“Looking at someone up and down” (with Swiss and British update)

[Update 5 November 2013]  Outsource the police state to charity:  The Swiss NGO Terre des Hommes lays a honey-trap for those who prize the bud before it flowers;  those who fall for it find their photos and addresses passed to the police:

L'ONG Terre des Hommes, qui se faisait passer sur Internet pour une fillette philippine, a annoncé aujourd'hui que plus de 20.000 "prédateurs" l'avait contactée, prêts à payer pour voir cette enfant de dix ans se livrer à des actes sexuels par webcam. Plus de mille d'entre eux ont été identifiés.

L'ONG a pu retrouver leurs adresses, leurs numéros de téléphone et des photos d'eux, et a transmis leur identité aux autorités compétentes, en particulier à Interpol.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2013/11/04/97001-20131104FILWWW00424-une-ong-piege-20000-pedophiles.php?m_i=t6qtZtw4L9Btyq0gMX%2B62pGgMrSYElU6mFRtQex2jt1U9jOZw

This is a remarkably efficient way to settle scores anonymously..  Simply pass a mass of addresses to Interpol, of purported pervs & perps, salted among which are those of one’s rivals and enemies.  Now the burden of proof is on them, as they are pilloried.

And people are worried about a federal agency with better things to do than worry about Joe Random’s private life, getting their “metadata”!   Not a patch on Terre des Hommes.

A minor legal nicety:  Notice that, even in the case of those who were genuinely interested, as opposed to just curious or nosing journalistically around, what they stand accused of is not even actually “looking at someone up and down”, since they never did get a glimpse.    Nor was there even a genuine Someone to look at, neither up nor down nor sideways, since the pretended mini-maid was a fiction.

~

Was für Krimi liest wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?

Schauen Sie mal!

Sigmund Freud und Sherlock Holmes

~

[Update 27 January 2013] An astonishing piece of legal overreach, the doctrine of joint and several liability, is now being pressed into service against individual viewers of forbidden images:

      Article 11,983 of the Lawyers Relief Act

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In our post below, from October, we noted that France (whose government is now pushing for matrimony of inverts, as well as “familles homoparentales”) has proposed outlawing things like “looking at someone up and down” (though presumably only men ogling women would be subject to actual sanctions).

Now Switzerland jumps into the P.C. soup:  A new law would outlaw, not merely looking longingly at an actual person,  but viewing a photograph deemed naughty in the eyes of the law.   Nay more, even if you are stone-blind  you might be grasped by the long paw of the law, since the basis of legal charges will be simply the register of sites visited on the Internet -- whether or not you actually personally viewed the page.  Indeed, you could easily be charged, and disgraced in all society, for having left your computer at work  unattended, if, during the interval of your absence, a fellow-worker were to surf in forbidden waters.   That it wasn’t you  might be a defence (if you can somehow prove it), at your eventual trial;  but you can still be charged, disgraced, and saddled with bankrupting lawyer’s fees.

-- Stop and ask yourself:  Could that possibly be true?  Am I just making it up?  Have things really come to that?

Well, judge for yourself, from today’s article in the highly respected Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

Auch das blosse Anschauen von Pornografie wird strafbar

Wenn ein Internetnutzer solches Bildmaterial auf die Festplatte oder andere Datenträger herunterlädt, macht er sich strafbar – nicht jedoch, wenn er es lediglich online betrachtet. Das soll sich nun ändern: Auch der besitzlose Konsum soll künftig strafbar sein.

Finde man im Internetspeicher des Verdächtigen entsprechende Daten, so genüge dies.

Als Internetnutzer mag man sich nun fragen, ob es bereits kriminell ist, wenn man beim Surfen ohne Absicht auf eine Seite gelangt, die harte Pornografie enthält. Oder ob man an seinem Arbeitsplatz künftig besser aufpassen muss, damit kein Dritter die Mittagspause oder andere Abwesenheiten ausnutzt und auf dem Computer einschlägige Seiten aufruft. Der Bundesrat betont in seiner Botschaft, dass nicht jeder Kontakt mit harter Pornografie, sondern nur der vorsätzliche Konsum bestraft werden soll. Es werde Aufgabe der Gerichte sein festzulegen, unter welchen Umständen darauf geschlossen werden könne. Laut Bundesrat dürften sich insbesondere die Anzahl der aufgerufenen Seiten und Bilder sowie der Fundort der Dateien als entscheidend erweisen.

http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/schweiz/auch-das-blosse-anschauen-von-pornografie-wird-strafbar-1.17937444?extcid=Newsletter_14012013_Top-News_am_Morgen

And don’t be fooled by that restriction to “harte” naughtinesses:  in this ephebophilophobic age, that qualification is  interpreted quite broadly, in a way that would have caused previous centuries to gape.   For instance, viewing this painting, from almost two centuries ago, could soon land you in prison:

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905):   Cupidon (L'Amour Mouille)

Ha!  Too late!  You looked!   You -  are -  doooomed ....

*

Sie fahren also gleich ins Gefängnis.

Was wollen Sie wohl lesen, da drinnen?

Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,

in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,

und christlich gesinnt,

klicken Sie bitte hier:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

[Update 16 March 2014]  Ha!  Sebastian Edathy hat angeschaut!  And now he has fled for his life:

     http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/41/41258/1.html

Plebs tunc canit  clamorosa:

Crucifige, crucifige.

As often, though, in the face of hair-raising news of legal extremism, we are reassured to find the readers are unconvinced.  Here they mock the pretentions of Switzerland (traditionally so lax in the matter of providing banking services to criminals) to become the political-correctness Mouse That Roared:

--------

Das ist das herzige an einem Kleinstaat: Er beschäftigt sich wirklich mit kleinen Dingen. Die grossen (Finanzregeln) überlässt er den Grossen in Washington, Brüssel, Berlin oder schiebt sie wie eine heisse Kartoffel vor sich her (Minder-Initiative)

--

Guten Morgen, Schnüffelstaat!

---

Die Bevormundung der staatl. Behörden wird immer mehr ausgebaut. Bürger werden zu unmündigen Kindern erklärt. Was will man damit erreichen? Mah sieht doch in Staaten in denen von die Prohibition herrscht wie in Schweden oder Finnland, was dabei herauskommt. Es wird unmässig konsumiert. Alles was verboten ist, ist gerade für den Menschen interressant. Nein, das ist ein Schildbürgerstreich. Mehr nicht.

*

Falls Sie im Doktor-Justiz-Sammelsurium

weiterblättern möchten,

Bitte hier klicken:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/Deutschtum

*

~   ~   [Original post from Oct 2012]   ~   ~

“Looking at someone  up and down”  : About to become illegal in France:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/world/europe/france-is-expected-to-pass-a-far-reaching-sexual-harassment-law.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

The provocative, semi-see-through, form-fitting (or padded where the form must be supplied), out-scooped, bust-upthrusting, crotch-clutching, slitted and slotted, streetwalk-ready, stiletto-heel-mounted  and tricked-out with cosmetics   sort of get-up, that is designed to attract such looks, will of course remain legal as before.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

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We have a foretaste of the sanctions against looking-up-and-down (here, in the milder version of remarking upon a new dress) from this portrait of Mitteleuropa society in the Vorkriegszeit:

» Du hast ein neues Kleid«, sagte er, um sie betrachten zu dürfen; und hörte sie antworten:

»  Neu?  Du bist bewandert in meiner Toilette ?! «

» Habe ich nicht recht? «

» Doch. «

-- Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (1924)

You can’t win, gentlemen;  you cannot win.

~

Was für Krimi liest wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?

Schauen Sie mal!

Sigmund Freud und Sherlock Holmes

~

Continuing to plow through Ronald Steel’s classic biography of Walter Lippmann, I stumbled  just now  upon the following passage:  Lyndon Johnson, having been unceremoniously uploaded into the Presidency,

besieged the Lippmanns with invitations to dinner, as though they were old friends.

Such a trifle would normally have seemed NTR, save that, shortly earlier this morning, we had read that French feminists desire  precisely to outlaw such multiple invites;  yet the Legislature, in their haste to rush through new laws trashing males, unaccountably omitted such egregious behavior from the list of punishable infractions:

“When a boss invites 10 times a reluctant employee to dinner, is there a sexual connotation to that?” asked Miss Baldeck, adding that she believed that there was. Yet under the new legislation, it would not qualify as harassment, she said.

Doubtless this oversight will be rectified in the next session.

(Although, in all likelihood  LBJ’s overzealousness would remain protected, since it was man-on-man.  The right of women and homosexuals  to shower with invitations  the objects of their desires, are unlikely to to be infringed. Beélzebub forbid, that any harm should come to thém !)

~

In his classic Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930), Sigmund Freud outlined the psychic price  we pay  for civilization.   Not knocking civilization here -- it’s worth the psychic price.   Every normal male must repeatedly withstand the beckonings of his testes, and is the better for having learned to do so.  Yet some of those who do not share his natural inclinations,  are proceeding extraordinarily far in punishing and repressing that inborn bloom, on the strength of which -- and without which, not -- civilization has managed to survive and thrive, through wind and wars and pestilence.

Thus, there are much more bizarre provisions in this “anti-harassment” law, than you are likely to read about in the anglophone press, where reports of the legislation have been sanitized for popular consumption:

La loi sur le harcèlement (Le Figaro)

Avec la loi sur le harcèlement sexuel, la transphobie a fait son entrée au Code pénal.

"Voilà ce que l’on n’invente pas."  (French for:  You can’t make this stuff up.)

 

 Some readers who, unlike their legislative representatives, have not yet taken leave of their senses, respond:

La transphobie ? On n'a vraiment des gens desoeuvrés dans ce pays (payés grassement de plus) pour pondre ce genre de choses et légiférer dessus.

That riposte is mild, and basically does not go beyond the confines of politics.  But the malaise which Freud addressed  is stated sensibly by another reader:

Je ne sais pas si je suis transphobe, mais sûr que cela me dégoûte, je n'y peux rien, c'est physique.

That is no more than the wholesome, instinctive reaction, of any normal person, confronted by these surgically self-emasculated grotesques.  The French law is trying to make us swallow a centipede.

La Manif pour tous, le 13 janvier 2013, sur le Champ-de-Mars.

Recommended reading:
Dann mach doch die Bluse zu - Ein Aufschrei gegen den Gleichheitswahn (Birgit Kelle)
In Deutschland wird heftig diskutiert: über Frauenquote, Krippenplätze, Sexismus, über die Gleichstellung von Mann und Frau. Der eigentliche Skandal ist aber, dass diejenigen, die zu Hause bleiben und unsere Kinder erziehen, die Dummen sind. Warum eigentlich? Es ist doch das gute Recht jeder Frau, ihr Leben so zu leben, wie sie es glücklich macht. War der Feminismus nicht einst genau dafür eingetreten? Auf dem Weg der gleichen Rechte ist etwas verlorengegangen. Nämlich die Freude, einfach Frau zu sein. Dieses Buch ist eine Ermutigung für alle Frauen, die es gerne sind, es zeigen und das auch nicht ständig rechtfertigen müssen. Für Mütter, die gerne Mütter sind und die berufliche Laufbahn hinten anstellen. Sie alle haben in Deutschland keine echte Lobby. Es ist höchste Zeit, gegen den Gleichheitswahn aufzustehen.

[Update 29 September 2013]  Spurred by a horrendous case of child murder, Britain is moving to further restrict access to Internet porn.  As written, the proposal is measured and reasonable:  a default filter on such material, which is  however defeasible at individual request.  But remember Hardin’s law:  “You can never do just one thing.”  Thus consider:

“They wanted to block extreme pornography, and I said nothing, then they wanted to block material that infringed on copyrights, and I said nothing, and then they started to block Web sites with extreme messages that didn’t quite agree with the government line, and I still said nothing,” said Alex Bloor, business development manager at Andrews & Arnold, a British Internet service provider popular with computer savvy subscribers. “This is the thin end of a massive wedge.”

They cite the recent case of a man who was denied access to an online version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” due to its “violent content” while doing research at London’s British Library.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britains-harsh-crackdown-on-internet-porn-prompts-free-speech-debate/2013/09/28/d1f5caf8-2781-11e3-9372-92606241ae9c_story.html

~

Now here's a lady you can look u-u-u-UP ...

and down... and not go to prison, neither!

Guaranteed of age!

Dames, dames, dames

~

[Update 1 Oct 2013]  Minor British doings like that  seldom get much coverage on this side of the pond,  but the current New Yorker has a nice Talk-of-the-Town by Lauren Collins:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2013/10/07/131007ta_talk_collins

[Update 15 Oct 2014]  Too hot to handle;  just links:

www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-john-grisham-troubling-statements-about-child-porn-20141016-story.html#navtype=outfit

www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/16/in-defense-of-john-grisham/

[Update 21 April 2016]  For other images that Germans in particular are forbidden to behold, try this:

    http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/flagge-verbot.html

Update 9 Dec 2016]  And now this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/world/europe/vladimir-putin-russia-fake-news-hacking-cybersecurity.html?_r=0

Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them

CAMBRIDGE, England — His indomitable will steeled by a dozen years in the Soviet gulag, decades of sparring with the K.G.B. and a bout of near fatal heart disease, Vladimir K. Bukovsky, a tireless opponent of Soviet leaders and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is not a man easily put off his stride.

But he got knocked sideways when British police officers banged on the front door of his home on a sedate suburban street here early one morning while he lay sick in bed and informed him that they had “received information about forbidden images” in his possession.

“It was all very bizarre and disturbing,” Mr. Bukovsky said. “This is not normally the language of a free society,” he added, recalling how his old K.G.B. tormentors used to hound him and his friends over texts and photographs declared forbidden by the Soviet authorities.

Here Russia simply hands the petard to the West, which hoists with it.