Ms Naughty looks at porn for women, feminism and sex in general
Yesterday I attended the “Money Shot” porn panel at the Reality Bites Literary festival. I wanted to hear what author Jeff Sparrow had to say about porn and censorship. He has written a book called The Money Shot, which looks at the dysfunctional censorship system here in Australia. This review does a good summary of the book. Also on the panel were erotica and fiction writer Krissy Kneen and journalist Read More …
Last Friday I heard that anti-porn author Gail Dines was going to appear on the ABC’s interactive program Q&A. As the public is invited to submit questions, I thought I’d add mine. It went something like: Gail Dines dismisses feminist porn by saying it’s not different enough from mainstream porn. What kind of sexually explicit material would be OK by her personal feminist standards? I signed it as “Louise Lush” Read More …
Back in 2008 a censorship controversy erupted over Bill Henson’s photographs of nude teenage girls. Police raided the gallery and shut down the exhibition, the Prime Minister called the images “disgusting” and a lynch mob mentality generally prevailed. Eventually the images were classified “G” (suitable for children) by the censors. Since that time the art world has become increasingly paranoid about censorship and have been self-censoring images of children, including Read More …
Wendy Bacon was a campaigner against Australian censorship in the 1960s and 70s. In this amazing article, she details the fight of students against censorship in those heady libertarian days. This was a time when the Minister for Customs justified bans on books by saying “normal healthy Australians would not be interested in the works of DH Lawrence and Henry Miller anyway.” Wendy and her friends conducted civil disobedience activities Read More …
Over the weekend, Australia had an election. Now the people have spoken and their overwhelming response is: Meh. We have a hung parliament. Neither Labor or the Liberal/National coalition won enough seats to form government. This means the fate of the country lies with three country independents and a freshly minted Greens MP. Meanwhile, the Greens have gained control of the senate. This is all fantastic news. If you’ve been Read More …
This is an ad from the Australian Sex Party which parodies the conservative “Work Choices” campaign from a few years ago. It’s not often you get an electoral ad that makes a fairly direct reference to masturbation, even though it probably should happen a lot more often in political advertising. Yes, the Sex Party ARE serious but they know how to make us laugh.
[flashvideo file=video/fionapatten.flv /] In 2000, the Howard government seriously considered introducing a new law that would have essentially made explicit porn movies legal in Australia. The Non Violent Erotica (NVE) classification was to replace the existing X classification. Explicit films rated X are illegal to sell in all Australian states (though it’s not illegal to own them). The NVE classification was a handy way of liberalising erotic material in one Read More …
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… Fanta Pants.” – Marieke Hardy It’s been a bit of a whirlwind 24 hours. I’ve got no work done at all because I’ve been glued to Twitter, news sites and the TV as the Australian political landscape shifted before my eyes. Australia now has its first female prime minister, Julia Gillard. She was not directly elected to this role; rather, she’s now in the Read More …
Not long after I posted about the Australian Sex Party’s press release that the Classification Board were now banning depictions of women with too-small breasts, my friend Michael Meloni wrote something similar on his blog Somebody Think of the Children. His post ended up on social networking site Reddit and from there it went beserk, ending up on hundreds of blogs, The Register, Jezebel, Encore, Crikey and the Sydney Morning Read More …
You may notice that I’ve changed the colour of my header image. My usual cheerful purple has been replaced by black and grey. This is because I’m taking part in the Great Australian Internet Blackout this week (24th-29th). The blackout is part of the ongoing protests against the plan to impose a mandatory internet filter on all Australians. It’s mainly to raise awareness about the issue. I also spent a Read More …
The Australian Classification Board has decided to ban any adult films that feature female ejaculation because they deem the liquid expelled during squirting to be urine. Thus, it comes under the umbrella of “water sports” which our good censors deem to be an obscene activity that should never be depicted on film. Never mind that female ejaculation has been scientifically documented. Not all women are able to ejaculate but those Read More …
Following on from yesterday’s blacklist post… Wikileaks went down yesterday but it’s back up again today. I’ve just spent a bit of time going through the list again and making a note of all the adult websites that I’ve heard of before, ones that feature consenting adults or are run by adult companies that I know. The list contains 40 domains. The majority of them are hardcore sites, a lot Read More …
Two days ago I was complaining that the internet filter plan is sucking up my time. Damn, if that hasn’t been true today. At 11am the SMH revealed that the ACMA blacklist of “illegal” sites had been leaked on Wikileaks. Naturally I went straight there to check out what the government authority considers to be “prohibited content.” As is to be expected, the list is a fairly abhorrent catalogue of Read More …
You may have noticed that the blog has been scarce with posts recently. That’s because I took another week off, relaxing and trying to recover from a bad RSI attack. The house I stayed in only had dialup, which decreased my computer use substantially – and a lovely thing it was too. Now I’m home again and over the last couple of days have been sucked into the usual round Read More …
Once again I’ve got a bunch of things to write about and I’m just going to be lazy and bung them all into one post with a nice sexy pic to make it a bit more fun. First – they’re about to release the rejiggered Joy Of Sex. The New York Times has a great article about how the book has aged and it goes into some interesting detail about Read More …