Wednesday, July 29, 2015

What you censor speaks about you - the UK and porn

Strong language advisory: Some people and their views are called dumb in this post. If this offends you, please do not continue.

We did a previous post about what censorship really says about those who do the censoring.

In virtually every case, censorship illuminates the fears, the prejudices, and a generally dumb view of the world by those who do the censoring.

When it comes to censorship, the friendly K-Landnews folks in their comfy basement love to point out that the political systems of censoring countries are irrelevant. While democracies have a stronger claim regarding the "legitimacy" of censorship, the underlying philosophies and views are really not different from those in authoritarian states that censor the same expressions or behaviors.

But then censorship is really never about a specific social, religious or societal problem, even though one or more of them are hyped up as serious and damaging, like the Russians and their gays, the Saudis and women, and so on.

What is the difference between, say, China and the UK censoring access to online porn?
Not much other than the UK focusing on protecting children, where China casts its protection claims a bit wider.

Maybe the UK should invest time and effort into protecting children from offline molestation and abuse for once.

Statistics and recent revelations about child abuse by influential people in the UK mean that there is a chance that a small number of those loudly advocating censoring online porn in the UK are your everyday garden variety of real life child molesters.

While we are talking statistics, isn't it funny that at least one generation of adults has grown up awash in porn and has turned out fine?

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