DeleteGate Rant
FIRST OF ALL: let me make clear that I do *not* in any way shape or form advocate child-abuse, pedophilia, rape and all that jazz. In fact I have some really not nice ideas of what should be done to people who do. Just to be clear.
I had a post already written in my mind on POTC AWE, something along the lines of "all that this movie deserves is a short drop and a sudden stop", and then I woke this morning to THIS crazyness, and all thoughts of pirates and mistreated commodores flew right out of my head.
Long story short: yesterday a bunch of RPG journals and fiction communities (most of those I know about were HP related, but that's probably because I'm in that fandom) and even a discussion community focusing on Nabokov's Lolita (!!) found themselves deleted or suspended by the LJ abuse team.
People of course went crazy trying to understand what the fuck was happening, and what they've been able to gather is this: based on their interest lists those comms were reported to the abuse team. The incriminating interests included: child abuse, human sacrifice, kidnapping, killing, murder, paedophiles, paedophilia, rape, and beating people up - from RPG journals that clearly stated that not only were they fictional, but the character was a bad person and they did not want to hear from anyone who felt otherwise.
incest and rape - from a fic comm
shota - this is a name
loli, lolita - from a fashion journal. These are Japanese fashion terms.
List thanks to this post
*Keep in mind that these are all third (or fourth or sixth) hand informations. See these two posts for more info*
Apparently a group called Warriors for Innocence [hxxp://www.warriorsforinnocence.org/2007/05/devastation-of-child-molestation-and.html hxxp->http, because I'm in no mood to find out if it's true or just paranoia that they're keeping tabs on posts that link to them. Or her. Or whatever] dedicated to track down online predators has been pressuring [hxxp://www.warriorsforinnocence.org/2007/05/livejournal-and-six-apart-its-time-to.html hxxp->http] LJ and Six Apart to suspend/delete the journal of potential predators.
A noble and worthy cause, right? Right.
*AT LEAST* untill you do your homework first. There are plenty of support communities for rape or child abuse survivors in lj, and obviouly each of them has the terms in their interest. Do they deserve to be targeted too? Of course not. Do fashion communities focusing on the gothic-lolita style deserve to be? Is discussing Nabokov advocating incest? More to the point, is writing FICTIONAL stories on those topics wrong?
Again, of course not.
Nor it is a crime, because, you know, IT'S ALL FICTIONAL.
I used to look at disclaimers on some (non-porn) mangas published in Italy and wonder why on earth they felt the need to put in writing that each character was of age (!) and, more to the point, that their characters were just that, characters, ink on paper, not real people.
Now I know why they did, because people are, generally speaking, ignorant.
Of course the above mentioned group denies to have been involved in reporting any fandom-related community t LJ, but...something's not adding up. Because someone did report these communities -bunches of totally unrelated communities- and of course Lj and Six Apart did the only possible thing to protect themselves and permanently suspended them. Lj has actually been quite good to concerned owners.
Now, I'm not a fan of rape, incest or abuse stories, but I have read some. Mostly they were stories that treated these topics seriously, dealing with consequences and trauma, not stories meant to titillate.
In some fandoms, like HP, most characters are underage, so a lot of fanfiction features underage sex, be it het or slash. Nothing wrong with that in my book, especially since for underage I mean mostly 16/17. 15-14 is a stretch, make them younger and it's Chan. Chan does bother me, but as long as you warn for it so that I don't stumble into it unaware, I don't have anything against it. Since IT'S NOT REAL.
And in some fandoms incest is a big part of shipping (Supernatural wincest, anyone?). It has never bothered me, not like some Malfoycest stories floating around the HP fandom, because -aloha, two consenting, fictional, not real characters, what's there to be bothered about??
It should be noted that the DeleteGate did bring down some communities actually encouraging pedophilia (hurray! I feel dirty knowing I shared blog space with that scum), you'll find lists in the very first post I linked to. But one has to wonder how much more effective Warrior's for Innocence's efforts could have been had they not:
-advertised their intentions in their blog, thus giving actual predators -who are interested in keeping tabs of that kind of sites, something unsuspectiong Nabokov fans tend not to do- the heads up to purge their interest lists.
-begun a witch hunt on lj, thus pissing off bloggers who, under different circumsatnces, would have been more than glad to see child-molesters' journals shut down, and more than ready to help in their efforts.
I guess this rants boils down to: it is so difficult for people to understand the defference between fiction and fact? And were were their parents when they should have been sitting with them in front of their TV, computer or books explaining why it's ok for Batman to jump from roof to roof killing villains right and left but they should not try it at home?
Just my two cents.
And no, I'm not going to lock this post, or lj-cut it. Sorry if it messes up your friends page.
I had a post already written in my mind on POTC AWE, something along the lines of "all that this movie deserves is a short drop and a sudden stop", and then I woke this morning to THIS crazyness, and all thoughts of pirates and mistreated commodores flew right out of my head.
Long story short: yesterday a bunch of RPG journals and fiction communities (most of those I know about were HP related, but that's probably because I'm in that fandom) and even a discussion community focusing on Nabokov's Lolita (!!) found themselves deleted or suspended by the LJ abuse team.
People of course went crazy trying to understand what the fuck was happening, and what they've been able to gather is this: based on their interest lists those comms were reported to the abuse team. The incriminating interests included: child abuse, human sacrifice, kidnapping, killing, murder, paedophiles, paedophilia, rape, and beating people up - from RPG journals that clearly stated that not only were they fictional, but the character was a bad person and they did not want to hear from anyone who felt otherwise.
incest and rape - from a fic comm
shota - this is a name
loli, lolita - from a fashion journal. These are Japanese fashion terms.
List thanks to this post
*Keep in mind that these are all third (or fourth or sixth) hand informations. See these two posts for more info*
Apparently a group called Warriors for Innocence [hxxp://www.warriorsforinnocence.org/2007/05/devastation-of-child-molestation-and.html hxxp->http, because I'm in no mood to find out if it's true or just paranoia that they're keeping tabs on posts that link to them. Or her. Or whatever] dedicated to track down online predators has been pressuring [hxxp://www.warriorsforinnocence.org/2007/05/livejournal-and-six-apart-its-time-to.html hxxp->http] LJ and Six Apart to suspend/delete the journal of potential predators.
A noble and worthy cause, right? Right.
*AT LEAST* untill you do your homework first. There are plenty of support communities for rape or child abuse survivors in lj, and obviouly each of them has the terms in their interest. Do they deserve to be targeted too? Of course not. Do fashion communities focusing on the gothic-lolita style deserve to be? Is discussing Nabokov advocating incest? More to the point, is writing FICTIONAL stories on those topics wrong?
Again, of course not.
Nor it is a crime, because, you know, IT'S ALL FICTIONAL.
I used to look at disclaimers on some (non-porn) mangas published in Italy and wonder why on earth they felt the need to put in writing that each character was of age (!) and, more to the point, that their characters were just that, characters, ink on paper, not real people.
Now I know why they did, because people are, generally speaking, ignorant.
Of course the above mentioned group denies to have been involved in reporting any fandom-related community t LJ, but...something's not adding up. Because someone did report these communities -bunches of totally unrelated communities- and of course Lj and Six Apart did the only possible thing to protect themselves and permanently suspended them. Lj has actually been quite good to concerned owners.
Now, I'm not a fan of rape, incest or abuse stories, but I have read some. Mostly they were stories that treated these topics seriously, dealing with consequences and trauma, not stories meant to titillate.
In some fandoms, like HP, most characters are underage, so a lot of fanfiction features underage sex, be it het or slash. Nothing wrong with that in my book, especially since for underage I mean mostly 16/17. 15-14 is a stretch, make them younger and it's Chan. Chan does bother me, but as long as you warn for it so that I don't stumble into it unaware, I don't have anything against it. Since IT'S NOT REAL.
And in some fandoms incest is a big part of shipping (Supernatural wincest, anyone?). It has never bothered me, not like some Malfoycest stories floating around the HP fandom, because -aloha, two consenting, fictional, not real characters, what's there to be bothered about??
It should be noted that the DeleteGate did bring down some communities actually encouraging pedophilia (hurray! I feel dirty knowing I shared blog space with that scum), you'll find lists in the very first post I linked to. But one has to wonder how much more effective Warrior's for Innocence's efforts could have been had they not:
-advertised their intentions in their blog, thus giving actual predators -who are interested in keeping tabs of that kind of sites, something unsuspectiong Nabokov fans tend not to do- the heads up to purge their interest lists.
-begun a witch hunt on lj, thus pissing off bloggers who, under different circumsatnces, would have been more than glad to see child-molesters' journals shut down, and more than ready to help in their efforts.
I guess this rants boils down to: it is so difficult for people to understand the defference between fiction and fact? And were were their parents when they should have been sitting with them in front of their TV, computer or books explaining why it's ok for Batman to jump from roof to roof killing villains right and left but they should not try it at home?
Just my two cents.
And no, I'm not going to lock this post, or lj-cut it. Sorry if it messes up your friends page.