Me in my porno days

THIS is me. The porno version.

Some people tell me the porno is now – 64 years later – with clothes on.

I expect there’ll be a mob of well-meaning community members outside my home tomorrow, with a rope. And possibly the Townsville Bulletin will be in court charged with corrupting public morals. I am prepared to risk it.

Those people who want a piece of me should be aware also that this photo has travelled across the world by internet – as has the photo of my granddaughter. An extraordinarily beautiful photo, taken by her mother from directly above, of this beautiful babe lying on her back on a blanket, naked except for two pink socks.

I was very proud of it. I sent it to my friends. They said they liked it, too. I don’t think any of realised we were perverts.

I suppose I could have thought abut it more and covered the rude bits.

But then I did think about it and I thought: what are the rude bits!

It’s a baby, for heaven’s sake! They don’t have rude bits!

You will by now, no doubt, have cottoned on to where I’m coming from: the now-notorious photos, first in a gallery of paintings, and second in an art magazine, of young girls… children… with no clothes on.
When Kevin Rudd said he couldn’t stand them, child abuse campaigner Hetty Johnson from Bravehearts was reported as saying she’d never been prouder of Australia.

Oh dear.

I mean… how can two sentient human beings have such opposing views. I don’t mean Kevin and Hetty; I mean Hetty and me. or maybe one of us isn’t sentient.

Look, I know there are some very strange and sad people out there with some very weird ideas about photos of nude children, but that doesn’t mean we have to listen to them.

There are some paedophiles and perverts out there, too, and we don’t have to listen to them either!

There have always been sickos and there always will be, but that’s no reason to be covering up the private bits on Michelangelo’s David, or on Venus de Milo.

We’re supposed to use our judgement. Of course, what the Kevin Rudds and Hetty Johnsons want is for us to use their judgement, and that’s the most frightening part.

And don’t give me the argument about protecting children from perverts. We have laws that protect children from perverts. And if one of them finds the photo of me, aged six months, and says to himself: “Aha … position no. 35!” … well, I’ll look upon it as therapy. For him.

We are in danger of becoming hysterical and we should be alarmed; not by the mailing of photos over the internet, but by the kind of minds that can’t spot the difference between a tender joy in young things — much like puppies and lamb — and an unhealthy, even criminal, sexual interest.

That’s the kind of thinking that got witches hanged at Salem and Jews gassed at Auschwitz.

By the way, in case you were thinking that the distribution of nude photos of children (and babies) is a modern invention, you need to know that within weeks of this photo being taken – more than 64 years ago – it had already travelled around Europe and had been whipped out of the inside pocket of an overcoat and shown to complete strangers …

My mother had it taken and sent it to my father – the father who, at that point, had never met me – while he was fighting for exactly the kind of freedoms that Hetty Johnson and Kevin Rudd would seek to curtail.