Bushbasher quotes Abigail, "I wanted to test the claims of various anti-censorship voices who argue that hard core on-line sexual abuse material is rare and difficult to find", and asks:
1) who exactly has claimed any such thing?

This is in fact a very common claim of pro-abuse voices (who call themselves anti-censorship voices). It is a claim made by Philip Jenkins in Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet, which is quoted widely (google it) by these "voices".

It is not difficult at all to find or stumble onto "hard core on-line sexual abuse material": mis-typing google as googlf used to bring up a series of cascading "rape sites" desperately trying to download themselves onto your computer.

I cannot quite grasp how such rape sites, or the site pointed to by Abigail, are "fiction" or "fantasy": gee, they look like real vaginas, real penises, real abuse, and real fear and pain to me, not imaginary vaginas or imaginary "sex".

Hele

'a series of cascading "rape sites" desperately trying to download themselves onto your computer'

Just when I thought the pro-censorship arguments couldn't get any more ridiculous...

For one thing, the main claim was that genuine CHILD PORNOGRAPHY is very difficult to find, and one of the people making that claim was a spokesman for the Australian Federal Police whose JOB it is to invade online paeodphile rings and collect evidence to produce arrests. Have a listen to ABC Radio's Background Briefing of 15 March 2009 - http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2512171.htm (Download Audio link is in orange near the top).

The depicitions in the website videos mentioned in Abigail's article might look like "real" abuse to you, but that's probably because that's what actors *DO*. What amuses me is that people are deriding the men in the videos on the website, but not the women. Considering that ALL of the participants are paid actors (and as someone else said, how long do you think the site would have lasted if just ONE woman came forward and alleged *actual* rape??), doesn't the blame lie in both beds? Or are we too caught up in throwing the "misogynist" label around like red paint on a fur coat?

Wanting to bring an end to the glorification of sexual violence is a genuinely laudible goal, and one that should be encouraged, but it's despicable that those of us wanting to protect the freedoms of this nation's citizens should have to put up with pointless attacks alleging that we're all sexual predators or promoters of same. But I suppose that's to be expected when that sort of behaviour is exhibited by government Ministers.

I think a lot of people are missing the point. It is not the fact that the Author typed in sex into Google and got back (surprise, surprise) porn sites, but that minors can enter these key words.

The strict filtering controls on Google do not work. Even thou I run Trend Micro with Parent Controls on, it cannot filter out abuse images in Google Images.

Even with strict filter set on, typing in just one word into Google Images such as tied will still bring back extreme images. Incredibly, at the top of the page, Google announces that you have Strict Filtering on and invites you to change to a lower setting with just a click. There is also no way to lock this setting in. Bing is the same.

However, the search engine www.altavista.com has very strong filtering and you will not see the extreme images for the search term tied as you do in Google. Whats more, AltaVista allows you to password protect the filtering settings preventing others from changing.

Regardless of one's attitudes to websites that simulate graphically such crimes as rape, I think that most reasonable adults would agree that it would be desirable to prevent minors from accessing them where possible. While I agree that Abigail Bray's methodology is woeful and that she seems to know little about either Web technology or pornography, I think that her general point is quite valid - at least to the extent that it should be easier for parents to control the material that their kids access online.

I'm not advocating compulsory censorship - rather, surely it's possible for the Federal government to provide easily understood information about the filtering technology that's available, including free options such as the Alta Vista search engine suggested by Chris Abood above.

isabelberners:

i'm sorry but i'm too busy to go fishing with google, and it's not my job. if there are such 'voices" (plural) or "common claim" (plural) as abigail and you suggest then it's up to you to provide the evidence.

chris abood:

it is of course valid to want to limit material that children can see, though probably pretty futile. but the "won't somebody please think of the children!" argument has a tried and true history of of being way overplayed, and of being used dishonestly as an argument to limit what adults can see and do. children are not that fragile. and, yesterday's horrible pornography is today's cover of woman's weekly.

in any case, i don't see that abigail is making that argument. she is arguing, against what seems to be a straw man, that "sexual abuse material" (i'm still not sure what means) and (what she unsupportedly claims to be) child pornography are easy to find.

all of you:

you really must learn the difference between fantasy and reality. such sites may not be to your taste, but that is no grounds for misrepresenting what the sites actually are.

Dyler,

'Wanting to bring an end to the glorification of sexual violence is a genuinely laudible goal, and one that should be encouraged, but it's despicable that those of us wanting to protect the freedoms of this nation's citizens should have to put up with pointless attacks alleging that we're all sexual predators or promoters of same. But I suppose that's to be expected when that sort of behaviour is exhibited by government Ministers.'

Amen. There we have a conclusive summary of the posts thus far.

Elka, ninaf,

I'd like to direct you to a great book called 'Women on Top' by Nancy Friday. Contained therein is many great female fantasies of Rape, Bestiality and Incest. It's a great read of true fantasies written down by women, under the guise of exploring women's fantasies and liberating them from their sexual hang-ups.

So this is a "fantasy?"
Yep

'why on earth are men fantasising about raping and abusing women,'
Don't know, but they do, and so do many women. Not my taste, but rape is up there as a fairly popular fantasy. It's something to do with sexual guilt for women and control for men. It works the other way around too. There's sites where men are humiliated and raped with strap-ons.

'second, why are people facilitating such a "fantasy" and why are you defending it?'
Because it's part of life and repressing people's sexual fantasies doesn't make them go away. That's what Nancy F was exploring with women and their fantasies.

'What other violence do you defend?'

I don't defend violence, I merely denounce thought crime.

'they would dehumanise, degrade and hurt others?'

No they don't and they wouldn't. It's just a fantasy.

'But it's not a "fantasy" someone actually carried it out, '

Tell me, when you go to the movies, you think it's all real don't ya? C'mon!

BTW: Another good book I'd like you to peruse is Germain Greer's book of naked little boys. She promoted it by saying "A woman of taste is a pederast — boys rather than men.":-)