Egypt Banned Porn, But How Much of the Internet Is That? 316
pigrabbitbear writes "The recent web pornography ban in Egypt has raised questions about the evils of censorship (and porn) and the changing tide of popular attitude of Egyptians. It perhaps reflects the emerging influence of more conservative Muslim elements in government, a shift. Apparently the same ban was passed 3 years ago but was not enforced because their filtering system was not effective. But porn bans are nothing new. Other countries with strict censorship laws like China and Saudi Arabia have successfully implemented bans that restrict pornography along with anything else they deem inappropriate for public viewing. In 2010 the UK discussed a ban that would require users to specifically request access to pornographic material from their internet service providers. And porn-banning rhetoric has even stomped through the U.S. news media over the last few months, thanks to GOP also-ran Rick Santorum claiming President Obama is failing to enforce pornography laws. (There have also been some awesomely ridiculous pornography PSAs.)"
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Violence plastered all over the media is okay, but God forbid little Hazem sees a tit.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bigger problems in the world than... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
So are cars (accidents create widows), jobs (long hours == annoyed wife), lack of jobs (husband annoyed because he thinks nonworking wife is lazy), children (lack of sex), TV (one spouse feels ignored), internet (ditto), books (ditto), gambling (wastes money), stores (spouse blows thousands of dollars).
Maybe we should just ban EVERYTHING that harms marriages.
Or we could take the more logical course and say, "With great freedom comes great responsibility. The government will not protect you from your own bad choices in life. You work too much, spend too much, have car wrecks, or view too much porn, youtube, TV, and your marriage fails. That's your own dumb fault." i.e. The path that was originally laid out for us in 1789.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe the marriages already had problems, porn was just used as a scapegoat because it was there. Wife doesn't want to put out? well, the computer will. Then the wife gets pissy. hmmmm
Fuck you. I love my wife. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having been married for plenty of years, I've concluded that pornography can actually quite harmful to some marriages if not most marriages
Porn showed me how to eat out my my wife.
How to masturbate her.
And that she has sexual feelings.
Catholic Sunday school taught me that she is evil.
I'm still married after dozens of years.
Porn showed me that my wife can be exiting after she gets old and fat.
Fuck you.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
But that would mean that people are responsible for their own actions and that bad things can happen to them if they make poor decisions. People want to be able to blame others when they do something stupid. If they can't make it someone else's fault what are they going to do?
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
If watching porn borks a marriage, that marriage was boned regardless. Not seeing any porn won't keep you from realizing that there are hotter women out there. Not seeing porn won't form the connection being sought through a webcam.
Marriages based on looks are doomed. Marriages without a connection between the spouses are .. not even marriages, except on paper.
Porn and Hookers (Score:4, Insightful)
Priorities! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Mr. President. The world's faced with rising oil costs and falling windpower costs, people in Africa are starving, 1/6 of our country has no access to health care and half don't have adequate access to it, our kids aren't keeping up with the rest of the world in math and science education, businesses are going Big Brother on their employees' facebook profiles, and our Defense Department is spending $700 billion a year with nothing to show for it"
"QUICK! BAN ALL THE PORN!"
That's fine for you. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the government's job to babysit your marriage.
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Violence plastered all over the media is okay, but God forbid little Hazem sees a tit.
Sounds American, so it must be OK!
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see hotter women than my wife just by turning on the TV, watching a movie, or even going to the mall. She can do the same for seeing hotter men than me.
Plus, these days, amateur porn is growing by leaps and bounds, and many of those people aren't hot at all. Just go to some of the amateur video sites like youporn.com and xtube.com and watching random videos. There's lots of average-looking (or worse) people on there (and considering what the "average" body type is these days in the USA, this is a pretty far cry from "hot").
Re:Just wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
After a year of bitching about it, Egypt realises they can still get it without too much hard work, and are getting a bunch more done these days. Plus, real naked people rock!
The Muslim Brotherhood won't be able to completely eliminate it, but they'll succeed to a greater extent than you think. The Taliban had things pretty well nailed down in Afghanistan, after all. It stinks for the minorities of Egypt... the Coptic Christian Church might well be extinct in Egpyt in our lifetime the way things are going over there... but ultimately, their fate is their own, made by their own choice. If Egyptians pick rulers that are going to do things like ban Internet access, let them live by their own choices.
Egyptians clearly wanted Islamism. They clearly wanted Sharia law. Let them have it. Maybe naive Americans that kept hyping the "Arab Spring" will finally realize that it was nothing of the sort, it was an Islamist Spring. What's going on in North Africa is Iran in 1979 all over again. "Freedom" for these people means "No one can stop us from becoming an Islamist state now". This is why I have little sympathy for the Iranians. They're protesting now, but you have to ask "What did you think you were getting when you demanded rule by Ayatollah?"
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Having been married for over 10 years, I've concluded that porn is awesome and keeps some marriages fun and interesting, if not most marriages.
Lack of communication is what's harmful to marriages.
Porn is generally harmless, its the sexual freedom that is perceived by fear filled conservative and sexually introverted religious people that does not work in their definition of normalcy and acceptable behavior, it ruins the artificial and suppressive rules of societal order among men and women. Moderation can be a good thing, but censorship is contrary to freedom of expression and personal liberty.
Re:Disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just arguing that someone is no fool for avoiding it, especially if married.
Different strokes for different folks, pun intended.
My wife and I occasionally watch porn together, and just the other night I channel surfed past a couple Scinemax movies after she went to bed, woke her up, and we made love. My wife will also point out good looking women we see in public so that I can make up a story about me screwing the stranger later while we make love. That kind of stuff gets her off.
On the other hand, we are friends with a couple where the wife can stand when he even so much as looks at a woman in public. She doesn't like the fact that there are titties in Game of Thrones, so it was a bit of a negotiation for him to come over each week to watch with it with me.
Not everyone is the same; blanket generalizations always get you in trouble.
Re:Bigger problems in the world than... (Score:3, Insightful)
Masturbation: It's sex with someone you love!
Re:Bigger problems in the world than... (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't that be insightful? Especially with the muslim brotherhood now running for the top office, and believed to have 43% of the vote in the bag already.
The difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Christian conservatives in the west isn't really that big, both are pretty conservative, very religions and willing to crack down on any wrong thinking liberals that they see as being a threat to their cherished beliefs, values and traditions. You can think of the Muslim Brotherhood as being Egyptian Republicans or Tea-Partyists. That being said I'd quite frankly be more worried if Rick Santorum or god forbid, Sarah Palin, became president of the US than I would be if the Muslim Brotherhood won an election with 43% of the vote and formed a coalition government in Egypt with some center right party. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood does not have thermonuclear weapons.
Re:Just wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your viewpoint is a bit narrow. The "Arab Spring" was indeed about freedom from tyrannies, not about religious revolutions. But opportunistic religious groups have used the power vacuums to insert themselves.
Sorry, I think this is naivete. I think a relatively small group of people wanted what in the west is considered freedom, and that the majority did want religious rule. One of these days we'll learn that "freedom" doesn't mean the same thing to different people.
There's no doubt that many Egyptians are conservative, but there is more of a split between the conservative (and less educated) rural areas and the cities like Cairo that generally have more progressive populaces.
That may be so, but.... so what? The former still outnumber the later considerably. And as for the "less educated" thing, that's a falsehood. The most radical, and most committed Islamists in both Arab nations and the West tend to be the best educated. It's the least educated types that tend to be the most moderate, the guys that just want to earn a living. The 9/11 hijackers were all well educated, and the London bombers were British citizens, the children of immigrants that grew up in Britain and had all the advantages of a liberal Western education. They choose Jihad, not had it imposed on them. The old "if we just get more of them in school, they'll be less radical" is an old saw that simply isn't true.
On top of that, you have the two religious Islamist groups, the fairly moderate Muslim Brotherhood, and the Sharia Law-loving Salafists, who are in discussions behind-the-scenes as to how radical to go.
Do you really think the Muslim Brotherhood is "moderate"? Seriously? By what standard?
I find it ridiculous when Americans act superior about Islamist states though;
I think you misunderstand me here. I'm not acting superior. If Islamism is what they want, then I really mean that they should have it. I'm not condemning them for it. I'm saying we should stop expecting that they're going to be a western democracy when they clearly aren't.
look at all the religion-motivated laws being passed in America lately that are taking women's rights back to the Mad Men days.
Religion-motivated laws, as you put it, are and always have been, part and parcel of American law. It's not like this is anything new. Religious influence in a law is not necessarily the same thing as a law being a religious law.
We're just as much in the hands of a conservative Christian cabal as Egypt is with Islam
Really? We can ban religions other than Christianity? We can jail people for apostasy? I bet that's news to the Christian Cabal that just watched the ban on homosexuals serving in the military to get lifted. Having a religious people, and certain laws influenced by religious tradition, is not the same thing as a theocratic state.
one disgusting religion doesn't equal them all (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Christian conservatives in the west isn't really that big,
Sure it isn't where [youtube.com] does [youtube.com] anyone [youtube.com] get [youtube.com] that [youtube.com] ...
idea [youtube.com].
I'm sure you have a good response to this. I'm sure it will explain how slightly inconveniencing you is much worse than mass murder. How every religion is really the same, whether it started by the self-sacrifice of someone who wouldn't raise a sword against his own executioner or it started with a paedophilic thief, warmonger and slave. Whether it built the best, freeest and by far the most moral, most scientific, least poverty-stricken and most advanced society in the world or whether it's the religion that built the islamic hellholes where there's currently a wave of women choosing death over their islamic "freedom" ("strangely" this does not make headlines in western papers), the one country that still openly practices slavery, and >95% of wars and massacres worldwide for the last century.
I don't really even want to hear it. Shut the fuck up.
Re:one disgusting religion doesn't equal them all (Score:4, Insightful)
You seriously want to make that argument? Mass murders? Slavery?
How many are dead in Iraq? I think that little mass murder escapade outnumbers all other terrorist actions combined. And don't try to claim that wasn't a war started by right-wing xians, all you have to do is listen to some of the rhetoric from the man responsible, G. W. Bush.
Oh, you want state judicial murders? Yeah, we've got those too. Over 1200 of them just since 1977.
Pure terrorism? McVeigh wasn't exactly muslim, was he? How about Eric Rudolph? No?
Go back a few hundred years - witch burnings. Go back a bit farther - crusades. islam is about 700 years younger than xianity, which makes a difference in scale of fanaticism, religions calm down somewhat as they age.
And we're not exactly short on slavery either. The US imprisons more of its population than any other country, and most of those people are forced into virtually unpaid work for someone else's profit. Things which hurt no one can lead to a very long prison term, which becomes enslavement.
islam and christianity are both evil, and very much alike. In many ways, they're just different branches of the same religion, both claiming to have the truth while being very, very wrong. The xian bible is full of exactly the same kind of instructions from "god" to kill, maim, and enslave that are in the koran. They're just fortunately ignored by more of its followers.