01:33 AM
Fandom Controversy, censorship and absentee parents

Fanfiction.net has decided to remove all NC-17 stories from their archive, this has generated a great deal of discussion in various places in fandom. I held my tongue till today....

First, I'm an archivist and I fully support ff.net's right to decide what goes in their archive. If they start out with one set of rules and for whatever reasons, legal, hosting, webspace, whatever, decide to change those rules for the overall good of the archive, that's their right.

Someone said, it's not censorship, that it's like a book store deciding to stop carrying a type of book or magazine, they're not restricting the customer's access, the customer can go to another bookstore.

And that caught my eye. I had to open my mouth because this is exactly how our freedoms are being whittled away every day here in the US.

If a book store decides to stop carrying a book because it's illegal or because it doesn't sell, that's fine. But if a local group of parents pressures the book store to stop carrying the book because they object to the content and they can't (or don't want to) control their own kids, then it's effective censorship of everyone else by a particular group (not the bookstore, the group that's complaining).

Because that group or another group may then go pressure another local bookstore to stop carrying that book and before you know it, *you* can't find a bookstore in town that carries the book you want to buy and are legally allowed to buy. That's effective censorship, by those groups (not the bookstores, they're just listening to consumers).

This is not an improbable situation, it happens all the time in real life. Adult groups at Yahoogroups have been effectively censored by the AFA, they've been hidden from view and you have to know someone who knows the group in order to find it even tho those adult groups are perfectly legal and operating within the Yahoogroups TOS. There are large chunks of states in the midwest that have no doctors to perform abortions because of serious harrassment by right to life groups. So even tho a woman may have a legal right to an abortion, that right has been effectively removed since she may not be able to travel hundreds of miles to a doctor who will perform an abortion.

I repeat tho, it's not ff.net that's censoring authors, it's the people who are complaining, they're the ones censoring you and me, removing stories we wrote or that we want to read and that we (those of us who are adults) can legally access (at least in the US).

So I think it's a disgrace that these people, some of whom are apparently parents who've abdicated their role as parents and want to babyproof the net, are limiting my rights as an adult person in the US.

I'd sign a petition to protest against those people, they're the villains in this scene.

There was also a comparison of R/NC-17 stuff archived at ff.net to racking Playboy in the juvenile section of a bookstore, it's a general audience site, it shouldn't be accepting adult-level fics.

The stories were marked as R and NC-17, right? So kids accessing them knew what the content was. If the stories were labeled as G or PG, then by all means, whap the authors, remove their archiving privileges, the authors did the wrong thing. But if the stories were properly labeled, then junior deliberately went to the adult reading section of the bookstore.

And where should R and NC-17 go? In some back room website, hidden from view, like all the adult groups at Yahoogroups? like it's something dirty and perverted? No thanks. This country is so fricking neuroticly repressed about sex, we don't need more of it.

But I wholeheartedly endorse ratings, clearly labeled groups and fiction and websites. Give parents knowledge that they can use to restrict their children's access, that they can use to teach their kids their personal values and morality. But don't stuff it away in a closet like it's something shameful. I'm an adult human being and part of that is my sexuality and if I choose to read or watch adult material, that's a choice I get to make. If I have kids, then I have to make more choices, about what they read or watch and about what I do where they might be aware of it. But I don't have any right to expect the rest of the world to kowtow to my wishes just so I can get out of my parental responsibilities.