There's a headline. The underlying story is not funny, involving racially discriminatory censorship in Australia.
ADDED: There is no porn at the link, though I do find what's there highly objectionable: The government banned pornography not for everyone, but for Aborigines, for their own good.
November 9, 2008
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9 comments:
Do I dare click the link, fearing controversial content on the other side?
It's a text news article. No pictures.
We lived in Oz for most of a year, during which time I did a LOT of reading on the problems around the indigenous community.
It's about 100x worse than we have here with our Native Americans.
The details are simultaneously boring and horrifying, but my impression was that the various pieces of the Ossie gov't were trying their level best to accomplish contradictory goals: protecting and integrating a group that doesn't mesh well with the modern world.
My kids school kept a basket of shoes so that the indigenous kids would have footwear. It wasn't that they didn't have money for them (it was given to them). Or that they didn't have them (lots of assistance programs for that stuff). It was just that they would forget to wear shoes to school. As I recall, there was a "shoes on the bus" rule that was regularly waived because of this too.
-XC
though I do find what's there highly objectionable: The government banned pornography not for everyone, but for Aborigines, for their own good.
What part do you find objectionable?
That the government banned porn (which is highly addictive) for one group?
Or that the government hasn't banned it for everyone else.
So to be truly transgressive the Aboriginal must make their own porn!
"The Booty of The Gods be Crazy!"
These days some paternalistic [aboriginal] elders are only too willing to toe the church line on matters of morality, and white middle-class critics are often too polite to call them out over it.
Translation from liberalspeak: some old Aborigines want to put a stop to rampant child sex abuse in their communities. They are adopting certain Western attitudes about sex.
White, middle-class liberals are too guilt-tripped by race and the sex-abuse issue to stand up and say: "Hey you stupid Aboringine elders! Don't you know the Church is bad!? Don't you know the Church attitudes about sex are wrong!?"
Nowhere in the original Little Children are Sacred report did the authors call for bans on porn. This approach was white conservative Christian policy. The report's authors wanted more education and enforcement of the Classification Act in the NT. They knew that bans on porn in Aboriginal communities would simply say to the general public that they had a genetic predisposition to sexual assault when confronted with nudity and sexual activity. The report even stated that bans on pornography would not be effective.
Further: if you say that Aborigine communities currently have a child sex abuse problem, it is implied that you think there is something genetically wrong with them. (Which of course completely contradicts the limp-wristed hand waving about "Oh Noes! The Churches is Coming to take Meh Sex Awayz!" fear of cultural influence).
Liberals casually impute racism to people with whom they disagree. That's just standard liberal behavior.
Anyway, if you want to protect a distinct Aboriginal culture, why would it be wrong to prevent access to Western pornography?
Obviously, Ross Fitzgerald is a cultural imperialist: he wants to impose Western ideas about sex and pornography on a bunch of Aboriginal people who, speaking through their elders, have said they don't want it.
Anyone who uses the phrase "white conservative Christian policy" in reference to Australia is, well, madder than a barking wallaby!
-XC
Porn is a bad thing, but it is also very easy to avoid. Except for child porn, bestiality, and the like, I do not see that it is anyone else's business.
Trey
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