While I'm pretty effing delighted to see the head of Six Apart eat crow, there are aspects of his statement that I'm really not thrilled about. Specifically, this:
There were a number of profiles that expressed “interest” in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably pedophilia and child rape. Both in the instructions for profiles and in other places on the site we make it clear that interests listed should be evaluated within the context of “I like x”, “I’m in favor of x” or “I support x”.
I think anybody with even a cursory understanding of LJ knows that the actual users do not interpret the interests lists that way. An interests lists, to most people, is a list of things a journal user is interested in, not that they like. (I have "fundamentalism" on my interests lists, because I'm interested in keeping abreast of what fundie and Dominionist groups are doing, not because I'm a big ol' fundie myself.) I think 6A needs to be more sensitive to the actual way users are interpreting and using their journal content, rather than attempt to monolithically force their interpretation on the whold of LJ.
More importantly, I'm pretty alarmed by this statement:
Another issue we needed to deal with was journals that used a thin veneer of fictional or academic interest in events and storylines that include child rape, pedophilia, and similar themes in order to actually promote these activities. While there are stories, essays, and discussions that include discussion of these issues in an effort to understand and prevent them, others use a pretext to promote these activities. It’s often very hard to tell the difference.
This paragraph of the entry has since been changed, and perhaps that'll be enough to mollify me, but the implication here has been, and may yet be, that if a journal doesn't go out of its way to assure any innocent passers-by don't understand that it doesn't approve of said issues, that is grounds for deletion. And here, I can't help thinking: would Lolita have been as powerful a novel if Nabokov had prefaced it with: "Just so you know, I don't approve of pedophilia"? Does this mean that ageplay fetishists will have to tack on "...but actual child abuse is WRONG WRONG WRONG" to all of their entries? Will fanfiction that doesn't portray incest, etc. as universally creepy and coming to no good end be interpreted as glorifying incest, and thus, be deleted?
Because, frankly, issues like age-disparate sex and incest have more facets to them than just "this is good" or "this is bad." Talking about such issues can, in some cases, better illuminate our society's attitude toward sexuality as a whole. Furthermore, there have been consensual age-disparate sexual relations and consensual incestuous relations in human history. I am not condemning or approving of such relationships, but I certainly don't think that any good can come from just sweeping them under the rug and forbidding people to talk about them in any but the most condemning tones. (Hanne Blank (http://misia.livejournal.com/1050549.html) has discussed this more eloquently than I can.)
So while I'm glad Barak Berkowitz has admitted to rashness, I'm withholding my big fat sigh of relief until I see what he and 6A are deigning to do about it.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 05:45 pm (UTC)I think anybody with even a cursory understanding of LJ knows that the actual users do not interpret the interests lists that way. An interests lists, to most people, is a list of things a journal user is interested in, not that they like. (I have "fundamentalism" on my interests lists, because I'm interested in keeping abreast of what fundie and Dominionist groups are doing, not because I'm a big ol' fundie myself.) I think 6A needs to be more sensitive to the actual way users are interpreting and using their journal content, rather than attempt to monolithically force their interpretation on the whold of LJ.
More importantly, I'm pretty alarmed by this statement:
This paragraph of the entry has since been changed, and perhaps that'll be enough to mollify me, but the implication here has been, and may yet be, that if a journal doesn't go out of its way to assure any innocent passers-by don't understand that it doesn't approve of said issues, that is grounds for deletion. And here, I can't help thinking: would Lolita have been as powerful a novel if Nabokov had prefaced it with: "Just so you know, I don't approve of pedophilia"? Does this mean that ageplay fetishists will have to tack on "...but actual child abuse is WRONG WRONG WRONG" to all of their entries? Will fanfiction that doesn't portray incest, etc. as universally creepy and coming to no good end be interpreted as glorifying incest, and thus, be deleted?
Because, frankly, issues like age-disparate sex and incest have more facets to them than just "this is good" or "this is bad." Talking about such issues can, in some cases, better illuminate our society's attitude toward sexuality as a whole. Furthermore, there have been consensual age-disparate sexual relations and consensual incestuous relations in human history. I am not condemning or approving of such relationships, but I certainly don't think that any good can come from just sweeping them under the rug and forbidding people to talk about them in any but the most condemning tones. (Hanne Blank (http://misia.livejournal.com/1050549.html) has discussed this more eloquently than I can.)
So while I'm glad Barak Berkowitz has admitted to rashness, I'm withholding my big fat sigh of relief until I see what he and 6A are deigning to do about it.