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quietprofanity Dec. 19th, 2008 10:49 pm)
quietprofanity Dec. 19th, 2008 10:49 pm)http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/man-convicted-of-possessing-simpsons.html
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/simpsons-porn-case-follow-up.html
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/forgot-to-get-memo.html
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/mary-marvel-cooch-cover-benefit-dinner.html
[groan] I don't even know why I'm writing this. It probably won't fucking convince anyone of anything, but I'll just say it now. I'll break it down into tiny points so maybe people can get it.
1.) I think it is very likely that these SPECIFIC Simpsons porn cartoons ARE dangerous.
No, really, I do. This doesn't mean that I think looking at them automatically makes you a pedophile but I think it is very possible the porn in the Australia case was for-pedos-by-pedos-for-best-results-in-abusing-children.
The comments by "silrana" in this post are extremely illuminating. You should really read all of the comments, especially as it may answer questions I'm not going to address here, but I do want to point to the most important part:
You have to realize, we aren't talking about something like Marge showing a boob and looking flirty, like you might see in fanart. We're talking fairly crude cartoons of things like Lisa performing oral sex on Homer. Many of the Bart-Lisa cartoons I see have Bart 'aged up' to look like a teenager to go with the older person-little kid image that the pedophile wants to impress upon the child.
These pictures are carefully tailored for their appeal. They use familiar characters in situations that give the idea that adults and children have sex all the time and it's no big deal. Some of it goes even farther. Once you've seen Rescue Ranger characters in bondage gear and ball gags and the picture has obviously been made to appeal to children rather than adults, you lose the "oh it's just harmless fun" reaction.
This is horrifying and worthy of condemnation, contempt, pretty much everything. This is bad. If we use the old chestnut "guns don't kill people, people kill people," then what we are specifically talking about here is a gun made for shooting children. So, yes, these SPECIFIC cartoons ARE used to hurt people, and I think the people who say otherwise and invoking Orwellian thoughtcrime are deadly misguided.
(Not that D'Orazio really gets that either, clearly her "Child Porn Comix" are already happening. Luckily the Big Two don't need to publish them because First Amendment doesn't mean private companies need to give every dickweed a platform.)
That being said ...
2.) Criticism =/= Censorship, and there is NOT a conflict with criticizing/holding in a contempt/condemning a work and yet being against a big government body knocking down the gavel and outright banning it.
i.e., When it comes to these Simpsons cartoons, I would be perfectly fine with them being probable cause if there's a suspicion the person may be a pedophile already. But when it comes to censoring them and prosecuting people just for having porn of underage characters STEP OFF.
Artists and geeks, for better or worse, have no trust when it comes to the government/judges understanding art/fandom. That was what the letter writer specifically said he was worried about to Neil Gaiman. It's not, "OMG! They're taking away my right to see Lisa suck off Homer!" It's "WTF? What does that say for my Lost Girls collection/my slash fanfic/my memoir comic depicting child sexuality?" (All of which I own, BTW. The last one is from this anthology.) This was really the reason people are pissed off. This is why Gaiman said what he did about the law being a hammer and being a scalpel. If the law could scalpel out these specific Simpsons cartoons, I would be happier than a pig in shit, but they probably won't. Grey areas are easy when it comes to these things, as Paul Reubens found out. (Read that article, BTW. It's fascinating.)
Possibly D'Orazio doesn't care about this. Possibly she thinks that they're all equivalent and fictional depictions of those 17 and younger having sex wrong across the board, authorial intent be damned. (Although I don't know why she keeps bringing up the "You only defend Lost Girls because it's so-called high brow art" nonsense again with this, given that these Simpsons cartoons that she's pissed people are defending are most likely the kind of work that's so low that it's not associated with brows. I'm starting to wonder when Alan Moore took a meat cleaver to her dog's head and threw it through her window.) Anyway, people can be hurt and LINES must be drawn so this is the place we can draw it. Possibly she thinks that. I don't know. I don't mean to strawman, but that really seems like what's coming across.
And I'm more than a little offended if that's so. Because it seems like she's lumping in slash fics of consenting teenagers having sex with each other or someone's memoir of child abuse with this creepy father-daughter incest indoctrination porn. I get that she has personal lines. I get that she finds some porn horrifying. Hell, I find some porn horrifying. But it's clear that the types of porn we find horrifying may not always intersect. I'd rather read someone's graphic fictionalization of their own rape as a child than look at a picture of a naked, airbrushed woman posing in Playboy. In fact, I would argue that the latter is more "dangerous" than the former, because the latter implies packaging unrealistic standards and a view of women as silly sex dolls (I mean, have you read Hef's description of the ideal Playboy bunny? Blech.) and the former is about truth telling and owning what society would rather sweep under the rug.
Although maybe I'm off-base. Maybe there are instances where she thinks these depictions can be appropriate. But if that's so, she's making a distinction. And many don't have faith the law would do the same thing.
ETA: Oh, hey, timeliness. Granted, this guy convicted (like the Australian guy) is clearly an asshole, but .. yikes.
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/simpsons-porn-case-follow-up.html
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/forgot-to-get-memo.html
http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2008/12/mary-marvel-cooch-cover-benefit-dinner.html
[groan] I don't even know why I'm writing this. It probably won't fucking convince anyone of anything, but I'll just say it now. I'll break it down into tiny points so maybe people can get it.
1.) I think it is very likely that these SPECIFIC Simpsons porn cartoons ARE dangerous.
No, really, I do. This doesn't mean that I think looking at them automatically makes you a pedophile but I think it is very possible the porn in the Australia case was for-pedos-by-pedos-for-best-results-in-abusing-children.
The comments by "silrana" in this post are extremely illuminating. You should really read all of the comments, especially as it may answer questions I'm not going to address here, but I do want to point to the most important part:
You have to realize, we aren't talking about something like Marge showing a boob and looking flirty, like you might see in fanart. We're talking fairly crude cartoons of things like Lisa performing oral sex on Homer. Many of the Bart-Lisa cartoons I see have Bart 'aged up' to look like a teenager to go with the older person-little kid image that the pedophile wants to impress upon the child.
These pictures are carefully tailored for their appeal. They use familiar characters in situations that give the idea that adults and children have sex all the time and it's no big deal. Some of it goes even farther. Once you've seen Rescue Ranger characters in bondage gear and ball gags and the picture has obviously been made to appeal to children rather than adults, you lose the "oh it's just harmless fun" reaction.
This is horrifying and worthy of condemnation, contempt, pretty much everything. This is bad. If we use the old chestnut "guns don't kill people, people kill people," then what we are specifically talking about here is a gun made for shooting children. So, yes, these SPECIFIC cartoons ARE used to hurt people, and I think the people who say otherwise and invoking Orwellian thoughtcrime are deadly misguided.
(Not that D'Orazio really gets that either, clearly her "Child Porn Comix" are already happening. Luckily the Big Two don't need to publish them because First Amendment doesn't mean private companies need to give every dickweed a platform.)
That being said ...
2.) Criticism =/= Censorship, and there is NOT a conflict with criticizing/holding in a contempt/condemning a work and yet being against a big government body knocking down the gavel and outright banning it.
i.e., When it comes to these Simpsons cartoons, I would be perfectly fine with them being probable cause if there's a suspicion the person may be a pedophile already. But when it comes to censoring them and prosecuting people just for having porn of underage characters STEP OFF.
Artists and geeks, for better or worse, have no trust when it comes to the government/judges understanding art/fandom. That was what the letter writer specifically said he was worried about to Neil Gaiman. It's not, "OMG! They're taking away my right to see Lisa suck off Homer!" It's "WTF? What does that say for my Lost Girls collection/my slash fanfic/my memoir comic depicting child sexuality?" (All of which I own, BTW. The last one is from this anthology.) This was really the reason people are pissed off. This is why Gaiman said what he did about the law being a hammer and being a scalpel. If the law could scalpel out these specific Simpsons cartoons, I would be happier than a pig in shit, but they probably won't. Grey areas are easy when it comes to these things, as Paul Reubens found out. (Read that article, BTW. It's fascinating.)
Possibly D'Orazio doesn't care about this. Possibly she thinks that they're all equivalent and fictional depictions of those 17 and younger having sex wrong across the board, authorial intent be damned. (Although I don't know why she keeps bringing up the "You only defend Lost Girls because it's so-called high brow art" nonsense again with this, given that these Simpsons cartoons that she's pissed people are defending are most likely the kind of work that's so low that it's not associated with brows. I'm starting to wonder when Alan Moore took a meat cleaver to her dog's head and threw it through her window.) Anyway, people can be hurt and LINES must be drawn so this is the place we can draw it. Possibly she thinks that. I don't know. I don't mean to strawman, but that really seems like what's coming across.
And I'm more than a little offended if that's so. Because it seems like she's lumping in slash fics of consenting teenagers having sex with each other or someone's memoir of child abuse with this creepy father-daughter incest indoctrination porn. I get that she has personal lines. I get that she finds some porn horrifying. Hell, I find some porn horrifying. But it's clear that the types of porn we find horrifying may not always intersect. I'd rather read someone's graphic fictionalization of their own rape as a child than look at a picture of a naked, airbrushed woman posing in Playboy. In fact, I would argue that the latter is more "dangerous" than the former, because the latter implies packaging unrealistic standards and a view of women as silly sex dolls (I mean, have you read Hef's description of the ideal Playboy bunny? Blech.) and the former is about truth telling and owning what society would rather sweep under the rug.
Although maybe I'm off-base. Maybe there are instances where she thinks these depictions can be appropriate. But if that's so, she's making a distinction. And many don't have faith the law would do the same thing.
ETA: Oh, hey, timeliness. Granted, this guy convicted (like the Australian guy) is clearly an asshole, but .. yikes.
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From:
no subject
Back to the topic, though. Interestingly, I think D.O. is trying to use the 'slippery slope' argument that a panty shot leads to child porn. (I disagree, of course.) It is the same sort of argument I see being used against gay marriage: if we allow gay marriage today, what awful things will be condoned tomorrow?
There's a lot more I could say on the subject, but you and I are on the same page. :]
From:
no subject
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
However I like this crap being probable cause so long as it can be kept from turning into a witchhunt.
From:
no subject
And, as far as I know, D.O. only brought the situation with Lost Girls et.al because many of those who are defending this guy with his Simpson porn are the same ones who condemned Lost Girls not long ago.
(Here from WFA)
From:
no subject
because many of those who are defending this guy with his Simpson porn are the same ones who condemned Lost Girls not long ago.
Mmmm ... no. Honestly, I've seen her argue this point before. The last time a few prominent feminist comics fans condemned How to Make Money Like a Porn Star for being sexist crap that made fun of rape, V.Do's response was "Why didn't you say anything about Lost Girls? Those girls were UNDERAGE!" And when I was like, "Um, underage girls masturbating is a little different from horrific depictions of rape played for laughs" she went nonsensically apeshit on me.
From:
no subject
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Another thing that annoyed me about D'Orazio was that in her final post to that thread she once again had to swipe out against godless moral relativism, as if some godfearing folks (e.g. certain traditional societies in the Muslim middle east, but also some extreme strains of American Mormonism) have no problems with forcing girls barely into puberty into marriage and sex.
And where does one stop? At "Occasional Superheroine" there was a big to-do over an "panty shot" of Mary Marvel, who according at least to one commenter is supposed to be eighteen these days (so she would not be underage). If that is seen as potentially dangerous, should people still be allowed to read and perform "Romeo and Juliet"? (Juliet is 14 years old, Shakespeare having made her two years younger than his source material). Shouldn't at least the Zefirelli version featuring a nude Julia on the morning after be banned? But at least this returns us to the Simpsons, with Edna Krabappel: "This, after I accidentally showed the R-rated Romeo and Juliet. I thought that nipple would haunt me forever!"
From:
no subject
I think you're framing it more from a creator-and-consumer standpoint. Like I said, seeing these pictures will not encourage anyone TO become a pedophile. These pictures are offered as a tool people who are already pedophiles (the consumers). They're not meant for masturbatory material. They're meant for pedophiles to show them to kids and say, "You see what Lisa is doing here? You can do this, too!"
And yeah, sex trumps violence. More children are physically abused than sexually.
Another thing that annoyed me about D'Orazio was that in her final post to that thread she once again had to swipe out against godless moral relativism, as if some godfearing folks (e.g. certain traditional societies in the Muslim middle east, but also some extreme strains of American Mormonism) have no problems with forcing girls barely into puberty into marriage and sex.
If it makes you feel better, I've seen anti-Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") stuff on there. Although to be totally honest, I don't remember if it was her or a commentator.
There are assholes who want to control women and younger boys of every stripe.
And I agree with your Romeo and Juliet comparison. This scorched Earth thing she possibly wants would never work. Even in porn it won't worked. The most mainstream literary porn of our era, Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" series, has a 15-year old heroine (or 115 ... depends on your perspective). I find the work objectionable (although I hate it because it's kind of racist), but it does show how ubiquitous teenagers in porn are ... and no actual teenagers were harmed, so ... [shrugs].