I can just imagine scantily clad busty bleach blonde women spilling into Reykjavík’s town centre. Tanned and waxed cheesy-looking guys, some muscular some flabby, chatting up the local girls in pubs and clubs. What I wouldn’t have given to see the SnowGathering, a pornography convention, stirring up some controversy.

But the SnowGathering will not be making its way to the streets of Reykjavík because Iceland is now walking a thin line between being a police state and allowing the freedom of expression.

Throughout the week the police have been searching the law books for any clause to prohibit the conference occurring. But the outcome was fruitless. The convention’s cancellation came from the Radisson Hotel which caved into protest and refused to allow the SnowGathering to be held there. The organizer, Cristina Ponga also suspects that other hotels would buckle and refuse SnowGathering attendees rooms.

I can’t even decide which is the bigger shock in this whole farce, the fact that pornography is illegal in Iceland or the fact that we are outlawing conventions that pose no threat to break laws or cause any violence? I had no clue porn was illegal! Though I do suppose the absence of the “dirty film section” in the Reykjavík rental stores does make sense to me now.

Speaking of sex on film, how is a movie like 9 Songs okay, shown in Iceland’s film festival in 2005, but not Buffy the Vampire Layer? Both films show real and graphic sex but at least films like The Da Vinci Load were funny as well as entertaining. Where 9 Songs was so bad it was as though someone had smeared fecal matter onto its filmstrips and then cheated millions out of hard earned cash.

Why, I am driven to ask, are strip clubs rife in Iceland but sex on screen forbidden? In a recent expose published in the last issue of IR, Sara Blask uncovered a sleazy stripping subculture, which inevitably raises the question how that is any better than porn? Stripping and pornography although different can be viewed from similar perspectives:

One view is that stripping is empowering, that the woman is in a position of control and most porn stars look at their job as exactly that – a job. But there are also issues of human rights seeing how both practices can be degrading towards women and are theorized to lead to higher rape risks and so forth.

Realistically though, where is the proof that supports the notion that pornography will enhance a risk of rape? When porn is violent then yes, certainly that is a great possibility but when it is not, then what?

I believe that most Icelanders listening to an offender using porn as an excuse to commit a heinous sexual attack would smack said criminal in jail without even a blink. Besides, people who watch porn need to be given a little credit. I watch porn and I am not a sex-crazed criminal. Using porn as a scapegoat for crime is like blaming video games for violence.   

It should be noted that my intention is not to be too controversial though I might come off that way. Icelanders talk about everything. We are raised to believe there is no shame in expressing opinions or even playing devil’s advocate.

On Thursday a colleague of mine at IR wrote in her Daily Life that in the case of SnowGathering, neo-liberalist acceptance should be shelved and that the visiting porn aficionados should be chucked out before they set up temporary camp in Iceland.

But surely that is a violation of human rights as well. It is censorship, plain and simple. If something is not illegal, there is no physical harm taking place, no plans to cause harm, not even instigation to cause harm or stir up hatred, then we are violating people’s rights to express themselves.
 
I do not mean to kick up a fuss and I will almost certainly be getting a suspicious lecture from my amma (“grandmother”), the next time I’m home. But surely some thought needs to be invoked to all the rational good-natured people who make good quality porn with plausible storylines using attractive casts.

I think this is taking things too far, and I am ashamed (of the cancellation, not the fact that I watch porn. Sorry, grandma).

NÁ - nannaa@hotmail.co.uk