Thread by @Panda_Chronicle

So @stellacreasy continues her campaign to stigmatise photography.

We already have laws against voyeurism and harassment, which all of us should support, and I do.

Has she ever tried being a male photographer? Routinely we are abused, threatened,

chased ... I've been casually catcalled as a pervert for taking a photo of an empty beer bottle, I took a photo of a dog burying its ball in the sand and was asked if it was "better than taking pictures of other people's kiddies" and am endlessly challenged, glared at, chastised.

This comes from police, security guards, shopkeepers, youths, parents, passers-by ...

Sovereign-self philistines like @stellacreasy and @JeffSmithetc feed this.

It's easy to see how a photo of a breastfeeding mother could be a powerful work of art.

Whether exploring the mother-child relationship, playing against a contrasting background to accent vulnerability or perhaps for comic effect ... As a real photographer said, today's is the first generation of children that will not be pictured in art. And so too today's women.

Why can we not simply illegalise non-consensual images for sexual purposes?

Instead, by targeting a *pictured situation* we a) feed the idea that photography is comprehensible from outside the viewfinder (no, Stella, you don't know

what I'm taking because tiny shifts put things outside the frame, out of focus renders things indecipherable, and focal length reduces either the frame or the size of elements within it) and b) feed the self-righteousness of aggressors by giving them a base in law.

"Chilling effect" doesn't begin to describe it. We already have to pray there aren't any skirts above the eyeline, now we have to hope there's no-one breastfeeding anywhere vaguely near us. It's not prosecution that's the concern, it's us being aggressively harassed in public.

Yes, the new law includes sexual intent. But by naming a pictured event it opens the route to *challenge and abuse* purely on the basis of that situation, not on the basis of proof of intent (that's only for Court, not the man in the street).

It takes time to compose. I was once harassed for a very long time by someone whose child cycled into my shot from miles away, of whose existence I was unaware when I lifted the camera to my eye. I witnessed another photographer being accused

of taking pictures of someone stood at right angles to him, a physical impossibility, as well as the fact there was a self-evidently interesting subject in front of him, a gosling, of which the complainant was aware as she was looking at it too.

But, @JeffSmithetc and @stellacreasy are members of the Eternally Blameless Labour Party, so they are inherently morally superior on all matters, and impervious to criticism or argument.

The only response they know is hectoring moralism.

Stigmatising art is philistinism. Which fits well with a Brexit party like @UKLabour.

Progressive? Tolerant? Intelligent?

Forget it.

No-one wants sexual exploitation. Labour hasn't a clue how to combat it other than by

stigmatising swathes of the population and banning legitimate activities.

It's all about divisionism, anger, hatred and blame with Labour.

#VoteLabourGetBrexit #VoteLabourGetIntolerance

@TPGallery @theRSAorg #photography #photographers #photographylovers #photographicart