Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2004-01-27 03:49 am
azurelunatic) wrote2004-01-27 03:49 am
Wouldn't be complete without a (sane) rebuttal from the other side.
I was talking with someone, and we came to an ideological impasse. And there were some really sane things said, and we realized that we were at an impasse, and we left it there. And I wouldn't be doing the right thing if I didn't put the other arguments out there.
Something more to think about. The only reason that this is not my stance is because this is not my experience; my experience is of being one of the kids who was mature enough to handle it (and need it), but not comfortable enough with the parents to ask specifically whether reading adult material was OK.
Warning: all italicized material following is my reconstruction of the stance. It's not my stance, but it's not their exact words either.
Kids too young to read, and kids young enough to obey their parents' injunctions to stay away from fic they're not old enough to read, goddamn it!, and kids mature enough to seek it out and enjoy it are not the ones we want to lock this away from using passwords and some form of secure age authentication. Kids who are too young for it, it'll pass right over their heads. Kids who are mature enough for it will appreciate it and thank gods for it being there. It's the gap in between those maturity levels that concern us.
The age/interest group that we want to protect most is those kids who are barging around on the internet deliberately seeking out R and NC-17 content, not because they actually can use it, but because they just want to stir up trouble. They'll read the warnings, and they'll go ahead and read it anyway, because they know they're not supposed to. They're the kids who break rules just because they're there to break, not because they care what the rules stand for or what the rules are there to protect them from.
They're at an age and experience level where they may understand the idea of sex, but they don't have context for it yet. They can't yet sort out "This is pretty typical" from "This is some seriously fucked-up shit" because while they may have had the theory, this is as close to the practice as they've ever been, and there is no one there telling them what's right and what's wrong. "They could go to their parents and ask about it," yeah right. Have you seen some of those parents out there?
And, more to the point, those kids. Those are the kids who would never dream of going to their parents if they ran into something disturbing. They'll process it by themselves, and probably do a fucked-up job of it. Like it or not, if your sick incest story is the first thing that kid runs into that's not school textbook biology, that's what they're going to have as their first impression of explicit sex. It's not the kids with the good parents that we have to worry about. The good parents are watching the kids, and making sure they're well-educated enough to handle whatever they run into, be it bad or good. You don't have to worry so much about the parents who are watching their kids like hawks. It's the parents who just don't care what their kids are doing, the ones who let their kids do whatever online, that have sufficiently fucked-up relationships with their kids so the kids can't trust them to talk about things with. Those kids are the ones who need good education the most, and those are the ones least likely to get it. The only hope for them is to keep the weird stuff well enough out of their way that the odds are that they'll run into an educational site when they're looking for explicit materials just because they can get away with it.
It would be fine if everybody was educated in how to handle sexually explicit materials, but the fact is, they're not. And I really don't see that happening any time soon, with the fucked-up families that aren't communicating with each other, leaving schools to do all the teaching. It sucks shit that fanfic authors have to do the work that parents should be doing, but the fact remains that while the parents aren't doing their job, someone has to be.
Something more to think about. The only reason that this is not my stance is because this is not my experience; my experience is of being one of the kids who was mature enough to handle it (and need it), but not comfortable enough with the parents to ask specifically whether reading adult material was OK.
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I am a parent of a clever child, and I will say that I consider it my responsibility to police where he goes on the internet. In fact, I don't particularly want anyone else doing it for me.
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And well -- I found my first explicit material in a library, and also, yes, it /was/ some rather fucked-up shit. I very quickly learned what I liked, in that matter.
You know how I turned out -- not too bad, really.
Another thing I could say is that if kids are determined to find porn, they will find it far sooner than they'll find my fic. A member of my family went through that "exploration phase" a while back, and well...wasn't looking for "Harry Potter NC17 fanfiction."
Sure, some kids might plug that into a search engine, yes. But if they're determined to find it, password protection is not going to keep them out.
I find myself highly frustrated by password protected sites, in general, and end up wandering off to find something else to read, as a matter of course. If I want fic, I want it /now/ and don't want to email someone and get a response days later with a password.
And it's a lot of trouble, and as an archive owner, I don't want to be on password watch 24/7.
It pretty much comes down to "I am not responsible for what happens to people who look at my site."
I'll warn, sure. Of course. I'll say "Don't read NC17 fic if you're under 17." But password-protect? The point is for my stories to be read, and password protection is about the same thing as putting an armed security guard at the door. Yes, some few might not figure out "Oh, all I have to do is lie about my age and I'll get in," but other readers who legitimately could read the fic won't read it either.
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(I know, this is not your position. Feel free to ignore my arguing with it. I object to the underlying messages of advertising and movies and such more and more each year, and wanted to comment on that.)
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My question is what age range are they talking about here? Because I was a virgin 'til I was 17...but I *wrote* porn as early as 12 years old. I had friends who were sexually active as early as 12 and 13 years old.
Unless one's parents are actively "protecting" you from such things (and I mean *very* actively) it's pretty damned difficult to grow up ignorant of sexual matters in this country. Even sitcoms have sexual references. And it's not too very difficult to figure out the difference between "normal" sex and the kinky stuff, even at 12...I don't recall ever having a discussion with my mom about kinky things, but I knew what I was writing when I wrote threesomes and bondage scenes that young. Hell, you can find pretty explicit stuff in the LIBRARY. Steamy romance novels are in the general fiction section, with no age limitation on them. (Believe me, I knew. :)
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I just had a bit of an ideological jolt last night, and I think the best solution that respects both sides of the argument enough is the concerned parents installing sitterware, and the fanfic writers telling the sitterware what they are (which most of them do).
I have a headache. Don't mind me.
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I am guessing that the average American parent-on-guard is so bombarded with advertising that it slips past the guards.
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