You are probably aware of the swirling debate surrounding the controversial plan to ‘filter the internet,’ figureheaded by the now infamous Senator Stephen Conroy. Much of the debate has centred around a single apparent dichotomy: ‘the right to free speech’ vs ‘the right to masturbate over photos of children being raped’ (Thanks to Andrew Bolt for that particularly pithy summation of the argument on Q&A, Thursday 26th March).

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Australia, unlike America (the de facto standard of law in the public consciousness), has no constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech, let's take this idea and think about it for a second.

Following the work of John Stuart Mill, the philosophical father of much of modern thought on liberty, we now understand the right to freedom of speech to be made up of two different rights, each with two parts: The right to hear (both to seek information and to receive that information) and the right to be heard (both to express ourselves and to distribute our expression to people who wish to receive it).

In most of the ‘censorship’ debates, the ‘libertarian’ view (namely that against the proposed filtering system) is that everyone should be able to exercise their right to free speech (as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for which Australia voted in favour). Conversely, the ‘authoritarian’ view is that nobody should have the right to publish or distribute material that harms those who are unable to help themselves, namely pro-rape material, child pornography, etc.

Notice the subtle difference? The libertarian argument is about the right to hear, whereas the authoritarian argument is about the right to be heard.

And the clincher? They're both right.

You see, in almost any discussion of the right to liberty (indeed, even in Mill's own work, and also in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the issue of ‘the harm principle’ comes up. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights probably puts it best:

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

In other words, every basic right guaranteed to a person may be curtailed by law in order to stop harm from coming to another person.

This is the reason why we don't have the right to publish certain kinds of material in Australia, particularly child, rape and snuff pornography. In this country, the right to be heard has already been limited, in accordance with the harm principle, so that publishing child pornography carries a maximum sentence of up to 5 years imprisonment in NSW. The reason behind this restriction is that the production of this material is inherently illegal, and so distribution of the proceeds is similarly illegal, much like purchasing or selling obviously stolen goods.

All with me so far? Basically – making child porn is wrong, distributing child porn is wrong, and they're both wrong because the material is demonstrably criminally harmful to another person.

Here's where it gets tricky.

You see, the two filtering strategies proposed by the Government don't cover just material which is demonstrably harmful to others. The first, deep packet inspection of all Australian internet traffic, has unacceptably high rates of error, both false positives and false negatives, and so covers a fuzzy ball of content, centred at ‘child pornography,’ but stretching out beyond its desired boundaries.

The second strategy is mildly more confusing. The basic idea is that a constantly evolving list of content would be blocked. Unfortunately, there are references to three separate lists of content: namely ‘the ACMA blacklist,’ ‘Refused Classification content’ and ‘illegal Refused Classification content.’ Of these three, only the third, ‘illegal Refused Classification content,’ is an existing standard for material that is demonstrably harmful under Australian Law.

‘Refused Classification content,’ a superset of ‘illegal Refused Classification content,’ is a designation used by the Office of Film and Literature Classification, a government organisation, responsible to the Attorney-General's Office, that has made decisions about the classification of literature in Australia since 1970. The members of its Classification and Review Boards are public, as are its decisions and the reasons for its decisions. Occasionally it will designate an item RC for illegal reasons – and then possession of that material will become illegal, as will its distribution. Until that point, ownership of material is legal, even if its sale or hire is not.

The first list, however, ‘the ACMA blacklist,’ is (as Senator Conroy likes to point out) a nine-year-old list of websites created by the Howard government that is designed to contain websites that either are or would be refused classification were they to go to the OFLC. The process is secret, and does not involve the OFLC at all. Indeed, the OFLC does not classify websites, but is restricted to film, printed material and video games.

But what does all this waffling on about lists and classification actually mean? Well, here's my point. Both the rights to hear and be heard are already restricted in Australia. Every person is fully aware of this fact, and it can be seen every time we don't have sex with children and sell videos of it in an adult store, or fail to purchase magazines filled with photos of a beautiful woman being raped and killed.

There are things that we know to be wrong. They are easily demonstrably harmful, and there is a system in place to tell us that they are such. We don't consume them because we know that to produce them hurts people who may not be able to help themselves, and we give up a little of our right to hear to give them back their right to be heard.

But we do it willingly. We know what's going on. We have the right to choose to give up our rights: as long as we understand what's going on.

So, everybody out there who's arguing back and forward over this issue, please: stop arguing two separate points! Stop arguing that authoritarians want to stop us from hearing the truth, or that libertarians want to fill the internet with images of vile crimes, and realise that you're both right! Everybody wants to be connected, and nobody in this debate wants to further the production or distribution of illegal material.

Let's stop arguing and find the people who are hurting, the people who have had their right to be heard taken away.

Surely that's what this debate is all about.

Well, it's that time of year again. It's Valentine's day soon – and yet again, I'm single!

So, I'm asking you to be my valentine!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is:

Present me with an application. It's as simple as that. Bonus points for cuteness factor or the ability to make me cry in a good way. And don't laugh, it's happened before!

The best (and there may be more than one category in which an application can be considered 'best' ) will gain the right to call me their valentine for the duration of Valentine's day. And possibly a coffee or 'date' or something similar, location permitting!

Now, a bit of the fine print:

• Your application can be in any form – if I can sense it, you can present it.
• This competition is open to all people. Gay, straight, male, female, partnered, desperately seeking same, no matter where you are or what you do, I want to hear from you.
• The title of 'Valentine' is non-exclusive and comes with no commitment to do anything whatsoever. Although anything offered would be nice…I don't mind nudity, drug references, or anything else that would be considered 'Prohibited or Potential Prohibited' content by ACMA. Some of that stuff is actually encouraged, in fact! Just keep it tasteful. Or desirable.
• Your application shouldn't violate any of the laws of the state of Victoria, the country of Australia, or the place in which you live.
• That includes copyright.
• Applications should be submitted by 5pm AEST on the 13th of February. I do need some time to think about it!
• No correspondence will be entered into.
• Oh, alright, some correspondence will be entered into.
• Fine! All the correspondence you want will be entered into, and yes you can bribe your way to the top.

To submit an application, send it via email to beminevalentine@forsakendaemon.net.

If you need any more details (postal address, phone number, where I will be at a certain time on a certain day), send me an email, a Twitter DM, an SMS if you have my number, or a Facebook message and I'll let you know!

There's a poem that I've been writing for months and have never been able to finish.

The poem is entitled 'salmon skies,' referring to those moments at sunrise and sunset when the sky is salmon pink, caught between day and night. The metaphor is for those moments in my life when I have been neither up nor down, but caught in the middle - able to think and reason rationally without buzzing away and losing focus or having to force myself to make it in the first place.

For the first time in a long time, I seem to have found focus.

Salmon skies have always been my favourite part of day. Whether it's sunrise or sunset, I find myself drawn to the impermanent beauty of those precious few minutes.

Suddenly I feel like I'm living in a sunset. It's not too hot, it's not too cold, the sky is a beautiful colour that never remains quite the same, but is caught on the edge of change for hours and hours and days and days, and I just want to cry with how wonderful it is.

And then I realise that there's nothing stopping me. And, just for a moment, I let myself revel.

But there are things to do, and people to see, and a life to live in a way I didn't realise I wanted to be possible, and I go on living.

And it's fucking fantastic.

Various people have been complaining that I haven't blogged in a long time, which is true. But, to be perfectly honest, I haven't had the time, motivation or content to really blog properly, so I thought I'd save you the effort of reading something malformed and pointless.

One of the major topics that's been occupying my mind recently is the idea of Pride. Not pride with a lowercase 'p' so much, more the politically charged concept that seems to be so important to so many people.

The question, really, is simple: do I have Pride?

Not pride, lowercase 'p', that apparently pedestrian state of being in which I am satisfied and comfortable with who I am and what I have achieved, but Pride, capital 'P', a vibrant, exciting, all-encompassing feeling of self-righteous joy and wonder at the awesomeness of myself.

Well, the answer is simple. Do I have that kind of Pride? Well, if you define it like that, then no, I don't. I don't feel like anything about myself is particularly awesome (although I don't dislike it), particularly not my sexuality (which is where this definition of Pride seems to be applied most often).

That said, I'm not ready to disavow the term quite yet. While I may not feel the sense of "wonder and awesomeness" that I seem to see among some others professing the term, there is something that I have that connects me to these people.

Yes, we share something about who we date, who we love, and who we fuck, but that's not it. Yes, we share a decent-sized chunk of the world who think that we are evil or disgusting, but that's not it either. Yes, we've all had people turn their noses up at us or abuse us or call us names because of the precise nature of our expressions of love, but that's not it.

I think the thing I share most with these people is community. The thing that brought us together was Who, What, When, Where and How we loved, but what keeps us together is something far more ephemeral, far less definable. Far less definite, if I'm truly honest.

What holds me to the community is the people. The wonderful, fantastic, fun, exciting, ultimately human people who are no better or worse than any other - if maybe a little more honest about it.

And in the end, I realise I do have Pride, that all-encompassing joy and self-righteous swelling of the heart. But it's not for me, it's not for my life or my sexuality.

It's for my community, whoever, wherever, however they may be.

It's rare that I'll make a blog entry recognising my Catholic heritage. And it's even more rare that I'll make a blog entry under the influence of anything other than caffeine. But, let's put that aside and see what comes out.

It's sad to me that people can't put aside whatever differences they have and just get on in life. That really upsets me. In the end, aren't we all just children (creations, ideas, facets) of $DEITY (the divine, God, Gaia)? Aren't we all just as wondrous and beautiful and fantastical as each other?

It worries me that there is so much hate in the world.

Wouldn't it be easier if we were just nice to each other for a change? Keeping in mind that one of the last people to say that apparently got nailed to a tree...

Peace out.

DAemon

I started reading a book the other day. Various people said that I should read it, and I'd been meaning to for quite some time. One of my friends said that he cried through to the end of the book. I reached the point that he mentioned, and the five little words that I'd been trying not to think leapt into my mind, unbidden and unwanted. Around and around they go, just five little words.

"Don't worry!" she said to me. "You're a smart guy, you're intelligent, you're careful. You'll never have to worry about that. It just won't happen to you." I sit in fear, because part of what she says is true. But the other part? Intelligence doesn't stop an accident from happening, it just reduces the chances. Delays the inevitable.

"Want to come to bed?" he says to me. And I do, and I want it, and I don't, and I see the possible future in his glinting green eyes, and I run. He's not a bad guy, there's nothing partiularly wrong ith him, I like him, I want him, I feel the need in me so badly that it hurts to run, but I do. I leave him lying there on the bed, and I go home, and I cry on my off-white pillow.

To disappoint my family, to be alone, to never be remembered, to hurt the people around me: these are the most terifying things for me. Never to have a family of my own, never to make it to be old, to be old and lonely and giving up, to be young and lonely and giving up, to know that I promised myself that I'd never live through that. That scares more than anything else. It doesn't help me much.

Die alone, die in your lover's arms, die by your own hand, die by the tiniest living thing imaginable, it doesn't matter. From dust you came, and to dust you shall return, whether by fire or by rot. They keep telling me that I shall die, and how I shall die, and that the seed of my own death is within me, prescribes how I shall leave this world. The last wall of my defences will crumble and fall, and the enemies outside the gates shall swarm through my city and destroy my people. WIth swords and fire and free love the enemies shall come, and I shall not stop them, for my walls and knights have returned to dust.

The name of the book is Holding The Man, by Timothy Conigrave.

This post is part fiction and part realism, for the true extent of my fear does not control me, but never leaves me.

For all those whose lives have been lost: May They Rest In Peace.

In Australia (and, indeed, anywhere else really) there is a peculiar beastie, hereafter called a 'radqueer.'

This particular subset of the queer community are distinguished by their beliefs that queers are continuously oppressed, and that only concerted effort on their part (and everybody else's part, but we'll get to that later) will get us through.

Let me state this for the record: I am not, nor have I ever been, a radqueer. I don't 'fight for my right to' [insert something here]. The closest I think I've ever come to chanting a slogan is 'I'm here, I'm queer, does that get me cheap beer?' during one particularly drunken night at a straight bar having a rainbow-themed night, and the only placard I've ever held was a blood-stained piece of white card proclaiming 'the dead are people too' during a Zombie Shuffle several years ago.

In case you don't get the picture – I don't do activism. Not that kind of activism, anyway, I don't think that it works very well, and I don't think that it's very smart. The things that I want out of life that I would conceivably have to protest for are coming to me, slowly but surely, by me asking for them, working for them, convincing people to work with me rather than fight me.

Relatively high on my list of priorities are things like adoption rights, legal partnership recognition, and decent anti-discrimination legislation. Relatively low on the list are things like the right to divorce the bastard once I can live comfortably off half his assets. Of the things that I find important, many of them are already well on their way in Australia, through legal reform and the action of a gradually more open-minded legislature.

Every time I bring up these desires, I am labelled a 'tool of the patriarchy,' and am told that by wanting these things, I am 'supporting the mechanism of a heteronormative machine seeking the subjugation of women and the oppression of the 'other.'' If I truly wish to 'subvert the dominant capitalism ideals of the hegemony,' I should give up such ideas, and instead 'oppose the normalised xenophobia that manifests as institutionalised homophobia and misogyny.'

I'm rapidly learning that this jumble of words and sentences means very little. Roughly translated?

"Come be a martyr with me. All the cool kids are doing it."

I'm running late, so I'll keep this brief for now. Today is a good day – I'm having breakfast with my mother, going to watch some children's theatre, and I'm catching up with Jonathan and Ryan today, 'cause Ryan's come to Melbourne for the weekend.

I've left the shawl and blanket that I was working on at work, so I'm moving back to a coat-thing that I started wuite a while ago for Rent that I never got finished. It'll be great once it's done, it's just a matter of finishing it. After that I should probably do the yoke on the Mark sweater, I'm just a little terrified that I'm going to get it wrong or something and have to frog it all.

Work yesterday was long but good: they're recognising that I'm overworked, and are trying to fix it! Also, we're moving email hosts this weekend, which means lots of fun times for me on Monday as I run around like a madman trying to fix everyone's POP settings.

Anyway, I'm heading off for breakfast, and I promise that a more thoughtful, incisive and interesting blog is just around the corner!

DAemon.

People may have noticed that the 'Artworks' section of this website now has a new category, called 'Patterns.'

In there, I'm planning on putting the knitting, crochet and general craft patterns that I create, modify, use and abuse. I also hope to put up some photos there once I get around to actually getting myself a camera!

For now, there's just an entry about my favourite slip stitch pattern liek ever, which you all should try. Come to think of it, so should I, 'cause I'm not certain that it works.

I'm thinking of doing some small projects in the near future. On my list are this baby sock pattern (purely for cutesy value), The Knitty Tychus hat, and the Cabled Coffee Cup Cosy that I found on Craftster via an acquaintance's Ravelry. I'm thinking that I could make a few of those, and either sell them or give them away. I'm wishing that I had easy access to elastic yarn, 'cause they would be wonderful as wristbands, I think. Of course, my taste in knitwear has never been brilliant, as those purple gloves will attest.

For now, I'm stuck at work, and very bored, but yet have too much to do.

It's not a good mix.

As part of my (admittedly fiendishly underpaid) work, I regularly have to redesign promotional materials for the office, including one-page advertising for inclusion in promotional packs, HTML emails, programs, flyers and brochures.

Regularly, I receive an email saying something along the lines of 'pls redo fancy email send me text i will edit THANKS,' signifying that several hours of perfectionist tweaking is about to ensue, followed by half an hour of trying to get the thing to print on a badly shared printer that the 'tech guru' of the office bought because the guy said it was good and gave him half price on toner cartridges for a year, even 'though it's a Solid Ink Phaser.

Then, the fun really starts. After being left on her desk for an hour and a half (just long enough for me to think that she likes it), the boss decides that she doesn't like the copy that I've written that actually makes sense, doesn't like the design that I've worked on for hours, and wants to know 'why couldn't you just make it look like the one we used to have but with the new photos and change the number to 40.'

Here is where my dilemma starts. I've been given someone else's design, someone else's work, someone else's text, and have been asked to 'make it look like that one.' Now, the company owns the design, so there's no legal issues there, and I don't even really mind doing it so there's not even really any ethical issues.

My issue is more one of professional pride - do I want to put my name to something that looks ugly? Do I want to spend my time recreating something that is essentially someone else's idea, and get paid for it?

In the end, it's a moot point. I will recreate the document, and make it look good, and tweak the things that I can't bear to see about it so that it's what they've asked for but still something that I'm not completely distraught about putting my name to. My job is to make the client happy more than to create wonderful designs, that's just the nature of the beast.

But I don't have to like it.