Hmmm! Who was it that said "Judge not lest thou be judged?" Well Melinda, it seems you've found out the hard way about judging others, but please don't forget, those same people you're judging are the same ones who fight for your 'right' to judge them. They're doing an impossibly difficult job in an increasingly hostile land. The atrocities they encounter on a day to day basis make a few girly pics hanging on their barrack walls pale into insignificance. We must be very, very careful about running down our defence force personel. It's the thin edge of the wedge that will spread to become an all out cry against the war on the enemy, that enemy who is the fundamentalist Muslim. How they must rub their hands in glee every time they hear or read reports of the West turning on itself over the war on terrorism. Our boys need all the support we can give them in their attempt to put an end to the aims of the aggressor even if it means turning a blind eye to the occasional barrack room prank, for as surely as night follows day, to loose this war against terror is to enter a very dark and bleak future for us, our children and their children, if indeed those generations are left alive.

Melinda didn't have to squint to see scantily clad women on the walls of young soldiers' barracks, she could have gone to the lesbian magazines which have scads of unclothed nubile young women for ogling. See here:

http://www.divamag.co.uk/diva/features.asp

http://www.lotl.com/

What about the trim ripped male bodies in women's magazines?

C'mon Melinda, you didn't even have to step outside of Canberra to see some naughty mags and photos.

So what about some poh-faced denunciation of the stuff being thumbed through by gay and straight women in her local Canberra newsagency?

Or a visit to the fleshpots of Fyshwick to see some real red blooded lesbian hard core and bondage stuff.

The radical feminists are ridiculous. So what if sexually active people look at the photographs nude or partly nude bodies? As long as they leave the kids alone - unlike Greer's pederast manual with photos of adolescent boys - who cares?

Fess up Medinda, you were just having a 'go' at men weren't you and you are not really concerned about pornography. Otherwise you not have gone outside of your own backyard to find it.

Shame Melinda, shame.

The porn on the walls was the first thing I could make out in those fuzzy images and an unhealthy relationship between sex and violence did come to mind.

Then I wondered what the wives, mothers, daughters, girlfriends of soldiers might think of it.

Then I wondered how those pornographic images came to be shown on prime time TV - shouldn't they have been fuzzed out or something?

While I don't think the issue merits this sort of hysterical response it shouldn't be dismissed either.

You have to wonder how the whole stupid catastrophe of this war is going to effect the men in those pictures when they get home.

Dear Melinda,
I admire you passion.

But well meaning, principled actions can do more harm than good if they are based on preconceived notions, not reality.

You wrote:
>Portraying women as nothing but sexual fodder for male lust and pleasure is a form of oppression of women everywhere. It puts women at risk of unwanted sexual advances and abuse.

How do you know this? Do you have any evidence?

Reality is, that pornography provides sexual relief.
In Sweden, after introducion of pornography a noticable decline of sexually motivated assualts was recorded.

Do you realy want to provide protection for women everywhere?
Realy?

I'll tell you what works.

But let's start with evidence.
During the WWII Germans troops did NOT rape local women, Russians did (massively).

Difference? Russians were ideological, Germans pragmatic.
Russians had their commissars, Germans had... field brothels.

So? What do you care more about: women in other countries or ideology?

If it is the former, I am waiting for a passionate paper 'let's introduce brothels for our soldiers.

Regards

Paul

www.creativewinwin.com

Since when did men looking on women in that 'certain way' become an act of oppression. The day men stop, the species is history.

I think the author ought to be examining herself to work out why she identifies so strongly with pictures of other people doing things she doesn't approve of.

The thing about Democracy that some people don't get, is that implicit in the freedom it grants, is that you have to respect the freedom of others. If it doesn't personally affect you or demonstrably harm others, then it's none of your business.

If this is all Tankard Reiss has to write about and OLO is so desperate for anything to publish, well I might be forced to put up a dissertation on the cultivation of belly-button fluff. It would be more entertaining and revelant to modern day life.

As Leigh, on the first post rightly commented, "but this essay is a piece of nonsense"

Spot on Leigh.

One wonders what is lacking in Tankard Reiss' life that she obsesses so much about absolutely nothing, maybe a lack of anyone bothering to look at her in that way men look lustfully at other women?