The UK’s obscenity law is a history of attempted prosecutions that have failed or been reversed. The latest such attempt has just been dismissed from court – it was the attempt to prosecute a man for putting online a story (titled ‘Girls (Scream) Aloud’) about the erotic kidnap, rape, torture, mutilation, and murder of the five members of ‘Girls Aloud’.
The coverage has been varied – the commonest line has been that the story is very offensive and very unpleasant, and the author ‘sick’, but that nevertheless – perhaps, and this is the question posed – does even a sick man have the right to publish obscene and terrible material? I had various thoughts reading this story, and so I felt that I should perhaps write a post about this kind of sexuality – what I’ll call hyper-sadism, the erotic fascination with, not just inflicting pain or exerting control, but with mutilation and murder. Read the rest of this entry »
