When 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.
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a_hollow_year has made a good post summarizing the current thing going on on LJ/in fandom as regards the suspension of journals.
