The New Misogyny

This is the sites hundredth posting and it was going to be about some exciting news that I understand is coming my way. That said, TonyN inspired me to write a new article, so I decided that it should take precedence and that exciting news could wait...

The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women was proclaimed on 20^th December 1993. It is a sad fact that the idea that women have a right to a life that is free of violence and fear is a recent one. As we can see it even took the UN 48 years to get around to making a declaration. Nonetheless is was made and I like to think that we are all better off for it. That said the struggle remains in some areas.

There is an interesting background to the Declaration in that one its key aims was to counter the then prevailing view that violence against women was essentially a private matter that didn’t necessarily merit state intervention.Since its inception, things have not always run smoothly. Many people have taken the view that the progress made since 1993 is being threatened by the rising tide of conservatism across the globe. 

In 2003, an Iranian delegate suggested making some amendments, such as the one that called on governments to condemn violence against women where it crossed into territory that was seen to belong to the religious side of things. Representatives from Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan and amazingly the US also raised objections about certain aspects of the wording.

To my knowledge, Object have never raised any issues about the way that the Declaration was worded. 

They just go and ignore it whenever they see fit and justify their actions under the 'fight against objectification'.

What? I hear you say…

Well, lets have a look at the Declarations articles and see what we think…

Article 1

For the purposes of this Declaration, the term "violence against women" means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

Objects entire campaign is based upon attempting the wholesale closure of strip tease and lap dancing clubs, thereby depriving the dancers and other staff their livelihoods, therefore inflicting psychological harm and suffering on the women who fear their loss of income.

The Object website contains details of what clubs to attack, therefore threatening specific venues with closure and almost certainly causing anguish to those whose jobs may be lost.

Despite what Object and its apologists say, dancers choose to be dancers, therefore the campaign to close clubs amounts to an ‘arbitrary deprivation of liberty’.

Finally the possible loss of licensed venues could well give rise to appearance of illegal, unlicensed venues whose operation would lead to ‘physical, sexual’ harm.

On the above basis, Object stand guilty of numerous contraventions of Article 1.

Article 2

Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, the following:

(a)   Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;

(b)   Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;

(c)   Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.

Object and other groups, such as the Solent Feminist Network have conducted frequent demonstrations outside clubs that have caused ‘intimidation at work’ for the dancers as they attempt to enter and leave the venue.

The empowerment of local councils by Object, to apply SEV legislation to close clubs amounts to ‘psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State’, due to the fear and anguish that is causes those that work in the clubs.

On the above basis Object or indeed any group that have appeared outside a venue, stand guilty of contravening Article 2 (b) and 2 (c).

Article 3

Women are entitled to the equal enjoyment and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.  These rights include, inter alia:

(a)   The right to life;

(b)   The right to equality;

(c)   The right to liberty and security of person;

(d)   The right to equal protection under the law;

(e)   The right to be free from all forms of discrimination;

(f)   The right to the highest standard attainable of physical and mental health;

(g)   The right to just and favourable conditions of work;

(h)   The right not to be subjected to torture, or other cruel,

      inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Object make a point of saying that their campaign is not designed to curtail the choices that dancers make to pursue their chosen profession. But nonetheless, the closure of a club removes the choice to work there, therefore violating womens ‘fundamental freedoms in the economic field’

Objects organised campaign to close clubs also violates womens right to have the ‘liberty’ to choose to be a dancer and the absence of a job violates their ‘security of person’.

The things that Object have written about dancers and clubs on their website violates ‘the right to be free from all forms of discrimination’. A good example of this would be the comments made about dancers in Hackney being trafficked drug abusers that perform oral sex for clients.

Object whole campaign and its objectives violate the dancers right to ‘the highest standard attainable of physical and mental health’, something that would be difficult to achieve if they are unemployed.

Dancers are self employed and they find those conditions to be favourable to their lifestyle and ambitions.  The closure of clubs would remover this option, thereby violating the ‘right to just and favourable conditions or work’.

Being abused as you leave and enter your place of work violates the right not to be subject to ‘degrading treatment’.

On the above basis, Object and other feminist groups are accused of violating Article 3 (c), 3 (e), 3 (f), 3 (g) and 3(h).

The biggest joke of all, is that Object refer to themselves as being a human rights group. Whose rights are they campaigning for though? Its certainly not any of the 12,000 people that work in the strip tease and lap dancing industry.

I suppose this is what leads me to the saddest thing of all, which is how Object squandered the chance the do some real good. What Anna and the gang could have done is work with the clubs to look at working conditions, they could have expressed their views in a manner that was conducive to cooperation and mutual understanding.

Instead they went for the cheap option, declared war on everyone and rebuffed every attempt at mutually beneficial discourse and applied for grant after grant.

Speaking of grants, I thought it might be  nice idea to remind you about those bodies that funded Objects violation of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.

They are as follows…

Trust for London
The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd
The Maypole Fund
Charities Aid Foundation
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
Allen Lane Foundation
Garden Court Chambers Social Fund
Awards for All (National Lottery)
City Parochial Foundation
Unison

Lets not forget the organisations that are happy to be affiliated to Object and its Declaration violating activities…

SERTUC (Southern and Easter Regional TUC)
Unison South East
Unison Kent
Unison South East Electricity 
Unison Yorkshire and Humberside
Unison Eastern Women's Committee
Unison NPS WM

Finally, lets also consider the awards that Object have won for violating the Declaration…

Government-backed Capacity Builders Award - 2009
Third Sector Charity Awards 2009 - 'Highly Commended'
Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize, 2009 - Winner

Postscript

I find it hard to believe that this blog has reached its century. As I have said in the past, I want it to be more than a site for fighting prohibition and shortly I intend to post some requests for articles and information that could help broaden the scope of what I am doing.

Thanks to all of  you that have read and contributed, made suggestions and in general made StrippingTheIllusion what it is today.

Cheers

Chasmal

Speaking of Censorship.....

"I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?"

Frank Zappa, Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock", 1985, in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general.

I thought I would finish off this weekends postings with another article about censorship. This time its about MTV style music videos, because it seems perhaps unsurprisingly that Object have a view here, or at least one of their activists did a while back.....

I must admit that I do not go to the gym or watch anything even faintly resembling MTV (anyone remember The Tube?), but it seems to me that our activist has worked herself up into a real lather about what she sees on TV.

'........Young women writhing, thrusting, pushing their genitals into the camera, simulating sex with chairs (?), poles, mens legs.....'

Really, take something, see someone, but calm down.....

The answer of course from the Object point of view is to see if another campaign can be launched to target and censor the music industry, MTV or music videos. I do not know if Object have a view on song lyrics, but I guess that they do, especially if the lyrics objectify women. That said, censorship in music is a real dead dog of a campaign and no one with any sense would go near it.

Would they?

P.S.

This is my 99th posting. Clearly (unless you were the author of the Lilith Report), the next will be the 100th and I am reserving this posting for some good news that I hope to receive shortly. So until then, remain open minded, watch MTV videos, look at nude sculptures near you and just be a better human being than the prohibitionists, which lets face it, isn't that hard.

Object, Page 3 and Public Art...

You may know that Object are currently focussing their rage on News International because of The Sun newspapers Page 3. For those that don't know, since 1970, The Sun features a photograph of a topless or sometimes naked female model. The pose always obscures the genital area. Object believe that Page 3 is a terrible thing, in fact in a recent interview in The Guardian, Anna Van Heeswijk said

"Our argument and solutions are simple," she says. "This type of sexually objectifying material would be restricted on television because of the recognised harms associated with these stereotyped portrayals of women and it would be considered sexual harassment if it was in the workplace. Why is it, then, that they should be printed in mainstream newspapers which are not age-restricted and are sold and displayed at child's eye level?"

Kat Banyard, the writer of the article believes that 'the legal footing for this so-called "institution" has never looked so precarious'.

I have a view on this matter. When Van Heeswijk says that Objects arguments and solutions are simple, she is absolutely correct. They are simple to the point of naivety and Kat Banyards comment about the legal footing of Page 3 is utterly contemptible.

Object and its supporters are ushering in a new era of censorship and the fools that publish The Guardian are cheering them on. But lets imagine that they succeed and Page 3 is banned. So images such as the one below, will no longer be legal in newspapers...

Remember that Object want this kind of image banned from newspapers, because anyone could see them, children for example. Fine, then if there is any substance behind Objects campaign, then what about the image below....

As you can see this a sculpture in a public garden somewhere in London. I am not going to say where it is or what its called, in case some moron tries to take a hammer to it in the name of objectification. My point is as follows; If Page 3 is objectionable, then so must be the sculpture above. In fact if you apply Objects 'simple arguments', it is worse. Its located in a public space, where children might see it, its available all of time for anyone to see and worse than that, the figure is completely naked.

So where do Object go with this?

Do they one day plan to force the removal of statues of naked women from public spaces?

Somehow I doubt it, they wouldn't survive the uproar.

I have a feeling that the basis for Objects argument against Page 3 is not the image, because if it was, Object would be busy stickering up statues now and would be working to get them carted away and melted down. No. I think the issue that drives the Page 3 campaign is the models themselves. Object will never bother to try and censor public art, for the simple reason that the models are not accessible, in fact many cases, such as the sculpture above, the models are long dead. What Object and its activists want are real people that are still alive and that can be reached.

We see how Object have tried to close strip clubs, damaging the livelihoods of thousands of dancers. Now they want to end the careers of Page 3 girls and models that pose for lads mags as well.

I hate to say this, but Object and their activists just seem to hate the women that are involved in the business, but they are not brave enough to admit (maybe even to themselves) what lies at the heart of their agenda.

Over the next week I will be releasing more frame grabs from my Object archive that will support this view.

Objectification Culture Or Censoring Art?

I hadn't planned to blog again today, but an article I read in the Telegraph frightened me to such an extent that I want to bring it to your attention today. The Scream gallery in Mayfair had an exhibition of the work of Derrick Santini, which included a modern day reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan The artwork had been exhibited for a month with no complaints from the public.

So as to ensure that everyone understands what has happened, lets look at the deep background starting with the myth itself.

Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus seduced, or raped, Leda in the form of a swan. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.

So we are clear that is a Greek myth, with the emphasis being placed upon the word 'myth'.

Throughout the ages, this topic has been the subject of artworks, some of which are below for you to see.


This painting is in the National Gallery, its a 16th century copy 
of a lost work by Michelangelo...


As you can this a sculpture of the same subject.....


This one is by James Legros.....

So we can see that this is a well portrayed subject and as such must be known to the public. Now, lets move on. Artist Derrick Santini, decided that it would be a nice idea to do his own version, and we can see it below....

This was the artwork that the Met Police censored...

Unsure if they saw this one or not....

It was exhibited in the Scream Gallery for over a month and as I said before it drew no complaints from anyone. Then one day a member of the Metropolitan Police was going past the gallery on a bus and saw the image and was so upset by what he saw that he swung into action. He contacted his colleagues and soon after two uniformed officers were visiting the gallery. They said the image condoned bestiality, which was an arrestable offence and stayed on site until the artwork was taken down and removed from public view.

I warned everyone that would listen that Object and their objectification based campaign would empower a whole range of morons to impose their morality on society and now we have the Metropolitan Police censoring artwork.

If I was in the Art Crimes Division of the Met (there must be one) I would get down to the National gallery as soon as possible, because the Michelangelo copy is still there. I would demand its removal and arrest the curator before anything immoral takes place. Lets face it, the Met are our moral guardians and as such should be told about this kind of stuff.

Hang on though, there is a load of this kind of sick stuff in London....

Eros in Picadilly....The little bastards got a bow and arrow and that must condone assault with a deadly weapon. Met Police, you know what to do....

Arthur Sullivan Memorial in Victoria Embankment Gardens...She's semi naked and thats illegal. Melt it down Met, melt it down now!

Phoebus Driving the Horses of the Sun at Australia House in The Strand. Oh my God you can see his willy!!!

The Boy David in Ropers Garden...more public nudity and its pedo stuff as well!!!

So for all my readers, this is what is happening in London. In the city that in weeks is hosting the Olympics, the police are running around censoring artworks.

Ok, lets face it, an understanding the Greek myth was never going to be part of the Metropolitan Polices training programme. But I always thought that thinking things through and showing common sense was a key attribute to being in the service of the police. I remember how brilliant the police were on the day of the London Tube bombings, every officer I met was a credit to the force, so what happened between then and now?

If like me, you wish to voice your concern about what has happened, don't bother with the police because the clown that reported this probably deals with the e-mails. A far better approach would be to tell Boris Johnson what you think, so go here to do that mayor@london.gov.uk  .