Safermedia Watch

Moralist campaigner Pippa Smith is belatedly whingeing to a Co-op store selling EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey novel.

Smith is complaining that shops are stocking the EL James novel, which features explicit sexual content, near children's products. Smith wrote to Waitrose and the Co-operative to complain that they were selling Grey, the latest novel from EL James, along with the DVD of the movie adaptation of the book series from promotional stands in their Crewkerne branches in Somerset.

In letters to both supermarkets, Mrs Smith spouted:

These pornographic books are not about a love story, but all about sexual abuse. They bring bondage, domination and sadomasochism into the mainstream and thereby glamorise and normalise it. By selling such books in your stores it appears to put a stamp of respectability on the content and condones and normalises the message it sends.

It may be legal but it is not right and is part of the process of pushing boundaries which shows how weak and ineffective our laws have become.

Smith also referenced the Co-op's decision to stop selling the Daily Sport newspaper and so-called lads' mags in 2013 following a barrage of complaints from customers about their content.

A response on behalf of Co-operative chief executive Richard Pennycook responded:

We do try to give our customers the option to purchase what they desire but also giving our customers the opportunity to make an informed choice as to whether to purchase the Grey merchandise in our stores.

On review, the Co-operative's stance on the Daily Sport is solely in response to those members and customers who have expressed concerns that children may see overt sexual images when visiting our stores.

This doesn't apply to the Grey merchandise, as no sexual images are visible.

John Thomas, the Lord Chief Justice has claimed to MPs that extreme internet pornography is causing rapists and murderers to commit worse crimes than before the time when such horrific material was available online,

However his claim appears to be on rather shaky grounds being based on just two cases. The most senior judge in England and Wales said he had dealt with two deeply disturbing criminal cases which had been influenced and intensified by shocking internet pornography.

He told MPs of the House of Commons' justice select committee:

The first of the two cases has left me in no doubt that the peddling of pornography on the internet has a tremendous effect on that individual.

What's available now to download and to see is simply horrific and it played a real part in ... the way in which this particularly horrible murder was carried out.

The first case referred to by Lord Williams concerned Jamie Reynolds , a sexual deviant who killed 17-year-old Georgia Williams by hanging her at his parents' house in 2013. In the second case, former soldier Anwar Rosser murdered four-year-old Riley Turner in a savage and gratuitous attack.

I Beg to Differ M'Lud

From  mirror.co.uk
From  backlash.org.uk

Nick Cowen, an academic and researcher at the campaign group Backlash, responded to Thomas's claims saying it was impossible to suggest that porn was making men more likely to rape and murder.

In fact, he suggested that the arrival of hardcore pornography may have even made society LESS violent:

You cannot establish a strong relationship between images someone looks at and what crimes they commit. Violent crime is actually on the decline for all manner of reasons. Some recent evidence suggests pornography may be contributing to that, although the effect is small.

He pointed to a Home Office graph which shows the UK has become less violent since the 1990s, when internet pornography first became available.

And Some Unsubstantiated Claptrap from Safermedia

Pippa Smith, chair of the religious campaign group SaferMedia told Mirror Online about a number of cases described to her by colleagues and psychotherapists. She told of a 18-year-old boy who had watched so much porn that he developed fantasies about punching women in the face and even began to follow strangers late at night.

Today's men are part of a guinea pig generation for porn exposure, she spouted, and the consequences could be dire:

Pornography has become much more violent and abusive and it can lead some to view ever more perverse material and even act it out. So for those who say porn is harmless, it is just not true.