Introducing LJ United

[insomnia]

Hi. My name's Mark. Some of you might know me from as LJ's first "All things Business" Manager in the early, freewheeling days of the site before it started becoming yet another dotcom.

Recently, I created

Comments

[athenemiranda]

It's always easy to make a popular argument to take away someone's rights. But it takes integrity to defend someone whose rights most people do not need or use, based on solid principles. And sometimes, it takes a small army to not get steamrollered in the process.

This is the odd thing about civil liberties; no one's ever going to challenge your right to cuddle kittens or dance about in the rain or whatever. The time you need to stand up for civil liberties is when you're talking about something that's discouraged, something most people don't want to know that anyone gets up to, but which is still within your rights. Civil liberties are distasteful subjects, and without them you've got nothing.

[tareacel]

Seconded.

I didn't start reading or writing slash until I was seventeen, but I was reading and writing *straight* porn by the age of 15. Voraciously. And, being female, at that time I was *statistically* more likely to go out and *get* raped (the ratio is 1 in 4 now, it was 1 in 3 when I was 15) than to go out and try to do it to someone else.

[insomnia]

As I mentioned to him, the popularity of slashfic, as a trend, seems to be quite influenced by Japanese fan culture... which includes fanmade literature, yuri, yaoi, etc.. . aimed at, and often created by, a younger audience.

In that sense, I don't really see much difference between someone who is young in the U.S. getting censored for expressing a kind of imported Japanese cultural standard that is still very new and misunderstood in this country, versus someone in China getting censored for expressing western ideas regarding democracy and free speech.

We're moving towards a kind of global blending of cultures and standards, and that's leading to a lot of kneejerk misunderstanding, rather than serious efforts to see where people are coming from. As such, we need to be inclusive when it comes to free speech, especially on global online communities, because we're dealing with the beliefs and standards of many different people, all of who reasonably believe that their rights should be respected.

[athenemiranda]

Not non-existent, sadly. But damn small.

The OP just killed the entry. Heh?

[macey_muse]

I've only recently turned 18 myself, and I've been reading slash for four years, writing it for two. I wonder if we need some kind of general survey to present as facts to these people who know -nothing- about fandom; but then, it'd probably be dismissed as biased. People don't like facts when they counteract their argument.

[frabjously]

lj-cut please?

[insomnia]

Sorry about that... I actually emailed the mod shortly after I sent the post, with my concerns that it might need lj-cutting once approved.

I've trimmed it significantly. Thanks!

[insomnia]

Sorry about that... I actually emailed the mod shortly after I sent the post, with my concerns that it might need lj-cutting once approved.

I've trimmed it significantly. Thanks!

[e_witness]

Convincing argument. I'll have to be keeping tabs on this.

[insomnia]

I'm glad you like the idea. I hope that we can grow a large, diverse community of people based around defending the promises that were made to LJers once, and protecting ALL our rights.

Ultimately, though, it will take a lot more people than me making the same argument. I'm willing to start the ball rolling, however.