Tag: blah blah

How Controversial Can I Be?

My writing is now being censored for being controversial. Generally, I live within the mainstream of society’s opinions although there are a number of areas where I could be swimming close to the bank. Many of these were explored in my novel, Blah Blah (http://www.gerrycryer.com/blah-blah/) but surely not so controversial that I should now be banned and censored?

Maybe the name of my female heroine, Scunt, was a little edgy, but that is easily defended. She is an inhabitant of Scunthorpe.

I also openly disagreed with the proposed new UK laws about brothels. At the moment prostitutes can legally work alone but if two or more work together then that is called a brothel. I am sure prostitutes would be safer if they worked as a collective with shared security. Also, then, authorities would find it easier to ensure that none of the women was underage or being trafficked.

Then I suggested that UK drug laws should change and reflect that drug addiction is a medical and social issue whereas now it is thought of as a crime. I have no direct experience but I would like the Government to consider a policy that prescribes drugs, not methadone, to the addicted. It is not so radical because this is exactly what the NHS does with prescribed painkillers. If other addicts were supplied directly by the NHS there would be two impacts.

First, we would have a chance to help many more addicts into treatment. Secondly, it would also mean that many of the crimes associated with funding an addiction would be eliminated.

It is very difficult to get data on the value link between drugs and crime. The National Crime Agency on their website (although not dated), say that drug trafficking to the UK costs an estimated £10.7 billion per year.

DrugWise, again undated say on their website that, examples of users needing £15,000 to £30,000 a year to fund drug habits have often been given. While they think it may be exaggerated they add, this has led some people to suggest that up to half of all acquisitive crime is drug-related and that the market value of goods stolen involved could be between £2-2.5 billion each year.

The UK Drug Policy Commission point out that at least 1 in 8 arrestees (equivalent to about 125,000 people in England and Wales) are estimated to be problem heroin and/or crack users, compared with about 1 in 100 of the general population.

Moving on I also agree with Scunt who says that we are far too illiberal in our attitudes and laws. I have no interest in sunbathing naked in the cold of the UK but if I wanted to then I see no reason to ban it. Taking your clothes off is not a privilege. I was quite cross when Stephen Gough, popularly known as the ‘Naked Rambler’, was arrested and then rearrested. In 2004, he walked the length of Great Britain naked but was arrested when he did it again in 2006. But quite cross was as far as I could go.

But I am moving off the point. These are all reasonable if not generally accepted opinions, I am not sure they could ever be thought of as controversial.

Maybe, now you can start to imagine my surprise when one of these daily gentle blogs was rejected by EzineArticles for being too controversial. If you wanted to read what I could possibly write that would upset a mainstream site, here is the link http://www.gerrycryer.com/2018/03/26/hard-but-fair/

If you don’t have time to go and look, it was a piece titled, Hard but Fair, talking about the Australia ball tampering debacle in South Africa, and how it unfolded. If you remember it the Australian cricket Captain Steve Smith owned up to the crime along with the two other participants, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft. I was talking about the impact on Australia when their national sport is demonised by its heroes.

Imagine my surprise when I received this email:

We are not able to accept articles that contain negative language in reference to any particular product, company, individual or group.

For example: “Australia are playing South Africa in a cricket test match and the Australian rookie, Cameron Bancroft was spotted by one of the many cameras tampering with the ball to roughen one side with some yellow tape. He knew he had been seen as he quickly stuffed the offending tape down his underpants!

Please focus on the general issue rather than parties involved.

I wrote back

Apart from the delay in publication that has removed the topicality of the piece, the request is ludicrous.

The article is about cheating in top-level sport. At the time it was a real issue. How can I avoid naming the individuals when they were all over the press?

They replied

Your article has been placed in problem status because we do not accept articles that contain controversial and/or negative language in reference to any particular product, company, individual or group.

Your articles should be where you share your own expertise about a given subject. Provide tips, techniques, commentary and/or other useful information to the reader. You do not need to name specific people or companies in your article to get your message across to your readers.

We would recommend focusing on general topics or issues, rather than parties involved.

I responded with even more incredulity and EzineArticles came back with

I’m sorry, but you will need to update your article in order to get it accepted. We are not a news source and typically do not accept press releases or controversial language. You do not need to name specific people in your article to get your message across to your readers.

Also,  some of the articles on our site had to be deleted due to the content. We need to adhere to guidelines from our advertisers, so we had to remove content in article categories such as News & Society: Politics and Pure Opinion.

And that is where we now stand.

I don’t know how I have done it but EzineArticles, at least, consider me as controversial. I am subversive, a revolutionary and probably a political dissident. If I lived in Stalin’s Russia I would already be on the way to a gulag.

My next step is to send them the link to this piece and see if they have any comment. I might also send them a photo of me typing. Possibly I might just have something in common with Stephen Gough, but you will never know. I have been banned😊.

The Seven Deadly Sins: #3 Lust

When I look at the reading statistics for these small pieces it is interesting that the first two in the series of the Seven Deadly Sins, are at the top and now that we are in the murky waters of sex and lust I know I have a chart winner. The pressure is on!!

It is also going to be the most difficult of the seven to write. Nothing raises the hackles of the moral battalions more than sex. Nothing sells as well as sex. Whatever our starting position sex and lust have a compelling fascination. The most natural act has become the focus of continuing discussion and debate. Whatever I write, someone will disagree.

Lust is the need to fulfil all unspiritual desires and not just sexual urges although this is the usual association. For example, we often say we lust after money, but I am not going to disappoint, and I will stay firmly with all things carnal.

I should set out my stall early. I come from the libertarian wing of society and I am not easily offended. I set out my opinions in the book Blah Blah:

‘In a really free society we all have the right to live our lives by whatever code we want. If I want to smoke grass and not cigarettes, that’s my choice. If I want to pay for sex with someone who wants to sell it – my choice. I think there are only a few basic rules of a functioning society. I think there are only two, as I see it. Never do anything that harms another person or that undermines the integrity of the State. Within that, you should be able to do whatever you like but harm is the key word.’

‘So,’ I started to frame a reply, ‘what happens if what I do offends you?’

‘Such as? Test the rules.’

‘Okay. I walk naked down the street,’ I said.

‘Offends but does no harm. It’s okay.’

’Rob a bank?’

‘Undermines the integrity of the State and usually harms an individual or two. Wrong.’

‘Don’t pay my taxes?’

‘Undermines the State.’

If I ever went to a confessional, which is very, very unlikely, I cannot imagine saying, ‘Forgive me Father because I have committed the sin of lust.’ Greed, envy, pride, or wrath are all possible but not lust. I see the problems and issues of all the other six sins, but in lust I see significant virtues. I can’t condemn it all.

With that out of the way and my bias clear, we can carry on.

Among the most important artworks at The Uffizi Gallery, Florence is the, Venus of Urbino, by Titian. This what a web site says of the work:

The best and most famous of Titian’s nudes, the Venus of Urbino is a masterwork of the form and one of the most alluring women in the history of art. Its frank and shameless eroticism was shocking for its time…… Many, including the writer Mark Twain, see the painting as an obscenity, a pornographic blot in Titian’s faultless career, whilst many others admire the mastery of flesh Titian achieves.

The nude is at the centre of high art and we admire the beauty of the painting as much as we recognise that our perception of beauty more often than not driven by lustful desires.

In those first few seconds and minutes when I first met Sasha, or for that matter Annie, my initial reactions were not love.

Thirty years ago, when I saw Annie standing at a first-floor window of a house in Lordship Lane I didn’t start dreaming about Christmas with our three children and a grandson.

I met Sasha first in a restaurant in Kiev and while it is romantic to think of love at first sight I didn’t immediately think this was the person I wanted to spend many decades of my life with. Our first conversations were not about building a home, the colour of the bedroom curtains, or blissfully happy days together pushing a trolley around a supermarket deciding what we were going to cook.

No, my first thoughts were simply; she is beautiful, I want to hold her, and I want to make love to her. Maybe I should be even more specific. My first thoughts were simply that I want to have sex with her.

It takes time for lust to add love and the more we knew about each other increasingly romantic thoughts became mixed with the initial lust and a loving relationship developed.

Sasha and I still have lustful thoughts which we share with each other (but not here). We find sharing our lust (as we do writing to each other every day) is important because shared, lustful fantasies are essential to a good and strong relationship. We don’t think of these as guilty pleasures but as an integral part of our multi-faceted love.

Furthermore, our lust is shared and not just mine. Sasha, is every bit into lust as I am. I have recently cooperated with a psychologist in Ukraine who specialises in women’s erotic fantasies. If you want to know more it is there for all to read on her web site www.AlexasFantasies.com and it is apparent that fantasies are not confined to men. Women share lustful, but different, thoughts to men.

Most men and women, have lustful thoughts most of the time. Indeed, the survey on the www.AlexasFantasies.com  web site says that 50% of women have erotic fantasies at least once a day. I have no data about how often men think about sex but the study, The Social Organisation of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, has identified similar statistics with men 54% of men thinking about sex at least once a day, very similar to my much smaller survey of women.

But this is not a carte blanche for everyone to live their lives with unbridled lust. Far from it. The biggest stories of 2017 were about the alleged sexual misconduct of, among many others, President Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and Kevin Spacey.

What differentiates most of us from those accused with sexual misconduct is that we have restraint. We can separate our behaviour from our lust. Not surprisingly the press has only reported the cases of the celebrities and powerful and not the middle managers or abusive husbands. The common factor in the cases is that the accused have power, of sorts, and need to demonstrate that power by controlling women, sexually.

As we report these terrible cases we should always condemn the abuse of power as much as the genetic frailty and sin of lust.  Lust is not always a sin. We must not confuse lust with misogyny, or abuse of power in the office or home, as the sin.

I have been talking about lust within a relationship. I have been talking about ‘consensual lust’. The real question is this. Are we going to condemn much of the great art because its theme or representation is lustful? Are we going to limit the full range of emotions in a loving relationship because we condemn lust as sin?

We can’t all be sinners and I am all in favour of ‘consensual lust’. I would go as far as saying it is at the centre of healthy, loving relationship.

I, for one, like to look at Titian and other famous nudes in the galleries. I don’t want great works of art condemned for provocative nakedness. A pretty woman will always turn my head. Just the thought of those days when Sasha walks around the house naked because she forgot to get dressed are provocative and stir base and lustful thoughts. I want Sasha to keep dressing to excite me. I love being able to tell her how beautiful she is when we go to dinner and how sexy she looks in a bikini on the beach. I don’t want to curtail my lust.

Lust is part of what has been encoded into my DNA but unlike the Weinsteins and Trumps, and those yet to be found out of sexual misconduct, and like most of the world I have managed my lust.

If we took lust out of our lives it would be a very grey world.

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