Feel the fear and fight the porn bill anyway (15)

It occurs to me after talking to many people signing letters to the Lords last night that one of the reasons people may not be writing to the Lords is fear of the consequences by outing themselves.

Fear is the biggest factor, I think, always, in why people don't take action on issues pertinent to their lives - on any issue. people who agree wholeheartedly something should be done, stay passive because we feel we are left in a position of no choice.

Fear is a political tactic, used to put people off forcing change by speaking out en masse.

Usually when discussing fear with others to encourage them to take action, I mention this:

Take your fear and turn it into anger - nobody should have the right to make you fear speaking up for your right to live a peaceful life, to live a good life, to live the life you deserve. Doesn't it make you cross that anyone can make you so afraid? How dare anyone do that to us.. as good people on this planet we should not have to fear being ourselves.

Then take your anger and turn it into action - fear and anger can eat you up, getting them out in a positive way helps you and can create change. why should you take it lying down? why should we allow those with power to frighten us out of standing up for ourselves. if we accept it, we are accepting their attitude as some kind of shameful truth.

fear is a way to keep us down, to keep things the same, to make us meek and compliant. The Bill above is written in a way to put us off protesting 'hang on a minute, you can't lump us all in with paedophiles' because even saying the word in the same sentence makes our stomachs churn.

Look at your fear, be angry about it, and speak up anyway.

Nobody is going to come chasing you because you wrote a letter to the Lords -do you really think any of them actually give a shit enough to even bother? they don't. If they gave a shit about our people they wouldn't be putting us in this position.

We are entitled to our privileges. We will have to work to keep them though, because they are being taken away.

If anyone else has anything to say about how to work against the fear which keeps us down, please post it!

-I'm not a 'sex offender', I'm 'FUCKING ANGRY'

see my weblogs for help to do something about the porn bill or backlashes website - below.

De

ACT NOW BEFORE WE LOSE OUR PHOTOS!! It only takes as long as posting messages here in the forums. see here http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ for sample letters. emark: "send a message to a Lord (pick one from http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peers and follow the links to send message at http://www.writetothem.com

Edited Sat 12 Apr 08, 4:39 PM by Degenerate

There have been quite a few posts on here and in the Backlash Forums saying "Oh, you're scaremongering, it won't be as bad as you claim".

Well consider this: The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was introduced to enable Police and Security Services to carry out surveillance on serious organised crime and terrorists.

Now that's all fine and dandy, but Poole Council have just used it to justify spying on a family to make sure that they weren't cheating on the School Catchment Area regulations to get their 3 year old into a particular school.

See here for the story.

Any law that is as badly and vaguely drafted as the CJIB Extreme Porn provisions are now *WILL* be abused at some time, it's just too easy to do.

Whether it's the Police using it to justify locking someone up when they've got no other evidence against them or a partner accusing their ex- of possessing "grossly offensive" material to gain an advantage in a messy divorce/ custody case, someone is going to abuse this and someone else is going to end up having their life ruined.

So don't think "it'll never be that bad, the Courts are too sensible, they wouldn't let this happen" because, trust me, it can and it will.

So please, write to the Lords, tell them you don't want Thought Crime, tell them you don't want a law that you won't even *know* you're breaking until someone else states an opinion on the porn you look at, tell them to support the Miller/ Wallace amendments to either remove the paragraphs entirely or, at the very least, bring its provisions under the Obscene Publications Act and the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to rationalise its provisions.

We can beat this thing, we just have to *want* to.

Edited 12 Apr 08, 2:27 PM by grahamm

If people are worried about outing themselves, they could write the Lord's email address via a free webmail account. For most people, "first initial plus surname" isn't going to be enough to out people. Alternatively if you do leave it unsigned, it makes a point in showing how fearful people are of the law, and it is still better than doing nothing.

Also remember there is no reason why opposing this law implies being into S&M - you can write from the point of view of anti-censorship, or simply the fact of how much of a shambles this law is being poorly worded, vague, and pushed through with dubious evidence (the Rapid Evidence Assessment, that has been heavily criticised by academics), or that it will simply waste police resources and taxpayers' money on locking people up who are not a danger.

Remember, there have been many Lords who have heavily criticised this law (here and here), including one Bishop, and there does not appear to be any national scandal as a result. One of the Lords proposing the amendments has said "Personally, I do not like pornography and believe it to be essentially degrading to the spirit, and violent pornography is even worse. Indeed, anything depicting extreme violence is, I think, dangerous as regards the well-being of society.", but then goes onto criticise the law. So the Lords seem well aware that this law can be criticised, even if one thinks that such sexual material is distasteful.

Over 1,800 people were willing to at least to put their name and address on a Government petition - that many people writing to the Lords would be quite a number.

'Extreme Porn' Law - people urged to Write to the Lords now

Edited 12 Apr 08, 3:46 PM by emark

ACT NOW BEFORE WE LOSE OUR PHOTOS!! It only takes as long as posting messages here in the forums. see here http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ for sample letters. emark: "send a message to a Lord (pick one from http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peers and follow the links to send message at http://www.writetothem.com

HOW TO CONTACT MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS ********************************************

http://www.parliament.uk/about/contacting/lord.c...

lifted from the above link

Contacting a Lord

The public are welcome to contact Members of the House of Lords. However, please note that the Lords do not represent geographic areas (constituencies) so you will not have a specific Lord for your area, as you do with MPs.

The best way to contact a Lord is by writing to them. Please remember that Peers are not paid and few have secretaries or office support. Their work in Parliament, in the House of Lords chamber, in a committee or other meeting, means that they are often away from their desks - if they have one. Telephone

Call the main Parliament switchboard on 020 7219 3000. If the Lord has a listed telephone number, the operator will try to connect you. Or, you can leave a message with the Message Service on 020 7219 5353. Letter

Letters should be addressed to individual Members at The House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW. Mail is delivered to the Lord in the House or forwarded to another address - be aware of this if you need to get in contact urgently, for example if you are writing about a Bill that has a tight timetable to meet. Email

Many Peers do not have public email addresses. Fax

Faxes for individual Lords go in the internal mail. Faxes should be sent to 020 7219 5979. Bulk faxes for all Peers are not accepted. Bulk mailshots

Bulk mailshots for Members of the House of Lords are not accepted unless every item is individually named, stamped and addressed to The SW1 Delivery Office, 53 Nine Elms Lane, London, SW8 5BB.

ACT NOW BEFORE WE LOSE OUR PHOTOS!! It only takes as long as posting messages here in the forums. see here http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ for sample letters. emark: "send a message to a Lord (pick one from http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peers and follow the links to send message at http://www.writetothem.com

Edited 13 Apr 08, 10:54 AM by Degenerate

If you can find the time today, please please write a letter to someone at the house of lords. we need to write to all of them and get as many onside as possible, attending and voting for amendments to or scrapping the Bill as is.

there's some sample lettrs written by ic members on my blog 'letters to lords'.

if you can't navigate this, we are sending some letters with added comments and names and addresses (there is also a way to do this anonymously, it's still better than no comment) so if you need someone to help and send one for you, please send me a memo and I will do it - more info about that is here http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/boards/activism... the letter we are using has now been sent to about 140 people each from a different member of the BDSM community either from IC or Club Lash or Spankd.

best of all is always your personal letter, if you can do this. guess doing both isn't a bad idea either.

I've been to two club nights with letters and although it's clear people are nervous of this, the feeling that we are doing it together that we agree in general and inprinciple on this issue is giving us strength. WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS LYING DOWN.

Keep kicking arse, we're in this together.

De

ACT NOW BEFORE WE LOSE OUR PHOTOS!! It only takes as long as posting messages here in the forums. see here http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ for sample letters. emark: "send a message to a Lord (pick one from http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peers and follow the links to send message at http://www.writetothem.com

Hear hear!

Edited 20 Apr 08, 5:00 PM by grahamm

Heres hoping guys!

Well done. Thanks so much.

Could you tell us which ones? ither here or by memo. We won't publish the names anywhere if you don't want us to but we're trying to track how many Lords are oppsing this, which party they're from and then trying to concentrate our efforts on Lords who might be persuaded to come onside, rather than the ones that already are.

Thanks again

wicked!! have you had any responses yet?

Preserve your right to own BDSM images without risking 3 years jail and the sex offenders register BEFORE 30th April - simple blog about what you need to do: http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/weblogs/Degener... . . . Video from BACKLASH about what we need to do: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tn8_9vmEIKs .

Actually, re-reading, I might be construed as having invited them to join me at a BDSM club ...

Toak

FEMALE, BONDAGE-FRIENDLY MODEL SOUGHT. I am seeking to update my "How To" shibari bondage pictures (see my profile pics, the clothed blonde tied in red and black) with a model more "enthusiastic" about BDSM, and who is happy to be photographed nude. MEMO ME if this is you.