Speaker: Won't Someone Please Not Think of the Children?
100 Responses
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You seem to be making a "slippery slope" argument,
I'm aware of that. But it's already clear that they're not just after the child pornography, because of the FBI memo. They're after stories written about doing things that are perfectly legal.They're already going after categories of material that stuff I've written falls into.
It is one thing to write the story as "therapy", it is a different matter again to post it on the internet.
Because why? The group was not visible to the general public - which is the reason I haven't been able to check if it was all done in the best possible taste, or if I'd have to go for a vomit and a lie down.
Not following you there. You can write a story in which a woman or child is sexually assaulted and then starts to enjoy it, and it won't be any less problematic than the same story represented in any other medium.
Actually, I was thinking of stories that have conveyed the harrowing horror of rape that I just couldn't see anyone finding 'prurient'. We've run a workshop on helping writers deal with the emotional impacts of writing this kind of thing. I think some people have a very strong mental picture of the kind of people who write this stuff, and it doesn't square with the people I know at all.
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And how is that different from the dozens of fairly graphic accounts of surviving sexual abuse I can walk into Borders and purchase? Some people get their stories published in a book. Some people post them on the 'net. If it works for them, fine. But you can't condemn one without the other.
I didn't condemn it. I just said that I have trouble feeling any particular concern.
And presumably the defendant in this case is not a survivor of murder?
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It most certainly is, but we're not seriously surprised that pictures are more readily censored than words, are we?
In a way, yes I am -- authoritarian societies have always been insensely aware that logos is ever but as powerful as icon .
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We've run a workshop on helping writers deal with the emotional impacts of writing this kind of thing.
This is truly quite remarkable.
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The other thing writing allows you to do is get inside the heads of the participants.
And maybe that is why"the powers that be" and their lobbyists just want anything that may "corrupt" swept under the proverbial carpet. There are no definitive studies as to what level literature can corrupt society but there are instances where it has affected individuals and then there is "crazy conspiratorial bullshit"
A little OT but I think you get my point. I hope. -
This is truly quite remarkable.
There's a statement I have no idea how to take.
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In a way, yes I am -- authoritarian societies have always been insensely aware that logos is ever but as powerful as icon .
Thou shalt not make graven images.
Seriously, don't let me catch you graving images, okay?I wonder what kind of authoritarianism you're referring too, though. A written text can articulate a political argument and is therefore very dangerous indeed. In pornography, however, description is somewhat privileged to argumentation.
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__This is truly quite remarkable.__
There's a statement I have no idea how to take.
Positively, positively. I think it's quite a remarkable forum you've got there.
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the University of Toronto until 1955 required students to warrant that they were free of "mental problems" before reading Joyce's book
Last year, I got about halfway through Ulysses before I was forced to give it up due to boredom. Did the book actually make me mental?
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There are no definitive studies as to what level literature can corrupt society but there are instances where it has affected individuals.
And, dare I say it, hundreds of thousands -- if not millions-- of people who've seen productions of Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Machbeth without turning into brutal and abusive uxoricides, living out the maxim that the couple that slays together stays together, or entering into angsty suicide pacts. Former Chief Censor Arthur Everard (who routinely got it in the neck from all sides) once said that he infuriated people by assuming that the overwhelming majority of adults weren't clinically psychotic -- i.e. were able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and behave accordingly. There are some things in the world that should disturb people.
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So what of Hansel & Gretal?
A story of child neglect, abuse, imprisonment and cannibalism.
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Last year, I got about halfway through Ulysses before I was forced to give it up due to boredom. Did the book actually make me mental?
The corrupting power of Ulysses has always been a bit of a mystery to me too. Surely a couple of chapters devoted to masturbation are not enough to destroy the fabric of society?
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I wonder what kind of authoritarianism you're referring too, though. A written text can articulate a political argument and is therefore very dangerous indeed.
I don't see anything particularly 'political' about The Satanic Verses or The Bible, but I sure wouldn't be walking down the street in Tehran with either tome conspicuously tucked under my arm.
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Surely a couple of chapters devoted to masturbation are not enough to destroy the fabric of society?
But may well increase the incomes of many opticians. ;-)
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So what of Hansel & Gretal?
A story of child neglect, abuse, imprisonment and cannibalism.Don't get me started. What cracks me up especially is the fact that H&G go back to live with their dear old father instead of, you know, murdering him in his sleep. Although perhaps that part was left for the sequel.
I don't see anything particularly 'political' about The Satanic Verses or The Bible,
I beg your pardon?
but I sure wouldn't be walking down the street in Tehran with either tome conspicuously tucked under my arm.
Questionable, in the case of the bible, but surely you wouldn't walk around Teheran with an image of the prophet tatooed on your forehead either, no?
Look, back in the day astronomy used to get you into trouble, so of course I'm not saying that books doesn't have a rather illustrious history of being burned, oftentimes along with the author. But pictures, religious, political or otherwise, share in that history too (did I mention graven images?).
When it comes to violence and sex, I would argue that images get banned first. I don't have hard data to back it up or anything, but since the invention of film (and more recently of video games) the news in this regard are made by the likes of The Clockwork Orange (the film) and Grand Theft Auto, rather than, say, by The Clockwork Orange (the novel) and American Psycho.
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Last year, I got about halfway through Ulysses before I was forced to give it up due to boredom.
I let this slide earlier, but... we really need to start a Ulysses appreciation thread and fix this thing.
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I didn't condemn it. I just said that I have trouble feeling any particular concern.
You don't feel any particular concern that there are moves afoot to prosecute people for obscenity based on what they write and post on the internet in password-protected groups? No matter what you think of the content - and it would certainly trip my squick-meter - it's the principle that is at stake here.
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Very compelling writing.
I would read Emma's writing no matter the topic.
I don't agree with a few of her "interests" but she's a compelling writer and worth reading, even if there's no sex or bestiality or BDSM or whatever.
The issue of governments not having to win cases to make people jump is one of the creepiest things about this cuture that I've always had a problem living in . . .
~ Alex
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So I got one of those Gravitar thinies...
How is it used?
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she wrote the stories partially as therapy:
this is understandable, and I understand that many such works are reasonably well hidden, or controlled. however not all are.
there is not much more horrific to me than the thought of a work; written by the victim of a sexual criminal to help them deal with reality; being used by someone more like the offender than the victim for sexual gratification.
its tricky stuff.
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The thing about the Miller Test is that it shifts the burden of proof onto the defence. Rather than the prosecution having to prove that Fletcher's material was obscene, Fletcher would have had to prove that it had SLAPS value.
reminds me of one of the more inventive uses of google trends:
What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an AnswerJudges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards?............
.........In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”
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the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”
I myself often search for a combination of the three.
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Positively, positively. I think it's quite a remarkable forum you've got there.
Oh good. I'm always a bit worried people will think we're a bunch of sick freaks.
reminds me of one of the more inventive uses of google trends:
What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an AnswerIndeed, I saw that and assumed it was because of the Miller Test. And it reminded me of this:
in 2000 a jury in Provo, Utah, took only a few minutes to clear Larry Peterman, owner of a Movie Buffs video store, in Utah County, Utah, a region which had often boasted of being one of the most conservative areas in the US. Researchers had shown that guests at the local Marriott Hotel were disproportionately large consumers of pay-per-view pornographic material, obtaining far more material that way than the store was distributing.
That would seem to indicate that it should be a standard a community actually has, rather than one it pretends to have.
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there is not much more horrific to me than the thought of a work; written by the victim of a sexual criminal to help them deal with reality; being used by someone more like the offender than the victim for sexual gratification
Yeah, I don't know anyone who writes in the area of kink who wouldn't be horrified by that idea. I don't want to speculate about Fletcher's own feelings, but.
I'm also pretty horrified by the idea of an ex-victim getting an obscenity conviction which results in them being put on a sex offender register with actual paedophiles.
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The Censor doesn't have to prosecute people and justify their decisions in front of a judge/jury you know.
The DIA provides a feed to various (all?) ISPs in NZ and can block any site, like [[http://www.dce.net.nz/|this].
They claim this is only for child porn, but the definition of "objectionable" goes much wider. A copy of Salient was censored last year. As people mention, a range of squicky activities are legal to perform, but not to describe or advocate.
Could a discussion like this one where people oppose censorship controls be "objectionable" - on the grounds that it indirectly advocates proscribed activity?
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