Talking Dirty And Being Punished
I don’t often cover heavy topics here because it is a fairly buoyant place and I don’t want to bring the day down. But I just read that Scotland are proposing a new law which will change the face of adult communication.
October will see the inception of the new Sexual Offences Act, this will include a clause relating to “Indecent Communication”. It will make communication with someone sexually be it in writing or speech without the other person’s consent or “reasonable belief” that they did indeed consent to it illegal.
The act is broken down in to these main areas, written communication, verbal communication and gestured communication. I’m sure they would have had a pretty stiff case against me in my previous job because I quite often started raunchy conversations with my work colleagues without their consent and occasionally added the odd gesture.
You have to wonder how this may impact on office life and also the social networking side of things where sexual advances and approaches are common place, well they are for me. Lol
The root of the problem with legislation like this is that politicians can’t bear to see people think for themselves and certainly aren’t going to encourage the population to do so (lest we all wake up and throw them out of office).
Therefore their only response to a problem (or a perceived problem) is to pass a law. Here in Australia our government is trying to pass draconian Internet filtering laws, despite a majority of the public being opposed.
As someone who relies on “communicating” material that could be seen as indecent (just like you and Alex) I find this kind of legislation abhorrent. Most of the time it will be fine. But laws like this are open to misuse and abuse.
I would much rather be encouraging society to be responsible, caring, and reasonable, rather than prescriptive.
John.