my_daroga | uncooked thoughts on this LJ business

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uncooked thoughts on this LJ business

I can't help but think that "freedom of speech" and self-policing are two separate issues. I support the idea that unreasonable dictates from on high squelch free thought and should be questioned. But why does it follow, then, that we should absolve ourselves for all responsibility? Can't we want free and safe space to express ourselves and reserve the right, as individual communities, to express disgust with certain practices?

In plain speech, can we fight against censorship and also decide that we don't support certain forms of pornography? Why can't we say, "This should not be forbidden, but neither do I find stories of sex between adults and pre-adolescents acceptable in my space"? Or any other set of standards a community as a group want to apply.

Or is it just too hopelessly messy to have ethics and standards when we're talking about the limits of speech? Because no matter what they are, someone else will think those standards too harsh or too liberal, and clearly even asking whether we can apply "standards" implies that the speaker considers herself the ultimate authority. (Not something I intended, and I very much regret that.) Is it a contradiction to find anti-pro-ana stances hypocritical, but not think Junie B. Jones (to quote a recent

metafandom post) porn is right? This is just an example. I am not trying to argue the validity of either of those statements. Only to discuss whether we can make both.

I expect I'll regret not writing this better. I just haven't the patience right now.

Edit to clarify: No, I do not like the behavior of LJ/6A over the past few weeks. I am decidedly *not* arguing that we shouldn't be worried, or that LJ should be able to ban any content that is not illegal. I am merely pointing out what is, for me, a nebulous ethical territory we should think about.

Edit after metafandom: I expect I'll regret it even more now, as my post has clearly left itself open to the interpretation that I might be advocating that only my own personal standards are valid. This is not at all what I intended. I merely used examples I felt were typical, in order not to be so vague as to be useless. Perhaps I could have said the opposite: "Perhaps we can call the anti-porn people hypocrites, but can't we also argue about the validity of pro-ana sites too?" All I really want to ask is whether we can ask LJ to allow us safe space for discussion and also dictate, for our own journals and communities, what material we deem appropriate. I personally think the answer is yes. What I am against is retaliatory action which only strikes at others the way fandom has been struck at.

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I think it's fair enough to have standards of what you are willing to host. But if you're trying to run a business, and have hundreds of thousands of users who've spent years building the communities that give your site its value, you'd be an idiot not to listen to them (and morally owe them consideration, IMO).

Some LJ communities have rules I regard as ridiculous, but I know that if I choose to join them, I have to abide by those rules - and if enough of us think they're stupid, the mods can change them or we can go start our own comm. But they don't charge me money, and leaving them doesn't entail abandoning a huge network of friends.

LJ has never been much good at negotiating the grey spaces, and giving people the benefit of the doubt, I think that's my main problem with it all. Plus the way their rules are never entirely clear, and the disastrous way they chose to handle all this.

Oh no, I'm not arguing in favor of LJ/6A's actions at all. My whole point was that in doing combating that, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that hey, not everything is "all right."

I just think there's a lot of disingenuity going on, both on the part of the anti-proana people and the blanket pro-child erotica people.

Yes. I find that nearly always in these things, one lot argues against censorship of [something], and someone always comes in to support that by saying "see, there are these way worse things, you should go censor them instead!" It starts as pointing out an inconsistency in policies or actions, and ends up with a witch hunt against the latter group.

And I'm sometimes torn, of course, because I generally think LJ should censor/forbid as little as possible, but there are always certain things I find truly sick and think they jolly well should suspend people for. I mean, I doubt there's anyone who doesn't want them to get rid of any genuine child porn they find.

Of course not. But once you introduce that possibility, someone else is going to call hypocrisy; or start trying to censor something else in retaliation.

And I think it would be easy for someone to call "hypocrisy" on anyone who was pro-free speech, but anti harmful stuff. Which is too bad.

"I doubt there's anyone who doesn't want them to get rid of any genuine child porn they find."

But, that simply *isn't* hypocricy, because child porn (involving actual children) is illegal because of the exploitation inherent in the production of child porn (ie, the abuse of an actual child.) The *primary* harm isn't the hypothetical, e.g. : "oh, a pedophile might see it, get turned on, and feel inspired to molest a child." (I think perhaps that's what a jury might consider in an obscenity trial, and that's not a concern just with photos of child abuse.) All claims about the "badness" of any particular act of expression, other than a direct request or order to harm another specific person, are based on hypotheticals about the bad things the speech *might* trigger in the reader or viewer. Actual child pornography is a record of harm that's already happened, and may be ongoing, putting it in an entirely different moral category, imho.

Here via metafandom

"pro-child erotica people."

The thing is, I've yet to speak to any such people (although I have *seen* one or two around LJ, in the past, whilst surfing randomly, but I've not seen them involved in the debate concerning LJ/6A.) What I've seen is mostly people saying things to the effect of, "why is LJ/6A conflating obscenity and child pornography?" and "Why are these fictional characters assumed to be children, even when the artist states that they're 18, and even when they look like they could be 18?"

Yet I do appreciate, and agree with, your overarching point, that it's possible, commendable, actually, to support a person's *right* to speak, while at the same time abhoring with the content of the speech.

oops "abhoring the content of the speech," not "abhoring with"--cut-and-paste mistake

I think it's really very complicated to draw a line. A lot of adult/adolescent probably won't bother most people, particularly if it's 20s/late teens. But I've definitely seen fiction like that which clearly shows a very messed-up power dynamic. And maybe that's the point--the message--which would make it okay, but maybe it's the author's nasty kink, which would make it creepy.

By the same token, where does one draw the line between thoughtful but explicit fiction about child abuse (and sometimes the explictness serves a purpose) and creepy stroke material? Most people view Lolita as being anti-child-abuse; some people find it erotic and aspire to be like the characters (not just men; there used to be an LJ community with women who wanted to be as Lolita-like as possible--most were legal, some weren't. I don't know if that community was strikethroughed or not, but it creeped me out immensely. But there's nothing illegal about adult women pretending to be naive teenagers, creepy as it can be).

So--yeah, I don't see anything wrong with having standards in theory, but I'm just not sure how they could be consistently laid out so users of a service like LJ would automatically know whether their posts were acceptable or not.

But if we do ban sexually icky material (or communities of mostly-adult women wishing they could find their Humberts), I don't see how it's hypocritical to ban pro-ana communities. But I have a hell of a lot of personal baggage on that end, and would arbitrarily ban pro-ed material from any internet service I ran because I wouldn't want to be facilitating the behaviors encouraged there (some of which are illegal--e.g. "Here's how to get banned diet drugs"), so paint me a hypocrite.

Your comment raises a lot of interesting points, but I think I wasn't clear.

For one thing, I don't want LJ/6A to draw the line; I want them to back down and make their policies more clear. However, I don't think that the threat of bolding being held over us is the same thing as a community, by member choice, making decisions about what's acceptable. Obviously we make those decisions in our homes, schools, neighborhoods all the time.

So it's not a question of LJ knowing when things are acceptable; I'm against involving them at all. I'm only trying to raise the point that we fans need to know what we're doing, too, and not just blanket everything in a rallying cry of "free speech!" It's a good rally, but at some point we need to step back and look at the landscape.

But if we do ban sexually icky material, I don't see how it's hypocritical to ban pro-ana communities.

I didn't say that. What I said was that people who are against banning sexually icky material should not turn around and say, "okay then, let's find someone else to persecute." I just personally don't see it as a very mature way of dealing with the situation; it's combative and it's like kicking the dog after your boss reams you out.

I'm not for a minute supporting any of the pro-ana business. It disturbs me to no end, and makes me really angry. But the stance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Because ultimately, what they're doing is arguing for their right to produce something by making the opposite argument. And I don't think they're doing it ironically.

I think this is a valid discussion point and I'm glad you've raised it. A couple of people I know are starting to lock down their NC-17 fics because they are worried about 'boundary creep'. These are just plain everyone-is-a-consenting-adult fics. LJ/6A has gone back and forth several times so there is some grey area, clearly. Who decides? Do we trust the people who decide? Who watches the watchers?

I'm thinking about taking my fics off LJ altogether, since I archive them in a couple of different places already.

I'm not worried about my own stuff at all, so that adds another layer of complication. I don't have self-interest motivating me.

Or is it just too hopelessly messy to have ethics and standards?

I'm not sure you're aware of how this sounds, but it sounds as if you're saying that everyone who doesn't draw the lines the same place you do has no ethics or standards.

That might be precisely what you were trying to get at; I don't know you, so I have no idea. But if you're actually trying to engender discussion, perhaps it would be worth taking the time to clarify that. (Or put on your asbestos jammies, since this got linked in MF.)

Wow. That is not what I meant at all, and I hadn't even remembered it was unflocked. Oops.

I will clarify. But in short, all I was trying to say was that it's legitimate to discuss what standards we have *and* still support freedom of speech. I don't much care what the standards are--I just want to be able to discuss them.

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uncooked thoughts on this LJ business

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Here via metafandom

Re: Here via metafandom