I am not now, nor have ever been, a moral relativist.

[alixtii]

1. Libraries as represented by the ALA oppose filtering. Libraries which filter in order to preserve government funds are indeed giving in to the Man and cooperating with a moral evil--although in very many cases the lesser moral evil, i.e. it's better to give in to the Man in the short term than keep people who need information from it completely (works of mercy get in the way of social action), and this should not be read as a direct criticism of those who have to make this or other difficult decisions. Making it easier for libraries to censor should not be paraded as a moral good, however.

2. Private corporations can censor. Think of a television station--who are the people who make sure you don't say bad words on the air, even if it's cable? Yep, they're called censors. It's not a freedom of speech issue when private entities censor--or rather, it is a freedom of speech issue but not a first amendment issue, and we have don't have a right to freedom of speech from private entities. That said, private entities whose sole function is to provide people with a platform for otherwise undifferentiated communication and still engage in the curtailment of free speech within their area of control may still be engaged in a moral evil. Just because something's legal doesn't make it okay.

3. It is not illegal to make protected speech available to minors on the internet. I could be wrong about this: certainly Congress seems to be passing a new law, and the courts striking it down, every six months or so. IANAL, but my talking point is that it is not illegal, and insofar as it is illegal (which it very well may be this week) the laws making it so are unconstitutional. That's not saying much--I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU and there are a whole lot of laws I think are (or should be) unconstitutional, and for the most part I just have to suck it up and abide by them anyway, because the battle was lost back in 1847 or something. But there's some indication that at least in previous years some courts, including the Supreme Court, have actually agreed with me on this issue. And if this is true, people engaged in certain types of moral evil cannot even have the excuse that it was legally compelled of them.

4. As said in #1, cooperating with moral evil by obeying an unconstitutional law can be absolutely necessary--morally required, even--if you are Rural Village Public Library which absolutely depends on federal funds to give poor children access to reading material. Not so much if you're a million-dollar private corporation out to make a buck. Just saying.

5. Sex being separated from other things which are "adult" (whatever that means), like having a job or caring about politics or falling in love, as something from which children need to be protected is, without a doubt, a form of misogyny, which is a moral evil.

6. I'm wondering if using the terms "NC-17" and "R" to rate fic according to sexual explicitness and other spectra is cooperating with a moral evil. It certainly isn't intended to mean "No children under 17" or "Restricted" when I use them, but that is their etymology and that meaning is out there and there is the (mostly) value-neutral alternative (if less precisely graduated, if you can get less precisely graduated than the MPAA system) "Not work safe" available. I'm thinking no--etymology isn't destiny--but it is food for thought.

Comments

Re: #5

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Why do you think some cutoff date is necessary? Shouldn't this be a decision individual parents make about their own individual children (except in cases of abuse and neglect)? What is so very damaging about sexual material that it has to be kept locked up that isn't damaging about non-sexual material? When I had nightmares from seeing things I couldn't handle as a young child (under 10) it was always violence, not sexual material. I didn't *get* most sexual material until I developed my own sexual feelings. So why the concern about sexual material? Children too young to understand it usually ignore it.

And when you define sexually explicit material as porn based on the author's intent you skirt perilous territory. I have written things that people were very aroused by when I was just telling a story and wasn't particularly aroused by the sex scene (commonly this happens when my characters have kinks I don't, or like things I don't). I would define it based on a lack of characterisation and plot, myself.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

A cutoff date is useful for legal purposes; for example, restricting the sale of such material or the admittance to theaters. Certainly it's important to know your child and what they can handle, but kids get into things on their own, so I think it's useful to have some kind of rating system that prevents them from seeing things unless their parents let them. (I'm talking about young children here, not all children under eighteen--by the time you're a teenager you should be able to start making those decisions on your own--but some cutoff date is still useful.) I don't think kids should be shown explicitly violent material, either. Neither explicit violence nor explicit sex is really comparable to explicit tax paying.

I think it's more useful to define porn as something with the intent to arouse because, as you say, different people are aroused by different things. If I have a foot fetish, and I get aroused by a scene where one character rubs another's feet, that doesn't make the scene inherently pornographic. If, however, the scene was written with the intent to arouse people with foot fetishes, it's pornographic even if I don't personally find it arousing.

Re: #5

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Most exclusion systems don't allow for parental permission. You can't take your 15 year old son to a movie rated NC17 or allow him to read fic with the Explicit Adult flag.

The problem with defining things by "intent to arouse" and the reason I will not accept this definition is that it requires the person judging the material to be a mind-reader. There have been many things which were not written with the particular intent to arouse that have been defined as pornography because those who were looking for pornography were aroused or feared others would be aroused by them; they then made the mental leap that if they were aroused by reading/viewing the material, it was clearly intended to arouse them. Foot fetishists are kind of the exception that proves the rule, because people who do not have foot fetishes consider bare feet a normal sight. I'm thinking more along the lines of those who are trying to decide whether an explicit scene of characters having sex was intended to arouse or not. It may be arousing to many people, but the reason it is in the story may well be that the characters interact in a way that reveals previously unseen aspects of their personalities. A reader who fails to see that will assume that the intent was to arouse.

So I find that definition completely unuseful, since I can't read people's minds, only their fic.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

I don't think it requires mind reading, just a little knowledge of context and of the author outside of their story. But obviously we'll have to disagree on this point.

Re: #5

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I can understand the claim that sexually explicit material is inherently harmful to children, even if I don't believe it. But I'm uncertain what inherent harm could even be argued to reside in material written to arouse (and I'd still question the singling out of sexual arousement from other types). Do children really need to be protected from scenes of people rubbing each other's feet just because the scene was written to arouse?

And you already know how I feel about legal cutoff ages. ;)

Neither explicit violence nor explicit sex is really comparable to explicit tax paying.

I think this premise is part of what ataniell93 and I have a problem accepting. (Violence and paying taxes are bad things*, sex is good.)

*I am a crazy tax-and-spend liberal, so I don't really believe taxes are bad things. I'm just joking.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

I think it's more nuanced than that, and that's why the tax-paying argument seems to me an attempt to derail the argument. Sex is not always good; whether it is good or bad depends on the context, and a child is not mature enough to realize this. I would make the same argument for violence.

Re: #5

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I really think the tax-paying argument cuts to the heart of the issue. Whether paying taxes is good or bad depends on the context; young children won't understand the intricacies. It really requires setting sex apart as something special from other fields of adult activity.

Now, I have several reasons why I think you would set sex apart as something special--but I think that's the source of the disagreement, ultimately.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

Probably.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

That is, if you are arguing that sex is no more emotionally significant than paying taxes, then yes, our views on the subject are fundamentally different.

Re: #5

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

But again, saying "Children need to be protected from emotional significant things" doesn't strike me as intuitive.

Re: #5

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

The above reply was "right out of bed" answer. Thinking about it more, I was trained in part by analytic philosophers, so I'm attempting a conceptual analysis, trying to carve language at the joints to figure out what it is about sex/pornography that we need to protect children from.

I'm not arguing that sex is exactly like every type of adult activity--if that were the case, paying taxes would be a lot more fun. But I don't think "emotional signification" can power the conceptual analysis needed; both tongueless kissing and fighting with friends are extremely emotionally significant activities, but they are quite often shown in G-rated movies.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

It was, off the top of my head, one reason that I would give for why I don't think it's a good comparison. By comparing sex to tax paying on the basis that they're both activities associated with adulthood, you're putting things in categories that I find far too broad to be useful.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

Also I think I'm having the same problem that you're having; the idea that children should not read porn is just so obvious to me that I'm having trouble articulating it. I kind of like getting into this kind of discussion for that reason.

Re: #5

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

That's what I love about philosophy, especially analytic philosophy: it takes our naive intuitions and subjects them to as much logical rigour as possible. Sometimes we're able to build a system out of the result, and sometimes we end up skeptical of what we thought we knew.

Re: #5

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

The foot fetish argument was a silly one. But in defense of my definition of pornography, I would first point out, so it doesn't seem that I totally pulled it out of thin air, that the Oxford English Dictionary defines pornography as such:

The explicit description or exhibition of sexual subjects or activity in literature, painting, films, etc., in a manner intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic feelings; printed or visual material containing this.

In general I find it a much more useful definition than the one that I often see, and the one that I think ataniell is arguing above, which is an argument about literary or artistic merit and usually goes something like, "If something is literature/art, it's not porn." And determining something's moral acceptability based on something as subjective as "literary merit" is not, in my mind, a useful exercise. In addition, the definition can get very easily turned around: "If it's porn [the meaning her is most likely "sexually explicit"], it's not art."

I think that in this context it's worth separating pornographic sexual content from non-pornographic (for a blatantly obvious example, a human anatomy textbook; most, of course, are more nuanced than that, which is why the definition is not perfect, but then none are). As I stated in my other comment, I think that you're using categories that I find too broad to be useful, which is why the arguments are breaking down (I don't see your comparisons as valid, and you don't see my distinctions as valid).