Wikiporn? Masturbation images on Wikipedia ‘crosses the line’
September 9, 2008 – 6:51 pm
Bernadette Mcmenamin
Wikipedia has come under fire from some users and child protection advocates because its pages about masturbation and ejaculation also contain ‘graphic’ images and footage (see here and here).
Child Wise CEO Bernadette Mcmenamin told News Ltd that while she supports sex education, displaying sexualised images in a freely available online encyclopaedia ‘crosses the line’.
‘Do we really need to see a woman masturbating on Wikipedia? Do we really need to see so many seconds of ejaculation?’
When an encyclopaedia topic is about masturbation, they certainly aren’t unnecessary.
A patented device designed to prevent masturbation by inflicting electric shocks upon the perpetrator, by ringing an alarm bell, and through spikes at the inner edge of the tube into which the penis is inserted.
As touchy or shameful as the subject of sex might be for some people, no act of censorship is more despicable than the censorship of information directly related to our bodies and health.
Wikipedia doesn’t exist to cater to individual morals or ‘lines’, it’s for sharing knowledge. If the images and videos relate to the topic than they should remain, otherwise they can be removed just as unnecessary text is. They shouldn’t be removed just because a child might see them.
Australian Womens Forum ran into trouble just for trying to publish unedited images of the vagina in an article about cosmetic surgery. Despite it being a serious piece on women’s health, the OFLC said the photographs contained genital emphasis (well duuurh) and as such should be classified Category 1 Restricted (QLD stores unable to sell). The last thing we need is for the net to follow the same route (which it is under Senator Conroy’s plan).
Mcmenamin also said:
‘Does that mean that when you type in ‘murder’, you should actually see someone murdering someone else?’
I hate to be the one to break it to her, but images of real murder do exist on Wikipedia, just as they do in your local public library.
Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem: February 1, 1968. Photographer Eddie Adams.
Would Bernadette prefer this banned?
13 Responses to “Wikiporn? Masturbation images on Wikipedia ‘crosses the line’”
With sexual stuff on wiki, there seems to be a mix of actual photographs and illustrations. I prefer the illustrations as if they came out of text book, though the one on wiki that illustrates Bukkake is weird looking, as are a few others. Judgement call of the poster. A lot of text books have similar images. Though it seems that the “woman masturbating” pic on wiki is obviously taken from a commercial men’s magazine shoot.
If shots of genital equals porn, I wonder if the image on this page; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon is child porn then? Should the poster go to gaol? Should Bernadette Mcmenamin stop typing up “dirty words” in wiki’s search engine?
By Matthew on Sep 10, 2008
Guess you’d need to ask a lawyer. Australian law seems pretty clear on the issue, but who knows.
Which does raise the question of drawn images to show these acts that Bernadette was so offended by. With today’s standards, a good text book example could easily be a realistic computer generated image. In an educational context like Wiki or text books, I’d personally rather see the real thing.
By Mike on Sep 10, 2008
That’s what I call open mindedness!!!
I write this for those who are against informatiion like this.
“You should be ashamed of ur self!!! about 99 percent of people in a society jerk off and the rest are liars.(the remaining percentage includes professional masturbators who don’t have a courage to admit to their actions) and people like these are the ones we owe our society’s malfunctions to.
I’m so sorry to learn, we still have punkheads like these!! They remind of the famous “Puritans”!!!
By James on Dec 17, 2008
I blame the puritanical and hypocritical God-bothering McMansion-types for all this knee-jerk insanity.
If this lot were truly interested in the welfare of children they’d do their own damn monitoring of their children’s internet usage. More than that they’d cease consuming the planet with their unsustainable lifestyles, which is greatly contributing to a bleak future for their’s and everyone’s children, and they’d stop buying little Billie his new sneakers courtesy of child-labour.
By Grant on Dec 30, 2008
Eh whats with this country. I come from NZ but spent 3 years in EU. I came to Aus becasue becasue of the jobs and I thought it was a progressive country. Well WTF ???
This country has censorship up the arse !!!
NZ has no censorship compared to Aus. In NZ adults are allowed to make there own informed descion. I seems that Aus has slowly been taken over by cristian zelots in state and federal
By Cam on Dec 30, 2008
i agree on the images being way way too much, in fact the words are enough to give you a picture.
There are a few pictures that aren’t all that bad, but the real-life photos are a bit much.
yea it’s bad, but just remove the images or something, not the whole topic.
By Notnohow on May 29, 2009
I agree with you Matthew about the illustrations are in my opinion better; @Grant, it’s funny how they don’t bother looking and controlling what their own children look up.
By Notnohow on May 29, 2009
I totally agree with you – I keep condemning Wikipedia for their lack of interest in policing the content properly. Our children are using this cheap resource to document their school papers, and I don’t know how can we tolerate such public content in an authority site. Think of Squidoo (on the same topic see http://www.squidoo.com/stamp-test) where they ask writers to qualify the content prior to publishing. So it can be done….
By Veronica on Jul 14, 2009
That is forbidden in Indonesia, I’m agree with u thats really cross the line…
By Ian Hafild on Feb 12, 2010
Rather interesting.
By Tyciol on Mar 6, 2010
Errr, Notnohow, Veronica, Ian, you do realize the article was not for taking the images down, right?
By Cooper on Apr 8, 2010