The case that led to a ridiculous law

Fiiiinally!

I moved from north to south and am reasonably settled now.

And here we go:

There have been various articles relating to Graham Coutt's new sentence, which will imprison him for life for the murder of Jane Longhurst. He has continually protested and claimed it was manslaughter. Who knows? We know he had hundreds of pornographic images on his computer - from hangedbabes.com, necrobabes.com (which is really bloody tame), etc - and this kickstarted Liz Longhurst's campaign against violent porn, later changed to 'extreme' porn (beyond hardcore, I guess), and the reason, primarily, the government is planning to prosecute against possession of 'extreme' pornographic images. You can see the whole Criminal Justice Bill (which had its first reading last week, I think?) here.

And you can read about the case here.

There are two statements made by Liz Longhurst in that article that stand out for me:

"I do feel now the public perception is that [Jane] was a wonderful girl and would never have done any of the things that were alleged."

...

"He [Coutts] is so restricted, he is so narrow-minded, he is in this rut of seeing everything through the eyes of perverted pornography"

Riiiight. So any woman who enjoys those kind of activities can't possibly be perceived as 'wonderful'? Well, aren't I lucky my mother loves me anyway, despite knowing what I get up to, what I stand for. But yes, joe public would certainly not perceive this as 'wonderful' in the least, and indeed, 'wonderful' girls don't get off on devious sex or, well, sex at all, do they? And then she goes on to call Graham Coutts 'restricted' and 'narrow-minded'. Erm, what the crap?

I'm not trying to belittle her loss or defend Graham Coutt's actions, but her statements are pretty anti-woman and perpetuate the madonna/whore myth that still dictates what female sexuality is supposed to be. That, for me, is the biggest problem with this law. It, again!, infantilises women, supposes that 'wonderful' girls don't do kinky sex and never watch or read pornography.

So what is a 'wonderful' girl's sexuality supposed to be composed of, then? I have absolutely no idea.

EDIT: Finally! Some decent public debate on the issue on Comment is free.

More 'porn made me do it' media crap

The Daily Mail has yet again got me riled for the day.

See here:
Revealed: The British links to internet rape site.

So they've dedicated about 75% of an article about the violent and life-threatening rape of an underage girl to the Ills Of Pornography and how the poor wittle man wasn't really responsible for his actions, it was the PRON THAT MADE HIM DO IT! BLAME THE PORN! From a newspaper that ran a story about potential changes to UK law over what constitutes rape over the weekend with a definite MRA bias, it seems pretty clear to me what their agenda is, and that hasn't got very much to do at all with preventing violence against women. In fact, in the first article, it seems to me that they're using the rape of a 17 year old girl for the purpose of publicising their anti-porn agenda. Belittling suffering in the name of authoritarian outrage. And that's ill. That sickens me.

I'll be interested to see if this crops up in any radfem blogs with a more authoritarian bent, and see how they divide up their blog space. I suspect the word-count on rape/porn may be quite similar to The Daily Mail's.

I took a look at the site they're on about. To me it just looks like any other misogynist gonzo porn, and I look at A LOT of porn sites. Doesn't surprise me at all that 30% of their members are women, though I'd be amused if the Flail started claiming the women who watched this material were potentially violent rapists, too, and I wouldn't put it past them, either.

Confusing messages.