The War on Porn

For the uninitiated: A snuff film is a porn film where the actress is killed on camera for the gratification of the viewer.

Such films have long been a staple of law enforcement propaganda. Gotta ban all pornography because of them! Gotta fight porn’s terrible spread because, you know, it’s one small tiny step from browsing MET-ART to becoming a producer of the latest and greatest snuff flick.

A snuff film even featured as the main plot point in the 1979 Hollywood film Hardcore. In that, Geroge C. Scott plays a Midwestern businessman who heads to San Fransisco to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a demonic snuff porn business. Here’s the trailer:

Apparently, the more recent film 8MM is “inspired by” (i.e. it’s a rip-off of) Hardcore, also having a plot that centers around a snuff film.

But as the esteemed sex doctor Marty Klein points out, snuff films probably don’t exist. He hasn’t seen one. And he doesn’t know anyone who has seen one. And he doesn’t know anyone who knows anyone who has seen one. And he’s a fucking well-connected guy!!!

So snuff films are likely just the product of legend and of fear and of Hollywood screenwriting and of dishonest politically-motivated fabrication.

Maybe the reason for this is that we human beings don’t actually like the idea of killing other people. Maybe we find it universally awful at the most basic visceral level. And maybe this disgust with killing is something that is shared by all humans, even by those godless gay-loving pot-smoking heathens from California. Maybe those people with “San Fransisco values” have some morals after all, and maybe they’re not subhuman like we good god-fearing Haliburton stockholders have been saying all these years.

Maybe the only way to get a person to enjoy killing is through political warmongering and the associated collectivist brainwashing. Maybe snuff films don’t exist, but an atmosphere encouraging sadistic violence in the name of the political leadership of the day does.

Make sure you read Violet Blue’s SF Gate column from last week.

Violet discusses the case of some teenagers from Greensburg Salem High School in Pennsylvania. Three girls, ages 14-15, sent nude and semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves to their boyfriends, ages 16-17. The cops got hold of the photos, oogled over them for months, and then finally dragged all six soon-to-be-sex-offenders to court for trafficking in child pornography! According to this report, “the girls are being charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys face charges of possession.”

Just try– try!– to wrap your head around the logic here. The charge is child pornography, which inherently involves the sexual abuse of a minor. But these girls took the photos in question themselves… so did they sexually abuse themselves? Can the girls be both perpetrator and victim? And is the government seriously trying to resolve this by having the girls (and the guys) labeled as criminals and sex offenders for the rest of their lives?

But here’s the worst part: No one cares! No one in the god damn fucking American mainstream gives a flying fuck. Just mention the phrase “child pornography”, or the phrases “marijuana” or “Internet gambling” for that matter, and all deference is automatically accorded to the cops. No one dare stand up for the accused due to the adult-on-adult peer pressure against being associated in any way with these “bad” categories. (Of course you don’t even have to be accused of anything criminal to get fucked by the authorities. Just a few days ago, a pro poker player was robbed of $15K in cash and a $50K watch because he was carrying them on his flight from Detroit to L.A. and that’s– GASP!– unusual!)

Let me tell you where the blame belongs: The prosecutors and the cops the school officials are certainly accountable for their part in this insanity. But the real source is the American public, who are too lazy to think for themselves or to speak out against the bullshit. They go to church and behave nicely and follow the rules and the insanity is not their problem. Well, I call Bullshit on this, and Bullshit on the pathetic American public, and I hope you will too.

POSTSCRIPT: I watched exactly ten seconds of Obama’s inauguration two weeks ago. I got to the TV when Aretha Franklin was on, singing something about “freedom”. And in just a few seconds I could see that she was giving it her all: FREEEEDOOOM! Then I got disgusted and turned it off. Because what freedom is there in America, really? Sure, there’s freedom to work and own a house and stuff like that. You are free to watch the Super Bowl like a good consumer. But that’s not freedom. Freedom is at the edges. Freedom only counts if you are doing something outside the mainstream comfort zone. And the biggest test of freedom is whether you are free of the nonsensical and unwarranted persecution of your government. By that standard, we are not free; instead we have a government that is more and more like that of the defunct Soviet Union, ready to unleash all its force upon you if you have stepped out of the mainstream line.

POSTSCRIPT #2: The New York Times mentions the case in this article. And then they go on to say:

Sending nude pictures, whether it is done under pressure or not, is part of a pattern of teenage behavior that the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a nonprofit domestic violence awareness group based in San Francisco, has labeled digital dating violence.

Got that? If a teenager sends a nude picture of herself to her boyfriend, she is committing “digitial dating violence”. WTF?!

American Airlines flight attendants are asking for content filters to be installed on the new in-flight Internet access. Some bad apples are apparently surfing porn and other objectionable sites. Shame on them!

Memo to readers: Don’t wank it in your plane seat. Those magazines in the seat back pocket are sticky enough. Besides, wanking is what airplane lavatories are for!

You get to bring 3 ounces of lotion with ‘ya, you know… Might as well put it to use.

This is a recent Reason.TV interview with porn director and industry legend John Stagliano. He’s currently in the dock on charges of obscenity for his production of Milk Nymphos and Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice.

The prosecution is bullshit, of course. But Stagliano is still fighting for his freedom… and indeed he is fighting for the right of the every common American to enjoy his blue-collar porn! Good for him!

Q: Is there a class component to this fight?

A: Pornography is the way for people with less money and less power to get off. If you’ve got lots of money, if you were a king or a nobleman a couple hundred years ago, or if today you’re a high-priced lawyer or a congressman or a senator…

Q: …or a governor of New York…

A: …or a governor of New York, you can afford call girls. You can get off and have your sexual desires satisfied. If you’re a normal working guy, you can’t afford that. Porno is what you get off on. And that’s what the government wants to suppress. That, to me, is just rotten.