Germans, please revolt against GEMA!

December 5th, 2011, 11:39 | 2 comments

You must be very hard to censor a video like this:

You can watch this video of a gay teen telling about his suicide attempts anywhere in the world. Except in Germany. Because “GEMA has not granted the respective music publishing rights” to the song in the background. Seriously, what kind of organisation is this?

What Germans see.

Youtube is probably the most revolutionizing aspect of the Internet in recent years. It gives everyone and teenage boys in particular a way to reach an audience of millions without contacting traditional media. Except in Germany.

What 1,734,032 viewers outside Germany see. Notice that these 1,734,032 viewers also get a “buy”-link to iTunes.

Sure, I can see that GEMA doesn’t like people using songs whose rights they (claim to) have. But things have gone totally out of proportions. Bureaucracy has put a lid on the most important aspect of the internet: Freedom of speech.

Dear fellow people in Germany – please revolt against GEMA! Don’t let GEMA censor free speech!

Also read: Why is German Youtube so bad?

Category: News & Politics
Tags: bullying, gay suicides, Youtube

Hold hands

July 26th, 2011, 1:31 | No comments

What happened in Norway has made me feel very uneasy. So I’ll give up my usual cynical approach to news and media, and instead just ask you, my many readers, to hold hands.

Do it here – click on the language flag in the upper right corner to have it in your language.

Hold hands for what?

The good thing is that it doesn’t say. There’s no manifest, no speculations on reasons for the violence or any such well-meaning yet pathetic crap. It just asks you to hold hands. And that’s what I want to do now.

Category: News & Politics, Personal
Tags: Norway

Intermale is history – an interview with its founder

February 10th, 2011, 18:02 | No comments

Intermale Gay Bookstore in Amsterdam. Photo by Karl Andersson.

Intermale Gay Bookstore in Amsterdam closed its doors at the end of January 2011, after 27 years in business. Intermale was a one of a kind gay bookstore with a wide selection of books and magazines. Not least, it was the biggest reseller of Destroyer. We asked the owner Eric Wulfert some questions about his store.

Why did you start Intermale?

“I was already involved in the book business and in 1984 my boyfriend and I decided to start Intermale as at that time there were no other gay bookstores in Amsterdam. It was an opportunity to do something meaningful and it also had commercial possibilities.”

Why did you move to the Netherlands?

“I moved from the USA in 1972 as Dutch society then was more accepting of gays. I was born in New York City and had also lived for a few years in Berkeley, California as a graduate student at the university there.”

Why did you decide to close down the shop?

“I decided to close Intermale because sales had been declining for some years and it became financially impossible to keep it open.”

What have the reactions been among your steady customers to the close-down?

“Many of our local customers were genuinely sorry that we had to close and we also received countless emails from mail order customers expressing their disappointment. Some of their reactions were quite personal and touching.”

Do you think many bookshops are struggling since Internet/Amazon? Is there anything one can do about it – except from closing down?

“Bookstores with a physical location are going to have a hard time competing with with giant e-sellers like Amazon. I’m afraid the old days of being able to casually browse in a real store are quickly disappearing, and this is true of retail outlets in general, not just bookstores.”

Was business ever prospering, and if so, when and why?

“Business was fine for a long time and at its peak in 1998 when Amsterdam hosted the Gay Games. Since then a combination of factors made business increasingly more difficult – the rise of internet selling, the decline of Amsterdam as a gay hotspot, and finally the recession.”

There is still one gay bookstore in Amsterdam, Vrolijk. Would you say you differ in some ways, and in that case how?

“Vrolijk started in the same year as Intermale and was in its early days as ‘alternative’ as we were. It has now metamorphosed into a sort of lifestyle gift shop which also happens to sell books, mirroring the shift in gay consciousness from liberation to marketing. Although I wish them success as the last venue in Amsterdam exclusively for gay books, they have always been hostile to intergenerational material (so much for liberation) and have never stocked Destroyer or the Dutch mag equivalent, Koinos.”

You sold Destroyer from the first issue. How did it sell? Any recollection of Destroyer customers?

“Destroyer always sold very well and we had to reorder it frequently. Because of the age group involved, some customers were embarrased about buying it in the same way as some gay men of my generation were embarrased about buying bodybuilding mags in the 1950s and 60s.”

Did you have any personal favourites in your selection?

“In my opinion the finest works dealing with ‘us’ in English are Isherwood’s A Single Man and Proulx’ Brokeback Mountain, which turns the American cowboy story genre on its head. As far as the intergenerational theme is concerned, I suppose my vote would go to Mann’s Death in Venice. In all three cases the books are much better than the films, and in the last example the boy Tadzio is clearly much younger in the book than he was depicted in Visconti’s film.”

And at last: what will you do now?

“The big existential question! I have no idea yet what the future will bring. I’m still a bit stressed out from the mechanics of closing the store so for the time being I’m going to have a long rest and then feel my way carefully into the future.”

Category: News & Politics
Tags: Amsterdam, gay bookshops, gay bookstores, gay literature, Intermale, Intermale Gay Bookstore, Netherlands

Swedish manga translator guilty of child porn crime because of cartoons

January 28th, 2011, 15:31 | 5 comments

Gaston Goor

Svea Hovrätt, a regional court in Sweden, today found manga translator Simon Lundström guilty of possession of child pornography, because of 51 drawn pictures (cartoons) that were considered child pornography. The court thus confirmed the verdict from July 2010 by local court Uppsala tingsrätt, but lowered the sentence a bit after scrutinising the drawn cartoons.

In a press release, Svea Hovrätt explains that “in four images, it cannot with absolute certainty be ruled that they depict children” and that “in eight images, it is uncertain if they are pornographic in the sense of the law”.

But they also write:

Regarding the remaining 39 images, the court finds that they are, from a legal perspective, to be regarded as pornographic images of children.

It should be remembered that there were no real children depicted in these images – all were cartoons. It was thus fantasy creatures that the court investigated. A bit surprised, they note that some of the “children” have “cat ears and tails”. Nevertheless, they come to this conclusion in the verdict, which I have read:

Even if some of the images do not appear real in all details, there is no doubt that they depict human beings.

Lundström is thus sentenced for child pornography of the lower degree, and has to pay a fine of 5,600 SEK (632 euro).

Lundström is Sweden’s most famous manga expert. He is teaching in this subject at the university and has translated over 80 manga, most of them published by Bonniers, Sweden’s biggest publishing house. One could expect that Bonniers would defend Lundström, since this verdict will most definitely affect their own business, but instead they chose to stop working with him, according to DN.

As a manga expert, Lundström possessed about three million pictures, that were investigated by the police. Of these three million, only 51 were considered child pornography (or 39 of them, according to Svea Hovrätt). One can also note, that out of these 51 pictures, 20 were duplicates from a backup disk.

Lundström says he is surprised at the verdict, and concludes that he must now stop working as an expert of manga in Sweden (from TT Spektra/SvD):

“I can work as a translator, but not as a manga expert, as I would need access to the erotic cartoons that exist in Japan. I’m not even allowed to visit manga artists’ homepages in Japan, since that is considered a crime”, he says.

Many are surprised that drawn cartoons, where no child has been involved in the creation process, can be deemed child pornography in Sweden. In its press release, the court explains the aim of the law:

The reason why the law has been extended to include drawn images is that such images are seen as humiliating to children at large, and not only to the child that might have been used as a model.

Personally, I’m very surprised too. I was convinced Svea Hovrätt would find Lundström not guilty – the court always has a choice to interpret the text in the law. Hopefully, Lundström will appeal and Högsta domstolen, the highest court in Sweden, and it will repeal the ruling.

I’ve chosen to illustrate this post with a painting by Gaston Goor (1902-1977), a French illustrator who worked closely with Roger Peyrefitte. This painting is now most definitely illegal to possess in Sweden. (Neither me nor my blog’s servers reside in Sweden.)

Wille at Prylfeber recommends Swedish manga fans to go through their mangas and cut out any picture that might be considered child porn in Sweden.

Also read my three posts in Swedish (but with illustrations that everyone will understand), about ways other than sexual that Ecpat and other defenders of the law think are goods way to humiliate children in drawings (murder for example):

I’m still convinced this interpretation of the law will not hold, or that the law will be changed. But until then, Sweden should be considered a no-go area not only for manga fans, but for artists in general.

(What’s this? I decided to start posting on the Destroyer blog again, starting with this double post from my personal blog, since it is relevant here too. Also, if you’re reading this in your reader, visit the blog too because I redid the design completely and it’s fantastic!)

Category: Art, News & Politics
Tags: child porn, child pornography, ero-manga, Gaston Goor, hentai, manga, manga translator, Simon Lundström, Sweden

Sir Kenneth Dover is dead

March 11th, 2010, 19:30 | No comments

The British scholar Sir Kenneth Dover died last Sunday (March 7, 2010), aged 89. He was the author of Greek Homosexuality, a groundbreaking work about same-sex sexual relations in the Classical period of Ancient Greece.

Destroyer wrote about Dover’s findings in issue 2 (“Heights of Civilization”), and criticized them, through Harald Patzer’s work Die griechische Knabenliebe, in issue 10 (“The Greek Myth”). In any case, his contributions to the understanding of Greek love among scholars are immense.

Obituaries:

Rest in peace, Kenneth.

(News found at this Swedish blog.)

Category: News & Politics
Tags: Greek homosexuality, greek love, Kenneth Dover

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Now shipping: The Destroyer book

"What this slender book does is chart the magazine’s history and backlash, presenting a calm rational response to the hysterical screams of paedophilia. It is, on the whole, quite convincing." -Gay Times, June 2011