Yes Bronwyn, “soft porn” distinctions are crucial, and we can assume a relaxed solidarity on this. Let's hope that the good among our cops, activists, lawyers and whistleblowers keep their resolve for victory.

As I understand it, “hard core” porn leaves little to the imagination, whereas “soft porn” is that which may be suggestive or objectifying enough for the visualizing into imagined “hard core”, fetish, or even just a reminder of physical form for more fleeting imagining in idle distraction. Nudity is very important in soft porn – and its offshoot of imaginings - because of [1] the symbolic vulnerability and general sensual response made more possible via nakedness, and [2] the specific exposure of erogenous parts. Thus, just as I share wider concerns about exploitation and dehumanization in advertising and elsewhere, I recognize that pornography is not the exclusive domain for sexualized imagination. However, symbolic vulnerability in nakedness has made it a practical definitional limit for “soft porn” in our culture. Of course, those definitions are outside of medical photos, for example, which some dubiously motivated Henson fans in OLO have already invoked as grounds for yet more insult and dull ridicule.

I referred to American Jeff Koontz and Italian ex-porn star Cicciolina who made highly stylized “art” photography of themselves with XXX-level explicitness, in a most emphatic destruction of the simplistic English law-style binary opposition between “art” and “porn”. But it's probably a good sign for your future enjoyment of art if you feel oblivious to most of my arty references: it's exciting to freshly examine works for your interpretations within a discourse, and to identify how factors of style and subject may connect to your social concerns. You might be surprised how easily your interpretations could offer new insight even to veteran artists and academics. Furthermore, your candid admission contrasts starkly with one other's earlier, dubious and irrelevant OLO thread allusion to Caravaggio (obviously token name-dropping lifted from Greer's mention of him), and a similarly vacuous and unconvincing tag for Pasolini's “Salo” i.e., “great, unforgettable movie”, but no comparative comment or other grasp of Salo

except for repeating the basic stated fact of its Australian banning. But desperate inverters of reality would label truthseekers “philistines”.

CJ and Van both avoid my testing question on “hard core kiddie porn”: they choose instead to hide behind the “relevant authorities” for some effortless appearance of “respectability”. In CJ's earlier posts here he also used the “wowser” abuse (with an extra one for Bowden about a “rock”) before the recent simplistic Henson-is-art-not-porn decision. While Henson supporters here mostly betray inconsistent argumentative logic, there is clear consistency between the dishonesty of their separate statements and the fundamental dishonesty of their moral position. The latest stunt poses a glib and obsequious nod to “the relevant authorities”, thereby relinquishing the activity of individual freethinking – all in a forum where Hensonites have made their uncritical “free expression” clichés into an almost overwhelming fanatic's article of faith.

I wasn't sarcastic when I extrapolated logically that following quote from Van's hyperbolic eulogy claiming that “Henson seeks to...DEcommodify childhood”. As with most others posing an “artistic freedom” agenda here, Van self-denies and still avoids my questions, comparisons, analysis, historical and ideological references – in short: avoidance of any serious debate.

Van comments that Henson is ineloquent, though “inarticulate” better captures Henson's deeper problems of self-expression, and thereby explains why his art is so banal and mediocre. It is unnecessarily cruel to condemn the artist for his mediocrity; his rich, dull and/or pretentious supporters are properly culpable in that regard. But its obvious banality carries Henson's art into those light themes – if not vacuum - of “soft porn”.

Again, what of Nazi pedo-art and Pasolini's warnings in “Salo”? The avowedly intrepid taboo-breaking Hensonites cannot touch that apparently sacred ideological nerve centre. By contrast, we are anti-fascist because we oppose the perverse morality which would uphold as “good” the delight in, and wilful dominance, subjugation and debasement of, our fellow humans. We are anti-pedophile because we abhor those yet more cowardly fascistic tastes for exerting similarly oppressive and perverse relationships, but on an individual level and with children.

mil-observer: << CJ and Van both avoid my testing question on “hard core kiddie porn”: they choose instead to hide behind the “relevant authorities” for some effortless appearance of “respectability”. >>

Mil-observer can babble on as much as s/he likes about the distinction between "soft" and "hard" pornography, but the fact is that Henson's images have been determined to be neither by those authorities whose job it is to classify images in the media or to prosecute cases of child pornography.

While mil-observer may subjectively decide that the images are pornographic, that idiosyncratic assessment says much more about mil-observer than it does about the images.

It looks like the ideological path is the one least cluttered by cobwebs and other arachnid matter, so I'll correct a previous posting for emphasis: “By contrast, we are anti-fascist because we oppose the perverse morality which would uphold as “good” their delight in the wilful dominance, subjugation and debasement of our fellow humans.”

I had no space earlier to mention other prominent works offering insight into the pathology of fascism's pedophilic instincts and the pedo-aesthetic within fascist identity. One notable example is the social realist epic by another Italian director Bertolucci with “Novecento” (“1900”). A broad and rich German analysis into the caverns under such ideological rubble was the literature of Klaus Theweleit, whose exploration of fascism's pathological tendencies opened their wider scope of aggression in specific dynamics of psycho-social and sexological symptoms.

I think it's also important to identify much of the pro-Henson “debating” style here, which indicates extraordinarily aggressive sophistry. One consistent tactic is regressive or infantile inversion of the original argument of those demanding prohibition of Henson's artistic kiddie porn. Thus does concern for the very pathology of pedophilia twist perversely so that aggressive Hensonites describe the concerned people themselves as “sick”, “obsessed”, “fixated” or even “pornographic-minded” if regarding Henson's photography for what it is i.e., soft kiddie porn.

Around that effort to invert statements against the person making them – as revealed even conceptually by an admission about “react to...reactions” - are steady torrents of personal abuse. Thus, the aggressive techniques go further still when Hensonites use “straw men”, or largely fictitious notions to misrepresent and smear their opponents with derogatory labels. For example, those who would censor or prosecute over photography of naked children are puritanical “wowsers”, or self-interested to impose themselves on the rest of “us”. Another approach is to depict opponents as anti-art or ignorant, uncultured “philistines”, “regional”, etc.

Then there is the argumentative cul de sac claiming that the debate must be about whether Henson's photography is “art” or “porn”. After these tactics have been discredited or at least exposed, there are vague claims to

elicit sympathy e.g., “I was abused so I know”, “I help abuse victims, so I care”, etc. Finally, in this case, there is refuge in another, seemingly safer cul de sac, resting conceitedly on a notion of official vindication over Henson's artistic porn. However, such righteous attitude is also unexplained, based as it is only on lawyers' decision to abandon prosecution against Henson due to isolated systemic legal considerations about the likelihood of success.

And parallels? From my time working in government I recall one pedophile arrested for his many years of abusing untold dozens of children during official business to various neighboring countries. He was uncovered after carelessly using a workplace computer to store and retrieve over ten thousand images of children, some highly explicit, some of clothed children, and many in between as “soft kiddie porn” of naked children. There remained several months of administrative process to remove the pedophile into surveillance and treatment.

However, during his remaining six months he revealed more unusual behavior when interacting with people who hitherto regarded him as just a rather repressed, but non-criminal, middle-aged colleague. After his arrest and the publicity, he would pass colleagues and state unprompted that he had been abused as a child, and asked for understanding. Weeks later, he started to voice hostility about gay people, including specifically those colleagues who were either openly or presumedly gay. Apparently the pedophile did this to manipulate sympathy from those colleagues known to express anti-gay prejudices; but they too, however, were perplexed in disgust.

From my reading of some criminology I understand that as a category of offender sexual abusers of children are notoriously recidivist and manipulative, and even extraordinarily resistant to efforts at just making them acknowledge the pathology and criminality of their activities. A typical example of pedophile denial is clear around cases of children ensnared in poorer countries' desperate prostitution industry, where pedophiles claim indignantly that their victims actually benefited via pay, food, accommodation or shared holiday trips.

Some pedophiles even describe their contributions to such brutal commerce in language of religious-style salvation.

"Mil-observer can babble on as much as s/he likes about the distinction between "soft" and "hard" pornography, but the fact is that Henson's images have been determined to be neither by those authorities whose job it is to classify images in the media or to prosecute cases of child pornography."

The fact is that it is banned in London as Child Pornography. The Classification Board in Oz, free passes child pornographers as its stock in trade, it's notorious. Henson wasn't the first. Henson is banned from exhibiting that material in several countries.

I was speaking to a Dutch pornographer yesterday, he said (a) it was child pornography (b) it would be impossible to produce anything more like pornography. I refer you to the glass negative material re: 1880s. It was copied from classic pornography, Henson can't even do original! It was retro-chid pornography.

Henson produces child pornography, we all know that, so we should stop being silly. The classification board, couldn't see the sex in naked teens (15 & 16) in a tub surrounded by Meot bottles, they're not being trying to hide their pro-pedophile bent.

Bill Henson is not only a man who produces child pornography, he was the inspiration, for laws to prohibit it, so the Oz position is whacko, it really is, who do these people think they're kidding?

Abnd (lastly) Alison Croggon is the definitive hypocrite.