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International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

November 25th was declared International Day for the Elimination Violence Against Women at the first Feminist Encuentro for Latin America and the Caribbean held in Bogota, Colombia, July 18-21, 1981. At that Encuentro women denounced gender violence from domestic battery, to rape and sexual harassment, to state violence including torture and abuses of women political prisoners. November 25th was chosen to commemorate the violent assassination of the Mirabal sisters (Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa) on November 25, 1960 by the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The Mirabel sisters quickly became symbols of dignity and inspiration. In 1999, the United Nations officially recognized November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. 10 years after the Encuentro in...

Deconstructing Vincent Tabak

Deconstructing Vincent Tabak

On Friday, 28 October 2011, 33-year-old Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak was convicted of murdering his neighbour, Joanna Yeates, in her Bristol apartment. The prosecution’s evidence showed that Tabak gripped Yeates by the throat with one hand; the slightly-built 25-year-old was unable to resist and died from asphyxiation. Tabak dumped Yeates’s body in a quarry where it was found on Christmas morning, 2010. The case gripped the nation, with fevered theories about such items as a missing sock and a pizza box. The trial solved these riddles, the answers mundane. Speculation that Yeates’s killer had kept the sock as a trophy or gorged on the pizza proved baseless. What the trial failed to answer was the central question of why Tabak killed Yeates. Yeates’s body...

The Awkward Discussion with the Other Half (UK)

The Awkward Discussion with the Other Half (UK)

Subscribers to the UK’s four biggest internet service providers will have to “opt in” if they want to view sexually explicit websites, as part of government-sponsored curbs on online pornography. At the moment, the situation seems to be that at the point of sale new customers will be given an option by their internet service provider to make a choice about whether they want to either have their internet connection subject to an ISP level porn filter, or have a unrestricted access to the internet and all its porn. The option apparently won’t be offered to existing customers. Now, regardless of whether you are opposed to the idea of any filters on the internet in principle, or think the risks of inaccurate systems blocking...

In porn news this week: ISP filters and more…

ISP level filters Internet Service Providers -including BT, Virgin, BskyB, Orange, Talk Talk and O2- are to be given until the autumn to develop an ‘opt-in’ system that blocks pornographic sites until an adult user specifically requests it. If ISPs fail to develop a system laws will be introduced to make them comply. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: ‘We are telling people that if they do not co-operate in bringing forward measures that will deal with this issue fast, we will legislate and regulate.’ Only 3% of pornographic websites require proof-of-age before granting access, and two-thirds do not even include any adult-content warnings. MP Claire Perry, said internet firms should ‘share the responsibility’ of protecting children. ‘The best option would be for the British...

Governments Around the World Reacting to Porn

This week has brought news from Tunisia, Turkey and Ghana that goverments and ministers in the three countries are unhappy about the use of porn in their countries. The three cases are unrelated. Below are summaries of the stories. Tunisia – Since internet censorship ended in January, following the collapse of the authoritarian regime of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, seven porn sites have appeared among the 100 most visited websites in Tunisia, with five in the top 50. In reaction to this a court in Tunisia has ordered the country’s internet authority to block all pornographic websites. Slim Amamou, an influential dissident blogger and advocate for freedom of expression who had been named junior minister for youth in the country’s interim government, has...

Bangladesh approves first anti-porn law

(AFP) – May 3, 2011 DHAKA — Bangladesh’s cabinet has approved the country’s first ever pornography law after public scandals over a string of celebrity sex tapes, an official said Tuesday. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government said it would introduce a draft law in parliament to make production and distribution of pornography punishable by up to ten years in jail. “We don’t have any laws now to prosecute criminals who make pornographic materials and spread them through the Internet and mobile phones,” spokesman Abul Kalam Azad told AFP. “We hope the new law will prevent immoral behaviour,” he said, adding that pornography had become a “social disease” in the conservative, Muslim-majority country. The law is likely to be passed after being debated by parliament....

New York Public Library for reading, learning and…watching porn

New York Public Library for reading, learning and…watching porn

Shakespeare’s plays, Einstein’s theories — and porn queen Jenna Jameson’s steamy online sexcapades. New Yorkers can take their pick at the city’s public libraries, thanks to a policy that gives adults the most uncensored access to extreme, hard-core Internet smut this side of the old Times Square. The electronic smut falls under the heading of free speech and the protection of the First Amendment, library officials say. “Customers can watch whatever they want on the computer,” said Brooklyn Public Library spokeswoman Malika Granville, describing the anything-goes philosophy that’s the rule at the city’s 200-plus branches… Read the entire article in the New York Post here.

Facebook more popular than porn with UK internet users

Social networking sites are more popular with UK internet users than pornographic ones, according to new figures from Experian Hitwise. The internet research company says that in January sites like Facebook accounted for 12.46% of all online traffic. That’s the equivalent of 2.4 billion hits or one eighth of all web visits. In comparison entertainment websites, including pornographic ones, accounted for 12.18% of traffic. It’s the first time social networking has overtaken entertainment in terms of popularity. Of those, social network site Facebook accounted for more than half, or 56%, of visits. Read the entire article here. And related pieces here and here.

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