Sensual Woman
A site for women run by women

Issues from Real Women! COPA

This is a particular pet peeve that is close to my heart.

All the fuss over COPA has brought it back up.

Children and porn on the internet.

I have three very sharp little points I’d like to make about this.

One
The news coverage would have you believe that people who sell porn are actively making every effort to get sexual images in front of your five year old.

Nothing could be further from the truth. They are trying to SELL porn. Your five year old isn’t going to whip out her little Barbie MasterCard and purchase a membership to Kara’s Playground. Porn sellers have ZERO interest in getting porn in front of little Billy or Suzie, they want to get it in front of ADULTS who can BUY a membership or pay a fee. Many of the people who sell porn, have children of their own. They are parents, people, just like anyone else, not horrible slimy smelly monsters hovering in a basement dungeon. Just regular people who happen to think it is ALRIGHT to look at naked people.

Two
Personal Responsibility. I know, that isn’t popular today. We want the government to make all our decisions and keep us perfectly safe at all times from anything they decide might be naughty. We want our children to live in a cotton wool cushy world where they never even skin a knee, let alone see a naked woman.

Get real.

You had those children. You take responsibility for them. If you don’t want them to see porn on the internet, download and install any one of half a dozen programs that will block those sites. Monitor the websites your children go to, and if you don’t know how, learn how. If you don’t want to learn how, then don’t buy the kid a computer or give them internet access. But you take responsibility for what your child sees. You. The parent. Not the government.

Yes, some of those programs will even block your child from learning about swimming the BREASTstroke. They also have overrides that you can set up so that only you can make the decision if that is an acceptable use of the word BREAST.

Three
The members of the government who are pushing these laws and who would be enforcing them are the people who wanted to drape a sheet over the statue of Justice because she has one bare breast. I discovered not long ago that a certain set of public computers has blocked the pictures I put on my website from AllPosters.com because “the administration believes this site may contain pornographic images”. Pinup girls and art nudes! I draw naked women, as does Don Turner, whose website I administer, and many other fine artists. These government administrators would consider our work pornographic. I do not draw nudes to sexually entice anyone. I draw them because in my opinion, the naked human body is beautiful. If you disagree with that, fine. Don’t look at my artwork. But don’t go draping a sheet over Leonardo di Vinci’s Leda and the Swan, or paint clothes over Michelangelos nudes in the Sistine Chapel, or drape a sheet over the statue of Justice, because your opinion is not the only opinion. There are millions of people who don’t find naked humans offensive, in fact, find them beautiful, and I as an artist have a right to draw what I want, and people have a right to look at my art if they enjoy it. As you may have noticed, on my art pages I have a button at the top that warns you of “artistic expression”.

Buy the child safe software, install it on your computer, put it in to block “nude” and you’ll never have to worry about your child winding up looking at one of my naked women drawings. Simple.

Conclusion
Parents need to be the monitors of their children. Not the government.

Some parents might even feel like it is alright for older children to see art nudes, or read about the breast stroke or breast cancer, and they should have that freedom of choice in regard to their own children.

As an adult, I resent the implication that some Big Daddy in government can decide what I should be able to access or publish on the Internet. I am an adult, capable of making my own decisions.

Summer River