Daily Archives: May 28, 2013

Topics: censorship, editors picks, photography, vivid sydney festival

NIMBIN-based photographer Raphaela Rosella has said she is "shocked" and "disgusted" at the censoring of some of her photographs on exhibition at the Vivid Festival in Sydney.

Her photos are among many that have been pulled in a controversial decision made by Destination NSW, the body behind the event.

The censored photographs will now not be projected in Circular Quay as part of the Vivid Lights program, but will still be part of indoor exhibits if the artists choose to proceed.

Ms Rosella knows that at least two of her photos have been pulled.

One is of a pregnant woman's baby bump, entitled Tamara's Pregnant Belly.

She said she understands more of her works are being censored.

"It's beyond a joke," Ms Rosella said.

"It's silencing the stories. I think it's wrong."

"I was mostly shocked when I saw it was Tamara's Pregnant Belly that was being censored because I was told they were censoring photos that weren't family-friendly. I find it hard to comprehend how a pregnant belly is not family-friendly."

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Censorship of photos embarrasses nation: Nimbin photographer

The potential censorship ramifications of the campaign are huge, and it also misses the opportunity to create productive dialogue around gender and desire, argues Nichi Hodgson.

Fashion magazines are arguably also demeaning to women. Photograph: Getty Images

Its not often that a feminist call to arms trends on Twitter. How unfortunate that the censorious Lose the Lads' Mags campaign being led by UK Feminista, Object and a bevvy of equality lawyers, is it.

In principal, I wouldnt be sorry to see the demise of lads' mags, in the same way I wouldnt be sorry to see the demise of the Daily Mail, Snog, Marry, Avoid and inane rom-coms where the dramatic tension is derived from women thinking the presentation of a princess-cut diamond translates to a life time of teak sideboards and babies and the men believing they'll get an endless supply of proper dinners and blowjobs. But would I actively seek to prosecute any of the above on the basis that they are "deeply harmful" to women? Well, no. Because that would be an undemocratic infringement of civil liberties. It would also do nothing whatsoever to tackle the underlining attitudes and values that encourage such an over-simplistic framing of sex, desire and male and female roles and thus create a consumer base for lads' mags in the first place.

If lads' mags are "deeply harmful to women" as UK Feminista director Kat Banyard asserts, then what are womens magazines? As a teenage anorexic, I created a pre-Pinterest "thinspiration" board by cutting out images of models with gaping thighs from copies of Vogue and the new defunct Looks magazine. Let me be clear: fashion magazines did not cause my anorexia; they merely "fed" my perfectionistic compulsion, a product of emotional turmoil at home and my hot-house schooling at a competitive girls academy. Ironically, it was working for a sex magazine that helped me to construct a multi-faceted sexual self predicated on more than just my vital statistics. The consumer magazines I read, selling both inspiration and aspiration to their readers, enabled me to objectify womens bodies in a way that damaged my relationship with sexuality and selfhood for years afterwards. But the problem lay in my psyche, and with my response to psychological and emotional stress. Banning fashion magazines would not have saved me.

The Lose the Lads Mags campaign presents the relationship between harassment and pornographic representation as an a priori truth. Both Object and UK Feminista are convinced that female objectification can be nothing but demeaning. The notion that it is possible for women to be "active objects" and in control of their own sexual representation, or that sex, power and desire entwine in a trickier amoral triadthan equality legislation can conceive of may fall beyond the remit of this campaign but neither UK Feminista nor Object engage with these complexities any where in their public-facing campaign work. Instead, the message is quite simply "button up, or youre being degraded."

Granted, its hard to think of a commercially distributed magazine (for either a male or female audience) that presents sexuality in a more empowered or nuanced way. The womens sex magazine Scarlet did a stellar job of creating a space for female desire but sadly packed up in production in June 2010. When I worked for the Erotic Review, a magazine that deigned to engage the brain rather than just the loins when it came to desire, we couldnt get WHSmith's to stock us. The reason? Because our explicit erotic photography (featured inside the magazine, not on the cover, mind), artful, inspired and sex positive as it was, disqualified us.

The potential censorship ramifications of an "all pornographic representation demeans women" approach are huge. How long before similar arguments are used to prosecute UK-registered adult businesses, for example? Or any number of advertisements (surely the largest depositary of "objectifying" images of women, explicit or otherwise)? Or explicit material designed for sex education that features naked adults engaging in consensual erotic acts? Already, businesses are taking up the censors mantle in a bid to protect profits and address corporate responsibility in a heightened political climate of anxiety about sexuality. Just try googling E L James in Starbucks and see what happens. I cant even visit my own sexual politics website over coffee any more, such is the prohibitive creep.

What we should be moving towards isnt well-intended fig-leafing, but the promotion of alternative sexual representations of both men and women. So many within the contemporary feminist canon are not only censorious but ill-informed about the range of sexual representation out there to begin with.

Its on this basis that I relish my role, however cursory it may seem, as a sex columnist for Mens Health magazine. Ultimately, engaging with male stereotypes and expectations of women and sex is the only way a notion of mutual pleasure and respect can be conceived. I only hope that, led by the Lose the Lads' Mag campaign example, a group of irate male supermarket employees dont try to refuse to handle Mens Health on the basis that its damning ideal of the Spartan physique is oppressive.To lose the chance to create dialogue around gender and desire will only widen the breach.

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Censorship and over-simplification: the problems of the Lose the Lads' Mags campaign

Mobile operator O2 UK has been accused of unfair sexism and political censorship after its mobile broadband platform was found to still be blocking over 100 websites that promote equality for men and or which have dedicated themselves to helping male victims of domestic violence and rape.

Admittedly some of the anti-feminist style websites are controversial and might perhaps have no trouble straying over some peoples perception of a red line (site list), which could make a tiny portion of them compatible with O2s definition of a hate site (you can check if a website is blocked on O2 here http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/).

But many others are far from deserving of such a classificationand could raise questions about the risks from abuse by overzealous internet filtering systems that impose restrictions without a proper review. Not that any of these concerns are new to O2, which is no stranger to such controversy (here).

John Kimble,Male Human Rights Activist, told ISPreview.co.uk:

My research on this matter and the response Ive had from O2 suggests theyve confused feminism with females as a whole, and thus they mistakenly regard any criticism of feminism (a political ideology) as criticism of women. No other ideology gets the same immunity from criticism that O2 give feminism and the likes of capitalism, socialism, communism etc. are all (quite rightly) fair game for critique.

Its also worth noting that highly contentious feminist sites are not blocked, for example http://femitheist******.blogspot.com promotes castration of all males. Even mainstream and popular feminist sites such as Jezebel.com are at least as controversial as any on the list.

O2 counters that all mobile operators in the United Kingdom are using the same approach and they claim that this is supported by the Independent Mobile Classification Body (IMCB). The sites listed within the links youve sent over have been correctly categorised by us following the IMCB classifications, said a spokesperson for O2.

Furthermore O2 notes that it is still possible to remove the block but this requires a credit card (not every adult has one of those) and disables all of the censorship measures through an age verification system (https://ageverification.o2.co.uk). A second option also exists that asks the customer to take a photographic ID into one of O2s store, which could cause some embarrassment.

An O2 Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

We respect our customers freedom to choose the material that they access. But at the same time, we want to protect young people from seeing things they shouldnt. So our approach is to protect our younger customers and apply a default block that restricts access to adult content, but that can easily be removed by customers who are over the age of 18.

More:
O2 UK Accused of Political Censorship by Male Human Rights Websites

MEDIA RELEASE 27 May 2013

New PJR challenges Pacific censorship, political shackles

AUCKLAND: Fijis brand of post-coup media censorship and other Pacific political curbs have been challenged in the latest Pacific Journalism Review published today.

Even if the Fiji media are shackled, conferences in 2010 and 2012 provided opportunity and space to engage in some open dialogue, including criticism of the regime authorities, the AUT-published international journal says.

The proceedings were not confined to the Suva conference venue, or within Fijis borders this is the digital age after all.

Many of the papers by Pacific journalists and media analysts were presented at a Media and Democracy in the South Pacific conference hosted at the University of the South Pacific last September.

Other articles, in the edition, co-edited by USPs Shailendra Singh and AUTs Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie, feature New Caledonia, West Papua and climate change reporting in the region.

Canadian communications professor and author Robert A. Hackett warns of significant democratic shortcomings in the medias watchdog, public sphere, community-building and communication equity roles.

He advocates critical selectivity over wholesale adoption of Western media models in the South Pacific to avoid some entrenched shortcomings.

Such shortcomings have been highlighted in Shazia Usmans study on the Fiji print medias coverage of female candidates in the countrys 2006 elections.

Go here to see the original:
New PJR challenges Pacific censorship, political ‘shackles’

Fijis brand of post-coup media censorship and other Pacific political curbs have been challenged in the latest Pacific Journalism Review published today.

"Even if the Fiji media are shackled, conferences in 2010 and 2012 provided opportunity and space to engage in some open dialogue, including criticism of the regime authorities," the AUT-published international journal says.

"The proceedings were not confined to the Suva conference venue, or within Fijis borders - this is the digital age after all."

Many of the papers by Pacific journalists and media analysts were presented at a Media and Democracy in the South Pacific conference hosted at the University of the South Pacific last September.

Other articles, in the edition, co-edited by USPs Shailendra Singh and AUTs Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie, feature New Caledonia, West Papua and climate change reporting in the region.

Canadian communications professor and author Robert A. Hackett warns of significant democratic shortcomings in the medias watchdog, public sphere, community-building and communication equity roles.

He advocates "critical selectivity" over "wholesale adoption" of Western media models in the South Pacific to avoid some "entrenched shortcomings".

Such shortcomings have been highlighted in Shazia Usmans study on the Fiji print medias coverage of female candidates in the countrys 2006 elections.

Reflecting international trends, the Fiji daily newspapers "lavished attention" on male candidates while "cold-shouldering" female candidates.

The Fiji Times quoted female candidates 20 times and male candidates 218 times, while the Fiji Sun quoted females 29 times, and males 292 times.

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New PJR challenges Pacific censorship