This week has seen the latest instalments in the government’s renewed attacks on our freedoms. The Digital Economy Bill and the Communications Data Bill, or Snoopers’ Charter, are both set to make significant steps towards becoming law. Both represent significant dents in our civil liberties.
But these two bills are not the only ones that the government has passed that aim to restrict our freedoms. Earlier this year, they put the Psychoactive Substances Act in place, arbitrarily banning any substance that affects “mental functioning or emotional state”. The government’s own advisory council said the law was unworkable and would harm scientific progress and medical research. It is evidence of the continuation of the ideological, unwinnable and detrimental war on drugs that not only wastes time, money and resources but impacts the freedom of individuals.
“Extensive sex education in school would be much more beneficial”
The Digital Economy Bill is no different. In banning “non-conventional” sex acts from being viewed in the UK, it is restricting the freedom of individuals who are doing no harm to anyone. While some of the bill’s intentions are warranted – the desire to stop children viewing porn is broadly admirable (although extensive sex education in school would be much more beneficial), and the bill’s covering of sex acts which could be seen as non-consensual is also understandable – it covers an unjustifiable range of sex acts.
Among others, the bill is likely to effectively ban female ejaculation, sex acts involving menstruation or urination, face-sitting, fisting and more. Most of these seem at least slightly dated in their gender attitudes, given that the majority of porn is male-female. The government is perfectly happy for us all to watch an 18 year old get face-fucked, but God forbid someone with a vagina straddle someone’s face, while the banning of sex acts involving menstruation only serves to further stigmatise periods.
“Society […] should be more tolerant of consensual sex that does not harm anybody”
In other cases, the bill is targeted towards these “non-conventional” sexual preferences, which are already often seen as deviant, dirty and weird by a society that should be more tolerant of consensual sex that does not harm anybody. I’ve no desire to watch somebody urinate on someone else, but where is the harm in allowing someone to watch consenting adults do so?
Such bans may seem trivial, but they are part of a wider ideology that has its extension in the dystopian, draconian and totalitarian Snoopers’ Charter.
The Snoopers’ Charter will give organisations as diverse as the police and the Food Standards Agency the ability to view the Internet records of any individual over the past 12 months. It is an invasion of privacy that will only impact the innocent and the incompetent.
“The Tories are stripping us of our privacy”
Who is to say where this ideology will take us next? Undoubtedly the Human Rights Act will soon be on the chopping block, while the access of the average citizen to a lawyer, a house, free healthcare, quality education and more will be eroded in the name of neoliberalism, the free market and austerity.
So why does nobody seem to care? The Tories are stripping us of our privacy, our freedoms, our rights, and most of us are nowhere near as angry as we should be.
If today we are denied the ability to alter our emotional states, watch consensual sex acts and maintain a strong sense of privacy, who is to say what tomorrow will hold for our individual freedoms.
Today our search queries can be seen, tomorrow private police can arrest you for them. And if you want a lawyer to protect you, you better be able to cough up: same goes for the healthcare you’ll need after your time in prison. While the Tories’ policies are harmful to us all, they are especially so to the working-class and the vulnerable – the very people that need such rights the most.
Yes, when it comes to our freedoms, the Tories are well and truly fisting us – while they still can.
Jack Taylor
Featured image courtesy of ‘Andrew Parsons’ via Flickr.
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