[Reader-list] PUBLIC INTEREST ALERT: Delhi Times promotes pornography & alcoholism

[Menso Heus]

Dear Lehar,

I have read your message which has left me quite surprised.
There seems to be a lot of material that you object to going
around in your country, and you seem to be afraid about 
young people getting exposed to this material for a big part.

What I find interesting is that you seem to have the idea that
it is the governments job to protect your children from exposure
to this material, by censorship and legislation. 

It seems to me that if your newspaper of choice is filling up
with content you disprove of, perhaps it's time to move on to 
another newspaper. If you don't want kids to read the material 
then it's up to the parent to do the parenting, not the censor-
ship board or the government.

Below I respond to some more of you message in detail.

On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:31:06AM -0700, Lehar .. wrote:
> 2. Since the last month they have run stories to
> promote alcoholism and the 
> sex industry. The FRONT PAGE HEADline stories are
> - Why bar drinking in public after midnight- Delhiites
> should get 24 hr 
> alcohol!
> Bars and license should be given to very subzi wala,
> shopkeer, retailer ( 
> like in the West- sic)- and alcohol should be served
> 24 hrs a day- 'like in 
> the West'. NO data is given to substantiate the
> ludicrous claim the alcohol 
> is served 24 hrs a day in the UK and the US. ( the 11
> pm deadline in the UK 
> is well known)- as is thats a justification!

You're mixing up 'serving in bars' and licenses to sell
it 24 hours a day. I think most places in Europe (with
perhaps exception of England) have clubs and bars that 
are open till 4 to 5 AM. It's possible to buy beer etc
at 24h gasstations. 

> 4. Legalise prostitution: While pretending to take the
> sex worker cause line 
> - the article was essentially in tune with the other
> stories preceding it. 
> Bars and sex workers go together, thus they should be
> encouraged legally. 
> More women will feel encouraged to enter the flesh
> trade if it offers 
> lucrative career options. - yes at the end of the
> article, one comes away 
> feeling that it is encouraging the flesh trade. and
> not taking up any cause- 
> surrounded as it was by titillating pictures of semi
> nude women.
> They also advertise call girl phone sex lines. This
> amounts to carrying 
> illegal ads for commerical sex activity in a National
> daily.
> IS this legal in India? Can we take this up?
> Is happening ( illegally so) in other any other
> country, is at all??

I'm from Holland and we've legalized prostitution a 
while ago. The result: the prostitutes now work in 
their own parts (usually on the edge) of town, which
has done a great deal of good to minimize the trouble
across cities that were crowded with prositution before. 
The prostitutes are a lot happier, the customers are a 
lot happier (and I imagine the government is a lot happier 
since legalisation meant the prostitutes had to start paying 
taxes too).

 
> 4. Playboy bunnies and semi nude actresses next to
> national headline in the 
> main paper- this has become a policy matter since the
> FDI in print was 
> allowed last yr. the Delhi times Daily carries an
> average of 10 naked and 
> semi naked women EVERYDAY. (majority of the pics are
> underwear clad women- 
> Hollywood starlets and explicit downloads of Britney
> spears etc).
> It is read by age groups between 10 -75.
> 
> Would the New York Times or the Guardian carry playboy
> bunnies in their 
> front pages- and their supplements- and that WIHTOUT
> any note/ warning etc.?

I'm quite sure that those newspapers wouldn't mind if it 
would make sense to the story. Though judging by what you 
say I think the NYT and Guardian are in quite a different 
league to begin with. Aren't there several newspapers in 
the UK that thrive on the fact they publish a different 
naked girl every day?
 
> It is completely justified for citizens to demand that
> exposing and 
> literally dumping sexually explicit material for pre
> teen age groups is a 
> phenomenon unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

I don't believe it's justified simply because I think this
is not what's happening. First of all, nobody is dumping
anything in your lap, you chose to buy that particular 
paper and you allow your kids to watch those movies.
Secondly, I think that 'pre teen age' groups are generally
not considered to be readers of newspapers. In the 
Netherlands people start reading papers generally around 
the age of 12-15 and by that time, they've had all the 
sexual education they need in school. 

> Neither are readers, majority of whom read the paper
> with their morning cup 
> of tea, informed that sexually explicit material is
> inside. They can then 
> CHOOSE to read to leave it. But there is no choice
> allowed.

You HAVE that choice already, if the paper is turning into
the playboy magazine you describe, then why bother reading
it at all? What's next, a warning message to people that
it might contain articles that describe violence for all the
people that find that hard to stomach in the morning?

> As a woman it demeans me to see semi clad women peeing
> out the paper every 
> morning, with sexually discriminatory ads flooding the
> rest of it-majority 
> being underwear and marriage jewlers ads, call girl
> phone lines etc.
> This is a gender discrimination at it highest order.

I don't see the link between underwear ads and escort
ads and sexual discrimination. I'm sure the paper would
not object to placing advertisements of men in their 
underwear...

> We have answered innumerable young children on
> questions about dildos, sex 
> life of an actress etc. which are front page columns
> in the Delhi Times.

Good for you!

> It is tragic that the National paper of the stature of
> the Times of India is 
> stooping to such a level- and displaying itself
> underhandedly as a 
> pornographic ?playboy? boys magazine.

Time to switch to a newspaper that doesn't!

> This phenomenon is in tune with the semi pornographic
> videos which are 
> flooding the market.
> While no one is objecting to a healthy awareness of
> sexuality- more cirtical 
> in this age of HIV/AIDS, this infiltration of
> commodified and pornogprahic 
> sex into every channel with unregulated 24 hrs access
> - is dangerous. Any 
> film which tries a progressive line on sexuality like
> Water and others is 
> 'censored' even before it is made- but lewd and semi
> pornographic material 
> is flooding evry quarter of the media- and exposing
> unaware chidlren to 
> sexuality in a completely unhealthy and anti-women
> way.

Who exposes the children? The filmmakers or the parents
that allow them to watch such films? Perhaps more 
importantly, why are the children unaware?

> Sexual violence and dowry death have increased 20 fold
> in Delhi in the last 
> 10 yrs.
> While the West at least monitors what its children
> watch on its own shores, 

The parents do, yes. In Holland access to pornography
is easy, instead of pointing to the government and 
saying "You take care of my kids" parents that find that
their kids should not see this sort of material keep 
them from accessing it.

> Thus, it is obvious that sheer advantage is being
> taken to flood a 
> ?developing? country like India- and thus export the
> sex industry to the 
> South- which has a na?ve and sexually repressed
> populace- 

You don't want people to know and read about sex and yet you
complain about them being sexually naive... can you see the 
relationship there?

> ( Its Rajya Sabha MP, Hema Mailini has been the Editor
> of the Indian edition 
> of the American magazine New woman- which also
> promotes this kind of 
> commodified 'sexualised' new woman) - it overlooks
> rapes of marginalised 
> women - and is thus destroying the rights of Indian
> womne in every quarter.

That there are women that want to give expression to 
their sexuality through ways of clothing and on the other
hand there are women raped are two seperated issues in
my opinion. Just as sexy clothing is no reason for being 
raped, the fact that there are women being raped should 
be no reason to ban sexy clothing or magazines that 
promote that.
 
> The 1986 Indecent representation of Women act is a
> powerful tool which can 
> be invoked in this caseand even a PIL filed for this
> issue.

Is it indecent? Do the models that pose feel they are doing
indecent things? It seems to be that the main problem lies 
quite differently from where you put it. 

You worry about ten year olds reading sexual related material
in the newspaper and seeing it on tv. You blame a whole bunch
of people for this, instead of the parents that allow their kids
to watch this material. If the parents think their kids should 
not have access to such content, *they* should be the ones to 
make sure they don't, not the government.

I remain highly amazed by the amount of people that think it's ok for
kids to see the most violent news images and movies yet as soon
as there's a scantly clad woman or nipple involved somewhere, 
they should be protected at all costs. 'Yes but the news is really 
happening' is an often heard argument... well, guess what, so is sex.


Kind regards,


Menso

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