this preamble is to say that I kind of likes me some entertainment from my computer on occasion. I travel a lot.. it makes it hard to maintain normal sexual relationships, and if you buy the once every 8 seconds rule, there aren't many women in the world that can consistently satisfy a man over extended periods of time. Also, men are very visual. it's a fact,male and female biology is quite different, and for a man, stimulation, superficial as it might be, is often heavily visual. I didn't make my body, but barring a lobotomy or extensive ingestion of salt peter, I am forced to live in in.. so you can understand why I might get a little frustrated when I bump into censorship in different countries of my occasional outlet.
My first experience with this was in Japan. I was staying in a nice hotel, and I had dinner with a very funny Harvard PHD who might or might not have known anything about me from our mutual friend, but had a healthy (in his case homosexual ) sex life himself... one of his first jokes to me when we discussed the hotel I was staying in, the Imperial, kind of the main old hotel of Tokyo, famously for visiting dignitaries, was "so how's the pixilation treating you!". I was quiet for a second, realizing that I had in fact spent about 30 us bucks the night before to learn this sad fact, that porn in Japan contains pixilation that obscures the hard core elements of the action, turning all porn, at least that displayed in hotels but I think also on the Internet, into the equivalent of American single X. I was there with an old friend, this PHD and his partner, and the goal was to have a fun dinner in the restaurant that inspired the last scene of the Kill Bill Movie, so what the hell, I answered "It Fucking Sucks!"... admitting that I had gone through it the night before.. and felt a little bottled up afterwards...
I don't know if I am parroting Porn industry propaganda, but it has been alleged that the availability of pornography has dropped incidence of Rape where it is available, and from a strict civil liberties perspective, what adults want to do,they should be allowed to do. I don't know if I would want my daughter working the pole, or in this case, the digicam, but I have chosen to not have kids, so it's kind of a moot point for me. I have dated a woman or two that makes their money in such ways, and it didn't really bother me. I am not arguing for child pornography nor exploitation.In the US where Pornography is close to completely legal, some obscenity laws aside, the business is actually somewhat dominated by woman in California.
So my gripe: Porn is censored in many countries around the world, and by many private entities as well. The Marriott Chain, run by a Mormon Family, was known for years for not providing Pornography on their in room On Demand systems. This is a valid choice made by a private entity, and I can usually vote with my feet if it means that much to me, but I am also seeing voluntary censorship of the Internet in rural areas of Colombia, it appears, by companies.. this I find to be much more alarming, as the Internet is to some degree like an electronic library, and this is like a banned book.
Here is a Wikipedia Graphic and explanation of where and how the Internet is Censored, but not specific to Pornography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country#
So Officially, Japan Pixilates and distorts all portions of images that would give something a rating above X in the US.
Many Internet Providers in the north of Colombia Self Censor as a business.
Thailand is now on the list, absurdly, although laughably ineffectively... thank God.. sure you can do almost whatever you want in this country, but this is something one is less ashamed of in the morning.
South Korea began pornography censorship in 2012... it seems almost abusrd given that South Korea is kind of symbolic of freedom from opression compared to North Korea, but it seems to be indicative of the rise of Christianity and it's influence in the country. Self Righteousness is peeking it's head into a country with no Jeffersonian values.
No comments:
Post a Comment