Archive for July, 2011
The Sexual Freedom Coalition would like to see an end to the gutter press, for good.
At least six of our friends have died as a direct result of having their private lives plastered over their nasty pages. When we were publishing our newspaper, Consenting Adults, we featured the gutter journalists, exposing them and their dirty deeds. Private Eye publishes similar exposés.
The move to exposing celebrities instead of ordinary people has not improved matters. Roger Ebert describes CelebCult as “a virus eating our culture alive…It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement”.
Let’s hope that the current scandals about the press and investigations will clean our media up completely. The SFC is keen to put forward a case for no more sexual exposés. They are insiduous.
Newspapers feed readers with all the juicy titillating details of what the “exposed” victim was doing, ending with condemnation of how disgusting it is. This is called double porn.
Not only do these double porn exposés ruin many people’s lives, they act as a distraction from the real issues that newspapers should be covering, they make a large sector of the population feel nervous and secretive, and they send sex-negative messages into society.
Partly thanks to double porn exposés, society dictates we can make jokes and giggle about sex, but must not enjoy it any other way than in private, in bed with our partner. Swinging, BDSM, stripping, whoring, dogging, polyamory, and even naturism are not acceptable in polite society, and not acceptable to government bodies and big business. In particular, parents live in fear of their sexual activities becoming known to their children’s schools and social services.
Perhaps the most stigmatised group are the BDSMers because the gutter press portray them as bad and evil. Most people have no idea what BDSM really is, nor how it might benefit their sex lives. People just think it is bad, despite the fact that fetish fashion is used in mass market advertising. Max Mosley managed to sue the News of the World for exposing his kinky romp, but his son later committed suicide and Mosley’s life will never be the same.
Leading a double life out of fear is not good for mental health. Sex is a natural desire which is literally turned upside down by guilt and fear.
Sexual freedom and privacy are a fundamental human rights, no less important than civil rights, economic rights or environmental rights. It’s about time they were taken seriously.