(no subject)
Ok.
For the most part, I've been keeping pretty quiet about the whole "inappropriate content" clusterfuck going on right now. This is for several reasons, which include, "I think I would have way too much to say about media censorship and would end up writing an essay" and "I'd probably end up mocking some of the more... hysterical posters in all of this, which wouldn't really help".
But I'm going to say something now, after someone on my Friends list pointed out what LJ have said regarding "pro-ana" (that's "pro-anaorexia") communities on their site.
"...it's not illegal to aspire to be thin. It's not against the ToS to give people bad advice."
One of my closest friends went through most of her teen and university life with an eating disorder. I'm not going to say she was anorexic, because she was never diagnosed as such, but she was barely over 5 feet tall and considered herself to be too fat at 7 and a half stones (that's 105 lbs for those of you on the metric system), so you can draw your own conclusions.
She used to go on weekend-long 'detox' sessions, where she would eat nothing other than a couple of pieces of fruit a day and drink nothing but water. She would do no preparation for these 'detoxes' like you're supposed to (you know, gradually cutting out the toxin-rich food so as not to give your system such a shock) and so would spend most of these weekends ill on the sofa, barely able to move. But she would be happy doing them, because she would tell us that she was making her body healthy and keeping her weight down at the same time.
She's doing better now, but having to watch her put herself through all that because she thought she was 'fat' (I'm fat, and I'm almost eternally grateful that, out of all the various problems I do have, the belief that I need to starve myself in order to achieve some 'perfect' body image isn't one of them) was really nothing short of heartbreaking.
Nick also had a friend, who he was very close to, who was a diagnosed anorexic, who in the end had to be hospitalised for her condition. So he knows how horrible this condition is as well.
Anorexia (or bulemia) is not "[aspiring] to be thin". It's a mental illness where you try to starve yourself to death because you believe you're 'too fat' or you've got the wrong body shape. And it affects an awful lot of teenage girls (and boys, although in considerably less numbers).
The current brou-ha-ha in LiveJournal focusses at least in part over the idea of 'protecting children'. When you consider that 40% of anorexics are teenage girls between 15 and 19 (source), and that, depending on what sources you use, between 10% and 20% of all anorexics will die from this illness, I would say that something more than simply saying, "It's sad, but there's nothing we can do," needs to be done.
I would like to get one thing straight. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to talk about their condition, or offer their opinion as to whether or not anorexia is a 'lifestyle choice' or not, or if it's a good or bad thing. Part of being an advocate of free speech and anti-censorship is accepting that people are allowed to sat things that you don't like or don't agree with, and fighting for them to say those things. But there is a difference between saying that anorexia is a 'lifestyle choice' and giving a teenage girl who hasn't eaten for several days and who is in pain from it encouragement to continue starving herself and giving tips on how to go even longer without food. That sort of thing should be given the same consideration and scrutiny as is currently being given to fanart/fanfic of contentiously-aged fictional characters (IMHO, of course).
For the most part, I've been keeping pretty quiet about the whole "inappropriate content" clusterfuck going on right now. This is for several reasons, which include, "I think I would have way too much to say about media censorship and would end up writing an essay" and "I'd probably end up mocking some of the more... hysterical posters in all of this, which wouldn't really help".
But I'm going to say something now, after someone on my Friends list pointed out what LJ have said regarding "pro-ana" (that's "pro-anaorexia") communities on their site.
"...it's not illegal to aspire to be thin. It's not against the ToS to give people bad advice."
One of my closest friends went through most of her teen and university life with an eating disorder. I'm not going to say she was anorexic, because she was never diagnosed as such, but she was barely over 5 feet tall and considered herself to be too fat at 7 and a half stones (that's 105 lbs for those of you on the metric system), so you can draw your own conclusions.
She used to go on weekend-long 'detox' sessions, where she would eat nothing other than a couple of pieces of fruit a day and drink nothing but water. She would do no preparation for these 'detoxes' like you're supposed to (you know, gradually cutting out the toxin-rich food so as not to give your system such a shock) and so would spend most of these weekends ill on the sofa, barely able to move. But she would be happy doing them, because she would tell us that she was making her body healthy and keeping her weight down at the same time.
She's doing better now, but having to watch her put herself through all that because she thought she was 'fat' (I'm fat, and I'm almost eternally grateful that, out of all the various problems I do have, the belief that I need to starve myself in order to achieve some 'perfect' body image isn't one of them) was really nothing short of heartbreaking.
Nick also had a friend, who he was very close to, who was a diagnosed anorexic, who in the end had to be hospitalised for her condition. So he knows how horrible this condition is as well.
Anorexia (or bulemia) is not "[aspiring] to be thin". It's a mental illness where you try to starve yourself to death because you believe you're 'too fat' or you've got the wrong body shape. And it affects an awful lot of teenage girls (and boys, although in considerably less numbers).
The current brou-ha-ha in LiveJournal focusses at least in part over the idea of 'protecting children'. When you consider that 40% of anorexics are teenage girls between 15 and 19 (source), and that, depending on what sources you use, between 10% and 20% of all anorexics will die from this illness, I would say that something more than simply saying, "It's sad, but there's nothing we can do," needs to be done.
I would like to get one thing straight. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to talk about their condition, or offer their opinion as to whether or not anorexia is a 'lifestyle choice' or not, or if it's a good or bad thing. Part of being an advocate of free speech and anti-censorship is accepting that people are allowed to sat things that you don't like or don't agree with, and fighting for them to say those things. But there is a difference between saying that anorexia is a 'lifestyle choice' and giving a teenage girl who hasn't eaten for several days and who is in pain from it encouragement to continue starving herself and giving tips on how to go even longer without food. That sort of thing should be given the same consideration and scrutiny as is currently being given to fanart/fanfic of contentiously-aged fictional characters (IMHO, of course).