered proof positive of pedophilia? You know, I can be in the company of a naked child (like many people, I have real live small children in my family) and not want to sexually assault him/her - is there something wrong with me? Is this hysteria the outgrowth of a belief that deep down inside we all really want to diddle our daughters?

I don't get it, and I don't really know how it happened. It wasn't like this when I was young. Everyone had pictures of their kids naked on the living rool rug, and showed them around proudly. And while it's very hard to gork out reasonable estimates, I'm pretty sure the rate of child sexual abuse has not declined in the last 45-odd years since it was my bare hide on the carpet.

But I rave...

[ladyteal.livejournal.com]

You made such a powerful point that I am just sitting her digesting it.

One wonders if this is just another "reason" that will be used to ban books. :-(

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

One wonders if this is just another "reason" that will be used to ban books. :-(

I fully expect it will be used in exactly that way. Sigh.