Because there's evil in the world, after all, and it's not always where we're looking.
I was going to make a ridiculously fangirly post about finally watching the Hyoutei TeniMyu. And then I was going to go and happily tap out some more reversible Silver Pair smut until I was sick of the logistics of male anatomy.
And then I read this.
What I suppose I don't understand is what, exactly, they think they're doing. I understand that kids have to be protected. God, I understand. But what is this so-called "mission" actually supposed to do to protect them?
Is it going to keep them from finding these things and reading them? Oh, I promise, there is much worse out there on the Net than the stuff on LJ; asstr.org has things on it that make my eyes go wide, and entire archives devoted to incest, childpreg, noncon, and the like. They're not going anywhere, I'm pretty sure. So what makes LJ any different--the fact that it's a relatively open community? The fact that its comms don't have NetNanny registration available? Frankly... show me a fifteen-year-old who's actually going to be stopped by NetNanny and I will show you a fifteen-year-old who is going to go out tomorrow and ask all his friends how to get past that little annoyance.
...unless, of course, his parents are actually paying attention to what he's looking at online. The very idea.
Okay, that may or may not be fair. My own parents are utterly computer illiterate. I probably could have had porn files saved to the desktop and they wouldn't have had a clue. But the fact is: if your lines of communication with your children are open, then they should know the difference between the sort of thing that is "unacceptable to parents," and the sort of thing that is "dangerous." They may or may not obey the former. But the latter... they should at least know what the latter constitutes.
It's nowhere near that simple, of course--the problem with parental disapproval is that so much of it gets lumped into the whole big mental bag of "Mom/Da's being old and cranky and fuddy-duddy." But there really is a difference between "Don't do this because I said so" and "Don't do this because you might very well end up raped, tortured, and dead... and here are examples of kids it happened to."
It won't stop anyone from doing certain things their parents don't want them to do, of course. I know for a fact that some of the girls on my Flist are, or were, reading smut before they were eighteen. I don't know if I'm okay with encouraging that, because I am old and fuddy-duddy myself these days, but... I was reading NC-17 smut long before I was seventeen. I was writing NC-17 smut long before I was seventeen. But I was definitely not doing NC-17 smutty things, I had no wish whatsoever to do them, and I knew that there was a difference between fantasy and reality.
That's the real question, I suppose. Now, I know that every child is not me. And I know that every adult is not me--I squee and giggle and blush over TeniPuri smut, but I honestly don't find anything particularly hot about real life gay men, so the point is moot. But does encouragement, tacit or otherwise, of stories involving incest, or paedophilia, or whatever, encourage that sort of inappropriate behaviour?
The people who would have such things banned would, of course, say "Yes." And the point was brought up during the infamous Waseda case: a CBS article claimed that the "underground pop culture" of X-rated games, videos, and mangas in Japan perpetuated the myth that rape was an acceptable outlet for male passion, and that women who resisted were doing so for show.
Now, I don't know if that's true, or if that's a very Western view on a very Japanese system of fantasy expression. The problem, however, is that it's not an argument that can ever be proven false... until you ban everything. Everything that's so much as tangentially related to children having sex. Everything..
And then, when all of that is gone and purged from the Internet, does anyone want to take any bets on me never seeing a twelve-year-old giving birth in the MCV hospital again?
Right, I didn't think so.
So why is it so hard for people to understand that fantasy, real fantasy, can be an outlet, as well? Urges, desires, the like... we all have them, and some of them are inappropriate. Thinking that the guy walking past you in the supermarket is incredibly hot and you'd like to jump his bones does not mean you'll do it--and there are a thousand reasons why you wouldn't. Thinking longingly about strangling the kid who sits next to you in class is not okay, but for the most part, we restrain ourselves.
How hard is it to impress upon people the values of fantasy--and the limits of it? There will always, always be people who overstep the borders--but I will eat my stethoscope if you can show me a direct link between their behaviour and whatever fiction they were reading. What you can show is a direct link to is their behaviour and their inability to differentiate between fantasy and appropriate reality... and you can blabber about hormonal imbalance, or miswired circuits, or upbringing or society... but if you're pointing at fiction as a cause rather than a waypoint, then you're trying to find a scapegoat, not a solution. There is a lack of restraint involved in predatory acts, but if people are actually believing what they're reading, there are bigger problems there than the reading material.
And banning a community devoted to a relatively innocent outlet of an inappropriate fantasy? Even if there were sexual predators on such communities--and I'm not convinced that there are, but that's me--how exactly is taking away an outlet going to make them have any fewer desires, exactly? When you point fingers in this way, the guilty ones duck, and you end up pointing at the ones who never saw anything coming in the first place... the ones who were writing for a lark, more likely than not. Innocent? It depends on your definition--but they're certainly not guilty the way moralists seem to assume.
Unfortunately, it's the guilty ones--and the smart ones--that are the ones who end up perpetrating the crimes.
So, in the end... it's the victory of Morality over Reason. Hurrah.
Edit: Sigh. Am realising that there's definitely underaged smut in this journal, and in sinsofwill. But damn it... I will not friends-lock. I simply refuse to believe that the admins will be crazy enough to start searching out and shutting down random people's personal pages... especially since I'm pretty sure I have never had anything incriminating in my Interests.
And then I read this.
What I suppose I don't understand is what, exactly, they think they're doing. I understand that kids have to be protected. God, I understand. But what is this so-called "mission" actually supposed to do to protect them?
Is it going to keep them from finding these things and reading them? Oh, I promise, there is much worse out there on the Net than the stuff on LJ; asstr.org has things on it that make my eyes go wide, and entire archives devoted to incest, childpreg, noncon, and the like. They're not going anywhere, I'm pretty sure. So what makes LJ any different--the fact that it's a relatively open community? The fact that its comms don't have NetNanny registration available? Frankly... show me a fifteen-year-old who's actually going to be stopped by NetNanny and I will show you a fifteen-year-old who is going to go out tomorrow and ask all his friends how to get past that little annoyance.
...unless, of course, his parents are actually paying attention to what he's looking at online. The very idea.
Okay, that may or may not be fair. My own parents are utterly computer illiterate. I probably could have had porn files saved to the desktop and they wouldn't have had a clue. But the fact is: if your lines of communication with your children are open, then they should know the difference between the sort of thing that is "unacceptable to parents," and the sort of thing that is "dangerous." They may or may not obey the former. But the latter... they should at least know what the latter constitutes.
It's nowhere near that simple, of course--the problem with parental disapproval is that so much of it gets lumped into the whole big mental bag of "Mom/Da's being old and cranky and fuddy-duddy." But there really is a difference between "Don't do this because I said so" and "Don't do this because you might very well end up raped, tortured, and dead... and here are examples of kids it happened to."
It won't stop anyone from doing certain things their parents don't want them to do, of course. I know for a fact that some of the girls on my Flist are, or were, reading smut before they were eighteen. I don't know if I'm okay with encouraging that, because I am old and fuddy-duddy myself these days, but... I was reading NC-17 smut long before I was seventeen. I was writing NC-17 smut long before I was seventeen. But I was definitely not doing NC-17 smutty things, I had no wish whatsoever to do them, and I knew that there was a difference between fantasy and reality.
That's the real question, I suppose. Now, I know that every child is not me. And I know that every adult is not me--I squee and giggle and blush over TeniPuri smut, but I honestly don't find anything particularly hot about real life gay men, so the point is moot. But does encouragement, tacit or otherwise, of stories involving incest, or paedophilia, or whatever, encourage that sort of inappropriate behaviour?
The people who would have such things banned would, of course, say "Yes." And the point was brought up during the infamous Waseda case: a CBS article claimed that the "underground pop culture" of X-rated games, videos, and mangas in Japan perpetuated the myth that rape was an acceptable outlet for male passion, and that women who resisted were doing so for show.
Now, I don't know if that's true, or if that's a very Western view on a very Japanese system of fantasy expression. The problem, however, is that it's not an argument that can ever be proven false... until you ban everything. Everything that's so much as tangentially related to children having sex. Everything..
And then, when all of that is gone and purged from the Internet, does anyone want to take any bets on me never seeing a twelve-year-old giving birth in the MCV hospital again?
Right, I didn't think so.
So why is it so hard for people to understand that fantasy, real fantasy, can be an outlet, as well? Urges, desires, the like... we all have them, and some of them are inappropriate. Thinking that the guy walking past you in the supermarket is incredibly hot and you'd like to jump his bones does not mean you'll do it--and there are a thousand reasons why you wouldn't. Thinking longingly about strangling the kid who sits next to you in class is not okay, but for the most part, we restrain ourselves.
How hard is it to impress upon people the values of fantasy--and the limits of it? There will always, always be people who overstep the borders--but I will eat my stethoscope if you can show me a direct link between their behaviour and whatever fiction they were reading. What you can show is a direct link to is their behaviour and their inability to differentiate between fantasy and appropriate reality... and you can blabber about hormonal imbalance, or miswired circuits, or upbringing or society... but if you're pointing at fiction as a cause rather than a waypoint, then you're trying to find a scapegoat, not a solution. There is a lack of restraint involved in predatory acts, but if people are actually believing what they're reading, there are bigger problems there than the reading material.
And banning a community devoted to a relatively innocent outlet of an inappropriate fantasy? Even if there were sexual predators on such communities--and I'm not convinced that there are, but that's me--how exactly is taking away an outlet going to make them have any fewer desires, exactly? When you point fingers in this way, the guilty ones duck, and you end up pointing at the ones who never saw anything coming in the first place... the ones who were writing for a lark, more likely than not. Innocent? It depends on your definition--but they're certainly not guilty the way moralists seem to assume.
Unfortunately, it's the guilty ones--and the smart ones--that are the ones who end up perpetrating the crimes.
So, in the end... it's the victory of Morality over Reason. Hurrah.
Edit: Sigh. Am realising that there's definitely underaged smut in this journal, and in sinsofwill. But damn it... I will not friends-lock. I simply refuse to believe that the admins will be crazy enough to start searching out and shutting down random people's personal pages... especially since I'm pretty sure I have never had anything incriminating in my Interests.