With how much I go to FA...

[wolfwings]

...I have to say this.

If you're going to leave that archive because they chose the road both of least administrative work for a free site, but more importantly the road of least censorship, please ask yourselves why you were even there in the first place in a place that allows art depicting drug-use, openly sexual art at all, violence, robbery, or any number of other equally-illegal crimes, some of which carry higher penalties than being convicted of being a pedophile.

The "slippery slope" may be as overused as "It's to protect the children!" to my ears, but it doesn't make the former quote any less valid a way to refute the latter quote. If you support censorship of artwork at any level, you are still supporting censorship of artwork. Any 'moral' arguments you make to the contrary are still arguments supporting censorship. And at the same time, you can already opt out of seeing adult artwork at all, and FA is adding support for much higher-granularity blocking of artwork you don't want to see. Don't like it? Guess what, like LJ, you aren't being forced to view everyone's journal entries. Don't argue for a ban when a simple 'Ignore' will function just as well.

And if the above makes you want off my friends list, lemme know. This is just about the only time I'll ever actually remove someone from my actual friends list instead of just my default view, is over issues like censorship, and by request to boot. My outlook is that it is not for myself, or anyone else, to judge another's choices of artwork to draw or share. The risk is entirely their own, and they can and will be judged properly in their own time. But not by me. I may choose not to associate with them, but I have no right to make outright judgements on them.

Comments

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like you, so any heat you may read off of this is unintentional. however I am all for the censorship of art. I used to be against it, but the cultural defaults aren't there any more in this age of post modernism, and relativism. But I believe that cetrtain acts should not be condoned or see the light of day. Criminal acts rarely are masturbatory foddeer, but the exisitence of cub art is not only masturbatory, but attempting to normalize that attraction. The worst thing ot happen to the supression of Child molewtation was the internet, where not only could images and files be sent along, but they could gather in groups sufficiently large, so that they could feel that they were"normal" because of all of their :friends' were. (insert famous Pauline Kael qquote about Nixon's voctoryy in 1968). Drug use analogies may apply, btu drug use also ruins lives.

The fact that these vocal fans of the cub art, and their hundreds of sock puppet accounts swung the voting on preyfar's pol on FA. Shows that the fandom is increasingly becoming ONLY a place for fetishist to gather. THus bringing the fandom down even lower. I think that people should be against the social acceptance of these acts, and that they should not be tollerated.

I have never been a free speech absolutist. and Free Speech without a moral spine just leads to useless noise.

Scott

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

Free Speech without a moral spine leads to useless noise... but Free Speech with a moral but without an ethical spine leads to memeological supremacy.

I don't agree with cub art. But.

I'll be damned if I'll let something that isn't against the law be treated as though it is.

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

..you mean like smoking?
and as to "memological Supremacy, Well so be it, because I do think there are ideas out there, like having sex with minors that do not deserve debate..

Scott

Sex + Minors = Bad!

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

To risk sounding like a broken record though, defining what is a minor would be a topic worth debate. Defining sex is something that would be unlikely to take long, beyond possibly defining levels of sexuality. So while the combination of the two deserves no debate, the components of the two may?

Re: Sex + Minors = Bad!

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

You think like a programmer, and this is rules lawyering and splitting hairs, but you are correct. but the legal definitions of age of majority have been set by the states. The definition fo sex, well you could take a medical dictionary approach or take a former president'ss definition? :-)

Scott

Re: Sex + Minors = Bad!

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Touche.

And it may very well be because I am a programmer quite often by trade if not by hobby.

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly like cigarette smoke, but I'm not about to ask smokers to stop smoking -- and I vote against ANY measure to increase cigarette taxes, or place limits on where people may smoke. As well, I offer smokers a safe haven, when I can, where they know that at least one person isn't about to preach to them to stop.

The problem with memeological supremacy is that it's the reason why Islam is so dangerous to Western culture -- it allows no room for debate, no room for other ideas, no room for other religions, no room for any question of the rites or rituals or trappings or the stamping of "WHORE" across every page of the passport of any woman who comes from a different culture who does something totally normal in her culture, but not in the culture within which she is travelling (such as sitting in the front seat of a car with a male driver, discussing business).

Thus, I reject any notion that memeological supremacy in any form is a good thing. (One bad apple spoils the whole barrel... and right now, we have more than a single example to reference. I merely chose Islam because the other examples I could cite are more incendiary.)

I do not debate that having sex with minors is a bad thing. (I'm a survivor of sexual abuse between the ages of 3 and 12, myself, and I know how much it fucked me up.) I must question, though, what your idea of a "minor" is. Does it mesh with mine? Does it mesh with the law? Does it mesh with, say, WolfWings's? And if it does mesh with the law, which jurisdiction?

Saying "the law is the most important guide in determining the age of majority" is a cop-out, as it has been shown time and time again that the law is made by self-serving politicians who have absolutely no connection with the real world. As well, it's been shown that in many jurisdictions, the age of majority is seriously... lacking. And in others, the age of majority is artificially high for no good reason.

Further, what about the other cultures where it's alright, where the social mechanics are in place such that kids who have sex young don't have to hide it, and don't have to go through many, many years of therapy in order to learn to deal with cultural normality?

There are certainly ideas that do not deserve debate... but there are many more that do, that are ignored by those too self-righteous to discern any kind of legitimate difference in the ideas that are brought up for debate.

Kyle

[likeshine.livejournal.com]

*applause*

Well stated.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

We know each other disagrees, but I have to applaud you for stating your stance so clearly and understandably. I'll have to mentally chew over the points you bring up that I hadn't fully considered for a'while, vis lowering the fandom as a whole, so please don't think I ignored this comment maliciously or otherwise. It's one that's warrenting much more thought.

Re: Well stated.

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

Oh by noemeans to I consider it being ingored. I often comment days after a post, because of how distracted/busy I might be. and interesting quote conincidentally I ran across a few hours later on an SF Weekly article about "Yaoi-con".

In the U.S., there have been a few legal cases regarding manga, but none yet specifically concerning yaoi. In 2000, a comic store owner in Houston, Texas, sold two sexual manga comics to an undercover police officer, and was promptly arrested on the charge of disseminating obscenity. The New York-based Comic Book Legal Defense Fund rushed in to help on behalf of the store owner, arguing in court that he had sold the comics to an adult, and that the books were properly shrink-wrapped and labeled to keep kids from getting into them. The Texas jury was not convinced. "The prosecution closed by saying, 'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we appeal to your common sense,'" recalls Charles Brownstein, the defense fund's executive director. "They said, 'Comics are for kids, they put this filth in this media that appeals to kids, and we can't allow them to get away with this.'" The jury delivered a guilty verdict within a few hours.

Brownstein says he's relieved that there haven't been any cases related to yaoi, but that it may just be a matter of time. The genre's characters are often high school boys, which in the U.S. makes the work subject to obscenity and child pornography laws. "It may be that prosecutors just aren't aware of it yet," he says.

The federal government got tangled up in the debate in 2003, when Congress passed the PROTECT Act ("PROTECT" stands for "Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today"). "It's a frustrating law, because half of the law makes good sense," Brownstein says. It increases prison sentences for child molesters and establishes a national coordinator for the Amber Alert system used to broadcast information about abducted children. But it also outlaws computer-generated images, drawings, and sculptures that show a minor in an obscene position or engaged in a sex act.

"I think the law goes too far when it criminalizes lines on paper," says Brownstein. "Child pornography is an indefensible, inexcusable crime that is evidence of the sexual exploitation of children. Anime, comics, and manga are ideas that exist nowhere except [in] the minds of the reader and the author." While it's natural for people to respond strongly to images they find disturbing, he says, "to a certain degree, it becomes a battle between the legitimate protection of minors and thought crime."

But some child advocates say the images themselves can be dangerous. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a tip line that receives almost 2,000 reports each week about online evidence of the sexual exploitation of minors, which includes reports about manga and anime.

"Any time you're depicting children engaged in deviant sexual acts — drawings or stories about those acts — that's a concern," says Adam Palmer, who directs the center's legal office. "Many times people make the same arguments about Internet stories or fantasy chats, but the sad reality is that some of those fantasy chats lead into the temptation to go after an actual victim, or they perpetuate an idea that it's OK to engage in those acts." In addition, Palmer says, the pictures can be used to groom potential victims. "It's trying to normalize something that is not normal, it's criminal," he says.

So what happens now if someone drops a dime on FA?

Scott