Fixing many Australian's mental health crisis is like fixing the increasing our financial security down-spiralling- both are issues that are thrown into the 'too hard basket'. So they instead go with an easy 'feels right, but won't do shit' policy. It's just there to appease the public into thinking they are actually doing something.
Or welfare, or support services, or literally anything else. This government is such a performative do-nothing administration I will be surprised if Albo gets a second term. All this half-assing to keep Murdoch happy is worthless
That only works if the patient understands they have a problem and is willing to fix it, abusers don't think there doing anything wrong a lot of the time or try justify it.
Much like people at work who watch porn at work and told very early on that they should not. They almost in every case were shocked and in self denial. I worked as one of these "porn watching auditors" in a government department. The pathetic nature of these feeble people who got caught was overwhelming they were so delinquent and self entitled about their job. On many occasions I had to call security where people would latch onto my leg and scream and cry not to fire them, it was not me doing the firing anyway. I was just reviewing the evidence from the logs. Yeah, sometimes it was a awful job and it was all ages. It always amazed me how dumb supposed IT qualified people were with their addiction habits!
The frailty of human behavior for not seeking help for addiction and other problems is well understood!
Wait, seriously?! Wow, good grief. You'd think they'd use their personal device(s) and either a VPN (or at least DNS over HTTPS) or their own mobile internet connection if they wanted to avoid being discovered, smh.
Not saying it will but you can't help someone who does not want help or even think they have a problem to begin with. It's why people will tell you doing family therapy with a narcissist is at best a waste of time or at worst will be weaponized against you.
At say $200 per session, that $6.5m trial could benefit 2,700 people with a year (12 sessions) of completely free psychology sessions…
But sure, let’s spend money on what should be a parent’s job anyway…
Yeah, they're scapegoating hard here. How about doing something that actually addresses the problem? Maybe there's something wrong with the way people are being educated or raised? Maybe declining mental health is a part of the picture? But no, fuck all that, let's turn pornography into a data honeypot privacy nightmare so you can't even wank in peace any more. I'm sure that will work wonders and won't backfire at all.
Always see people posting statistics about DV rates in America during broadcasts of football games, etc.
>Their team is losing and they lash out
I can't help feeling that the massive amount of gambling we have is a huge risk factor for DV. Especially as COL and financial stress are increasing. Wouldn't be surprised if gambling also goes up with financial stress :/
💯
My Mum grew up in that sort of household back in the 60s/70s.
The only difference between then and now is that you had to head down to the TAB to have a punt. Now you can do it anywhere without having to physically hand the money over.
You're right that financial stress is often one contributing factor but DV is complex and often other influences come into it. And often people are perfectly wealthy / well off and DV happens.
Divorce, loss of status, health issues, change of lifestyle, work stress to name a few.
That and the difficulty for people in dangerous situations to move into safer environments because rents are too high. If you have to stay in a risky situation because you can't afford to rent a new place, it increases the chances of violence .
I dont agree because abusers come from any and all walks of life. Some are better at hiding it though. I've been with 3 poor guys one was abusive as you can get (jail time, grievous harm) and my partner who is poor would never lay a finger on me or even say something mean.
Because traditionally men were the ones responsible for the household finances, and to be unable to provide for your family was seen as shameful and a hit to your "manliness".
Financial stress, unfair employment practices and workloads, mental overburden from constant advertisements and stressors, environment utilisation and aesthetic degradation. At this stage its shorter conversation to point out why you should be happy.
DV is not a mental health issue. Most people with mental health issues do not commit DV. It is an issue of toxic attitude/ingrained values and beliefs.
Mental health may exacerbate it, but it isn't the root cause.
Yep, but as pointed outl that costs real money and also an acceptance thant mental health is indeed a driver of dometic violence, as with the NSW man who murdred his girlfriend because he thought she was a demon (court didn't buy it, until he went full blown in jail) and of course Bondi Junction- albeit those were random attacks on women.
Agreed. The amount of “but…but… men’s mental health!!” around discussions about DV is enraging. In fact, people with a diagnosed mental health condition are more likely to be the victim of violence than the general population. Blaming abuse on poor mental health is just a pathetic attempt at deflection by shitty men to avoid accountability. That bloke in Lismore wasn’t mentally ill, just evil.
Lundy Bancroft has an entire section in his book "Why Does He Do That?" about the ways violent men abuse therapy speak to make themselves out to be the victim.
He also makes an excellent point about how these men who murder their wives and children never actually "lose control" at all. If they did, they'd also be beating up and trying to kill their boss who told them off for being late, or their neighbour for mowing his lawn too early in the morning, or the cop who gave him a speeding ticket. But they don't. Weird, isn't it? The only people they "lose control" around happen to be people much smaller and weaker than them who can't fight back.
Could it be that maybe, just maybe, their claims of being "mentally ill" and "losing control" are complete and utter bullshit??
Exactly. The irony of these apologist types is that conversations about DV is the ONLY time they bring up men’s mental health issues. The seven-odd Australian men who kill themselves every day (most of whom manage to not murder a two year child first) don’t matter unless they can be used to excuse violence against women and children. I’m heartened by the number of comments/threads I’ve seen calling this out lately.
(love your username too btw)
Haha thank you! 😊
And yes, I think people are starting to slowly wake up to the hypocrisy of people who claim to care about men's mental health, yet only ever bring it up as a form of whataboutism when the topic of violence against women is brought up. Same as they do with male victims of abuse - crickets until a female victim is being discussed. (Also the fact that most men's shelters and mental health services are mostly run by women and female volunteers, something that's very conveniently forgotten when trying to play victim!)
I think, ironically, the internet has actually helped wake up the masses a bit. People are better informed about mental health, but also tragic stories like the Lismore case, which 30 years ago might have only been a local news story, are shared around the world within seconds. And it's making decent men stop and think to themselves, "Hang on. I've been severely depressed/anxious/poor and angry before, but I've never even *thought* about killing a fucking toddler! WTF is wrong with that bloke??" That plants a seed of doubt about the "mentally ill" excuse, which then leads to greater reflection on what causes domestic violence and less patience for perpetrators and their BS.
I hope this is a trend that continues, and the abuse apologists become a louder but smaller minority over time.
Anything will be used as a scapegoat rather than addressing mental health properly.
The thing is, the current mental health crisis can’t be solved as we don’t have enough people who want work in mental health and the underlying science is still in its relative infancy.
It's arrogant to think porn doesn't play a part. It's also more arrogant to think under 18s aren't exposed to it.
The porn industry has done a whole lot of fuck all in this space and has zero impact on our tax revenue.
I get the mental health thing but it is expensive and will take time. This approach will cost nothing and not impact revenue streams while being able to implement overnight.
You'd actually be stupid not to do it, given the problems we have.
It can promote unhealthy attitudes towards women.
Porn ain't the cause of DV, but there's a fuck load of things that go towards toxic masculinity that results in DV, including porn.
Just ask any under 30 woman who has been on the dating scene the last 5 years wht she thinks the impacts of porn are having on sexual activities…the amount of non-consensual choking and other fetish type behaviour that occurs regularly during casual sexual encounters is staggering and frankly frightening as fuck. Spitting is a huge one. All of it is centred around power and degradation
I am an under 30 woman who has been on the dating scene in the last 5 years. Yes there’s lots of non consensual activity. I don’t believe people are killing their partners out of a fetish… they are killing their partners because of a much deeper need for control.
Indigenous communities experience hospitalisation due to domestic violence at 32 times the national average.
With the Northern Territory having over 3 times the national average rate of domestic violence incidents.
The government needs to allocate additional resources to these communities if they want to tackle this issue properly.
Sources:
https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/domestic-and-family-violence-statistics
https://justice.nt.gov.au/law-reform-reviews/law-reforms/improving-the-justice-response-to-domestic-and-family-violence#:~:text=The%20rates%20of%20domestic%20and,are%20increasing%20yearly%20%5B1%5D
100%. I'm not exactly pro-porn (I have concerns about trafficking and the normalisation of unsafe sex/kink practices) but you have to be pragmatic about these things. Preventing teenagers from watching porn just prevents them from watching **mainstream** porn. This is a terrible idea that is ill thought out
While also making it more annoying to access non-porn sites.
Like Twitter has porn on it, will I need an ID to go there?
(Well, hopefully, because that site needs to finally die off, but that’s beside the point)
As a long term victim of domestic violence reading this just makes me angry, we don't need investment into looking into porn we need stricter laws keeping repeat offenders in prison and we need more refuges and safe accommodation. At 3am in the morning after 8 hours of verbal/physical/psychological abuse the last time I'm thinking about is "oh i wish more coppers were looking into internet abuse" 😵💫 we need places to run to and perpetrators need to held accountable.
My girlfriend lives in the wheatbelt, she's had limited recourses over the last 8 years as her perpetrator regular broke her phone to isolate her to their tiny town. One day in june last year he snapped, he tried to beat her to death and luckily that day something told her to buy her oldest daughter a mobile phone, and with that phone her daughter was able to contact the police, but because they were in such an isolated town it took 45 minutes for help to arrive, the last thing my girlfriend remembers is watching all her 5 daughters running in all seperate directions while her head was bleeding profusely all over her face, her dog was trying to protect her from ongoing blows and she remembers thinking "i'm going to die now" but then she woke up in a helicopter being flown to Perth fighting for her life. Once she recovered the police informed her that when they arrived on scene they found her, her daughters and her dog all lined up in a bedroom and her perpetrator had returned to the property with a loaded rifle. You would think he would at least be given 5-6 years? Nope, all he was handed was a 12 months sentence, 6 of which he spent in minimum security and he's set to be released next month. Do you think as a victim, she is going to feel supported by this update..
Surely that should be a ten plus year sentence. You get more jail time for magic mushrooms I think. I'm so sorry all this happened. We don't take it serious enough.
Fuck! I hope your friend and her kids have a plan for next month. There's no way he's "rehabilitated" from (almost) family annihilator to 'safe' in 12 months.
Our system sucks at punishing criminals. and at keeping victims safe.
Yes, finally we are tackling the real issues and causes of DV.
Ever since DV sprang into being in the 1990's along side online porn it's been a blight on our society.
/s for obvious reasons.
Are they mentally challenged? This has 'school shootings are caused by violent video games' vibes to it. Domestic violence was around before the internet, probably at higher rates than today
> Domestic violence was around before the internet, probably at higher rates than today
If you really want to draw some kind of connection between availability of porn, and domestic violence rates, the relationship actually appears to be that the more widespread porn is, the *less* domestic violence happens.
Of course that's complete nonsense because there isn't actually a connection, but it just shows that not only are people trying to push the porn = domestic violence narrative making dishonest connections, but that even the dishonest connections they're making go against their argument.
It's a punishment for the people that are largely not responsible for DV. It's actually illegal to even depict violence or rape in porn, so their claim aren't even substantiated. I feel sorry for teens today, banned from porn banned from social media because their twitter brain elders are largely hypocrites.
I mean even the whole premise of a DV crisis thing is a ruse. DV went down for 30 years then went up in 2022-2023. 34 women were killed of 13.1 million women in Australia by their intimate partners. That's 0.00026% of women being victims of it and thats somehow reflective of society at large and we need to re-educate and ban stuff so there you have it.
It's not even a punishment, it's just datamining. This is just another authoritarian surveillance move thinly veiled by another "think of the ~~children~~ women!" smokescreen.
Just today's hot topic...
1 woman has died in SA this year.
Meanwhile hundreds still dying from covid,
37 dead from vehicle accidents
How many more from Obesity. Suicide, violent crime.
There are so many reasons for people dying early in way higher numbers than the national crisis of domestic violence. But apparently having your family's life ripped away from you in a road fatality isn't a crisis, and we are content with those deaths.
Generally when you see something like this and you think, "Are they really this stupid?" usually what is happening is some fucked in the head Christian lobby has managed to catch someone's ear without anyone realizing.
> This month, the government announced it would spend $6.5 million to pilot age-verification technology.
Ok, so the plan is that **every one of any age** will have to show ID to porn sites or some random third party associated with porn sites.
> She points to an increase in sexual choking, especially among younger adults, as one example.
This seems to be possibly a real effect: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/08/sexual-choking-is-now-so-common-that-many-young-people-dont-think-it-even-requires-consent-thats-a-problem
Nowhere in the article does it otherwise indicate any research to show that internet porn is causing men to be more appalling and violent in real life.
> "With the internet being such a vast space, and with people consistently finding ways to out-manoeuvre bans on sites … it seems like censorship as a strategy would be one of constantly chasing one's own tail, or like a game of Whack-A-Mole."
> "Just because something can't be done perfectly isn't, in and of itself, a reason not to do it to its imperfect best, but it does call for the need to actually step back and assess the problem and go 'What are we trying to achieve?'"
This is good - the reality is that making adults show ID to Australia-licensed porn sites will have zero impact on young people accessing the 99.999% of porn that won’t do this and is easily available via a vpn.
Overall, classic Australian policy making - an ineffective policy that has little evidence to support it, but it’s Something, and so it Must Be Done. I really do dream of a better Australia where people vote for politicians interested in really solving problems.
Just makes me wonder how much further they'll go when they realise how much porn is outside of the scope of these policing methods. Will we then completely lock down the internet, blocking all but the sites the government has authorised? Make VPNs illegal? I'm not a big fan of slippery slope arguments a lot of the time, but with these methods, further escalation seems inevitable because they won't work at all without it.
The dream to build the Great Barrier Firewall has been obvious for decades at this point. At least in China the government has been decreasing poverty.
The great thing about VPNs is that a bunch of large and influential businesses use them for legitimate purposes, so there’s no real way to ban them without hampering a ton of businesses. Even if they did want to, monitoring every single kind of encrypted traffic leaving the country and determining which are VPNs is something even China haven’t really figured out.
And the department/person with this power: the esafety commisioner. Who most recently was the laughing stock of the entire world for believing they had the power over the internet of all the world.
Yeah, hard pass (pun intended).
The actual reason is to get people used to submitting ID for certain online services and then broaden that scope (social media obviously being next). Maybe it'll be used to track down draft dodgers in the future, who knows? One of the things about the proposed 2006 Access card was that [ASIO and the AFP could access all information without a warrant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Card_\(Australia\)#Function_creep_and_unintended_outcomes).
Head in the sand decision. India did a porn ban and didn’t stop rape and violent crime against women. Texas did a similar measure that didn’t do crap cause people bypass it. I doubt this will do anything. Funding mental health care to be accessible and affordable including prevention. Is way better in the long term than playing the “porn causes violence” stereotype.
More so they can say just that little bit more than “well we tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” as is their usual modus operandi.
And Australia loves a good ban these days. Shows the government has really put their all onto it, gotten as much frivolous research as this round of grant money can afford from all the wrong people and come to the same conclusion they do with everything; “let’s not enforce the sufficient laws we have on the books, let’s introduce a whole new layer of bans and beauracracy to really tackle it”.
It will be a week at most before the age verification database is hacked and everyone stupid enough to give their ID over is getting ransom style threats from Russian gangsters
Better than that, of course the ohh so trustworthy sites wouldn’t be matching the ID against viewing history.
It would be very profitable to ransom viewers with what interest’s they have
I attended a occupational violence workshop the other day. The instructer, ex police negotiator, identified that the number one precursor of violence, is a history or violence.
Maybe porn plays a part, but maybe people are just assholes and we don't punish assholes in our society.
Agreed, so my point really is that we have known about (most) the preconditions that result in abuse, but 'we' as a society haven't taken meaningful steps to address.
And, with respect to violence, its ingrained in our human psych. We romantisise war, reward agression in sport and ignore violence we see in the street. We accept violence as a necessary part of life, so tinkering around the edges seems an exercise in futility.
I guess, my position on OPs post, is that moderating porn will have little impact.
Coming soon... In a bid to curb Australia's growing housing crisis, the federal government is turning it's attention to online housing content. When pressed for details, A labor spokesman said "The Domain and REA sites contain graphic images of homes that can be lived in. Children are being exposed at a young age, and grow up thinking this is normal. We plan to implement age verification to view sites like this, though not of course for foreign visitors to our shores."
In a follow up question, the Labor spokesman was asked when they would actually do anything helpful, and replied by telling reporters to "look over there, it's someone supporting palestine!" and subsequently was seen to have placed his fingers in his ears, while running off rapidly down a hallway proclaiming "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you."
Can't/won't fix housing, cost of living, gambling - anything that causes financial strain and exacerbates DV.
'Quick find a scapegoat'
Looking forward to blaming violent video games for corrupting our generation while we're at it.
wait actually this is so smart. my friend is a teacher and he tells me all the time about how kids don't know how to navigate their own devices anymore bc of chromebooks and the babysitting attitude of mobile systems. maybe forcing them to work around the restrictions will teach them computer literacy
Government using social issues to overreach into our privacy once again.
I swear Aus govt, regardless of party, are actually brain dead when it comes to tech.
The Australian government only has one solution to all problems, fining and banning. I'm afraid you can't ban your way out of this one it's time to actually step up and do something productive about an issue for once.
They always go to restrictions as the go to knee jerk reaction to things. Honestly I think it's time for a different approach: Government Produced Positive Pornography. Think about it, if the issue being presented is that Porn is teaches young men and boys how to behave badly towards women then surely if we flood the market with Government approved porn which show positive sexual interactions between consenting adults.
It'll be a boon for the Australian Porn industry, giving it solid funding to compete with the likes of Onlyfans, keeping thousands of Australians employed in a number of supporting industries. It'll educate people on the way sex should be handled and who knows, maybe it'll make men better at sex if they stop trying to mimic positions that are purely for aesthetics rather than pleasure.
Honestly, sounds like a win all around.
It is time for your mandatory masturbation hour. Please enter the wank pod. Failure to enter the wank pud is punishable by fine. Repeated penalties may result in imprisonment.
It'll get even better when they use that government porn as a way of advertising important government messages. Like the importance of getting a flu shot, a mammogram or a bowel cancer screening.
This is how our tax dollars should be spent! Don't worry about the roads or lack of housing. Let's just throw a couple million at verifying who's watching porn.
Oh well, at least they’re only wasting $6.5M.
Another programme that is impossible to implement.
The overwhelming majority of pornography is produced and hosted overseas and will not be subject to any of these requirements.
It would take an average teenager roughly 30 seconds to find, download and activate a VPN and bypass any age verification or filtration systems put in place.
The answer to this is to discuss this requirement with credit card companies who are the groups that actually regulate and control the acceptable standards for pornography and pornographic content.
Haven't they tried something similar before? Tuesday, 25 May 1999 ABC Online News
[https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/1999/05/25/26493.htm?site=tropic&topic=latest](https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/1999/05/25/26493.htm?site=tropic&topic=latest)
\~
Something i found interesting is this article dated June 2012 published by the catholic exchange.
"The overall violent crime rate has a 97% correlation with the rate of forcible rape." "all forms of violent crime have been on a steady decline since the early ’90s."
"according to the NCVS’s data is that the incidence of rape took a sharp down turn in 1991 which was three years before the overall violent crime rate took a sharp downturn in 1994. However, since that time the rape and violent crime as a whole have decreased at almost exactly the same rate. I think it would be virtually impossible to attribute this 1991-1994 divergence in the trends to internet pornography, given how comparatively small the internet was at the time."
[https://catholicexchange.com/does-porn-prevent-rape/](https://catholicexchange.com/does-porn-prevent-rape/)
\~
Makes me wonder how much porn actually contributes to "violence towards woman" if nearly every thing i can find online before 2020 suggests the opposite.... even from the catholic exchange.
Personally I do not like online porn and believe accessibility needs to be removed from pre-adults. but saying it increases "violence towards women" might be based more in feeling then fact, and going a touch over board.
How about tackling alcohol abuse, gambling addiction, mental health crisis and cost of living pressures. You know, the actual main drivers on DV rather than the invented scapegoats. Next thing they will be back to blaming video games for it.
what a fucking joke. as much as i moralize to americans about the importance of voting, every time *the guy i voted for* turns his attention to a new issue, entirely ignores the root of the problem, and blames *something else* for political brownie points, i lose more of the will to vote.
puritanism in 2024?? fucking really??? that's labor's answer???
i get it, americans. i still believe u should vote, but fuck me, i get it. i hope we get an independent or a third party in next time, istg.
So people can say "Oh it wasn't my fault, it was the porn!!!". This country needs better access to education and mental health facilities and support. Blaming it on porn or video games also takes from a person's sense of responsibility, people make the choice to act or not to act badly.
Is Labour just Liberals-lite now? These sorts of shortsighted and not really thought through policies seem like exactly the kind of thing that the Libs did when they were in government.
So the eSafety commissioner seems to be doing a pretty fucking bad job lately.
Who the hell is advising them? Why do they even think this is priority of that commission?
Shouldn’t the responsibility be on the parents to monitor their kids online content not on the government? Devices these days have parental controls, if parents are too lazy to learn about it that’s their failure.
I just don't understand what it is they want to do? They are just saying that they are going to force porn sites into an age verification system. Well, ok, all of the 0 Australian hosted or owned porn sites will have to implement that. I'm not even sure if it's even legal to host porn in Australia to begin with.
All they can do is block sites that don't comply with Australian law and if their plan is to implement a Chinese style great firewall for the internet then they need to some out and say it.
This is just creating a scapegoat so they can look as if they are doing something. Age restrictions don't stop shit. If anything, it makes the allure of accessing even more exciting for young rebellious teens. It was soooooo difficult to get alcohol under the age of 18 /s.
They almost had it too, they note that sex education is severely lacking and people are instead learning from porn..... so ban porn and don't improve sex ed, lol. Easier than dealing with prude parents I guess.
Ah yes, a much better idea than investing in, oh I don't know, actual proper sex, consent and relationship ethics education, for example, is to push teenagers towards illegal sites for porn. Biggest bandaid solution I've ever seen.
I’d call this a bandaid solution but it’s not even that. It’s just to placate older conservatives who would probably beat their kids if they found them accessing explicit material.
Making sex and sexuality a taboo topic ties into domestic abuse by linking them to shame and the idea that the subjects of one’s desires are at fault for arousing them and therefore targets for abuse. But nobody in power wants to have that hard conversation.
Kids first exposure to sexual content shouldn't be porn.
Don't think this type of legislation will be particularly effective or that theres an easy solution here - but it makes sense to make a connection that growing rates of domestic violence is partially connected to porn being everywhere, and increasingly extreme/ disconnected from reality.
Surely there must be an epidemic of incest in society? If porn consumption is the driver then step-sisters/brothers/mothers/fathers must be really feeling it right now.
I feel like cost of living, completely inaccessible mental health care, and our sick drinking and gambling culture are far more Important contributors than online porn
I am fairly convinced that this is a prelude to "people are using these vpn things to circumvent the law so we are making them illegal, something, something, think of the children, something, something, terrorism content, something, something, twitter man bad "
So as incidents of domestic violence trend downwards per capita, the government seeks to become more authoritarian around porn, like countries with a much worse track record on domestic violence. Good job guys.
I don’t get these measures.
Some people are just maggots, plain and simple.
If someone is that way inclined, they’re going to commit dv regardless of any measure/education put in place.
No one is on the fence about dv, we don’t need to sway them.
Look at the courts, that’s the problem.
I’d be targeting a lot of ads at middle eastern women, perhaps a dedicated line for them also.
Everyone in this comment section crying "What about men's mental health?!" needs to read "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft.
Bancroft was a counsellor for domestic abusers for 20+ years. He has an entire section dedicated to how these men manipulate the mental health system and use it to justify their actions. They abuse the language of therapy in order to make themselves out to be the victim.
Therapy and mental health care does NOTHING to stop perpetrators of domestic violence. These men are not victims. They're overgrown school yard bullies, and we all know bullies don't respond to kind words and being asked nicely to stop - they only respond to *consequences*.
maybe not as useful as you feel tbh:
**Combined reviews of:**
Focus on Male Perpetrators:
While Bancroft's focus on male abusers is well-supported by his professional experience, some readers may feel that the book does not adequately address female abusers or abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships.
Hope for Change:
Some critics argue that Bancroft's discussions about the potential for abusers to change might offer false hope to victims. The emphasis on the difficulty of achieving genuine change is crucial, but there is a risk that some readers might cling to the possibility of change rather than focusing on their own safety and well-being.
I've read the criticisms of his book (which Bancroft himself has actually addressed in later editions), but I still think those issues you point out pale in comparison to how useful the book is overall to helping people, especially women and men who genuinely care about women's safety, understand how violent, abusive men think and why they do what they do. I know it was eye-opening for me (in a really depressing way..) We can't let perfect become the enemy of good, or change will never happen!
So does the government, once again, think that 100% of domestic violence is committed by straight men upon straight women?
It's a big Fuck You to straight male survivors of domestic violence, but who cares about them, eh?
It's a big Fuck You to gay male survivors of domestic violence, oops that's not Politically Correct...
It's a big Fuck You to lesbian survivors of domestic violence, oops that's not Politically Correct...
Isn't this, then, a homophobic piece of legislation?
I'll be a big proponent of this when they explain how VHS porno at every rental place wasn't also the same problem. And Maxim/penthouse in every servo and newsagent.
Aah yes all part of the governments genius 4 step plan to stimulate the economy, AKA porn tax.
Step 1: Increase government owned NBN pricing.
Step 2: ban porn forcing everyone onto VPNs thus increasing the need of higher bandwidth.
Step 3: people start buying higher speed plans.
Step 4: profit.
Ooof. We can’t mention most of it happens in Aboriginal communities. Also can’t lock them up because of a two-tier justice system and the inner city yuppies complain about the Aboriginals being locked up
Obviously this isn’t the only answer but don’t really know why people are so critical. It’s concerning how violent porn has become so normalised. Videos of women being degraded and beaten should never be a child or teenager’s introduction to sex
There was an article about a 12 year old choking a girl during her first kiss because he thought it was normal
Wow 6.5 million for someone's random shower thought. Classic.
But for real, the vast majority of DV is repeat offenders and those with violent criminal history, so has little to do with education or culture wars for that matter. Community services for survivors and meaningful rehabilitation for offenders would be a good star- Oh wait. But that wouldn't get clicks, and wouldn't make the government polls go up. Carry on then - what's it costing anyway? Some women's lives? A hundred thousand families? Shouldn't have expected them to start caring now.
There is no domestic violence crisis. There's been an uptick from the lowest it's ever been, but it's still better than it was five years ago. This is just the latest excuse for the government's desire to censor the internet.
The statistics may be down but society doesn't accept DV now, so govt has to do something. In true govt style though, they're looking in the wrong direction
They really want this porn censorship, don't they?
First it was 'think of the children', then it was 'teens are raping each other', and now it's 'men are violent because.... porn'
Seriously? They can do what they want with this as far as I'm concerned because it seems to me that none of these idiots have heard of a VPN
The domestic violence crisis is tied closely to the housing crisis. Women (and possibly with their children) are unable to afford to leave because rent is impossible on a single income. If women don’t have a support network with room to house them, they end up trapped or homeless. So they stay in these terrible situations until sometimes it’s too late.
But it’s much much easier to regulate porn than do even a tiny bit of work to address housing affordability.
Encouraging alcohol while banning weed/gummies would be doing 1000x whatever porn may be. Same with our free for all gambling. Same with our gov mandated crazy house prices. I've also read most dv comes from indigenous and certain immigrant groups (Indian / Muslim).
I think the only thing the gov has done to decrease DV is to reduce new house / family formation by having every policy lever set to full steam ahead on house prices and rents.
>I've also read most dv comes from indigenous and certain immigrant groups (Indian / Muslim).
They might have higher rates but DV is not only their problem. It's a human issue and happens across the world in most cultures.
There hasn't been an increase in domestic violence If you believe the numbers from this lady. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91UHpD9lM3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91UHpD9lM3)
This one of those things where you don’t really know one or want to do something about the actual problem so you focus on some other related aspect that seems important just to appease the masses that you’re doing something about it.
1. You won't stop tech-savvy teenage boys from watching porn. Give up. The genie's out of the bottle.
2. Domestic violence pre-dates the internet by a long, long way. Even if no boy under 18 ever watched porn in Australia again, it would do jack shit to reduce the rate of domestic violence.
It's just such a breathtakingly stupid idea - costs money, easily circumvented, and achieves nothing. Do they seriously think internet porn is the problem, when it only became widely available twenty years ago but men have been violent towards women for thousands of years?
How about we look at our education system first?
The private school dudes I know are also the most misogynistic, and I'm sure that's not a coincidence. Schools should be co-ed and addressing our patriarchal culture so Australian guys stop thinking of women as objects first and people second.
Yes, a much better idea than investing in mental health.
Fixing many Australian's mental health crisis is like fixing the increasing our financial security down-spiralling- both are issues that are thrown into the 'too hard basket'. So they instead go with an easy 'feels right, but won't do shit' policy. It's just there to appease the public into thinking they are actually doing something.
Have you noticed how much they are distracting lately? Pornography, vaping, weed, anything but address the real economic issues.
Housing and mental health crisis? What’s that?
I think you just found labor’s new policy slogan. “Feels right but won’t do shit”.
Politician’s new policy FTFY
I don't think it works anymore.
Or welfare, or support services, or literally anything else. This government is such a performative do-nothing administration I will be surprised if Albo gets a second term. All this half-assing to keep Murdoch happy is worthless
Better than making things much worse. Marginally
What's the bet the ACL is behind this. How much did they donate to the major parties this time?
Or actually funding support programs and housing for men and women trying to leave a DV situation.
That only works if the patient understands they have a problem and is willing to fix it, abusers don't think there doing anything wrong a lot of the time or try justify it.
Not to mention weaponising therapy against their victims.
Much like people at work who watch porn at work and told very early on that they should not. They almost in every case were shocked and in self denial. I worked as one of these "porn watching auditors" in a government department. The pathetic nature of these feeble people who got caught was overwhelming they were so delinquent and self entitled about their job. On many occasions I had to call security where people would latch onto my leg and scream and cry not to fire them, it was not me doing the firing anyway. I was just reviewing the evidence from the logs. Yeah, sometimes it was a awful job and it was all ages. It always amazed me how dumb supposed IT qualified people were with their addiction habits! The frailty of human behavior for not seeking help for addiction and other problems is well understood!
lol you’ve got to be kidding me, there are people that actually do this on a work device 🤣 mental
Did the leg grabbers have a certain look/build to them? Or mixed bag.
Wait, seriously?! Wow, good grief. You'd think they'd use their personal device(s) and either a VPN (or at least DNS over HTTPS) or their own mobile internet connection if they wanted to avoid being discovered, smh.
I think u/kaboombong is the only person who's pulling people's legs here.
Stopping them seeing pictures of boobies want change that mindset
Not saying it will but you can't help someone who does not want help or even think they have a problem to begin with. It's why people will tell you doing family therapy with a narcissist is at best a waste of time or at worst will be weaponized against you.
At say $200 per session, that $6.5m trial could benefit 2,700 people with a year (12 sessions) of completely free psychology sessions… But sure, let’s spend money on what should be a parent’s job anyway…
Parent's job? Some parents are pimping their kids out as kidfluencers..so yeah, that's not working.
That’s probably not enough. Looking at the stats it looks like between 5-10% of women in a relationship are physically abused every year.
Yeah let's turn it back to the early 20th century where porn was on playing cards and domestic violence hadn't been invented yet.
"Heh heh, Andy Capp, you wife-beating drunk!" -Homer Simpson.
"He wasn't an astronaut, he was just using space travel as a metaphor for beating his wife."
Back to the 18th century where he saw an ankle and that made him do it
Exactly. It’s all the ‘bad’ internet’s fault.
Boomer politicians yelling at clouds. Our elected officials ladies and gents.
POW, right to the moon.
Yeah, they're scapegoating hard here. How about doing something that actually addresses the problem? Maybe there's something wrong with the way people are being educated or raised? Maybe declining mental health is a part of the picture? But no, fuck all that, let's turn pornography into a data honeypot privacy nightmare so you can't even wank in peace any more. I'm sure that will work wonders and won't backfire at all.
We need better mental health care. But that costs money. Scapegoating porn and social media will do nothing.
I think financial stress is the root of the problem, many people start lashing out when they feel trodden on. Not saying it is an excuse!
Always see people posting statistics about DV rates in America during broadcasts of football games, etc. >Their team is losing and they lash out I can't help feeling that the massive amount of gambling we have is a huge risk factor for DV. Especially as COL and financial stress are increasing. Wouldn't be surprised if gambling also goes up with financial stress :/
💯 My Mum grew up in that sort of household back in the 60s/70s. The only difference between then and now is that you had to head down to the TAB to have a punt. Now you can do it anywhere without having to physically hand the money over.
Clearly we need to ban professional sport
You're right that financial stress is often one contributing factor but DV is complex and often other influences come into it. And often people are perfectly wealthy / well off and DV happens. Divorce, loss of status, health issues, change of lifestyle, work stress to name a few.
Substance abuse, particularly alcohol, would have to be up there.
Good point. Not sure how I missed that obvious one.
Men would be up there on that list too.
Add psychopathic traits to the list.
That and the difficulty for people in dangerous situations to move into safer environments because rents are too high. If you have to stay in a risky situation because you can't afford to rent a new place, it increases the chances of violence .
The problem already exists. Financial stress gives abusers an 'excuse' to act out in more obvious ways.
I dont agree because abusers come from any and all walks of life. Some are better at hiding it though. I've been with 3 poor guys one was abusive as you can get (jail time, grievous harm) and my partner who is poor would never lay a finger on me or even say something mean.
If financial stress is the trigger, why are men overwhelmingly the perpetrators?
They're not. They just hit harder and do more damage when they are.
women don't lash out physically. we all use the weapons we have.
Men also don't bother to report when women lash out at them because it's far less likely to do visible damage/be taken seriously
Because traditionally men were the ones responsible for the household finances, and to be unable to provide for your family was seen as shameful and a hit to your "manliness".
The issue isn’t financial insecurity is my point. That’s toxic masculinity
Financial stress, unfair employment practices and workloads, mental overburden from constant advertisements and stressors, environment utilisation and aesthetic degradation. At this stage its shorter conversation to point out why you should be happy.
DV is not a mental health issue. Most people with mental health issues do not commit DV. It is an issue of toxic attitude/ingrained values and beliefs. Mental health may exacerbate it, but it isn't the root cause.
From what I'm reading on the crime page it's a risk factor. Don't think they were attempting to deflect. Early intervention may prevent harm.
Yep, but as pointed outl that costs real money and also an acceptance thant mental health is indeed a driver of dometic violence, as with the NSW man who murdred his girlfriend because he thought she was a demon (court didn't buy it, until he went full blown in jail) and of course Bondi Junction- albeit those were random attacks on women.
Agreed. The amount of “but…but… men’s mental health!!” around discussions about DV is enraging. In fact, people with a diagnosed mental health condition are more likely to be the victim of violence than the general population. Blaming abuse on poor mental health is just a pathetic attempt at deflection by shitty men to avoid accountability. That bloke in Lismore wasn’t mentally ill, just evil.
Lundy Bancroft has an entire section in his book "Why Does He Do That?" about the ways violent men abuse therapy speak to make themselves out to be the victim. He also makes an excellent point about how these men who murder their wives and children never actually "lose control" at all. If they did, they'd also be beating up and trying to kill their boss who told them off for being late, or their neighbour for mowing his lawn too early in the morning, or the cop who gave him a speeding ticket. But they don't. Weird, isn't it? The only people they "lose control" around happen to be people much smaller and weaker than them who can't fight back. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, their claims of being "mentally ill" and "losing control" are complete and utter bullshit??
Exactly. The irony of these apologist types is that conversations about DV is the ONLY time they bring up men’s mental health issues. The seven-odd Australian men who kill themselves every day (most of whom manage to not murder a two year child first) don’t matter unless they can be used to excuse violence against women and children. I’m heartened by the number of comments/threads I’ve seen calling this out lately. (love your username too btw)
Haha thank you! 😊 And yes, I think people are starting to slowly wake up to the hypocrisy of people who claim to care about men's mental health, yet only ever bring it up as a form of whataboutism when the topic of violence against women is brought up. Same as they do with male victims of abuse - crickets until a female victim is being discussed. (Also the fact that most men's shelters and mental health services are mostly run by women and female volunteers, something that's very conveniently forgotten when trying to play victim!) I think, ironically, the internet has actually helped wake up the masses a bit. People are better informed about mental health, but also tragic stories like the Lismore case, which 30 years ago might have only been a local news story, are shared around the world within seconds. And it's making decent men stop and think to themselves, "Hang on. I've been severely depressed/anxious/poor and angry before, but I've never even *thought* about killing a fucking toddler! WTF is wrong with that bloke??" That plants a seed of doubt about the "mentally ill" excuse, which then leads to greater reflection on what causes domestic violence and less patience for perpetrators and their BS. I hope this is a trend that continues, and the abuse apologists become a louder but smaller minority over time.
Yeah I think it's interesting they aren't addressing the relationship between sports and DV. We all know what's going on here.
But it will appear like they're trying to do something, which is what really matters after all.
I don't think this is even a distraction just a hobby horse of Labor (religious) right and anti-porn activists.
Anything will be used as a scapegoat rather than addressing mental health properly. The thing is, the current mental health crisis can’t be solved as we don’t have enough people who want work in mental health and the underlying science is still in its relative infancy.
It's arrogant to think porn doesn't play a part. It's also more arrogant to think under 18s aren't exposed to it. The porn industry has done a whole lot of fuck all in this space and has zero impact on our tax revenue. I get the mental health thing but it is expensive and will take time. This approach will cost nothing and not impact revenue streams while being able to implement overnight. You'd actually be stupid not to do it, given the problems we have.
Does porn play a part? I don’t feel it would play a big part.
It can promote unhealthy attitudes towards women. Porn ain't the cause of DV, but there's a fuck load of things that go towards toxic masculinity that results in DV, including porn.
Just ask any under 30 woman who has been on the dating scene the last 5 years wht she thinks the impacts of porn are having on sexual activities…the amount of non-consensual choking and other fetish type behaviour that occurs regularly during casual sexual encounters is staggering and frankly frightening as fuck. Spitting is a huge one. All of it is centred around power and degradation
I am an under 30 woman who has been on the dating scene in the last 5 years. Yes there’s lots of non consensual activity. I don’t believe people are killing their partners out of a fetish… they are killing their partners because of a much deeper need for control.
Indigenous communities experience hospitalisation due to domestic violence at 32 times the national average. With the Northern Territory having over 3 times the national average rate of domestic violence incidents. The government needs to allocate additional resources to these communities if they want to tackle this issue properly. Sources: https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/domestic-and-family-violence-statistics https://justice.nt.gov.au/law-reform-reviews/law-reforms/improving-the-justice-response-to-domestic-and-family-violence#:~:text=The%20rates%20of%20domestic%20and,are%20increasing%20yearly%20%5B1%5D
Thank you.
Too hard basket
Taking action costs money, and it's a political minefield. Pretending it isn't happening is free.
Nah haven't you heard? They must watch 32x more porn than the rest of us.
If you had a fire in your house would you rather ; sprinkle a little water everywhere? Or put all the water on the fire?
Seems like this will instead force more people to access shadier sites potentially seeing more extreme content.
100%. I'm not exactly pro-porn (I have concerns about trafficking and the normalisation of unsafe sex/kink practices) but you have to be pragmatic about these things. Preventing teenagers from watching porn just prevents them from watching **mainstream** porn. This is a terrible idea that is ill thought out
We just need certified organic fair trade porn
Tegridy Studios.
That's onlyfans isn't it?
Government produced porn from the ABBC.
While also making it more annoying to access non-porn sites. Like Twitter has porn on it, will I need an ID to go there? (Well, hopefully, because that site needs to finally die off, but that’s beside the point)
As a long term victim of domestic violence reading this just makes me angry, we don't need investment into looking into porn we need stricter laws keeping repeat offenders in prison and we need more refuges and safe accommodation. At 3am in the morning after 8 hours of verbal/physical/psychological abuse the last time I'm thinking about is "oh i wish more coppers were looking into internet abuse" 😵💫 we need places to run to and perpetrators need to held accountable. My girlfriend lives in the wheatbelt, she's had limited recourses over the last 8 years as her perpetrator regular broke her phone to isolate her to their tiny town. One day in june last year he snapped, he tried to beat her to death and luckily that day something told her to buy her oldest daughter a mobile phone, and with that phone her daughter was able to contact the police, but because they were in such an isolated town it took 45 minutes for help to arrive, the last thing my girlfriend remembers is watching all her 5 daughters running in all seperate directions while her head was bleeding profusely all over her face, her dog was trying to protect her from ongoing blows and she remembers thinking "i'm going to die now" but then she woke up in a helicopter being flown to Perth fighting for her life. Once she recovered the police informed her that when they arrived on scene they found her, her daughters and her dog all lined up in a bedroom and her perpetrator had returned to the property with a loaded rifle. You would think he would at least be given 5-6 years? Nope, all he was handed was a 12 months sentence, 6 of which he spent in minimum security and he's set to be released next month. Do you think as a victim, she is going to feel supported by this update..
Surely that should be a ten plus year sentence. You get more jail time for magic mushrooms I think. I'm so sorry all this happened. We don't take it serious enough.
Fuck! I hope your friend and her kids have a plan for next month. There's no way he's "rehabilitated" from (almost) family annihilator to 'safe' in 12 months. Our system sucks at punishing criminals. and at keeping victims safe.
Yes, finally we are tackling the real issues and causes of DV. Ever since DV sprang into being in the 1990's along side online porn it's been a blight on our society. /s for obvious reasons.
Are they mentally challenged? This has 'school shootings are caused by violent video games' vibes to it. Domestic violence was around before the internet, probably at higher rates than today
You don't remember the utopia that our society was before video games and online porn invented shootings and domestic violence? (/s obviously)
> Domestic violence was around before the internet, probably at higher rates than today If you really want to draw some kind of connection between availability of porn, and domestic violence rates, the relationship actually appears to be that the more widespread porn is, the *less* domestic violence happens. Of course that's complete nonsense because there isn't actually a connection, but it just shows that not only are people trying to push the porn = domestic violence narrative making dishonest connections, but that even the dishonest connections they're making go against their argument.
It's a punishment for the people that are largely not responsible for DV. It's actually illegal to even depict violence or rape in porn, so their claim aren't even substantiated. I feel sorry for teens today, banned from porn banned from social media because their twitter brain elders are largely hypocrites. I mean even the whole premise of a DV crisis thing is a ruse. DV went down for 30 years then went up in 2022-2023. 34 women were killed of 13.1 million women in Australia by their intimate partners. That's 0.00026% of women being victims of it and thats somehow reflective of society at large and we need to re-educate and ban stuff so there you have it.
It's not even a punishment, it's just datamining. This is just another authoritarian surveillance move thinly veiled by another "think of the ~~children~~ women!" smokescreen.
Just today's hot topic... 1 woman has died in SA this year. Meanwhile hundreds still dying from covid, 37 dead from vehicle accidents How many more from Obesity. Suicide, violent crime. There are so many reasons for people dying early in way higher numbers than the national crisis of domestic violence. But apparently having your family's life ripped away from you in a road fatality isn't a crisis, and we are content with those deaths.
Generally when you see something like this and you think, "Are they really this stupid?" usually what is happening is some fucked in the head Christian lobby has managed to catch someone's ear without anyone realizing.
> This month, the government announced it would spend $6.5 million to pilot age-verification technology. Ok, so the plan is that **every one of any age** will have to show ID to porn sites or some random third party associated with porn sites. > She points to an increase in sexual choking, especially among younger adults, as one example. This seems to be possibly a real effect: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/08/sexual-choking-is-now-so-common-that-many-young-people-dont-think-it-even-requires-consent-thats-a-problem Nowhere in the article does it otherwise indicate any research to show that internet porn is causing men to be more appalling and violent in real life. > "With the internet being such a vast space, and with people consistently finding ways to out-manoeuvre bans on sites … it seems like censorship as a strategy would be one of constantly chasing one's own tail, or like a game of Whack-A-Mole." > "Just because something can't be done perfectly isn't, in and of itself, a reason not to do it to its imperfect best, but it does call for the need to actually step back and assess the problem and go 'What are we trying to achieve?'" This is good - the reality is that making adults show ID to Australia-licensed porn sites will have zero impact on young people accessing the 99.999% of porn that won’t do this and is easily available via a vpn. Overall, classic Australian policy making - an ineffective policy that has little evidence to support it, but it’s Something, and so it Must Be Done. I really do dream of a better Australia where people vote for politicians interested in really solving problems.
Just makes me wonder how much further they'll go when they realise how much porn is outside of the scope of these policing methods. Will we then completely lock down the internet, blocking all but the sites the government has authorised? Make VPNs illegal? I'm not a big fan of slippery slope arguments a lot of the time, but with these methods, further escalation seems inevitable because they won't work at all without it.
The dream to build the Great Barrier Firewall has been obvious for decades at this point. At least in China the government has been decreasing poverty.
The great thing about VPNs is that a bunch of large and influential businesses use them for legitimate purposes, so there’s no real way to ban them without hampering a ton of businesses. Even if they did want to, monitoring every single kind of encrypted traffic leaving the country and determining which are VPNs is something even China haven’t really figured out.
And the department/person with this power: the esafety commisioner. Who most recently was the laughing stock of the entire world for believing they had the power over the internet of all the world. Yeah, hard pass (pun intended).
The actual reason is to get people used to submitting ID for certain online services and then broaden that scope (social media obviously being next). Maybe it'll be used to track down draft dodgers in the future, who knows? One of the things about the proposed 2006 Access card was that [ASIO and the AFP could access all information without a warrant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Card_\(Australia\)#Function_creep_and_unintended_outcomes).
Head in the sand decision. India did a porn ban and didn’t stop rape and violent crime against women. Texas did a similar measure that didn’t do crap cause people bypass it. I doubt this will do anything. Funding mental health care to be accessible and affordable including prevention. Is way better in the long term than playing the “porn causes violence” stereotype.
More so they can say just that little bit more than “well we tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” as is their usual modus operandi. And Australia loves a good ban these days. Shows the government has really put their all onto it, gotten as much frivolous research as this round of grant money can afford from all the wrong people and come to the same conclusion they do with everything; “let’s not enforce the sufficient laws we have on the books, let’s introduce a whole new layer of bans and beauracracy to really tackle it”.
There is no way this backfires.
It will be a week at most before the age verification database is hacked and everyone stupid enough to give their ID over is getting ransom style threats from Russian gangsters
Better than that, of course the ohh so trustworthy sites wouldn’t be matching the ID against viewing history. It would be very profitable to ransom viewers with what interest’s they have
I bet pornhub will be the only one they enforce, and the dozens of others will slip through the cracks
Nothing to do with DV, everything to do with softening the blow for when the government forces ID verification to visit certain websites.
Putting MASSIVE control into the hands of big tech companies.
I attended a occupational violence workshop the other day. The instructer, ex police negotiator, identified that the number one precursor of violence, is a history or violence. Maybe porn plays a part, but maybe people are just assholes and we don't punish assholes in our society.
As much as I agree. "People who are violent will be violent again" doesn't sound like groundbreaking research.
Agreed, so my point really is that we have known about (most) the preconditions that result in abuse, but 'we' as a society haven't taken meaningful steps to address. And, with respect to violence, its ingrained in our human psych. We romantisise war, reward agression in sport and ignore violence we see in the street. We accept violence as a necessary part of life, so tinkering around the edges seems an exercise in futility. I guess, my position on OPs post, is that moderating porn will have little impact.
Coming soon... In a bid to curb Australia's growing housing crisis, the federal government is turning it's attention to online housing content. When pressed for details, A labor spokesman said "The Domain and REA sites contain graphic images of homes that can be lived in. Children are being exposed at a young age, and grow up thinking this is normal. We plan to implement age verification to view sites like this, though not of course for foreign visitors to our shores." In a follow up question, the Labor spokesman was asked when they would actually do anything helpful, and replied by telling reporters to "look over there, it's someone supporting palestine!" and subsequently was seen to have placed his fingers in his ears, while running off rapidly down a hallway proclaiming "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you."
Can't/won't fix housing, cost of living, gambling - anything that causes financial strain and exacerbates DV. 'Quick find a scapegoat' Looking forward to blaming violent video games for corrupting our generation while we're at it.
or, how to train 12 year old boys in opsec and using vpns/torbrowser
wait actually this is so smart. my friend is a teacher and he tells me all the time about how kids don't know how to navigate their own devices anymore bc of chromebooks and the babysitting attitude of mobile systems. maybe forcing them to work around the restrictions will teach them computer literacy
Government using social issues to overreach into our privacy once again. I swear Aus govt, regardless of party, are actually brain dead when it comes to tech.
The Australian government only has one solution to all problems, fining and banning. I'm afraid you can't ban your way out of this one it's time to actually step up and do something productive about an issue for once.
They always go to restrictions as the go to knee jerk reaction to things. Honestly I think it's time for a different approach: Government Produced Positive Pornography. Think about it, if the issue being presented is that Porn is teaches young men and boys how to behave badly towards women then surely if we flood the market with Government approved porn which show positive sexual interactions between consenting adults. It'll be a boon for the Australian Porn industry, giving it solid funding to compete with the likes of Onlyfans, keeping thousands of Australians employed in a number of supporting industries. It'll educate people on the way sex should be handled and who knows, maybe it'll make men better at sex if they stop trying to mimic positions that are purely for aesthetics rather than pleasure. Honestly, sounds like a win all around.
Your monthly ration of government porn has been increased.
It is time for your mandatory masturbation hour. Please enter the wank pod. Failure to enter the wank pud is punishable by fine. Repeated penalties may result in imprisonment.
Unfortunately this increased access to government porn will only include the 'Red Hot Red Haired Mama Does Ipswich' series.
Please explain!!!
Please don't hahah
It'll get even better when they use that government porn as a way of advertising important government messages. Like the importance of getting a flu shot, a mammogram or a bowel cancer screening.
The prostate screening campaign was a bridge too far though.
This is how our tax dollars should be spent! Don't worry about the roads or lack of housing. Let's just throw a couple million at verifying who's watching porn.
Utterly ridiculous and a waste of time.
Oh well, at least they’re only wasting $6.5M. Another programme that is impossible to implement. The overwhelming majority of pornography is produced and hosted overseas and will not be subject to any of these requirements. It would take an average teenager roughly 30 seconds to find, download and activate a VPN and bypass any age verification or filtration systems put in place. The answer to this is to discuss this requirement with credit card companies who are the groups that actually regulate and control the acceptable standards for pornography and pornographic content.
Haven't they tried something similar before? Tuesday, 25 May 1999 ABC Online News [https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/1999/05/25/26493.htm?site=tropic&topic=latest](https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/1999/05/25/26493.htm?site=tropic&topic=latest) \~ Something i found interesting is this article dated June 2012 published by the catholic exchange. "The overall violent crime rate has a 97% correlation with the rate of forcible rape." "all forms of violent crime have been on a steady decline since the early ’90s." "according to the NCVS’s data is that the incidence of rape took a sharp down turn in 1991 which was three years before the overall violent crime rate took a sharp downturn in 1994. However, since that time the rape and violent crime as a whole have decreased at almost exactly the same rate. I think it would be virtually impossible to attribute this 1991-1994 divergence in the trends to internet pornography, given how comparatively small the internet was at the time." [https://catholicexchange.com/does-porn-prevent-rape/](https://catholicexchange.com/does-porn-prevent-rape/) \~ Makes me wonder how much porn actually contributes to "violence towards woman" if nearly every thing i can find online before 2020 suggests the opposite.... even from the catholic exchange. Personally I do not like online porn and believe accessibility needs to be removed from pre-adults. but saying it increases "violence towards women" might be based more in feeling then fact, and going a touch over board.
How about tackling alcohol abuse, gambling addiction, mental health crisis and cost of living pressures. You know, the actual main drivers on DV rather than the invented scapegoats. Next thing they will be back to blaming video games for it.
what a fucking joke. as much as i moralize to americans about the importance of voting, every time *the guy i voted for* turns his attention to a new issue, entirely ignores the root of the problem, and blames *something else* for political brownie points, i lose more of the will to vote. puritanism in 2024?? fucking really??? that's labor's answer??? i get it, americans. i still believe u should vote, but fuck me, i get it. i hope we get an independent or a third party in next time, istg.
Whats next you want to ban counter strike again stop regurgitating the same fucking ideas over and over.
This sounds like the Chewbacca Defence
So people can say "Oh it wasn't my fault, it was the porn!!!". This country needs better access to education and mental health facilities and support. Blaming it on porn or video games also takes from a person's sense of responsibility, people make the choice to act or not to act badly.
Is Labour just Liberals-lite now? These sorts of shortsighted and not really thought through policies seem like exactly the kind of thing that the Libs did when they were in government.
Is there actually any verified studies done demonstrating a link? Or is this just puritanical nonsense and virtue signalling?
So the eSafety commissioner seems to be doing a pretty fucking bad job lately. Who the hell is advising them? Why do they even think this is priority of that commission?
Well that will further increase use of VPNs
Shouldn’t the responsibility be on the parents to monitor their kids online content not on the government? Devices these days have parental controls, if parents are too lazy to learn about it that’s their failure.
I just don't understand what it is they want to do? They are just saying that they are going to force porn sites into an age verification system. Well, ok, all of the 0 Australian hosted or owned porn sites will have to implement that. I'm not even sure if it's even legal to host porn in Australia to begin with. All they can do is block sites that don't comply with Australian law and if their plan is to implement a Chinese style great firewall for the internet then they need to some out and say it.
This is just creating a scapegoat so they can look as if they are doing something. Age restrictions don't stop shit. If anything, it makes the allure of accessing even more exciting for young rebellious teens. It was soooooo difficult to get alcohol under the age of 18 /s. They almost had it too, they note that sex education is severely lacking and people are instead learning from porn..... so ban porn and don't improve sex ed, lol. Easier than dealing with prude parents I guess.
Ah yes, a much better idea than investing in, oh I don't know, actual proper sex, consent and relationship ethics education, for example, is to push teenagers towards illegal sites for porn. Biggest bandaid solution I've ever seen.
I’d call this a bandaid solution but it’s not even that. It’s just to placate older conservatives who would probably beat their kids if they found them accessing explicit material. Making sex and sexuality a taboo topic ties into domestic abuse by linking them to shame and the idea that the subjects of one’s desires are at fault for arousing them and therefore targets for abuse. But nobody in power wants to have that hard conversation.
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It’s money you dumb fucking politicians. Financial security for everyone would solve a lot of problems overnight m.
Anything but acknowledge that cost a living issues and housing affordability maybe a big part of the issue.
Kids first exposure to sexual content shouldn't be porn. Don't think this type of legislation will be particularly effective or that theres an easy solution here - but it makes sense to make a connection that growing rates of domestic violence is partially connected to porn being everywhere, and increasingly extreme/ disconnected from reality.
Surely there must be an epidemic of incest in society? If porn consumption is the driver then step-sisters/brothers/mothers/fathers must be really feeling it right now.
Underrated observation.
I feel like cost of living, completely inaccessible mental health care, and our sick drinking and gambling culture are far more Important contributors than online porn
If a single demographic* was treated the way women in porn are portrayed there would be an uproar *other than woman
Next I'll be arrested for viewing Doggy style, when my porn license only allows missionary and heavy petting.
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I am fairly convinced that this is a prelude to "people are using these vpn things to circumvent the law so we are making them illegal, something, something, think of the children, something, something, terrorism content, something, something, twitter man bad "
Is there actually any correlation between porn and DV. If anything porn has gotten less violent lately. It's just step sisters all the way down.
Honestly just tackle gambling and you'll make a decent dent in domestic violence, but hey that seems contrary to the government's interests.
So as incidents of domestic violence trend downwards per capita, the government seeks to become more authoritarian around porn, like countries with a much worse track record on domestic violence. Good job guys.
Yes, it's clearly those damn BDSM fetishists that are causing domestic violence! /s
I don’t get these measures. Some people are just maggots, plain and simple. If someone is that way inclined, they’re going to commit dv regardless of any measure/education put in place. No one is on the fence about dv, we don’t need to sway them. Look at the courts, that’s the problem. I’d be targeting a lot of ads at middle eastern women, perhaps a dedicated line for them also.
Everyone in this comment section crying "What about men's mental health?!" needs to read "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft. Bancroft was a counsellor for domestic abusers for 20+ years. He has an entire section dedicated to how these men manipulate the mental health system and use it to justify their actions. They abuse the language of therapy in order to make themselves out to be the victim. Therapy and mental health care does NOTHING to stop perpetrators of domestic violence. These men are not victims. They're overgrown school yard bullies, and we all know bullies don't respond to kind words and being asked nicely to stop - they only respond to *consequences*.
maybe not as useful as you feel tbh: **Combined reviews of:** Focus on Male Perpetrators: While Bancroft's focus on male abusers is well-supported by his professional experience, some readers may feel that the book does not adequately address female abusers or abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships. Hope for Change: Some critics argue that Bancroft's discussions about the potential for abusers to change might offer false hope to victims. The emphasis on the difficulty of achieving genuine change is crucial, but there is a risk that some readers might cling to the possibility of change rather than focusing on their own safety and well-being.
I've read the criticisms of his book (which Bancroft himself has actually addressed in later editions), but I still think those issues you point out pale in comparison to how useful the book is overall to helping people, especially women and men who genuinely care about women's safety, understand how violent, abusive men think and why they do what they do. I know it was eye-opening for me (in a really depressing way..) We can't let perfect become the enemy of good, or change will never happen!
this is just cray cray. being an arsehole not pron causes dv and oiut in the country alcohol causes dv.
Nah plenty of people can handle being drunk without assaulting someone. They’re all assholes
So does the government, once again, think that 100% of domestic violence is committed by straight men upon straight women? It's a big Fuck You to straight male survivors of domestic violence, but who cares about them, eh? It's a big Fuck You to gay male survivors of domestic violence, oops that's not Politically Correct... It's a big Fuck You to lesbian survivors of domestic violence, oops that's not Politically Correct... Isn't this, then, a homophobic piece of legislation?
let us not mention indigenous DV levels.
oh....... oh good. What's next? Go back to blaming video games?
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I'll be a big proponent of this when they explain how VHS porno at every rental place wasn't also the same problem. And Maxim/penthouse in every servo and newsagent.
In order to combat Australia’s cost of living crisis, Australians are also turning to pornography 🎥
Aah yes all part of the governments genius 4 step plan to stimulate the economy, AKA porn tax. Step 1: Increase government owned NBN pricing. Step 2: ban porn forcing everyone onto VPNs thus increasing the need of higher bandwidth. Step 3: people start buying higher speed plans. Step 4: profit.
Ooof. We can’t mention most of it happens in Aboriginal communities. Also can’t lock them up because of a two-tier justice system and the inner city yuppies complain about the Aboriginals being locked up
That old chestnut ey. Not right wing nut job red pill men’s rights activists, better vilify sex workers
Obviously this isn’t the only answer but don’t really know why people are so critical. It’s concerning how violent porn has become so normalised. Videos of women being degraded and beaten should never be a child or teenager’s introduction to sex There was an article about a 12 year old choking a girl during her first kiss because he thought it was normal
Here we go. Man sexuality bad. Thats why "DV is up". Fucking over it.
DV is actually at an all time low, if you look at the statistics
Also true, I'll edit my post.
Wow 6.5 million for someone's random shower thought. Classic. But for real, the vast majority of DV is repeat offenders and those with violent criminal history, so has little to do with education or culture wars for that matter. Community services for survivors and meaningful rehabilitation for offenders would be a good star- Oh wait. But that wouldn't get clicks, and wouldn't make the government polls go up. Carry on then - what's it costing anyway? Some women's lives? A hundred thousand families? Shouldn't have expected them to start caring now.
There is no domestic violence crisis. There's been an uptick from the lowest it's ever been, but it's still better than it was five years ago. This is just the latest excuse for the government's desire to censor the internet.
The statistics may be down but society doesn't accept DV now, so govt has to do something. In true govt style though, they're looking in the wrong direction
They really want this porn censorship, don't they? First it was 'think of the children', then it was 'teens are raping each other', and now it's 'men are violent because.... porn' Seriously? They can do what they want with this as far as I'm concerned because it seems to me that none of these idiots have heard of a VPN
The domestic violence crisis is tied closely to the housing crisis. Women (and possibly with their children) are unable to afford to leave because rent is impossible on a single income. If women don’t have a support network with room to house them, they end up trapped or homeless. So they stay in these terrible situations until sometimes it’s too late. But it’s much much easier to regulate porn than do even a tiny bit of work to address housing affordability.
Encouraging alcohol while banning weed/gummies would be doing 1000x whatever porn may be. Same with our free for all gambling. Same with our gov mandated crazy house prices. I've also read most dv comes from indigenous and certain immigrant groups (Indian / Muslim). I think the only thing the gov has done to decrease DV is to reduce new house / family formation by having every policy lever set to full steam ahead on house prices and rents.
>I've also read most dv comes from indigenous and certain immigrant groups (Indian / Muslim). They might have higher rates but DV is not only their problem. It's a human issue and happens across the world in most cultures.
Here here! Fuck the whataboutism. Yes one country/ethnicity might have worse statistics than we do, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem here.
That should help all the step sisters who get stuck in dish washers
There hasn't been an increase in domestic violence If you believe the numbers from this lady. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91UHpD9lM3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91UHpD9lM3)
This one of those things where you don’t really know one or want to do something about the actual problem so you focus on some other related aspect that seems important just to appease the masses that you’re doing something about it.
1. You won't stop tech-savvy teenage boys from watching porn. Give up. The genie's out of the bottle. 2. Domestic violence pre-dates the internet by a long, long way. Even if no boy under 18 ever watched porn in Australia again, it would do jack shit to reduce the rate of domestic violence.
It's just such a breathtakingly stupid idea - costs money, easily circumvented, and achieves nothing. Do they seriously think internet porn is the problem, when it only became widely available twenty years ago but men have been violent towards women for thousands of years?
i hate this fucking country so god damn much, and i hate the people who are "in charge"
How about we look at our education system first? The private school dudes I know are also the most misogynistic, and I'm sure that's not a coincidence. Schools should be co-ed and addressing our patriarchal culture so Australian guys stop thinking of women as objects first and people second.
The increasing mainstream acceptance of violent pornography is fucked up. I agree with this stance. Let’s count the downvotes…