David Cameron, who clearly does not have enough to do, has pledged to consult on campaigners' proposals to force internet service providers to block porn by default. I am against the proposals because of the force. I also agree with Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group that non-porn will get blocked by mistake. There will likely be other technical problems. And it will make the perceived problem it is trying to solve worse because parents will have a false sense of security while savvy children figure out how to work around the filters. And I am not convinced that porn harms children.

But mostly I want the government to stop messing with my internet.

Stanley Fish is rightly getting a lot of heat in the internet for his brazen assertion that it is okay to adopt double standards in terms of the kind of language used to describe women so long as the person using such terms holds the "right" views and is, in some more general sense, on the side of the intellectual "good guys".

David Henderson, over at EconBlog, has what I think is the most devastating take-down of this character, all the more devastating for doing so in measured tones. The associated comment thread is well worth reading also.

"Might is right". For heaven's sake.

I have pretty much ignored the Weiner Dong flap as I am not much fussed about how the man gets laid. Whether he is true to his wife, a kinky netizen or as much a womanizer as some of my musician friends of old does not much matter to me. His political stands would be equally obnoxious to me whether he be Saint Weiner or an alley cat guitarist. However, I could not pass up this brilliant little bit of poetic license from the always humorous Iowahawk which Taylor Dinerman pointed out to me.

`My name is Weinermandius, Dong of Dongs: Look on my junk, ye mighty, and despair!'

As oft saith Glenn Reynolds, "Read the whole thing."

I have been following this minor scandal via Instapundit. This to make clear that I am engaged in the study of American political culture, rather than wallowing in trivial scandal like wot you might of thought.

There are two things I don't understand.

In this video (excellent snark by Real Clear Politics: they have chosen the perfect excerpt to present without comment), the question and answer go thus:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: "Have you ever taken a picture like this of yourself?"

REP. ANTHONY WEINER (D-NY): "I can tell you this, that there are -- I have photographs. I don't know what photographs are out there in the world of me. I don't know what have been manipulated and doctored and we're going to try to find out what happened. But the most important reason I want to find out what happened is to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Obviously somebody got access to my account. That's bad. They sent a picture that makes fun of the name Weiner. I get it. Touche."

The first thing I will briefly pretend not to understand while actually understanding perfectly, as do you, is why he does not simply answer "No".

The second thing I truly don't understand is why he does not simply answer "Yes".

Times have changed. It is traditional to say at this juncture, "I am not a prude, but..." . I am a prude and proud of it. I wish times had not changed (for one thing, a whole branch of humour is being rendered obsolete now that there is no need for coded language), but changed they have. Emailing pictures of one's wedding tackle to persons of the opposite sex really is not that unusual. Sixth formers and bored secretaries get into trouble for it every week. Fumble-fingers hitting the "Send" button with the wrong email address in the little box - or the wrong group of addresses - really is not that unusual either.

My advice in this situation has to be "man up".

So, Ken Clarke hamfistedly but correctly says there are degrees of seriousness in rape and the law reflects this - and causes great outrage. Not just from the avowedly feminist Guardian either. The Sun says he's a danger to women, no less.

Interestingly, both the the Guardian's and the Sun's commenters seem to take a more nuanced view than their respective papers. As they should. Clarke was attempting to make a valid distinction. Sure, he messed it up, particularly when he appeared to confuse date rape and statutory rape, but of course there are degrees of seriousness in rape as in any other crime. To say that is not to say that any form of rape is trivial. Whoopi Goldberg's much derided comment that Roman Polanksi was not guilty of "rape rape" was not outrageous because she attempted to distinguish between statutory and actual rape, but because Polanski had committed rape rape.

It distresses me that so many of those who seek to help to rape victims seem to act all the time as if they were a politician on the radio. By this I mean that they have always ready in their heads one idea, one sound bite, that they must express. Nothing must detract from that message; no ifs, no buts, no side issues. I agree entirely with the One Idea in this case: all rape is serious. But when one sees what trouble a real politician on the radio got into for merely touching upon the reasons for a sliding scale of sentences one also sees why most politicians try so hard to stick with the pre-prepared One Idea. Meanwhile Lara Williams in the Guardian (linked to above), a woman whose real-life experience of helping rape victims would lead one to hope that her views were rooted in observation, comes out with the sort of mindlessly simplified slogans that have given politicians a bad name:

Through distinguishing "serious" and "less serious" rape, Clarke assumed a perverse gradient of suffering, a warped taxonomy of perceived victimisation.

No one actually believes that. If called upon in court to state what impact a particular rape had had on a particular victim, I have no doubt that this writer would recoil in horror from saying, "Oh, the usual. All rapes have the same impact. All rapes are equally bad." Yet that is the logical implication of what she has written. She is not the only such commenter. It is sad to see obviously intelligent and compassionate people with so little faith in the public that they make themselves believe that the only way to put forward a true idea - all rape is bad - is to coarsen it into falsehood.

There was a time when the cry of liberals everywhere was that the State should keep out of the bedroom - no longer.

Andrew Brown of the Guardian has written an article entitled Why the Cornish hotel ruling should worry conservative Christians.

I think it should worry any person who in any aspect of his or her life is a minority or who might one day be part of a minority.

A law you like is passed; it coerces those you dislike. You rejoice, you "liberals". But the wheel turns. You do not have to die old in order to live long enough to see what was once persecuted tolerated and what was once tolerated persecuted.

"The sexual conservative’s true hypocrisy is that he doesn’t really believe in his own idealisation. Men will be inflamed by the sight of hair, women will bear other men’s children at the fall of a veil, boys will suddenly cast off the tedious ways of heterosexuality and put on the gaudy garb of gayness. In truth, sexual conservatives wants to make everyone else pay for their own dark thoughts."

- David Aaronovitch.

"Our exercise program can dramatically improve a woman's sexual performance," says Olga Nikitina, 40, the founder of the School for VUM-Building in central Moscow. "She can transform herself from a slow Russian car like a Lada into a Ferrari." To disguise the fact that the equipment really does look like it belongs in a car-mechanic's workshop - it's all pressure gauges and rubber hoses - the school's two rooms are painted pink and blue; stuffed animals model phallic devices.

"Once a woman reaches optimal fitness, she can shoot a fountain of water up out of her vagina in the bath," boasts Nikitina, a ponytailed blonde in a leopard-print top. The core device is a small silicone balloon that is inserted in the vagina and inflated with a pneumatic pump. "You squeeze against the balloon and measure the pressure on the attached gauges," says Nikitina. Fine-tuning can be achieved by learning to shoot out pebbles onto a metal target.

- Russian women learning how to get - and to keep - rich and generous husbands (with thanks to Instapundit)

It's no secret. No secret at all. Every second or third blog I read has stuff about it. Film Director Roman Polanksi (Repulsion, The Pianist) did something bad of a rape-like nature to a teenage girl several decades ago, and lived in Europe from then on.

But now they are going to extradite him or not as the case may be, from France or Switzerland (somewhere European), and big cheese lists of Hollywood big cheeses are saying he's a great artist and therefore regular morals and laws and suchlike don't apply to him, ease up, forget about it, freedom of artistic expression, it wasn't really rape ("rape-rape" as Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost, Girl, Interrupted, Rat Race) has famously put it), it was her fault, it was her mother's fault, it was the judge's fault, blah blah, and the rest of us are saying: bullshit you evil bastards.

If you care about the details you now know them. I care about the details, a bit, and I too am of the bullshit you evil bastards tendency. Not my point here. No, what interests me about this ruckus is how the internet has so completely changed the rules of such debates, and so completely wrong-footed the big cheese evil bastard team.

Twenty years ago, regular people had opinions, but no obvious way to express them, unless they were paid to do it, or were obsessive opinion-mongers the way I was. But even I, an amateur opinion-monger more obsessive than most, had no easy way to say what I thought about the Roman Polanski thing. I had vaguely heard that he had been accused of something sexually bad and was being chased around the world by American cops, but so what? What was I going to do about it? Sit down and write a Legal and/or Cultural Notes piece for the Libertarian Alliance? Well maybe, but frankly, I didn't care to do that. Spend too long trawling through the details of some rape case on the other side of the world, and you risk being thought a bit too interested in the raping (or whatever it was) of underage (if that's what she was) girls yourself. Writing for the Libertarian Alliance in those days meant either writing something a bit serious, of some length, digging into all the details and making sure to get them right, or writing nothing at all. So, for practical purposes, I was in the same position as all those people in pubs saying: "How about that Roman Polanski then? What's that about? No, I don't know the details either. Hollywood eh? Nice work if you can get it. Well, anyway, who cares what we think, fancy another pint?"

At the time, and for many years since, I too guessed that it may well not have been "rape-rape". That is, I guessed that maybe this was one of those furores where the legal age limit had definitely been transgressed (hence the fuss being made by all those puritanical US cops and judges), and Polanski was indeed a bit creepily old, but that otherwise, well, whatever turns you on and whatever you agree to. Silly girls in Hollywood will consent to all sorts of stuff to get their careers cranked up, and it should be their choice. But more fundamental to my point here: I didn't know, and I didn't care to go to the trouble of finding out. Me and millions of others.

The internet has changed all that. What the internet supplies is a vastly higher class of gossip. Before the internet, finding a piece which listed what you considered to be all the pertinent facts of a complicated, foreign and creepy matter such as this one could take weeks, and the chances were that if you really, really wanted a piece like that, you'd have to write it yourself, and risk being branded a creep yourself. Which would anyway probably never be read by anybody in significant numbers. Too creepy. Now, a few links, and you have all the facts you want.

Facts like: she was thirteen, rather than sixteen or seventeen. Facts like: he drugged her. Facts like: She said no!! Several times!!!! In every respect short of the use of a chair leg or crowbar and there being blood all over the place alongside all the other rape-fluids, this was most definitely rape-rape, and we all now know it.

All over the world, blog postings and think pieces like this one, this one, and this one, and of course this one, are now being penned - in America, by people who have long doubted the accuracy and quality of the Hollywood moral compass, all over Europe, by people who don't want it thought that all Europeans are as "sophisticated" as their damned Culture Ministers are about child rape, and all over the world by people who think that child rape is wrong, dammit.

Who the hell knows what should have been done about all those damned collapsing banks? Who's fault was that? What does that all mean? Not even the internet can sort that out for you in half an hour. But it can sure as hell tell you in fifteen minutes what bloody Roman bloody Polanski did to that poor girl, and admitted to doing to that poor girl, and how old she was, and how she said no no no no no, and it can tell you that it was wrong, and that he should be punished, and that how long it takes to catch him and how good or crappy The Pianist was are absolutely not the issues, and that if Martin Scorsese (The Age of Innocence, Shine a Light) thinks otherwise then Martin Scorsese, fine film maker though he may well be, is a piece of shit who deserves to have his moral compass wrapped around his neck.

It took me way less than two hours, in among boiling a couple of eggs, having a couple of coffees, setting the video to record the Japanese Grand Prix, listening with a half an ear to Martinu's Sixth Symphony, and scanning several other things on the internet that I've already forgotten about, to say all that. Having read and thought, a bit, I then wrote and posted it, a bit, in, for all practical purposes, no time at all, and it's now being read by Americans, maybe even including Instapundit, and maybe even including Martin Scorsese's press agent. A comment on some other think piece or blog posting would only have taken me a minute or two, as many, many others have been demonstrating. It's a different world, my friends.

A final point. Not every member of the Sophisticated Class is being as dumb about this as a lot of them are. Luc Besson, it seems, is not on any of those stupid bastards lists:

But support was not universal; Luc Besson, a prominent French film director and producer, was not on the list, though he describes himself as a Polanski friend.

“This is a man who I love a lot and know a little bit,” Mr. Besson said in a radio interview with RTL Soir. “Our daughters are good friends. But there is one justice, and that should be the same for everyone. I will let justice happen.”

Well said.

What follow is a somewhat edited version of a comment I left on a Hollywood gossip blog called JJ's Dirt. As the blog owner decided not to approve my comment (as is indeed his right of course, so no nonsensical bleating about 'censorship'... it is JJ's blog and any comments on his turf are quite rightly at his unconditional sufferance. His blog = his rules), so I thought I would post my comment here. As it never saw the light of day, I have slightly expended it to more fully express my views.

I came across the article in a google search for something quite unrelated and saw a short list of people who are purported to be homosexual or bisexual in various so called 'public' walks of life in the USA. Although I am utterly indifferent to people's consensual sexual behaviour provided it is not aggressively thrust unwanted in my direction, I have always been deeply uncomfortable with the self-righteousness of people who 'out' others. This was the trigger phrase that moved me to comment and my (slightly expanded) reply follows.

"The failure to come out on the part of figures in the public eye seemingly sends a message that homosexuality or bisexuality is something shameful that needs to be hidden."

Or maybe they just have the notion that it is none of anyone else's damn business and that unless they choose to openly discuss their private life, they should have their privacy respected by others when they are not on the job.

If someone is a politician, they are a person controlling the violence backed means of collective coercion and quite reasonably should have no right to privacy whatsoever, be it sexual, social or financial.

Being an athlete or actor/actress on the other hand is just a job, not a public office. Why should your wish to 'out' someone trump their wish to perhaps not have what they do in private known? Certainly no one can or should force you to stop this (unless they feel you have defamed them, which is a rather different issue that I am not addressing), but that does not make what you are doing right. Perhaps you define yourself by your sexuality but most homosexual people I know do not, so why try to force them to make common cause with you when they may well feel no affinity with you or your world view at all? It is already the case that in most of the civilised world (i.e. the western world) the law does not prohibit homosexual public displays of affection. You have legal protection against violence directed at you and being homosexual no longer mitigates your legal right not to be assaulted... and rightly so of course.

Moreover by and large you have tolerance socially too, in that people will not take action to try and stop you holding hands with your partner. That is what tolerance means. It is the natural right of everyone to have their consensual behaviour with others tolerated.

However if your 'comfort' means it is 'acceptance' you want from straight people, rather than just tolerance, well you may ask people for it but you have no right to it and a significant number of people will choose to not accept you. No one has a right to be accepted. As long as someone tolerates you (as they must), it is their right, not yours, to judge you according to their sensibilities.

In short, if all someone does is sneer at you and your partner holding hands in public, deal with it. The world is full of jackasses and always will be. But please, stop poking into people's private affairs if they do not want them poked into. I do not think what you are doing is immensely harmful but it is neither admirable nor justified.

Men do not like tits because they buy Zoo. Men buy Zoo because they like tits.

- mr eugenides comments on Michael Gove's aside about men's mags in this

Recent large stories in Britain and the US keep the issue of whether prostitution should be legalised in the public eye. I think it should. The resignation this week of Eliot Spitzer, a US politician and former state prosecutor who quit after allegations about his use of prostitutes' services - despite his prosecuting them in his day job - and the recent conviction of the British murderer of five Ipswich prostitutes, convince me we should legalise it. The benefits are many:

People like Eliot Spitzer and other vicious, corrupt state officials would have fewer ways of annoying the rest of us, which is unquestionably a public good. Pimps who control prostitutes, or who attempt to do so, would have fewer opportunities to prey on such women. The spread of sexually transmitted disease would be reduced, if not eliminated because a client could shop around to find brothels that enforce hygiene checks and advertised themselves accordingly. If he caught a STD, the client could sue the brothel, just like a client can now sue a pizza joint if he or she gets food poisoning. And finally, because if an adult woman or man wants to sell sexual favours, that is their business, and no-one else's, period.

John Derbyshire, the UK-born commentator who writes for the right wing US publication National Review, has this comment, which reminds me of why I am not a conservative:

Prostitution, like drug trafficking, is one of those zones where libertarianism bumps up against the realities of human nature.

Wrong. Prostitution and drug trafficking, which are both illegal, demonstrate perfectly the libertarian argument that if you ban trades between consenting adults (children are another matter), then criminals and the plain reckless will provide them, damaging society as a whole.

To a lover of liberty, it is hard to see why a woman shouldn't sell her favors if she wants to. Trouble is, weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery to unscrupulous men, and I think there's a legitimate public interest in not letting that happen.

Oh come on. One might as well say that liberty is only for intelligent, smart people who write for right-wing Washington magazines. Of course, unintelligent, feeble-minded people screw up, but the case for liberty is that people are better off if they are presumed to be best able to judge their own interests. The fact that some cannot do this does not overturn that point. Encouraging personal responsibility is good for society as a whole (sorry to use such a collectivist expression) even if it is true that some individuals are not good at taking such responsibility.

The best private sector solution would be a guild system, like the geishas had in old Japan. There'd be entry standards for the guild. Women would have to pass exams, and have some entertainment skills other than the obvious ones. The guild would police itself, expelling miscreants. Freelancing outside the guild could be under strong social disapproval, even made illegal.

He is talking about a form of trade union closed shop for prostitutes, sanctioned by law. But then what about the businesses that try to gouge concessions from politicians to get into these closed-shop deals? How would such 'guilds' be able to start up? What about registration fees? I can see a wonderful opportunity for political and business corruption here.

No, sometimes we ideologues have it right: the simplest, most radical option is also the most practical one. Even if you morally disapprove of prostitution - I do not - as a practical matter, legalising it makes lots of sense. Compared to what goes on down in most parliaments, prostitution is a noble calling.

The screenwriter, Tad Safran (whoever he is), has penned a rather coarse and unpleasant item about the physical pros and cons of British vs American women. It says something about the state of the Times (of London) that they would print this sort of thing at all. There may be some limited truth in his observation that women (or for that matter, men), spend different amounts of time on personal grooming and appearance. But in my experience of travelling to the States, I have seen enough examples, from both sexes, of scruffiness/smartness to reckon that his generalisations are BS.

This is a rather more uplifting study on the wonderful womenfolk of these Anglosphere nations.

Note: in my original item I said Safran was an actor, not a screenwriter. Mea culpa.

One of my fellow Samizdatistas recently told me that whatever business model the porn industry is following now is what Hollywood is about to follow. To see the future of Hollywood, look at porn now. Porn, so I was told, now, already, distributes itself by being given away, and then if you like something you see for free you go to the originating porn site and pay a bit, either in cash or in advertising attention or for individual products, because that turns out to be an even better deal, and worth paying a bit for. Hollywood is slowly learning this lesson.

But is it actually too late for them to learn? Look what is apparently now happening to the porn industry:

DVD sales are in free fall. Audiences are flocking to pornographic knockoffs of YouTube, especially a secretive site called YouPorn. And the amateurs are taking over. What's happening to the adult-entertainment industry is exactly what's happening to its Hollywood counterpart - only worse.

So, is that what is about to happen to Hollywood also? Will movie and TV entertainment of the clothes-mostly-on sort also be overrun soon by amateurs?

WIth thanks to Instapundit for the link.

Important data on the meaning of curves and wiggles.

It is a story told of more than one matinée idol, and no doubt actionable, so let us call him The Star.

The Star was rumoured in a big Hollywood prostitution case to have been one of the most regular [I almost wrote "biggest"] clients of the latest martyred madam. An interviewer caught up with him.

- "Mr Star, is it true you hired call-girls."
- "Now I'm not going to comment on the case, and I never had any contact with Miss X; but it is no secret I have used call-girls plenty of times in the past."
- "But Mr Star, you are known as one of the sexiest men in the world. You could surely have all the girls you want for free. Why pay anyone for sex?"
- "I didn't pay them for sex. I paid them to go away afterwards."

It seems our madly interfering government now wants to police our private lives a bit more closely, and thereby make them a bit riskier. According to The Times:

Unmarried women and men will be able to make claims against their partners to demand lump-sum payments, a share of property, regular maintenance or a share of the partner’s pension when they separate. They will also be able to claim against their partners for loss of earnings if they gave up a career to look after children.

The reforms are to be published by the Law Commission, the Government’s law reform body. It is expected to drop any proposal for a time stipulation, so that only couples who had lived together for, say, two years, could bring a claim; or any bar on childless couples.

Plans that would have made it harder for the partner who stays at home to lodge a claim have also been dropped. Courts will no longer have to be satisfied that the unmarried couple jointly decided that one of them should give up their career and stay at home and that the decision was not made just by one of them. [...]

The reforms would apply to both opposite and same-sex couples in “an intimate relationship.” But the Law Commission emphasises that the plans are about granting individuals a remedy, not rights, when they split, and says that the measures will not undermine marriage but make the law fairer.

A marriage or civil partnership is a clear, deliberate, decision. I don't think the state should control the form of family that is possible, but at least those particular controlled forms are optional, and formally delineated. This opens the way for officialdom to delineate and the courts to investigate any relationship for an actionable degree of intimacy, and for divorce lawyers to open a whole new field of speculative actions. Divorce lawyers will just love the idea that there's no minimum length of 'intimate relationship' involved, and that unilateral reliance by one party can create a liability for the other. And they've been agitating for it for years (e.g. in Solicitors Family Law Association, Fairness for Families: Proposals for Reform on the Law on Cohabitation, 2000 - sorry, can't find that online).

It would be an impressive feat on behalf of the state to make both marriage less attractive (some of its appurtenances - for those who want them - would come free) and at the same time to make sex and friendship outside marriage more risky - and possibly more risky the more affluent you are.

It might do some good of course, undoubtably there are people who are mistreated by partners or mistaken about their rights. But to punish every other single person in Britain for the cruelty or ignorance of a few is an appalling way to go. The parade of motivated winners tells you what you need to know: mad clingy girlfriends, scrounging scrubs of boyfriends, family lawyers, smug marrieds, investigators, officialdom, and prurient tabloids.

I can see a spin-off gain for the proprietors of anonymous, deniable, premises for lovers' assignations. (Brighton?) Perhaps the Argentinian or Japanese speciality hotel businesses would get emulated here. But that would still be risky for the rich and famous. The only people certain to come out with improved credit (in both senses): proper, professional, prostitutes.

Francis Stokes, creator of YouTube sensation God, Inc:

It's funny and kind of charming when things like this, the Sexual Harassment Policy Video, never evolve beyond their most primitive and mockable state. Being poster children for the post ironic post-post modern society we live in, it's hard to even imagine something so bleedingly achingly sincere. And yet totally insincere. A sincere video would flash across the bottom the screen the entire time, "PLEASE DON'T SUE US. WATCHING THIS MEANS YOU CAN'T SUE US. YOU PROMISED. YOU SIGNED A THING."

But my point is, we live in a society that is keenly aware of irony. You'd think there'd be nothing left to mock. But thankfully, we have group think. A bunch of beaurocrats would never agree to allow the Sexual Harassment Policy Video to have any knowing hint of irony, even if they each individually hold the strong belief that personally they aren't stodgy humorless corporate drones, after all, they watch "The Simpsons". So group think will prevail where post modern can never go. You can't really have a funny Sexual Harassment Policy Video. And it's this commitment to non-humor that makes it so hilarious.

Read the whole thing to find out the answer to this post's title.

Back in my day, the toms weren't much to look at, but you look at these Polish birds in London these days and yer think, blimey, I'd pay money for that!

- So said a London taxi cab driver the other day, starting off with what I had taken to be the preamble to an anti-immigration rant to a captive audience (me) but which turned out to be a hosanna to the value to the British gene-pool of the latest wave of mass immigration. He said because of the area he worked, he frequently picked up and delivered high class 'courtesans' to their place of gainful employ.

Steve Edwards relates an interesting story unfolding in the Chinese blogosphere:

Chinese Internet vigilantes have launched a hunt for a self-professed British bounder who has sparked outrage by blogging about his seduction of women in Shanghai. The campaign to uncover the identity of the blogger and have him kicked out of China is the latest in a series of online denunciations that have drawn comparisons with the humiliations inflicted by mobs during the Cultural Revolution.

Traffic on the Sex and Shanghai blog [currently restricted to members only - JW] had surged from 500 hits to more than 17,000, thanks to a swarm of castration threats, anti-British rants and attacks on women who sleep with foreigners.

That some Chinese men are haunted by a sense of sexual inadequacy should come as no surprise - it is a trait that can be uncovered universally. However, there seems a particularly 'Chinese' way of expressing this, combining a sense of wounded pride, chauvinism and sexual frustration. I recall similar goings on a few years ago when a young Chinese female author wrote a scandalous (by Chinese standards) book that was subsequently banned. The protagonist, a Chinese teenage girl, got up to all kinds of naughtiness. In the most infamous scene, she has sex with a German in a public bathroom, stating something like "riding his big cock was like sitting on a fire hose". Such explicit prose brought forth a torrent of outraged letters to the author and messages posted on bulletin boards. Most of them were deeply offended by the sexual encounter with the foreigner, and many threatened sexual violence involving the respondent's own (presumably fictitious) monster appendage.

The ugly controversy these isolated tales of sexual licence generate obscures - yet also confirms - the fact that generally, Chinese women are probably the most sexually conservative in East Asia. Despite its ostensible headlong rush to modernise and embrace the rest of the world (not an entirely apt metaphor, considering my forthcoming conclusion), such controversies show that much of Chinese society harbours a visceral discomfort with the consequences of throwing open the gates to Johnny Foreigner. This evidently includes large elements of the net-savvy middle class; a demographic that usually has progressive views ascribed to it. Socially, China is still quite an illiberal society, despite the adoption of many Western values. Foreign workers in a city like Shanghai can lose sight of this in the familiar surroundings of expensive consumer goods, rows of the steel and glass churches of capitalism and a general will to party like it's 1999 amongst the city's elite and emerging elite. Nevertheless, as this story confirms, conflating the two cultures can still be dangerous; even in the midst of China's latest Cultural Revolution.

Four firefighters are due before a disciplinary hearing over their refusal to hand out leaflets at a gay pride march in Glasgow

When did the 'enthusiastic participation' become compulsory?

I've remarked here before on how the paedo-craze leads to possession of ordinary images of children being deemed indecent, and hence their possession a serious crime, depending on who has them. Now comes an example where there were no children (nor, as the facts suggest, any young adults) involved at all, except in the imagination of the court speculating about the imagination of the defendant.

The Times reported yesterday:-

A COMPUTER expert who altered indecent images of naked women to make them look like children has been warned that he faces a prison sentence.

Stafford Sven Tudor-Miles scanned photographs of adult porn stars into his computer and used sophisticated digital equipment to reduce the size of their breasts.

The images, which Tudor-Miles also manipulated with graphics software so that the women were partially dressed in school uniforms, appeared to be of girls aged under 18.

For those who have not been keeping up with the intricacies of UK sexual offences legislation: Possession of, or (more seriously) making, indecent (not defined) photographs of children (defined as being or appearing to be under 16) became illegal a while ago. But it was extended to pseudo-photographs, i.e. digitally edited images, in 1994. And the age criterion was raised to 18 just a couple of years ago. And the courts have in their wisdom decided that copying an image to or within a computer counts as 'making' it.

So photoshopping or downloading a picture (which also counts as 'making' it) that appears (to the court) to represent someone under 18 and is indecent (as it appears to the court after hearing the evidence of prosecution experts that may relate as much to the nature of the defendant and the context in which it was found as that of the picture itself) is a crime bearing a prison sentence and registration as a sex offender - even if the defendant made absolutely certain that no-one under 18 was in any way involved.

You can screw your sixteen-year old girlfriend or boyfriend however you both like*, but snap them with their top off, or even leering suggestively, and use it as a screensaver, and you are a manufacturer of child pornography who could easily, given bad luck and a zealous prosecution, end up unemployable and/or be locked up to be tortured by career criminals. I don't know how unlucky Mr Tudor-Miles was, but The Times also quotes Ray Savage, one of the professional experts involved in the case:

“I’ve seen it in only two previous cases,” he said. “To create an image of a child by altering an image of an adult is just as serious as downloading child porn, and probably more worrying in terms of the time taken and work involved to produce such images.

“In general terms, these images can be as crude as someone having pasted a cut-out of a child’s head on to an adult’s photo.

“At the other end of the scale, someone will use sophisticated computer image manipulation equipment to alter the size of the breasts and genitalia to make a very realistic image.”

More worrying? Mr Savage worries me more than Mr Tudor-Miles.

If our protectors wish to stamp out people having sexual fantasies about schoolgirls, then police raids and mass arrests here and here are clearly called for. Better still, lets deal with the problem at source and stop women going to school. It worked for the Taliban. I have it on good authority that you still can not buy a stripy tie or a navy-blue mini-skirt in Kabul.

[* But not, under the new Sexual Offences Act, wherever you like.]

A victory in the Netherlands for freedom of expression:

A political party formed by paedophiles cannot be banned because it has the same right to exist as any other party and is protected by democratic freedoms, a Dutch court has ruled. The Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity party (PNVD) was launched in May to campaign for a reduction in the age of consent from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals, provoking widespread outrage in the Netherlands.

The Solace group, which campaigns against paedophiles, sought a ban on the group, asserting that the party infringed the rights of children, and that its ideas were a threat to social norms and values in a democratic state. But a court in The Hague held otherwise.

- The Times (from the Reuters report)

Good for the court. Even easy-going Dutch society is prey to populism, it seems. Without constraint on 'democracy', then eventually non-majoritarian views will squeezed out; not defeated in argument, but denied even consideration.

Worth noting (1): Solace [can anyone find a web-site? I will link it if so], who would rather nobody hear the views of the PNVD, made their claim based on some putative 'rights of children'. I would like to know quite how it enhances anyone's rights to exclude from the political sphere discussion of policy on the age of consent, pornography, the treatment of animals, or the use of drugs - those questions that have aroused populist ire. Have any actual children complained? And if so, how have they been injured by ideas?

Worth noting (2): What is causing most frothing at the mouth both there and here is the idea of lowering the age of consent from 16 to 12. But that is the most plainly arbitrary, indeed vapid, of all the fringe policies on offer. While opponents can not bear the idea of even discussing a change, the precise age (unlike in Britain or the US) has not been agressively and rigidly policed in the Netherlands, and prosecutions of cases without actual rape or breach of trust are very rare. Those exceedingly law abiding teenagers who can not wait until they are 16 can hop on a subsidised train to France (15), Germany (14), or Spain (13) for a dirty weekend.

(His Most Catholic Majesty's Kingdom of Spain is not generally pointed out by moralitarians as on the brink of social collapse - but then 13 is a rise from the Franco era, so perhaps it is more democratic...)

If I were his lawyer, I would point out that using a government office for having sex with his secretary was far less ruinous for Britain than how he might otherwise have been using it. While Prescott was harmlessly fucking his secretary, the rest of the cabinet were probably hatching schemes to make us all line up and be fingerprinted. Put it this way: would you rather he was shafting his secretary, or the nation? We got off lightly.

- Harry Hutton

The headline of the print Daily Telegraph today trumpeted 'Mini-brothels get go-ahead to operate on your doorstep'. I immediately took a peek at my doorstep but alas nothing to report yet.

To recycle a well known quote: prostitution combines free enterprise with sex. Which one are you against?

As someone who follows such things I had expected the latest Home Office consultation exercise to go according to the standard pattern, thus:

1. Home Office makes suggestions for changes in public policy...
2. ...'evidence' is taken from interested parties including police in search of promotion, contractors in search of contracts, and researchers seeking posts on the new quango to be created...
3. Home Office considers, announces its plans have 'general support', ticks box marked 'public consulted' and carries on with making legislation for parliament to approve.

So I was gearing myself up to write a piece on the repulsive sight of a department torn between the desire to regulate everything and to maintain PC social norms. Citing the ignominious failure of the Victorian Contagious Diseases Acts, I was going to pour scorn on the futility of a regulatory regime that licensed brothels while denying the most basic economic rights to prostitutes, and created 'zones of toleration' in an effort to buck the market while punishing the streetwalkers it purported to protect.

The Goverment has shot my fox. And it turns out the fox was packed with explosives. Someone has overturned the (paradoxical) regulatory liberalisers and has decided puritan prohibitions are what we need. The move is instead to be to "Zero Tolerance" of 'kerb crawlers' - and quite without comment, the continuation of zero civil-law rights and next to zero criminal-law protections for prostitutes themselves.

The Home Office minister Fiona McTaggart was quoted yesterday on the BBC as saying that prostitution "is child abuse" because many prostitutes begin selling sex below the age of consent. That is an insane argument driven by the demands of moralism. By the same token unpaid sexual contact must also be child abuse, because most people's sex lives begin before that arbitary, if increasingly rigidly totemic, mark. Someone, somewhere, is making David Blunkett, who was responsible for the original pseudo-tolerant proposals, look like a liberal.

Does the devil's name begin with B? The emphasis on cleaning up public untidiness by bullying is of a piece with the respec' agenda. And there have been suggestions that the inate liberalism of the Home Office - not something spotted by many commentators before now - is interfering with the operation of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit.

Just another brick in the wall, perhaps. But turning the public agenda on a sixpence, and producing plainly mad arguments for doing so, are ominous. The Head Boy is ever more a dictator, and ever more the apostle of social conformity.

The Italian government, desperate for any additional source of revenue as it beggars the surrounding economy with its imposts, has slapped a fresh tax on the country's porn industry. It will be intruiging to know just how much this tax raises or whether, as may probably happen in Italy, the tax drives the industry under the bed, so to speak.

Personally, I have more regard for people who earn an honest living making racy videos than tax collectors.

Paul Coulam sees that a contempt for private property leads people to do some very strange and self-defeating things. Free association? Not any more.

Amazing as it may seem the government has today banned 'gay clubs' as a result of campaigning from the gay lobby.

According to the Times:

Hoteliers, bed-and-breakfast owners and pub landlords will no longer be able to bar gay people from their premises under new laws to be announced today [...] The Government will accept today an amendment to its Equality Bill that will outlaw discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in providing goods and services or organising public functions. The amendment [...] will also mark the end of gay or lesbian-only clubs because bars and nightclubs will no longer be able to turn away straight people.

How stupid can these people be? Many gay businesses survive as such only because they can so explicitly discriminate, especially in their advertising. This ridiculous new law will be a very serious threat to the continuation of a 'gay scene' in many towns across the country. It is tricky to foresee all of the unintended consequences of this one. Gay clubs operate varying degrees of explicit discrimination depending on the locale or type of club. The strictest hard core gay cruise clubs generally operate a 'men only' door policy, which does the trick, but this itself may be or may become illegal - who knows what horrors of forced integration are still to come?

However many of the more general gay dance clubs operate what they advertise as a 'gay majority policy' which is usually employed to refuse entry to large parties of girls only. Gay clubs are often the best clubs in a particular town and tend to attract groups of girls who want a night away from predatory straight men. Of course the large numbers of unwary girls in these clubs itself attracts the straight men and before long the club has lost all appeal for gays. In the case of hotels there are lots of hotels in various, often remote, parts of the country that offer gay only accommodation and advertise as such. Will such advertising be illegal? In the short term after this absurd bill is passed clubs, bars and hotels will continue to operate discrimination informally but all it will take is some petulant activist or a council with a bee in its bonnet or some obsessive bureaucrat to stick their oar in to ruin some particular venue or business.

The picture below has been making the rounds of the net aviation (and other) communities the last few days. The young Aussie lads chanced upon a motor race event whilst on coastal patrol. They went into a temporary hover all the better to communicate with numerous and luvly birds on the ground.

Someone caught them in the act and the photo went up on a professional pilot's site from whence it spread to other places.

The lads seem to be in a bit of hot water over it, no doubt due to complaints from the PC (Pulchritudinously Challenged) sector.

A few years ago I read of lower spine stimulation by a doctor working with paralyzed patients. It had 'interesting' effects when done in just the right spot. Another, or perhaps the same doctor, Stuart Meloy, a Winston-Salem, North Carolina anesthesiologist and pain specialist, has been experimenting with an FDA approved stimulation device for lower back pain. At least one woman in his pain trial had breathtakingly enjoyable orgasms along with the pain abatement.

Other work I have read reports there is a lower spinal nerve area which controls the timing of ejaculation in men. Perhaps it is the same? The article does not say. Dr. Meloy has completed an initial medical trial on the use of the stimulator, now dubbed the 'orgasmatron', by women with orgasmic dysfunction. According to women in the trial, it works exceedingly well.

It may beat the knickers off a vibrator, but at $17,000 for surgical implantation this will definitely be a rich girl's toy. I wonder if anyone has asked Woody Allen for a comment?

Everyone is entitled to their sensibilities, however wacky, just so long as they do not try to make them the law of the land. As a result when I describe Los Angeles Times writer T. J. Simers as a 'weird prude', it is not with the sense of loathing, hatred and vitriol I would have used were I under the impression he was suggesting that his disquiet over a picture of a beautiful young woman in a pair of shorts (and presumed wish to see people share his puritan values regarding women) be reflected in the law of the land by imposing censorship.

But a 'weird prude' is indeed what I think he is. Whilst I see that bizarrely the age of consent in the benighted state of California is 18, in the vast majority of the world and even in much of the USA, the age at which one is permitted to engage in sex is 16. Moreover even if for some reason you conclude that the age at which young adults should actually have sex should be 18, surely only the most purblind would actually expect a 16 year old to be asexual even if they were abstinent.

So when an attractive physically active 17 year old has a picture taken wearing no less clothing than that in which millions of people have seen her win tennis tournaments...

... T. J. Simers asks, no doubt thinking the true answer is beyond the pale:

Now what do you think when I tell you the girl in the ad is 17 years old?

Well, yeah. The girl is question is Maria Sharapova and since she won Wimbledon, quite literally tens of millions of people know exactly how old she is. And what do I think? I think "Nice legs! What a babe". I am, distressingly, old enough to be her father, but that does not change the fact she is a very attractive young woman. So what?

He continues:

Sharapova may or may not be the most mature 17-year-old the world has known, but she's still 17. A kid. And if the message to young girls everywhere in the L.A. area is that sex sells - rather than Wimbledon championship tennis, shame on anyone who rewards AEG this week and takes their daughter to Staples Center.

Where were her parents? "There you go," said Lindsay Davenport. "I wouldn't do it, and I can tell you my daughter wouldn't either."

Well Lindsey Davenport was a great tennis player but I for one am also relieved she never struck such poses, though gallantry prevents me from elaborating what I think are the obvious reasons for that. But why oh why does Mr. Simers or Mrs. Davenport think a 17 years old should an asexual being? The advertisement was not one in which Maria Sharapova was offering to have sex with anyone, just displaying her athletic assets (her body) in a way in which many would find rather attractive. Being attractive does indeed sell so why pretend otherwise? Is the fact she is not pictured in the act of playing tennis somehow make her sexuality more obvious than these...

Clearly this is not a young woman who is in denial regarding the fact she is a sexual being and hardly seems like some bewildered victim of heartless ad man dressing her up as Lolita. I rather doubt the camera man had to wrestle a teddy bear out of her arms to get her to strike that pose. For T.J. Simers to find the WTA image offensive is perverse and suggests to me that he must have some quaint notions of what 17 year olds are really like and how people should perceive them.

Millions and millions of people are married or in long term sexual relationships by the time they are 17 and many of those are also parents, which suggests that the peculiar notion of infantilising young adults and calling them 'kids' for as long as possible is rather far off the mark.

I think what really made this whole thing seem so daft to me was that I have just got back from an interesting exhibition about the Crimean War which features an account of a 14 year old who had accompanied the British forces on that campaign and it all really does make some of the modern notion of a strict division between adulthood and childhood seem truly preposterous when talking about a worldly 17 year old Russian woman who, if you have ever heard her interviewed, is obviously no fool.

There is something profoundly odd about the mindset of a certain ilk of conservative.

After legalising prostitution last year, the New Zealand government has now issued a 100 page Occupational Health and Safety manual.

The recommendations - which the New Zealand Herald said will also be distributed to brothels and sex workers - include detailed advice on safe sex practices such as the storage and handling of sex toys and disinfecting equipment.

Employers are asked to ensure condoms in a variety of shapes and sizes are always available, and to provide beds that support the back for a variety of services to be performed without strain or discomfort.

Sex workers are cautioned to watch out for occupational overuse syndrome, often caused by rapid repetitive tasks or forceful movements, and to carry a small torch in case they need to check clients for sexually transmitted diseases.

Comprehensive training of staff in the safe use of all equipment, particularly for fantasy work, is also recommended.

Ah, governments. Where would we be without them?

Some readers will have observed that I fight an often lonely battle against the forces of the militant lesbian, anti-humanist, fascist, tree-hugging puritan conspiracy to wipe out masculinity. We know as a scientific fact that the best lovers are larger men. I have previously commented on the sexual inadequacy of skinny types.

It is therefore clear that the current obesity obsession in this country is part of a nefarious conspiracy aimed at wiping out Great Britain. Was Henry VIII skinny? Did Winston Churchill eat tofu?

Help is at hand in the form of a marvelous new book Eat What you Want and Die Like a Man: The World's Unhealthiest Cookbook. The reason for this masterpiece is set out in the Foreword:

I wrote this book because I was tired of being told what to eat. I was tired of the Food Pyramid and vegetable oil and small food. I was tired of pinch-faced little people who actually got angry when I talked about lard and egg yolks. I felt it was time for a backlash. Time to celebrate things like bacon grease and heavy cream. Don't we have better things to feel guilty about? Like the resurgence of velour?

This is not a serious cookery book, says the author. No doubt he could be sued by the pinch-faced little people.

So says local MP Robert Brokenshire. It is a moot point, actually. I am not convinced the social fabric in Adelaide is really under that much pressure. There is nothing wrong with Australia that making us responsible for ourselves again will not fix.

That is by the by. Mr Brokenshire is a local MP who is angered by this website, which is a sperm donor registry. The problem with the site is that it is run by, and aimed at, lesbian couples.

Mr Brokenshire has introduced a private Member's bill in the South Australian Parliament to prohibit such websites.

At present, homosexual couples are not permitted to use publicly funded fertility centres in SA.

The Australian Sperm Donor Registry bypasses these laws because it only connects the donors with recipients � forcing potential mothers to arrange insemination themselves.

Ms Thompson, who started the registry with Ms Ryan almost a year ago, said they had 'matched up' about 70 recipients.

My first instinct is to ask why the State is funding any fertility clinics- but the notion that the taxpayer should pay for all health in Australia is one of those assumptions that is just not questioned out here.

Be that as it may, if the State decides to discriminate against certain people on the grounds of their sexuality, people, being free, try to work around such restrictions, in the way Ms Thompson and Ms Ryan have. But you cannot keep a good Statist down, and Mr Brokenshire and his Parliamentry thugs, who know what is best for this couple, and me as well, are on the case.

After all, there is a social fabric to protect.

I recall, quite a few years ago now, watching one of those terribly serious TV documentaries that purported delve into the psychology of sexuality. The only part of the programme that I can actually recount was an examination of a gas-mask and uniform sexual fetish that appears to be almost entirely a British phenomenon.

The impressively qualified talking-head that they employed to interpret all of this, speculated that this particular fetish had its roots in World War II when the images of gas masks and uniforms (in the context of great national emergency and danger) left its imprimatur on a lot of impressionable pre-adolescent boys.

This was also shortly after Gulf War I when Israelis were all issued with gas-masks for fear of some chemical attack from Saddam. Hence said talking-head predicted the emergence of a similar sexual phenomenon in Israel in years to come.

It all sounded quite plausible at the time but its very difficult to judge whether or not they hold any objective truth. I was reminded of this, though, by a recent conversation with Dr.Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance on this subject and what (if anything) lies at the root of sexual fetish. The object we were discussing was not gas-maks though, but cigarettes.

In short, has smoking become eroticised?

I think there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that it has. If websites like Smoking Models are anything to go by then some people are clearly getting their kicks from photographs like this:

And this:

The linked site is devoted to nothing except loads and loads of photographs just like these and while the girls are undeniably young and pretty there appears to be nothing which could seriously be described as pornographic. Nor is there any nudity as such. As best as I can tell, it is the actual act of smoking a cigarette which is the focus of attention.

I found the linked site by means of a 'Google' search which also thew up hundreds of sites just like it (although many are clearly of a more carnal nature) and that means that demand for this sort of thing must be fairly widespread.

At the risk of betraying a relatively sheltered life, I cannot remember seeing this kind of thing before. Perhaps it was only the advent of the internet that made it possible but Dr.Tame is quite a few years my senior and he seems to think this has fairly recent provenance. If that is true, then it begs the question of whether the Western world's sustained 'holy war' against smoking has caused this eroticisation. Is it possible that years of cultural demonisation of smoking as wicked, anti-social and dangerous has gifted to cigarettes a quality of thrilling taboo?

If smoking has indeed been fetishised then I suppose it is a variation on the time-honoured theme of unintended consequences. It would just serve the nannies and health-fascists right if all their efforts to eradicate the evil weed had resulted in turning cigarettes from a casual habit into objects of obsessive desire.

Today I received the following email:

Brian,

Brian has started a webring of Brians with blogs. If you would like to join us, go and sign up here.

Brian

What is a webring? If I signed up to it, would the rest of my life be ruined? The Brian who sent me this email seems to be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that, consenting adults, some of my best friends..., I'm personally in favour of gay marriage, blah blah blah. But if I sign up, will I be bombarded with gay porn for the rest of my days?

In general, I feel that it is good that we Brians are getting together, and if a webring is what I think it may be, we can perhaps sit on one, in a circle, perhaps somewhere in the countryside, and discuss the Brian Issue. That is, we can discuss why cuckolded husbands, send-up substitutes for Jesus Christ, etc. etc., in the movies, all seem to be called Brian. Brian is not a cool name, is my point. Maybe we Brians can get together and change that. (The danger, of course, is that by getting together in such ways as these, we might merely confirm all the existing anti-Brian stereotypes, and cause Brianphobia to become even more deeply entrenched.)

Meanwhile, how many indisputably cool Brians can be assembled? I offer two outstanding contemporary sportsman: the West Indian cricket captain and ace batsman Brian Lara, and the Irish rugby captain and ace centre threequarter Brian O'Driscoll.

Having already done most of my schoolboy sniggering in private (although I reserve the right to indulge it again at a later date) I think I can now bring myself to say a few (semi) serious things about this:

Belgian legislators are hoping to bring that to a close with a parliamentary bill that would draw prostitutes into the legal fold and bring the industry under state control, providing sex workers with labour rights and greater health protection.

But for a fee.

The sex workers themselves would be expected to pay up when the tax man calls - boosting state coffers to the tune of an estimated 50 million euros a year.

It represents an attractive option for a country currently struggling to balance its budget deficit - a means of generating money while affording prostitutes better protection.

Not so much legalisation then as part-nationalisation and while it would be nice to imagine that Belgium's lawmakers have been driven by a genuinely liberal impulse it is more likely that they have been prompted by the desire to get their sticky mitts on all that revenue.

However, I think complaints would be out of order. The trade in (ahem) 'personal' services between adults is not a crime and should not be treated as one, so although they may have to hand over a chunk of their earnings to the state at least the prostitutes (and their clients) will have been freed from the constant threat of arrest and prosecution. That is a good thing.

Aside from the fact that we can now justifiably and factually regard them as pimps, the Belgian government would undoubtedly argue that they cannot legitimise the sex industry without subjecting it to the same taxes that every other legitimate industry is forced to stump up. Nor should it be overlooked that gangster protection may prove cheaper than the Belgian state but tax-inspectors generally do not use razors as a means of enforcement.

I sincerely hope that HMG decides to follow the Belgian example on this issue but I don't expect they will do so anytime soon. Even in this day and age there is still a deeply-ingrained Sabbatarian disapproval of 'bawdiness' in this country that manifests itself as a very noisy and effective 'no' lobby at the merest mention of relaxing the laws on prostitution. I wish it were not so because even a taxed-and-regulated sex industry would be an improvement on the current arrangements.

Cultural commentator - from a generally conservative vantage point - David Brooks has some interesting things to note about the popularity of men's magazines like Maxim, and about what this says about our culture. In a nutshell, he suggests that this shows that the advance of feminism and even political correctness (however you want to define that) may not have produced the results some commentators may have wanted.

He also makes the point, which to my mind rang true, that 'reactionary' attitudes are often not the preserve of the upper classes, but often most deeply held elsewhere, such as among America's rap music artists. Here's a nice quote:

We have a dynamic urban culture that treats women like whores and that regards owning a Mercedes as the highest possible human aspiration, and the leading articulators of progressive opinion have nothing to say about it. They can't seem to bring themselves to admit out loud that their most effective ideological enemies have turned out to be the same underprivileged people they wanted to rescue from oblivion.

This observation is hardly new. Yet even someone like yours truly, who likes to watch action movies, dreams of fast cars and feels no shame in enjoying pictures of lovely women, can feel a bit troubled about where things can be headed. I don't know if the kind of things Brooks frets about are problems that have to be 'fixed' in some way.

There definitely has been something of a backlash in parts of our culture against the dictates of political correctness. It doesn't surprise me all that much that the kind of mindless dreck published by the Maxim mags of this world is so popular. Maybe we are just observing the cultural equivalent of Newton's law at work - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It applies to space rockets and it applies to culture as well, maybe.

Student Amy Keel in the Harvard Crimson explains why she destroyed a phallic sculpture:

"As a student of Harvard University, neither I, nor any other woman, should have to see this obscene and grossly inappropriate thing on my way to class. No one should have to be subjected to an erect penis without his or her express permission or consent.

Many women and men, including myself, are the victims of sexual assault, child sexual abuse and rape. The unwanted image of an erect penis is an implied threat; it means that we, as women, must be subject to erect penises whether we like it or not. There was nothing "challenging" or "subversive" about the penis. The only thing it did was create an uncomfortable environment for the women of Harvard University."

Presumably she would not have enjoyed the parties at the very countercultural communal flat of my CMU grad school days. We had wild ones. If you are a true conservative rather than a libertarian, they were everything you feared was going on some where... and more.

There was one Halloween party where a large chunk of the Fine Arts department ended up in our flat. It was a night Fellini could have been proud of.

Some of the costumes were so creative I remember them to this day. There was a gay friend of the household from Globe Players, our Shakespeare company, who came as "The Dope Fairy". He wore a pink tutu, ballet tights and a Santa's bag. He moved about the party spreading happiness where ever he went... and then there were the four fellows from Painting and Sculpture. They really put effort into it. It must have taken days to build the chicken wire frames, paper mache them and do the painting. They came as organs. Male and Female.

Have you ever had a 6 foot breast bump into you at the punch bowl? Or seen a face staring out at you from the middle of a hairy...

Perhaps I'll skip that one.

It seems some of the conservative media are getting all hot and bothered over sex on the campus. If the allegation that tax payer funds were used were true, I would agree on that very limited issue. Universities should not be State funded. Period and full stop. In any case, the University of Arizona event in question apparently wasn't campus funded:

The university insists none of their money went toward promoting the controversial festival. It was underwritten by a public-funded arts council and held both off- and on-campus.

Another even less objectionable event occured in Indiana:

Other universities have also lately had trouble maintaining the line between sex and education. At Indiana University, officials are probing whether any laws were broken when pornographic filmmakers from Shane's World entertainment, based in Van Nuys, Calif., used a campus dorm to make an adult movie last month.

It's hard to see what laws could be broken. I don't think any force was used by the filmmakers. Hell, if you were an undergrad and a porn starlet hopped into YOUR bed, which of the following would you say?

1. Help, Police! I'm being attacked by a sex goddess!
   
2. Thank you God!
   

Why does sex seem to be such a hangup for so many of the conservative orientation?

David Blunkett, Britain's blind Home Secretary proved his blindness extends far beyond mere eyes.

New sex offence laws to be unveiled by the Government next month could include a crackdown on date rape.

Under the proposed law, reportedly being introduced by Home Secretary David Blunkett, men accused of rape will have to prove they made efforts to ensure their sexual partners gave agreement.

They will no longer be able to rely on the defence of "honest belief", a legal loophole where suspects can be acquitted if they genuinely believed the alleged victim wanted sex.

What happened to the presumption of innocence? This is utter madness. Rape is an appalling crime, but how exactly can a guy who "genuinely believed the alleged victim wanted sex" somehow prove it to be a justified believe? Is he expected to get a second opinion from some third party before continuing at each stage? Perhaps lawyers like David Carr will find an new lucrative source of business as 'dating lawyers', sitting at the bottom of the bed and witnessing each declaration of consent.

Him: May I touch you there, my dear?
Her: Oooo, yes please!
Lawyer: Consent recorded.
Him: Oh yeah, baby...
Her: Ahhhhhh....
Lawyer: Umm, is that 'Ahhhh yes' or 'Ahhhhh no'?
Her: Yes! Yes!
Lawyer: Consent recorded.
Him: Lean back a bit...Oooooo!
Her: Mmmmm... a little lower darling.
Lawyer: Hold it! As your lawyer I must advise you that if you proceed, it could be construed as potentially non-consensual as she has clearly stated you are not touching her exactly where she wishes to be touched! Whilst not admitting anything to the generality of the foregoing on behalf of my client, I must advise my client to, er, withdrawn and seek written confirmation before continuing...

The PC anti-sex brigade has claimed another victim. Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene has been forced to resign - I would call it fired - for sleeping with an of-age teenage girl over ten years ago.

Whatever happened to sexual liberation? The Berkeley Free Sex (and Speech) Movement? Is the Anglosphere being taken over by prudes? And if so, where did they come from? They sure as hell weren't in the left when I was, back 30 years ago when everyone was bonking away like an Austin Powers at the Plato's Cave nightclub.

Adriana and Perry have discussed Leah McLaren's articles but the problem isn't that English men are all closet poofs. The problem is that Ms McLaren's sampling method was unscientific. "Old Etonian skinny boys make poor lovers" is hardly news. As I pointed out some weeks ago, she should have followed expert opinion: larger men have more sensitive mouths, lips and tongues. This makes us heartier eaters and no doubt better kissers. Typical of a North American health-freak snob to get it wrong.

I knew it wouldn't take long for someone to respond to Leah McLaren's criticism of the English male. By the way, Perry, I was not merely amused by her remarks, I also agreed with them.

The gentleman defending Englishmen's pride and amorous skills sounds nice and perfectly serviceable. Nevertheless, Leah based the conclusions in her article on about a dozen 'dates'. Perhaps not enough to make sweeping statements about the entire male population of the British Isles, especially as there are always exceptions, but sufficient to get some insight into their 'mating habits'.

Instead of discrediting Ms McLaren's motives, one should ask - does any woman agree with her? To me her rather unkind analysis of an English male rang true not as an old adage about the reserve and reticence of the quintessential English gentleman, usually so painfully and embarrassingly at odds with his own emotions that only 'tragic' and 'desperate' situations a là Jane Austin novels force him to articulate them.

Leah may have been harsh in her judgement but yet... harsh. It all depends on what you are after. If she expected to be overtly fussed over, adored and ultimately made feel above all women, well she was probably not going to get that on the first or even the fifth date with an Englishman. In that sense, English men are perhaps slower but more solid once they sort out their sometimes convoluted emotions. (And I am talking about the kind of gentleman who wrote the article, I would not want to presume an emotional dimension in the laddish section of the population.)

Leah says she prefers a straightforward North American male who looks her in the eye telling her whatever she wants to hear. Good trick, if you can manage it. This is where the grain of truth in what she says is hidden. The English man does not understand women. Leah may have even been right about why that is. Separation from maternal affection at an early age, exclusively male company during the crucial formative stage, etc,..blah blah. None of this necessarily means that he cannot understand a particular woman once he decides to make the effort. What it does mean though is that he is indeed no match for the more romantically skilled nationalities, such as Italians for example. And believe you me this is not just another cliche.

To be fair though I'd much rather have a date with an English gentleman than an oily Don Juan.

Canadian Leah McLaren's remarks about the sexuality of English males amused Adriana but a gentleman who actually dated the winsome Ms. McLaren has a rather less charitable view on why she wrote the things she did.

This is what you get for having a female contributor to Samizdata - I don't think any of the guys would care to link to an article by Leah McLaren about The tragic ineptitude of the English male.

Leah is a Canadian reporter who moved to London and found her 'dating' experience profoundly inadequate. If you are an English male and thinking well, perhaps, it's just her, she wasn't interesting, attractive, sexy, blah, blah, blah enough, don't even go there. She is right whether you like it or not!

Obviously, there are exceptions, I hasten to add in order to salvage my reputation and male egos of those who might take my emphatic agreement with Ms McLaren personally.

The truth of the matter is that the English male is confused by women in general, and by English women in particular. He handles foreign ones better, simply because he can be more patronising to them, especially if their first language is not English....Ouch! I know that hurt.

The trick of a quasi-normal interaction with an English male is to stop behaving as a woman and just be a person easy to talk to. Generally, it works provided they can get past certain features of the female anatomy. Obviously, this approach is not suitable for 'dating' and Leah may have to stick with North American ex-pats. Good to hear that things have really changed there over the last 10 years...

Blogger Susanna Cornett disagreed with my earlier post Free love or fight

Here's the reality: Believing there are appropriate and inappropriate contexts for sexual activity that should be socially enforced is not inherently "anti-sexual", and no more or less than what Amon does. Maybe conservatives and libertarians are more alike than he thinks.

If I want to go on the road with a rock band and over the course of 10 years sleep with 1000 women (like at least one heavy metal star claims), and if all were willing and if I have taken appropriate precautions against the negative outcomes, then it is my prerogative to live that lifestyle. I have used no force, I have coerced no one, and I've had a jolly good ten years.

If a well known gay blogger suddenly decided he wanted quantity and variety and went to gay orgies every night, but took precautions then that is his business.

It is true that I would call for the repeal of all laws of victimless crimes. I'd also call for the removal of all public assistance for those who partake of those life styles and get burnt. You are free to do it - but on your own shilling.

I have no problem with nonviolent social enforcement. If I live in your town and you absolutely hate my life style, you don't have to talk to me or do business with me. If enough people agree with you, I might find it best to move elsewhere.

The government has no place whatever in sexual matters.

Dale Amon is someone with whom I actually have an unusually high degree of agreement on many many issues. In his article Free love or fight! however, I find myself agreeing with his conclusions only partly and even that for rather different reasons.

Whilst he is quite correct that there are elements of the Republican Party in the USA which are supportive of profoundly repressive actions by the state regarding sexual freedoms, I am not sure the issue of abortion comes under the category of 'sexual freedoms' at all. It is a contentious issue pertaining to definitions of life and death rather than sex, which whilst the proximate cause, is a separate issue.

Similarly I know many Republicans who are very libertarian regarding matters of sexual liberty... profoundly so in fact, taking the view that provided possible results of sex such as disease and pregnancy are treated responsibly and of accepted consequence, then the fact a person might like to have wild monkey sex is none of any one else's business. The 'Ashcroft' faction does not define the entire Republican Party's views on sex.

Of course there is indeed a certain paleo-conservative constituency within Republicanism in the USA which is inimical to libertarian values on many issues... but then I would argue they are just as inimical to neo-conservative values. Similarly there is a large and just as toxic 'anti-sex' element within the US Democratic Party, largely drawn from their still large number of paleo-feminist supporters. In reality I suspect the Democratic Party's infection with Political Correctness is probably the greater threat to sexual freedoms (abortion is another issue entirely) than the Republican Puritan elements will ever be.

I am convinced that libertarians can indeed find significant elements within both the Democratic and Republican Party with whom to work, based on the inherent contradictions of these philosophically fuzzy groups that make a subversivist approach both practical and productive.

My worry about whether libertarians can actually find any common ground in the short term with mainstream Republicanism is more due to the fact it is becoming clear that George Bush is just another economically incoherent crypto-Keynsian. For all his talk about free trade, he has added not just steel tariffs but also wood tariffs against Canada, honey tariffs against Argentina, textile tariffs against Pakistan and sugar tariffs against Mexico... never mind that Mexico and Canada are NAFTA members.

I shall blog another article soon about the economic and political harm being done by the US government not just in their own country but also elsewhere, as they undermine the very people they should be supporting.

In his Weekly Standard article Condi Crazy, Lee Bockthorn goes straight to the heart of why I never have and never, ever will vote for a Republican:

But no matter how much these pro-choice Republicans whine, the GOP will always be a pro-life party. Why? Because the abortion issue goes to the heart of what both major parties are about. For Democrats, it's a proxy for their entire worldview regarding sexual freedom and unfettered moral autonomy. For Republicans, being pro-life is about remaining the party of Lincoln: Just like slavery, unlimited abortion on demand threatens equality (and thus liberty) by denying a class of human beings their inalienable rights and equal dignity merely because it is convenient to do so.

It is not even the abortion issue per-se that angers me. Libertarians are split across the issue. I'm solidly pro-choice: others are not. That's fine so long as we all agree to keep the State out of it. What is key is Mr Bockhorn sees Republicans as inherently anti-sexual. I am profoundly pro-sexual freedom and unfettered moral autonomy... within the limits consensual activity and personal responsibility for the results. Some libertarians may prefer a more "traditional" family, but they would never consider ramming it down my throat.

The quote shows how fundamentally flawed it is to ever think we as Libertarians can accomplish anything at all with the Republicans.

We just don't have all that much in common.

Sometimes I leap to defend libertarian ideas with a glad cry, filled with the joy of battle. And sometimes I do it with a peg on my nose, scarcely able to believe that it is my fingers doing the typing. In the latter spirit do I second the Brian Micklethwait line in an earlier post. Incest between adults falls into the category of wrong (and in my view impious, and, no, I am not joking or posing when I use that word) actions that nonetheless should not be illegal.

I did not enjoy writing that, but it got me thinking. Might a libertarian society be more, not less conformist than our present one? A favourite theme of mine is the coming return of the age of the verbal oath made in person. For the last few hundred years we have leant on the crutch of documentary or camera proof but the time is coming when technology will allow us to fake anything. Then, my friends, a man's word had better be his bond, at least if he wants to borrow money. The only way of telling who is creditworthy will be personal recommendation. Well, in a similar way, we have leant on the crutch of law to regulate our social relations. Should that crutch be removed, a man or a woman's reputation may once again be his or her most precious possession. And since reputation is decided by others, public opinion will matter more.

No, Marie Claire is not my supermodel younger sister. She's a British woman's magazine, and a lady writing a piece for Marie Claire rang today asking about the libertarian line on incest (which she knew, either from the Libertarian Alliance website or via that from Sean Gabb's Freelife website, that Sean had done a piece about, many years ago).

I told her (a) that you need to distinguish between morality and legality (legitimacy of social pressure, etc.), (b) that it ought to be legal if both parties consent, (c) that the consent principle meshes nicely with the fact that the police are powerless to catch people if no one is complaining � and thus telling them � about whatever it is, but that (d) the consent principle comes under severe strain as soon as a weaker party is on the receiving end of an inescapable power relationship, as is almost invariably the case where children are involved. It's tricky to get things like this right, but she seemed sympathetic. Consent lead us on to the mass of consenting relationships (e.g. between the "Metric Martyrs" and their customers, all happy to trade in feet and inches) that are now being busily illegalised by our pathologically meddlesome government.

A nice illustration of how the willingness to assert libertarian principles, even (especially) when what follows from them is deeply disreputable, leads directly to mainstream media attention, and not just in the men's pages.

She said she'd ring back if a piece does materialise in Marie Claire which refers to any of the above, and I'll keep you posted.

Sorry, but if Kevin Holtsberry can come up with the wonderful title Pornucopia, then I must say that writing about the subject again makes him a porn again Christian.

Natalija and Kathy's point that two women are on the 'pro-porn' side while two men are on the 'anti-porn' side has interesting connotations.

Forty or fifty years ago it would have been different. Nice girls were prim and proper and never thought of such things so guys read Playboy... or so guys were brainwashed. But then came the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Tom Lehrer, Supreme Court Decisions, Free Love and Feminism.

Radical Left Feminists have always been basically anti-pornography. Because of it, they have often found themselves in bed with the Extremist Right Christians. This has caused a role reversal. Women were liberated from old stereotypes and seem to have promptly used their new liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Meanwhile, Left men were brainwashed by the feminazi's that porn is demeaning to women and should not be allowed. Right men were just beaten even harder with the same Old Testament whip.

This time around the girls get to lead the charge against the establishment.

I think our lasses have already started rolling up the left flank...

Well if the boys can have Inter-blog Gun Wars, why not Inter-blog Porn Wars? And contrary to what one e-mail said, I do not write these things just to wind people up...

...well, I must confess I do rather enjoy seeing Kevin leap up and down every time the subject comes up again.

But in truth I do think the issue lies on the edge of some very fundamental questions about human society and what makes it work, or not. Kathy Kinsley has joined the battle, giving William Sulik a forceful handbagging. I agree with Kathy and digging out my Oxford dictionary find a much more straightforward definition of pornography:

pornography n. 1 the explicit description or exhibition of sexual activity in literature, films, etc., intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. 2 literature etc. characterised by this. [Gk pornographos writing of harlots f. porne prostitute + graphos write]

As Kathy also mentions, it is interesting to find that women seem to be the ones who tend to the 'pro-porn' side of this argument. Last time I wrote about this issue and, as has also been the case this time, generated a big spike in e-mails, women overwhelmingly agreed with me whereas men were more evenly divided.

Also I do address the matter of the more extreme forms of porn in my latest pro-porn frolic. Like many others I have poked around the Internet and seen some of the more alarming stuff but I cannot help thinking that it is much less significant that many seem to insist. It is a fact that people are capable of astonishing brutality and cruelty, but having seen that first hand on a large scale, I cannot see how people can then conclude when the same things happen on a small scale elsewhere, it must be due to pornography. Why not vodka or anything else you care to think up?

I will try to make some time later to answer more of the e-mails and bloggings on the subject that have sprung up overnight. I have a feeling these issues are going to have a long shelf life.

The idea pornography is responsible for rape is just plain silly. Of more interest is the very strong case that arming women decreases rape by a huge factor (see Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings And Right To Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private And Public Law Enforcement" by Lott and Landes).

The gist of this seminal (no pun intended) study is hidden carry laws substantially decrease crimes against persons and decrease rapes by an even larger amount. Even a small number of woman with concealed weapons is enough to cause a significant drop in the rape statistics.

Many of the e-mails I got as a result of my last remarks about pornography raise the same points, some politely and some very rudely. As all the objections came from conservatives, I will address them. One of these objections to pornography is that it is 'harmful to family life' or 'is responsible for causing divorces'. I in turn have several objections to this approach.

Firstly it is impossible to know if that is true with any certainty. Regardless of anecdotal evidence that I am sure I can match to the contrary, the truth is relationships break up for many and varied reasons. I very much doubt pornography is the actual source of those sort of problems. They are just pictures for goodness sake and to blame such things is usually going to be a gross simplification.

Secondly, even if it were true, so what? Whilst socialists might not have a problem with the idea of the state interposing itself between the most personal of relationships, is that really what conservatives want? If the state can restrict what a person reads or watches on their video player because it might damage the institution of marriage, then I would suggest banning all televised football, both American and Soccer, as that has probably caused more marital tension than 1000 copies of Playboy. And if you accept the principle that the state has a role in family matters, why stop there? I hope it is clear where this leads. It is not a slippery slope, it is a cliff.

Not all the letters to me were advocating legal suppression of pornography however. Many just wanted to discourage it socially and in that I have no problem. I personally would tend to ignore those sort of pressures but that does not mean I regard the social norm I may be ignoring as being an inherently bad thing. One person said that 'no one would read a Playboy in public and that was a good thing'. Well maybe not where he comes from but that is not the case everywhere, even within a single country. In America I have only ever been to New York City yet I suspect what is fine socially in some parts of New York might not be fine in Utah. But in truth I do not think that social customs are a bad thing as most enduring customs have an objective, even if fuzzy, basis for their existence. I will touch again on that point at the end of my article.

Another point made by several people was that pornography leads to sexual violence, by which I assume they all mean the non-consensual kind. Once more I think that this is a simplification. I think that people who rape have what we all have, a sex drive, but lack any objective moral capacity and empathy. They do not really require a motivation beyond the physical urge, just an opportunity. On that basis it occurs to me pornography, particularly violent pornography might actually be a useful outlet rather than a cause, though that is just a logical supposition on my part. I have seen what large numbers of people do when a state has partially or completely collapsed and taken the values of a state centred society down with it. When that happens young men kill helpless civilians and they rape even more of them. It does not require pornography to make that possible but rather a collectivised view of the world and a subjective sense of morality. Nothing more and nothing less is required.

Even the few with latent sexually violent urges who might be somehow triggered by violent pornographic images do not provide any justification for banning these things however. Look at a bottle of vodka: most people can drink from it, enjoy the drink and then get on with their lives. Yet a few will drink it and then start a fight or drive a car and kill someone or rape a woman afterwards while drunk. Would you therefore ban all alcohol?

If you would ban violent images, quite apart from the impossibility of doing so in the Internet era, where do you draw the line? How about pictures that are just suggestive of sexual violence? Well you can find those even in women's magazines occasionally. For example there was a photo shoot of lovely Dutch model Karen Mulder in the French edition of Glamour that was clearly playing on sexually threatening and potentially violent themes. But guess what? I think those are quite exciting pictures. That does not mean I personally want to be chased for real through the Paris Metro but the pictures 'work' for me with their frisson of sexual danger.

My whole point here is that I think when people worry about pornography, they are worrying about the wrong things. Pornography is just an expression of what goes on in people's heads and the vast majority of people who look at it are no more harmed by it than by a glass of red wine. War movies do not cause wars either. The things that cause violence against women and relationships to break up are complex and inter-relative. Social pressures to not do things are just fine by me. I like the idea that attacking me when I am walking down the street is frowned on by society.

But when we start involving the state, rather than society and reason, then we enter a realm of downward spiralling consequences. If the only reason a man does not attack and rape me is that he fears the state and its laws, then if he encounters me alone in a remote place, what is to stop him now? So I think that societies which encourage reason in people rather than just fear of the law, are surely going to be safer. To try and legislate away all the possible influences that cause perceived ills is not only going to fail, soon we are back heading in the direction all state-centered orders eventually end up going, which is the replacement of society itself by the state. Trust me when I tell you that does not turn out to be the better route to a safer society. It is in fact the end of society all together.

The notorious Lagwolf comments on another tale of 'older woman' syndrome and replies to his detractors

Giles Brandreth confesses a "Mrs Robinson" liaison as well in today's Sunday Telegraph. He, like the boys in the recent UK case, bragged and got his seductress in trouble. Although he does wobble a bit at the end of the editorial, it is mostly positive towards this sort of liaison. Truth be told both cases say more about men and boys who are wont to brag, than they do about the evils of older women/younger men liaisons.

My first set of scribblings on the subject of "Mrs Robinson" caused one Samizdata reader to write in. She begins:

"Lagwolf's writing really fails to deal with the problems in either case."

There is little doubt that the humorous twist to my rant was entirely lost on this reader. She then goes on to state:

"Lagwolf addresses none of the somewhat serious issues that arise from what is a relatively silly case."

Serious issues, excuse me please, but the case is about a couple of women 'streakers' who got caught and defended themselves. One can only hope the transcript to the trial gets released.

While it is rather disturbing that men risk prosecution for participation is this collegiate right-of-passage, this is still daft. What foolish policeman decided to prosecute these two young women? Surely he should have known that he would have come up a cropper, made an arse of himself, the law of the state and the State of Maine? It is possible Maine will follow a town called Locust, PA in the US which has outlawed anything sexual in a public place. (Thanks to Instapundit for this link.)

She then takes me to task for my "its good for the boys" comment about the recent case in the UK (see above). She gives me a right drubbing for making light of the issue. Entirely ignoring my points in praise of older women liaisons, the second paragraph reads like it was written by a pressure group that has decided there is no difference between boys and girls.

The email continues:

"Should we likewise be encouraging young boys to have sex with men? Or young women to be having sex with older men? Or younger women with older women? If so, why? If not, why not?"

I make it clear in my post that I believe it is a good thing for young men to loose their virginity to slightly older women, but not for girls. The Daily Telegraph agrees with me on the grounds that boys can't get pregnant, need to be "interested" to perform and generally stronger than women. In other words, it is impossible for a older woman to rape a teenage boy. It is possible, despite what some pressure groups say to address a particular issue, by itself.

It is worth keeping in mind that it is only in the "enlightened" West that anyone even suggests that a 14 year old is a "child." It was appalling to see The Independent calling for the Canadian teacher to be charged with paedophile.

I never set to write an expose on all types of underage sex. It is a shame that some readers can't take humour for it's worth. I wasn't dealing with problems, I was making fun of uptight puritanical types who see everything in black and white. The letter in response makes the post even more apt.

Lagwolf

Porn has been around longer than written language. It has been around since humans first started drawing on cave walls. If porn is unnatural, then so is writing and agriculture and high heels and teddy bears and antibiotics. As for causing emotional and physical damage, you could just as easily be describing most close personal relationships, or football, or being a war correspondent or riding a horse come to that. Are these also things to be 'discouraged'?

One big trouble I have with so many conservatives is the implicit arrogance that underneath it all, people basically see the world the way they do and feel as they do. Now I am as guilty as them of seeing the world through the filters of my own experience and emotions, but at least I do not claim that I think most other people secretly agree with me when it is quite clear they do not. Conservatives can claim that there is deep meaning in sex and certainly that can be true. But the truth is that sometimes sex is the banquet at the wedding feast and sometimes it is just a quick trip to MacDonalds.

The evidence is clear that much of the time people see sex as an end in and of itself. You do not have to even read Playboy to see that. Look through Vogue and you will see page after page of exaltations of female sexuality... not female commitment, female sexuality, with a strongly bisexual/sapphic overtone at that. It is all about elegant, lovely, lustful and largely unobtainable sexual perfection. We all want to look like exquisite Christy Turlington wearing Hervé Leger, Bulgari and exchanging enigmatic eye contact with Linda Evangalista. Of course we all know in our heart of hearts that the only person who can actually do that is Christy Turlington, not us. Yet I still buy Vogue every month... Italian edition, German edition, Russian edition, British edition.

And so it is with pornography. Maybe we need to look at unobtainable uncomplicated thrilling sex for the same reason we want to look at unobtainable expensive sophistication in Vogue. For the same reason preliterate man made sexual cave paintings and extravagantly male outlines on hillsides, we still need to experience the animal side of our existence. Do you think the conservatives roaring fiercely as they watch their favourite sportsman on television are getting in touch with the spirit of Aristotle? So why do they find it so hard to understand the nature of pornography? It is impossible not to trip over people's true attitude to sex every time you walk down the street or turn on the television or pick up a magazine. People do not use marriage as a marketing devise, they use sex, because that is what people actually think about much of the time. Pornography is just the essence of that. In reality most well adjusted people do not get porn and real life confused, keeping them in different boxes in their heads.

Yet I don't read Vogue primarity for the articles anymore than most people read Playboy for the articles (which are mostly crypto-socialist drivel anyway). I read them both for the sex. I don't have a problem with pornography because unlike many conservatives and their socialist-feminist friends, I do not have a problem with the reality of human nature. I just wish those conservatives and their statist allies on the left would stop trying to use the force of law to impose peculiar world views on everyone else.

The notorious Lagwolf writes in with his views of streaking and joys of older women

For some odd reason both Maine and the UK, two places I hold dear, are both in a tizzy over silly sex stories. I have been resisting to write about these two stories, but they do seem to be getting many a knicker in a twist. Both involve 20-something women doing things, they ought not to, but in perspective not too egregious.

In Maine two women have successfully defended themselves (Judge rules women can jog naked in Maine) against the charge of public indecency. In seems that these two "streakers" were not breaking the law because no genitals were shown. Having done their research, the arresting officer was asked if he say any genitals. He said "no." Case dismissed, and the state of Maine has wasted oddles of money prosecuting two women for doing something college students have been doing since Rome. This does mean the law is sexist of course, because men's genitals are exposed they may not streak. You would almost think the law in Maine is encouraging women to streak.

There are those who want to ban "streaking". As Maine Goes has a whole thread dedicated to who is more childish, those defending these women's right to run around nude or those against it.

The case is the UK is a bit more serious, but just as daft. A woman has been found not guilty of "sexually abusing" two boys over the age of 14. Of course, the Independent is screaming that she raped these boys. The Telegraph and its columnist Boris Johnson have quite rightly poo-pooed this notion. That is not to say that pressure groups have not fired off a few terse letters to the paper for their "callous" disregard for the case.

We get to read how one man became a drug addict, socially maladjusted and a loner after he was "raped" at 15 by a woman twice his age! Oh give me a break, this guy was all of those things before he got his cheery popped.

Another letter fails to realise, as the Telegraph clearly stated, that there are big differences between girls and boys. Boys cannot get pregnant, have to be "interested" to perform and were no doubt quite willing.

The woman involved, the 'Mrs Robinson', was a 25 year substitute teacher. It could be argued she took 'lessons' a tad too far, but rape? The only reason the woman got busted was the two boys involved bragged. No doubt one of their mates who was not getting any, 'told' in fit of pique. For what its worth the woman involved has been sent back to Canada and won't work as a teacher again.

There are, of course, advantages to boys having flings with older women. The women are more likely to insist on a condom, choose somewhere discreet and less likely to have guilt pains afterwards. Far from discouraging this sort of behaviour amoung young men, we should encourage it. The older woman might knock some sense into these testosterone fueled young boys. Worked for me.

Lagwolf

I was pointed at this article about consensual incest in the Guardian and yet again the issues are the usual ones... on one hand social loathing of a relationship which translates into the force of law leading to destroyed lives... and on the other people freely doing what they want to do with each other.

Incest is such a taboo that it gets mixed up with all the other extreme taboos, like rape and pederasty, but which a moments thought shows are all quite separate things. If people want to have a relationship that is not coercive, how is that anyone else's business? Violence within a relationship and rape are reasonably illegal but if those are absent, what is the problem? Does incest make you uncomfortable? Well it certainly does make me uncomfortable. So feel free to not associate with people who act in ways that make you uncomfortable. That is usually what I do.

Yet it is not so hard to understand how these things happen. I have repeatedly felt attracted to a cousin of mine and although it never came to anything, I can certainly understand how in other circumstances things might have happened differently. But is that something that justifies legislation? How can that be? Whose business is it which two adult people have relationships with each other and in what manner? As Dr. Sean Gabb says in the article, if it is because of the fear of birth defects, will we also forbid relationships to other unrelated people who exhibit a clear history of genetic defects with eugenic laws?

I cannot help thinking everyone would be a great deal happier if we all just minded our own damn business and left others to go where their hearts take them, no matter how strange other people might find it.

Kevin Holtsberry writes in Sex and Libertarians that he does not agree with the views that I expressed in Sex makes (some) people stupid back on December 25^th, about a 15 year old boy in Australia who was dying of cancer being provided with a prostitute.

I really think this sums up the difference between us. She describes sex between a 15 year old and a prostitute as "casual physical intimacy." I guess I am a prude because I see sex as an important and consequential physical and emotional act that should not be entered into lightly or flippantly.

No, that is not what sums up the difference between us at all. I have no desire to force my views on anyone else, but Kevin wants his views to have the force of law, that is what sums up the difference between us.

Although it does bother me a bit that Kevin does not feel more empathy for that poor boy wanting to do something so human, it certainly does not bother me at all if Kevin does not conduct his social life the way I do. It does not even bother me that he would almost certainly not approve of the twists and turns of my complex love life. Kevin disapproves of casual sex and presumably feels it should happen only within deep and emotionally engaged relationships. Well I am certainly all in favour of deep and emotionally engaged relationships! But life is just not that simple, at least not for me and I think for most people. If I choose to have a relationship with someone, does that mean I have to marry them? Why? Can we not just be friends? Maybe we are just indulging mutual infatuations for a while and we both want it to be non-consequential because we are adult enough to realise we are not well suited for a deeper relationship. And pretty much the ultimate in non-consequential low risk relationships without a future, would have to be a boy about to die of cancer experiencing sex with a prostitute. Sex does not get much safer than that.

I also believe that it is not something that 15 year olds should be engaged in. A terminal illness does not change the fact that he is a 15-year-old boy and that sex with a prostitute is illegal and wrong and not likely to help him any.

The problem I have with Kevin's views are that they are based around the idea that it is perfectly okay to force moral ideas on others. This boy was 15 years old, not 5 years old, so he will have had more than enough time to contruct a valid even if incomplete world view of his own, along with moral ideas to go with it. Kevin too has moral ideas, as all people do, but which part of that morality allows him to support using force to impose his views on someone else?

I grew up in a world in which the Communist Party stood as the sole provider of morality and of truth itself. Like most people, I saw it for what it was and lived my life in spite of, rather than according to, the state. I understood intuitively long before I read the books that explained why the state was wrong to try to force me to see things its way. People make mistakes and states are made up of people, which means states make mistakes... and when states make mistakes, they tend to ruin lives and kill people on a far greater scale.

So when Kevin says that something is illegal and wrong in the same breath, I wonder if he thinks that everything that is illegal is also wrong? If he does think that, then I guess he thinks I am very wicked indeed for having not obeyed all sorts of laws that the Yugoslav Communist Party tried to force me to obey, like when I read certain books or forbidden magazines. But if you think I did the correct thing, then I guess you agree with me that morality, not law, is what matters and that law and morality are not the same thing at all.

People have different ideas about how things work, what is moral, what things mean and so on. If someone disagrees with you, you argue and maybe one or both of you changes their mind. Or maybe not. But unless you never make mistakes, what gives you the right to use force to make the other person act the way you want unless they are trying to do the same to you? Yet Kevin do not seem to think this boy can choose what he believes to be correct at all, but rather must do what he is told by people whose views he obviously does not share. He becomes not a boy but just a human shaped animal that has no choices to make at all.

How about some counseling on his mortality and how to deal with it appropriately? Was this out of the question or was he so stuck on sex that he couldn't think about anything else? Is that the key to dying in peace - have sex? To me this seems shallow.

I have always been chilled when I hear some Americans call for 'counseling' when someone else does something they do not approve of. It suggests that only experts can actually understand the truth of a matter and us mere lumpen should listen and learn from them. Kevin should be entitled to die as he pleases, but why does he feel it is important to force his views on how to die appropriately on other people? Morality, as my editor is always saying, is objectively derived, and if not then what passes for morality is just quaint custom to be followed or ignored as one deems prudent [That does rather sound like me, Ed.].

I believe society has the right to define boundaries for the community as a whole - and keep 15 year olds from having sex with prostitutes seems like one we should keep. I for one am glad that prostitution is illegal in this country (USA) and I am also reassured to know that someone still considers it troubling to supply young people with prostitutes. (more on society, boundaries etc. later).

And there we have it: Kevin uses 'society' and 'state', for only states make laws, interchangeably^*1 like all socialists of both left and right. That is why the word 'socialist' is such a sick joke: it is the negation of anything 'social' and it's replacement by 'state'. What Kevin specifically values may be different to that of a bunch of European communists but the underlying philosophy is based on that oh so familiar subjective collectivist matrix, just painted a different colour.

By meeting with political activists the state did not approve of in a private room in somewhere, I might have been arrested and thrown in jail by the now vanished communists. And by meeting a woman in a room in Australia in order to have sex and then paying her, a boy and prostitute might be arrested and thrown in jail by conservatives even though both parties are willing and know what they are doing. Communists and conservatives agree that it is okay to arrest people for free association with other people of whom they do not approve. Same music, just played in a different key.

[^*1 Editors note: see Common Sense by Tom Paine]

One of the really nice things about sex is that you can completely loose yourself in it for a while. But what is it about sex that makes people lose their reason even when it is someone else who is doing it?

Our conservative friends may stand with us regarding economic freedom and capitalism, but as soon as I slip into something interesting and make a seriously risqué suggestion, I rarely have a problem separating the libertarians (or Eastern-communists for that matter) from the conservatives and Western-socialists... not that they actually have different urges, just that one is open about it and the other only admits it if no one else is listening.

In some ways, I think many conservatives have accepted the Western socialist-feminist attitude to women, and think we are these poor hunted things that need to be protected from men. This attitude, coming from a strange mixture of Christian prudishness and Western-socialist identity politics, is particularly hilarious to me as I grew up in a communist country in which men were men, women were women and everyone understood the implications just fine thanks.

So when I read something like a sad little article about a 15 year old boy in Australia who was provided with a prostitute before he died of cancer, I cannot help but wonder at how some people have reacted to what was nothing less than an act of kindness and charity.

Conservatives fume about 'immorality' and people who fondly imagine themselves to be feminists fume about 'sexual objectification', but fortunately in that hospital there were people who realised that what mattered here was not the views of others but rather that a dying boy wanted to experience what all 15 year old boys want to experience before he died.

Some people argued "[it] demeans women and reduces the sexual act to being just a physical one." Yet what gives those people the right to impose their moral theories on this boy? Clearly he was never going to have the chance to form a lasting or deep relationship, given that he was dying, so how dare these people try to deny him such a basic human experience?

How can a woman be 'demeaned' by engaging in her chosen profession with a grateful dying boy? It makes me so angry sometimes when I read of such cruel stupidity and self-righteous dogmatism. I am so very glad that more compassionate souls were there to make the only true moral decision or this story would have reduced me to tears.

The reality is that people have sex for all sorts of reasons, such as love and respect and caring and lust and attraction and curiosity and too much alcohol and it-just-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time. That is reality. Sometimes 'the sexual act' is 'just a physical one' and sometimes, just sometimes, that's just fine by me too.

In a couple articles in The Spectator, two female writers deplore pornography. One of them, Tania Kindersley, does so in spite of saying she is a believer in free speech, and the other, Rachael Jones writes as a sexually threatened irrationalist who deduces that her obvious personal neurosis indicates the sickness of the society in which she lives.

In fact, I would venture that of the two of them, only Rachael Jones is actually honest, in a pathologically disturbed sort of way. Certainly one thing that galls me about both of them is the implied supposition that all women essentially agree with them. Camille Paglia and I certainly do not.

Tania Kindersley writes in her article The Degradation of the Species, that she believes in freedom of expression and in an unfettered sexuality, but "in this frank and disturbing investigation shows why hardcore pornography is repulsive, demeaning and dangerous". Well it certainly is a revealing article but not the way she thinks.

Porn isn't about sex, it's about money. It doesn't sate the appetite it feeds it, but increases it: the palate stales quickly, so the industry finds more and more freakish acts and genres and combinations to keep the punters hooked.

Well sorry Tania, but 99% of the sexually oriented things I look at are via the Internet and are completely free. People post things on the Internet for the sheer unremunerated thrill of knowing that somewhere in the world, what they did is turning someone else on. Some of us just happen to like our experiences spiced differently. Also I sometimes like to think about things I would not necessarily do. Is it so terrible that I can find pictures of those things to look at? What is more, does she apply the same logic to cars? Is the fact people tend to buy progressively more elaborate cars with ever more features somehow evidence of sinister manipulation by the Mercedes Car Company Gmbh?

Censorship isn�t the answer. The free market and the Internet would make any attempt at control look like taking on an elephant with a pea-shooter. A war on porn would have the same pompous pointlessness of the war on drugs

So it now becomes clear that far from 'believing in freedom of expression', Tania Kindersley does not want to resort to censorship for the purely utilitarian reason that it will not work. With only a few exceptions I find that people who are conservatives and say they support 'free speech' will suddenly start equivocating when it comes to pornography if you only dig deep enough and find something they really don't like.

The only weapon of any potency against the tide of market forces is, paradoxically, fashion: tell the kids that porn is cool and groovy, that the performers really love what they do, and you breed an eager new generation of consumers. But if the rock chicks and movie icons and rent-a-crowd celebrities were bold enough to proclaim that sitting in a darkened room with a can of lager and a copy of Latino Sluts is a pitiful substitute for the real thing, then it might be a start.

Oh Tania, what a sheltered life you bourgeoise English women must lead. I read fashion magazines, skydiving magazines, skiing magazines, hunting magazines, travel magazines, cooking magazines and political magazines. I also buy nice clothes, skydive, ski, hunt, travel, cook and have real life face-to-face political debates. I also read things like Skin Two magazine. Yes, Tania, I do that for real too.

Thanks to Perry de Havilland for editing my article, doing the html black magic and correcting my sometimes confused English. This is my first English language blog post so please be understanding.