Hello folks. I saw an old Wire in the Blood last night (Robson Green), which is usually a good story and written with originality and thought. However, the episode I watched last night fell into some of the traps the media fall into all too often. They gave the impression that people who look at pornography are likely to commit violent crime and then of course the crimes themselves were committed featuring BDSM and a version of the Slaves of Gor. Now I am not a fan of Gorean slavery (having done it and found it bordering on abusive), but I am a fan of BDSM, and the story made it look evil personified. The tone taken by the police when they interviewed ANYONE with a pornography collection was one of disgust, and the character played by Robson Green took just as closed a view when he began his online research of the BDSM community.
Violent crime is not just associated to porn. It has been associated to most things in human life, including alcohol, cigarettes, drugs an of course the most popular of all; Money. Also, the proportion of people who watch porn and then go on to commit violent crime against women or men (particularly serial crime) is very low indeed. Finally, there is still no conclusive link to the viewing of 'specialist' material and violent sex crime. Porn and BDSM have their bad sides, just like most things created by the human mind, but neither deserves to be treated quite so poorly by the media.
In the case of BDSM, I wonder if the secrecy of our scene does not help. People are frightened of what they don't know. For instance, the Freemasons can get bad press, despite their charity work, because they are a secret society shrouded in a degree of mystery. Maybe it is a vicious circle. The media vilify us so we go underground, giving off this air of secrecy, so we are further vilified. I am not sure; tis just thought. Please do leave me yours if you have one...
