MMsSenf

Sie waren lange Zeit "kein Thema" in den gängigen Massemedien. Die Tragweite der Gesetze wird von ihren Befürwortern (womit ich nicht rückratlose Mitläufer, Jasager, Speichellecker meine, sondern die, die die Gesetze wirklich kennen und hinter ihnen stehen) meiner Meinung nach durchaus gesehen - in diesem Falle: "Wie etabliere ich eine reaktionäre (sie würden wahrscheinlich sagen: traditionelle, "bewährte") Sexualmoral?" In den USA - die das Vorbild für den Gesetzesvorstoß lieferten - wurde das ja auch ganz offen zugegeben. In Deutschland ahnen die Befürworter zumindest, dass das nicht mehrheitsfähig ist - und versuchen es über die "Europakurve" und die "Hinterum"-Tour.

Das ist eben der Grund, war um ich die halbdirekte Demokratie am Ende doch vorziehe. Nicht, dass sie vor schlechten Entscheiden schützen würde -ich habe hierzulande in den letzten Monaten genug Frustrierendes erlebt. Sie sorgt aber dafür, dass Minderheiten Themen in die Schlagzeilen bringen können und eine Diskussion stattfindet. Das mag von Aussen manchmal etwas grobschlächtig aussehen, als ob eine ganze Nation auf Stammtischnniveau diskutiere. Aber all die provokativen Plakate der politischem Hick-Hack, die grossen Fernsehdiskussionen die jede Abstimmung auslöst, bringen solche Themen eben in die Schlagzeilen. Es gibt einen öffentlichen, lauten Disput. Und da dringt eben doch zumindest ein Teil der Argumente für und wider das neue Gesetz in die Massenmedien und damit zu dem halbwegs informierten Teil der Gesellschaft vor. Vor allem weiss der Wähler nachher sehr genau, wer sich für was eingesetzt hat: Die Politiker werden gezwungen, Flagge zu zeigen und können sich nicht hinter irgendwelchen Koalitionszwängen verbergen.

Meiner Meinung nach liegt der grösste Vorteil der Demokratie nicht darin, dass die Mehrheit bestimmt, sondern dass eine permanente, harte und freie öffentliche Diskussion stattfindet. Politik muss in erster Linie ein diskursiver Prozess sein - heute driftet sie aber immer mehr in eine Art "Populationsmanagement" von oben ab.

Wie Demokratie ohne diesen freien Diskurs aussieht, kann man sich derzeit in Russland anschauen. Nenn mich Paranoid, aber genau die Mechanismen, die Du beschreibst (bestimmte Themen kommen einfach nicht in die Medien, manche Meinungen sind einfach "pfui" und werden zum Karriererisiko, wer Fragen stellt, macht sich verdächtig, "die da oben werden schon wissen was richtig ist"), führen eben dazu, dass die breite öffentliche Diskussion nicht mehr stattfindet und dass auch Westeuropa zunehmend in Richtung einer von Eliten gelenkten Demokratie abdriftet.

Meine Meinung: Es sollte zumindest möglich sein, gegen Eingriffe wie die Vorratsdatenspeicherung oder dieses extrem restriktive Sexualstrafrecht das Referendum zu ergreifen und das Volk entscheiden zu lassen. Das würde am Ergebnis vielleicht nichts ändern, aber das Bewusstsein stärken, dass da etwas passiert, und das das keineswegs unumstritten ist.

Diese Mobilisierung der Kritik könnte dann, vielleicht zu einem viel späteren Zeitpunkt und in einem ganz anderen Kontext, wirklich einen Unterschied machen.

Liebe Grüsse, P

(Das meiste ist auch auf deutsche Verhältnisse übertragbar, auch wenn die sexuellen Normen bei uns etwas freizügiger sind. Der neue 184b StGB bietet für Kinder (unter 14) keinen Deut mehr Schutz als die bisherige Regelung, aber schafft neue Rechtsunsicherheit, vor allem bei Jugendlichen - denn nach der neuen Fassung heißt es nicht mehr:

1) Wer pornographische Schriften (§ 11 Abs. 3), die den sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern (§§ 176 bis 176b) zum Gegenstand haben (kinderpornographische Schriften) (...)

sondern

1) Wer pornographische Schriften (§ 11 Abs. 3), die sexuelle Handlungen von, an oder vor Personen unter achtzehn Jahren zum Gegenstand haben (kinder- und jugendpornographische Schriften) (...)

!

What's probably of more importance to the comics industry, certainly to the manga industry, is an impending bill passed last week by the House Of Representatives requiring all ISPs to police their systems for incidents of "child pornography," with large fines if they fail. (If I understand it correctly it still needs to pass the Senate.) While I doubt anyone's going to defend kiddy porn, one of the more heinous practices the human race has yet invented, the big problem is that, as with most anti-pornography bills passed by Congress, there's no definition of "child pornography" in it. Meaning ISPs, which by traditional law have been generally held not responsible for material individuals place on them, would be in the position of being especially restrictive cops on anything that even had the faintest whiff of possible interpretation of kiddy porn.

Is a photo of a naked 2 year old running through a sprinkler kiddy porn, or does there need to be some specifically intended sexual content for the term to apply? What about five and six-year-old beauty/dance pageant contestants dressed up like 30 year old hookers? Is a drawing of a naked child the same thing, under that bill, as a photo of one? How equivalent to a similarly themed photo is a sexual drawing of a child?

If the Mike Diana case is any indicator, the courts and legislature don't distinguish between the two at all. (Diana, in the late '80s, was a comics artist, and not an especially good one, who was forbidden by a judge to even draw any of his creepy fantasies after he received a sex crimes conviction – I forget, was it pedophilia? – and higher courts upheld the restriction. A Florida case, natch.)

I can point to old Dennis The Menace strips showing him charging willfully down the street, through department stores, across neighbors' lawns au natural with his chubby little buttocks flapping (and, presumably, everything else) flapping in the breeze. Pornography? I'd say no, and an ISP owner would likely make the same guess, but without a specific definition in the law his guess would be functionally irrelevant. Worse, the law doesn't require the ISP owner to remove the image (in fact, they have to preserve them) but to instead report the poster, referred to in the bill as the "potential sex offender," to the National Center For Missing And Exploited Children. This suggests that what they're mainly looking for is real pictures of real children, but the bill doesn't specify that. It specifies "any" images, which means it's also trolling for potential sex offenders as well.

"Sex offender" has taken on monstrous connotations in America, and covers a hell of a lot of ground without making much distinction, apparently on the believe that any aberrant behavior means a person is open to, apparently eager for, all aberrant behavior. Which is kind of a leap. Going onto a sex offender list effectively destroys your life, for the rest of your life, yet in most jurisdictions you can get labeled a sex offender for taking a leak against a tree while drunk. Sure, it's bad behavior, but a sex offense ought to at least have a sexual connotation. Yet the term is broadly applied. Within the range, it's still something of a leap to say that someone who, say, peeps into windows to watch couples mating will jump at the chance for sex with barnyard animals. Perversions tend to take very specific expression. Even within a narrow range, say kiddy porn, it's still something of a leap to assume a pedophile whose behavior has always been restricted to looking at photos will start molesting children? (Admittedly, it's a chance I'd prefer not to take, but it's still hard to leap to any broad conclusions about the nature of perversion; like many things, you have to approach it on a case-by-case basis.)

However, manga presents a special problem. An awful lot of it, of varying types, is no stranger to at least partial nudity and sexual situations involving prepubescent girls, and there's a long tradition of it in Japan. (NEGIMA, anyone?) Porn manga – most of it hasn't gotten a lot of exposure here – frequently involves sexual activity, much of it brutal, by sexually developed teenagers, which is still officially frowned on here even though pretty much everyone knows and admits that quite a few teenagers have sex. Much worse are porn manga subdivisions like loli (sex involving cherubically undeveloped little girls) and – I'm not sure what it's called... shikou? – (boy love); undeniably creepy, sick stuff, even if you can write off the rape fetish that infuses most porn manga of any kind as mere motif or artistic expression. (I suspect most women, at least, wouldn't.) Like most other subdivisions, both genres support a bewildering volume of titles, and these make it to the web with extraordinary regularity. (Marvel's not the only comics publisher that has these problems.)

Kiddy porn? Irrefutably. What else could you call it? But since it involves no actual children, would it be reportable?

I'm pretty sure Congress would say yes, as they'd likely say yes to anything an ISP owner even suspected might fall into the category. Not that kiddy porn isn't a serious issue, but legislators have long tried to use it as a wedge against all pornography; it plays well with many voters. The question is: should drawn kiddy porn be given the same status as photographed kiddy porn?

We're in a strange situation, culturally, especially when it comes to porn. The traditional expectation of porn, commonly promoted by churches, civic leaders and various big mother types, is that it drives people to sexual frenzy, and especially men to rape. While there's no doubt it objectifies women, recent studies have drawn correlations between the widening availability of porn in our society and the decline of incidents of rape. Sure, other factors are probably involved – the studies can only judge by reported incidents, and there may be factors that have caused reporting to decline, while a decline in rapes might also correlate to increasing publicity of rape trials and an array of other possibilities – but if it's true that an easy availability of sexual imagery leads to less physical expression of perversion (or less non-consensual, anyway) then a crackdown on porn, as much as it would please many people, may be counter-productive. If rapists can actually be headed off at the pass by exposure to porn (and I'd say a considerable amount of additional study is necessary before we can come to a sure conclusion, and even then we must again allow for variations among individual cases) can the same thing be said for pedophiles? Obviously, photographic mollification for pedophiles is completely out of the question, but what about porn comics?

This isn't a proposal, it's just speculation. I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know what clinical studies tell us about the peculiar psychology of pedophiles, and for all I know kiddy porn imagery of any kind drives them toward the desire to physically play out their fantasies. But I do know another standard misconception in our society is that having fantasies – and everyone has fantasies of some sort, whether they admit it or not, though hopefully most of those fantasies don't involve sex with children – means people want to play out those fantasies in real life. I suspect most people don't, and wouldn't if they could, the same way most people who dream of flying don't jump off cliffs. Fantasy is pretty much the ultimate in safe sex. But colonizing fantasy has always been one of the great fantasies of western civilization, especially among those in power, because we have always basically mistrusted fantasy, and imagery/iconography. Legislating behavior is one thing, legislating fantasy is another, and if nothing else Freud demonstrated pretty clearly that sexual repression has consequences. Often unpleasant and violent consequences. Maybe visualizing aberrant fantasies helps stave off aberrant behavior, and maybe it doesn't, but study, not half-assed legislation (which will almost certainly get thrown out by the courts, like almost all porn legislation that tries to extend its grasp via vagueness) and citing "common wisdom," seems appropriate. Of course, this is one of those hot button issues where even suggesting alternatives will have the frothers (of both ilks) thinking you're some kind of sympathizer, so open discussion of the problem seems to be at a minimum. I'm all for rooting out pedophiles but casting an inordinately broad net creates the most harm for the least results (and in this specific instance forces an entire class of people to be unpaid cops, or suffer the consequences) when what we need is a practical solution.