this sweet, strange, and sour thing
May. 30th, 2007 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmWhen I was a kid going to Hewitt each late-Spring we attended a mandatory school book fair where we had to buy books off of a selected reading list for our grade level. They were to be read over the summer, and we had to sit essay examomations on them immediately when we returned. The books were often annoying in one way or another -- novels in which girls struggle to be proper women or struggle against the elements -- often both -- but we made our selections dutifully and read them each year so that we might be allowed to commence the next grade upon our return. No one ever, ever didn't read their books; I have no idea what would have happened had they not.
Regardless of that somewhat irksome ritual, we all loved the bookfair. Because the bookfair was also a school fundraiser and in no thorough way divided its wares by school year. It was very exciting to see what the incoming seniors were reading and just as exiting to see what books had been purchased to make us want to purchase more even if our parents were vaguely horrified. I found How to be a Valley Girl (I'm a child of the 80s), The Vampire Lestat and those wretched VC Andrews novels there. And, while you can critque each of these rather dubious titles all you want, here's what I learned from them: that self-creation wasn't only possible, but necessary; that my being emotional wasn't a crime; that beauty could well be even more varied than I thought even if it was also more deeply regimented for most people than I ever could have suspected; that it was okay to write about stuff that was dark; that gay people could be romantic heroes; and that invisible prose and titilling subject matter could sell millions of copies. I learnt no sins and received no scars; rather, I discovered I wasn't broken, and at twelve do any of us - at least the smart ones, at least the female ones - tend to feel anything but?
Of course, you can say I grew up in a different world. And I did. It was one without the Internet, one rigorously isolated to a particular neighborhood in New York City convinced it was still raising the paragons of womanhood from another age, one where the only cell phones were so massive, they were carried as handsets extendeding via wire from large, industrial looking briefcases. Most of my friends were driven to school in dark chauffered sedans that seemed to swallow them and their little legs that never touched the floor. Surely, the world must have been safer then and there.
Well, the world wasn't. I grew up in the world of at least two very well publicized "private school murders," and if you are my age and from my city, you probably remember them. Jennifer Levin? Dorian's Red Hand? Ring any bells? But more importantly, and more to the eventual point of this essay, child predation was just as real. When we were all ten I knew plenty of girls who had been mugged, girls who had been grabbed on the street, thought to elbow and ran (funny how tough we were, how ruthless, how willing to bite a stranger until we tasted blood eventhough we were the children of privlege and shelter; it was as if it had somehow, accidentally made us feral and wise, as if the fierce containment of our largely domestic trainings bred us to it).
I am many, many things in this life. I am a storyteller, and it is equally important to me to be the sort of person one tells stories about. I do things that are unladylike. I do things that are dirty. I read books that are shocking. And I date people who are arguably inappropriate -- like women. Delicate, ferocious, twisting and clever women. Perhaps women are always inappropriate (I make this about gender because LJ is largely female and fandom predominantly so -- as such, women's sexuality absolutely, positively makes the list of issues in play here).
My point in all of this is to talk about the current series of LJ deletions (at the apparent behest of "Warriors for Inocence") or suspensions of specific accounts that have interests that could be deemed criminal or inappropriate and to hopefully make a point about why it should matter to you. Even if you aren't in fandom. Even if you don't have an interest in those things. Even if you recognize LJ, as a private company, can, in fact, absolutely, do as it pleases. Even if you say well, duh, what sort of idiots put those sort of interests in their LJ profile?
Innocent ones. And I mean that in many, many senses of the word. The weird naivete of the Internet is one of its last true beauties, but that, of course, is neither here nor there. The issue here isn't about what you think of incest in fact or fiction or why someone would list rape as one of their LJ interests. The issue here is how words are being contextualized in a way that not only presumes guilt, but provides no recourse to prove innocence. Don't care about the fanfiction? Squicked by the Weasleycest? Well, how do you feel about the the Spanish-language discussion group for Lolita that got nuked in all of this? Or the anime folks that may very well take a tumble in this process (foreign language words such as yaoi and chan also seem to be triggers for the group that is leading LJ around by the nose on this).
Who gets to decide what art is, how art can be dicussed and what art discusses? Must our imaginations be limited in order to protect reality? Should words without context be capable of defining guilt? After all, if the issue is "interests that advocate criminal acts" where does that leave the gay and lesbian members of LJ? My personal life is illegal in many states and countries. Think that's paranoid? I don't blame you. But the real problem with this situation is less the naivete of someone putting incest on their interests list (Can anyone tell me if there are any published PhD dissertations on incest as literary phenomena ? I'm near certain there are, but I am, if anything, an indepdent scholar in such matters) and more the naivete in thinking someone won't object at some point to you -- and what you like to read or write or who you are.
This certainly isn't about defending child porn. And this isn't about denying the value of real programs ethically carried out in conjunction with law enforcement to find true child predators at work. This is about whether all art has to be acceptable for display in the middle of the dining room table at Sunday brunch. It is about recognizing the value of darkness and the forbidden in fiction and fantasy. And it is about how no children were harmed in the making of this sweet, strange, and sour thing called my life.
The current situation here as institgated by Warriors for Innocence should make you uncomfortable, because whether it effects you or not, it's absolutely, definitely about all of us.
Regardless of that somewhat irksome ritual, we all loved the bookfair. Because the bookfair was also a school fundraiser and in no thorough way divided its wares by school year. It was very exciting to see what the incoming seniors were reading and just as exiting to see what books had been purchased to make us want to purchase more even if our parents were vaguely horrified. I found How to be a Valley Girl (I'm a child of the 80s), The Vampire Lestat and those wretched VC Andrews novels there. And, while you can critque each of these rather dubious titles all you want, here's what I learned from them: that self-creation wasn't only possible, but necessary; that my being emotional wasn't a crime; that beauty could well be even more varied than I thought even if it was also more deeply regimented for most people than I ever could have suspected; that it was okay to write about stuff that was dark; that gay people could be romantic heroes; and that invisible prose and titilling subject matter could sell millions of copies. I learnt no sins and received no scars; rather, I discovered I wasn't broken, and at twelve do any of us - at least the smart ones, at least the female ones - tend to feel anything but?
Of course, you can say I grew up in a different world. And I did. It was one without the Internet, one rigorously isolated to a particular neighborhood in New York City convinced it was still raising the paragons of womanhood from another age, one where the only cell phones were so massive, they were carried as handsets extendeding via wire from large, industrial looking briefcases. Most of my friends were driven to school in dark chauffered sedans that seemed to swallow them and their little legs that never touched the floor. Surely, the world must have been safer then and there.
Well, the world wasn't. I grew up in the world of at least two very well publicized "private school murders," and if you are my age and from my city, you probably remember them. Jennifer Levin? Dorian's Red Hand? Ring any bells? But more importantly, and more to the eventual point of this essay, child predation was just as real. When we were all ten I knew plenty of girls who had been mugged, girls who had been grabbed on the street, thought to elbow and ran (funny how tough we were, how ruthless, how willing to bite a stranger until we tasted blood eventhough we were the children of privlege and shelter; it was as if it had somehow, accidentally made us feral and wise, as if the fierce containment of our largely domestic trainings bred us to it).
I am many, many things in this life. I am a storyteller, and it is equally important to me to be the sort of person one tells stories about. I do things that are unladylike. I do things that are dirty. I read books that are shocking. And I date people who are arguably inappropriate -- like women. Delicate, ferocious, twisting and clever women. Perhaps women are always inappropriate (I make this about gender because LJ is largely female and fandom predominantly so -- as such, women's sexuality absolutely, positively makes the list of issues in play here).
My point in all of this is to talk about the current series of LJ deletions (at the apparent behest of "Warriors for Inocence") or suspensions of specific accounts that have interests that could be deemed criminal or inappropriate and to hopefully make a point about why it should matter to you. Even if you aren't in fandom. Even if you don't have an interest in those things. Even if you recognize LJ, as a private company, can, in fact, absolutely, do as it pleases. Even if you say well, duh, what sort of idiots put those sort of interests in their LJ profile?
Innocent ones. And I mean that in many, many senses of the word. The weird naivete of the Internet is one of its last true beauties, but that, of course, is neither here nor there. The issue here isn't about what you think of incest in fact or fiction or why someone would list rape as one of their LJ interests. The issue here is how words are being contextualized in a way that not only presumes guilt, but provides no recourse to prove innocence. Don't care about the fanfiction? Squicked by the Weasleycest? Well, how do you feel about the the Spanish-language discussion group for Lolita that got nuked in all of this? Or the anime folks that may very well take a tumble in this process (foreign language words such as yaoi and chan also seem to be triggers for the group that is leading LJ around by the nose on this).
Who gets to decide what art is, how art can be dicussed and what art discusses? Must our imaginations be limited in order to protect reality? Should words without context be capable of defining guilt? After all, if the issue is "interests that advocate criminal acts" where does that leave the gay and lesbian members of LJ? My personal life is illegal in many states and countries. Think that's paranoid? I don't blame you. But the real problem with this situation is less the naivete of someone putting incest on their interests list (Can anyone tell me if there are any published PhD dissertations on incest as literary phenomena ? I'm near certain there are, but I am, if anything, an indepdent scholar in such matters) and more the naivete in thinking someone won't object at some point to you -- and what you like to read or write or who you are.
This certainly isn't about defending child porn. And this isn't about denying the value of real programs ethically carried out in conjunction with law enforcement to find true child predators at work. This is about whether all art has to be acceptable for display in the middle of the dining room table at Sunday brunch. It is about recognizing the value of darkness and the forbidden in fiction and fantasy. And it is about how no children were harmed in the making of this sweet, strange, and sour thing called my life.
The current situation here as institgated by Warriors for Innocence should make you uncomfortable, because whether it effects you or not, it's absolutely, definitely about all of us.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:20 pm (UTC)This is a digital medium, educate your child, watch what they DO, be a parent. Stop relying on stupid watchdog groups that will blindly take out everything not in their limited view of acceptable to do it for you.
There is a lot on LJ that isn't in my personal taste, but you know, it's like the television, if I don't like what I see? I just change the channel.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:30 pm (UTC)Educate, sheltering has never worked.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:54 pm (UTC)What concerns me is that what if I was to put down " rape " as one of my interests, because I am a friend of a rape victim ( which I am , several ). So i have to qualify my interest as " Frend of rape vicim " to escape censorship? Perhaps I should put down " Support for people who want to take violent action against rapists but know better than to do so. ". Likewise " incest " vs " Survivorsof incest" , " Sublings of incest victims " and countless other things that peoplewill rattle their sabres about. What if a person is just too simple , or too damaged to use the longer terms. What if they take the advice and use one word descriptions of their interests?
In an amusing way, perhaps all his electronic instant sharing with the world will turn us back to our paper and pen diaries where our thoughts are not subject to the scrutiny of any number of paranoid orginizations. Will we write about grocery shopping, family announcements and how the roses are bloomingin LJ and quietly pass hand made , hand written books to each other in the produce asile?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 03:01 pm (UTC)Susan
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 04:37 pm (UTC)(Wandered in here from
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 04:59 pm (UTC)Thank you for the information about this watchdog group.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:02 pm (UTC)Saw it in WTF-inc and was stunned. Edited my profile to include banners and links. Check it out and feel free to link to it.
...and all this a DAY after I buy paid time...*sigh*
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:05 pm (UTC)LJ should realize that if they instead went public with what WFI is attempting to do they would get farther in keeping pervs away from the journal. They're really turning their backs on customers with this mass banning.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:46 pm (UTC)You have quite effectively stated my views on internet censorship as a whole.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
my post on the subject: http://cooperati.livejournal.com/135932.html
in my comment i posted a link to someone else's investigation that proposes that the WFI isn't alligned with any law enforcement group, offers no mission statement, follows no established protocol, and this makes me nervous and sick.
-=T=-
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 06:02 pm (UTC)You don't want your children seeing something on TV? Change the channel.
Radio? Change the station.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 06:45 pm (UTC)Instead, the vast majority of the many abductions are by relatives (typically as part of divorce/custody battles) and the vast majority of the horrendously large number of rapes are committed by relatives, teachers, priests, and other people the child knows well.
I see all the mad witch-hunt mentality by Warriors for Innocence and the many similar groups as nothing more or less than an attempt to deny the fact that strangers lurking in the bushes or on the internet are not the real threat, because that actual facts are both more difficult and more frightening. Also, such efforts are about control and fear remains an excellent tool for control.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 07:52 pm (UTC)my apologies
Re: Mobo sent me
Date: 2007-05-30 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 08:44 pm (UTC)My account renewed automatically -- for a year -- in the wee hours of this morning, before I'd been given the relevant links to decide that I should have cancelled it. Definitely not buying a perm account now, though, and I had been leaning that way previously. I'm disappointed that I just missed the window for cancelling that payment.
I've always had a blank Interests list in my profile, because I didn't want to be searchable by random strangers. I guess now I look guilty as hell for all sorts of unspeakable acts. *eyeroll*
no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 10:59 pm (UTC)Federal Law and more recently the SCOTUS has always stated that one must show it is an actual child in order to be prosecuted. I don't understand how it advocates a criminal act if it is fiction. Because fiction no matter how young the child would not be criminal at the very very best you might be able to get an ruling that would force you to stop producing the fiction, but that isn't criminal. (and in my opinion would have to be retchingly horrible in many cases to go that far)
Now if people were writing about real twins who were underage then there is actually a case to be made there. It is why RPS written re: actors who are underage is probably not a safe thing to do, because technically it would fit within the confines of the federal law. (although writing is hard to prosecute)
But let's get real, that isn't what this is. We are adults, and if we aren't then it is our parents job to shelter/not shelter us. Not LJ's and certainly not some third party that I suspect finds things offensive that are just simply part of life.
Sorry for the long/rambling comment.
Save the Fandom!
Date: 2007-05-31 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 05:26 pm (UTC)I think that's just human (and animal) nature. My tiny, frail advisor, who is one of the most devoutly and truly religious and gentle people I have ever met, told us recently about being attacked in her elevator a couple of years ago by a man who knocked off her glasses and grabbed her cane. She fought back like a wolverine, and said that in the moment she could happily have killed the guy.
I think it's just what we do when we have to.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 04:33 am (UTC)Yes. The strange, rare stories that actually had 'me' in them were essential to me growing up, and I've read more stories with 'me' in them in fandom than in published fiction. I don't want to think how I'd feel without having known them.