# Censorship in Writing: your thoughts?



## Trollheart (Sep 24, 2019)

This thread is based on an article I published in my journal on Music Banter back in 2012. The concerns expressed here were genuine on my part, and can, I believe, form the basis for some hopefully enlightened discussion on the whole topic of censorship: how far is too far, who makes those decisions and why, and is free speech always a good thing if it leads to hatred or prejudices being even tacitly accepted?

All opinions welcome. I'd really like to get some proper discussion going on this. Obviously, this is no longer necessarily about the artist referred to here, but more a wider issue addressing the problems of censorship, and the balance to be struck between free speech and giving oxygen to views that are opposite to yours, and may in fact be objectionable, even abhorrent to you.

Here's the piece, written by me in 2012:

*                                         "My Brain Hurts!" 
The often demented ramblings and musings of a music journal author*


Something has been troubling me since yesterday. I stumbled across an artiste whose name intrigued me (often the first impression one makes on me is to have an interesting name, either of the artiste or the album) and having trialed a few tracks found it not terrible. It was, I think I can only conclude, doom metal, but for what it was it was not too bad, and I haven't had that much experience with that sub-genre. So as I usually do, I went searching for more information on the artiste. Wiki had nothing, which is never a good start. My other main source --- for metal at any rate --- _Encyclopaedia Metallum_ was more helpful, but still details were sketchy. So I decided to type in the artiste's name as a domain, and was gratified to see a website pop up.





The artiste in question is known as Babylon Mystery Orchestra, and turns out, from what I can see, to be the solo efforts of one guy, who sings, plays all instruments, writes all lyrics and music and is so far unsigned, despite having six albums and being in existence since 2003. Is this a good thing? If he was that talented, surely he would have been signed by now? Perhaps. Not necessarily, I thought though. Some artistes either turn down the advances of a major label as they either don't want their music diluted, want to retain control of their music or simply don't trust them. From having read about BMO I think he falls into the final category.


Now, the music is fine: nothing terribly special, but not unlistenable (at least, in the samples I heard) but I often look for more interesting than good albums to review. Wow, that sounds stupid doesn't it? That's not what I mean. What I mean is that I look for something interesting _first_, some hook on which to hang the review. Of course, if the music is terrible then it doesn't matter how different or thought-provoking the name is, I shy away from it. No point in sacrificing quality for novelty. I learned this lesson with Vincent Kuhner's album some time ago, buying it only for the extra-long title, and was very disappointed, if not totally confused by it. But if the music matches the interest factor, I can usually push “Purchase” and have a listen to the whole thing.


Babylon Mystery Orchestra is the brainchild of one Sidney Allen Johnson, and on his website there is a lot of rhetoric about the things he doesn't like, and/or trust, and it seems, in fairness, to be pretty much everything. He has written, it would appear, albums that take apart religion, politics, America ... here, I'll let the guy tell you himself: _”From its inception Babylon Mystery Orchestra has defiantly presented its vision of the truth, the way a true artist should, without regard to the prevailing popular views of the time. The gothic hard rock/heavy metal artist thrives on challenging conventional thinking. Especially that of the rock music elites. No man-made institution is sacred to Babylon Mystery Orchestra! Not America, portrayed as the Biblically doomed "Mystery Babylon the Great" on the debut CD "Divine Right Of Kings." Not the Christian church, a man-made institution rightly questioned on the critically acclaimed work "The Great Apostasy: A Conspiracy of Satanic Christianity." The second CD, "On Earth As It Is In Heaven," even condemned rock music itself!”_


Okay, all fine and good. It's a thinly-disguised promotion for his previous works, certainly, but it manages to succesfully state his case. So I'm intrigued, and want to investigate more. I notice that on his site the guy seems to have links to essays --- _essays?_ Yeah. So obviously he's reasonably intelligent and presumably articulate. A good way, I reason, to find out what he's all about is to read one or two. So I do. The one I choose seems to be a deconstruction of the theory of evolution. Now, to my mind, there is only one group that denies evolution as a solid theory, and that's creationists. So am I reading the rantings of a religious conservative? I read the article, which I have to say is both well-written and researched, and seems to reference some eminent scientists, who appear to agree that there may be flaws in Darwin's theory. I get a little unsettled by this, and await the revelation at the end that Johnson believes God created the world. If he says this, then I know (right or wrong) I'm dealing with a creationist, and my opinion may form on that basis. 


But to my surprise, he doesn't say anything, beyond mentioning The Great Flood and Noah, however the manner in which he refers to them leaves me no wiser as to whether he's advocating creationism or laughing at it equally. My curiousity unsatisfied, I turn to see if there's a similar essay “taking down God”, as it were, but my attention is drawn to one about homosexuals. In this article, I find Johnson perhaps revealing his true colours, as he seems to launch into an angry, hate-filled tirade about the passing of laws in certain states promoting and allowing same-sex marriage. It's clear he doesn't agree with this, it's clear he has a hatred of gays, and also of the president, as he constantly refers to laws passed by Obama, with a thin veneer of hatred over his writing which suggests he either hates Democrats, or blacks, or both.


So, are we now looking at racism, gender-fuelled hatred and prejudice? It would, on the face of it, seem so. The fact that the symbol for BMO is a badly-disguised swastika does not help settle my nerves. I know it's the actual original ancient symbol that Hitler corrupted to make into the Nazi emblem, and which came to stand for repression, murder, totalitarianism and hatred, but in which context is it supposed to be understood when used as the logo for Babylon Mystery Orchestra? I don't see essays on jews, but I do see a lot of hatred directed at Islam. This is not good. Islam is a religion; it's Islamic _terrorists_ or _extremists_ that should draw the ire of all right-thinking people, not a whole community that is spread out over the globe.


Titles run like: “There is no god but Allah: the truth about Islam part 2”, “The science of denying God”, “Heavy metal's golden goose ... COOKED! By the Ku Klux Klan” and “Homosexuals and Hugenots”, the latter of which was the one I read. This last one, at least, makes very uncomfortable reading, and I am left in something of a quandary (whoever owns it shouldn't have left the doors open, but there you are, I wandered in and now I'm stuck in it!): do I now judge this man's music --- the lyrics of which do seem to reflect his view on the world as transmitted through his somewhat hate-filled but well-written essays --- on the basis of what he writes? If I review it, can I divorce the music from the ideals, the man from the music, the album from the prejudice? And if I do review it, am I giving oxygen to a preacher of intolerance and hatred, becoming (however inadvertently or reluctantly) the mouthpiece for Sidney Allen Johnson, providing a platform from which he can spout his edicts and pronouncements? If people reading this enjoy the music, am I driving them into the arms of a fanatic?


But if I choose not to publish, not to pursue this review, ignore the man and his music, am I pushing the problem to one side and refusing to face it? Am I pretending this sort of hatespeak through music does not exist, even though I know it does. Of course I know, but is this a case of NIMJ (Not In MY Journal)!? Am I ignoring the problem and hoping it'll fade away? Am I taking the easy way out instead of taking this challenge head-on and trying to deal with it? Should I even _involve_ his politics, beliefs, prejudices, or just concentrate on the music? But when the music is so deeply rooted in that belief system, how can I have one without the other? They're each part of the whole, more than the sum of their parts, and one road leads inexorably to the other. 


Or do I misunderstand the man? His first essay, while coldly laughing at the idea of evolution and explaining WHY he does not believe in it --- or, indeed, global warming --- was quite a deep and enthralling read, and he can certainly string a word or two together, there's no doubting that. Is he a harmless conspiracy theorist, one of those people who blames the government on everything that happens, that think shadowy men sit around a dark table in a grey office somewhere and make decisions that affect the world, faceless, powerful men who are answerable to no ---- hey! Where are you taking me? What's the hood for? I demand to see the Irish ambassador!


Seriously though, do I give his writings credit, should I decide to go ahead with the review, or ignore them? Do I give him more exposure, let him say what he wants, and let people make up their own minds about that, or do I essentially repress what I've read, practicing a form of censorship myelf which I have never fully agreed with? Will I be unwittingly doing the work of the “shadowy men” by denying Johnson and the Babylon Mystery Orchestra a chance to state their case? Will I be making myself a tool of the “Illuminati” or PNAC, or whoever he blames for all the ills and wars and diseases and economic meltdowns in the world?


It's not even that I'm that blown away by his music: I mean, it's okay, but I could just as easily review something else, forget about him and move on. But then again, _could_ I forget him? If his words --- be they misguided, plain wrong, or in fact the unvarnished, undisguised truth --- have affected me so deeply that I felt I had to write this to try to sort out my reaction to BMO, do I not owe it to myself, and my readers, to explore further and see what's to be found? I only run a tiny music journal, in the final analysis, not a conspiracy centre or a television studio, but what I put in it is up to me, and I like to think that my choices are based both on personal experiences and first impressions as well as gut feelings.


What does my gut tell me about this? I'm still trying to work that out.


If anyone knows of Johnson, or Babylon Mystery Orchestra, and has any advice, I'd be really grateful to hear from you. Anyone else who would like to weigh in, on either side, your input would be welcome too.


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## bdcharles (Sep 24, 2019)

Trollheart said:


> how far is too far, who makes those decisions and why, and is free speech always a good thing if it leads to hatred or prejudices being even tacitly accepted?
> 
> ...
> 
> a wider issue addressing the problems of censorship, and the balance to be struck between free speech and giving oxygen to views that are opposite to yours, and may in fact be objectionable, even abhorrent to you.



Well, first there is free speech and free speech. There's the free speech that permits you to critique your government without fear of reprisal. Then you have Article 19 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which permits anyone the right to hold and express any opinion. The latter comes with several amendments, mostly to counter this sort of thing. In the UK there are several hate speech laws that do a similar function, not that that stops people citing "free speech" as a get-out for being a c**t. My understanding is that there are fewer such laws in the US.

Then there's the scope of a piece of censorship. If someone comes into my house and starts, I dunno, talking smack about the Irish or what-have-you, I'll probably ask them to leave. Am I censoring them? No, because they are (somewhat) free to spout their views on the internet or out in the rain for all I care. I just don't want it in my house, on my blog, or anywhere on my patch. I am under no obligation to grant them any publicity oxygen. It's quite a common defence of such behaviour to cry censorship when in fact no such thing is happening. So - I make that decision for my stuff and I stand by it and now the world knows why 

Do I support laws that censor such a hardline opinion? There's part of me that does. I just ... don't think sufficient numbers of people are well-enough equipped to handle such outre opinions. I mentioned here the other day that the only place in the UK that still teaches rhetoric is Eton. That's not a good situation to be in because it leaves huge tracts of the population so backfooted that they don't even know how backfooted they are. As I understand it rhetoric is still taught in US schools and it shows. People need to learn how to handle the sorts of arguments that are gaining way too much ground today otherwise we will be sunk, and until we do, I think we need the intervening hand of the law. Of course, whether the implementers of that law can be trusted to do it right is a whole other side-issue.

As for your writeup, I think it's fair. It doesn't censor the guy but at the same time it is clear what he's about. Therefore readers can then be that bit more forewarned and forearmed.


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## seigfried007 (Sep 24, 2019)

I'm against pretty much anything resembling censorship. You don't get a free-thinking society by stifling thought and expression. 

If someone's a raving asshole, I want them to air their opinions all the time at high volume, wear the t-shirts, gets the picket signs and everything. Helps me know who the assholes are.  

I find far more damage is done by people keeping bad things quiet than airing said problems out.


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## Ralph Rotten (Sep 24, 2019)

Lenny Bruce was not afraid.


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## Trollheart (Sep 24, 2019)

Thanks for the replies, especially bdcharles's very considered one, and sorry man, by the way, for sending you the PM. I just assumed you were a mod. 

My main worry was and is something that kind of surfaced a little on Music Banter, where one of the guys would rave about, literally, a Nazi punk band, and cheerfully quote the lyrics without any adverse comment or warning. To me, and I may be wrong here, that's tantamount to agreeing with/supporting the position of the writer. I mean, if some guy writes in his songs something derogatory about the Jews, I really don't want to be a conduit for funneling that to other people. But the problem, as I said, with BMO was that he was actively writing (and, as I mentioned, it has to be said, very articulately and on the face of it well-informed) about a lot of issues that would be considered hate speech, and I wasn't sure whether giving him that platform, however small, was a good idea. In the end, from what I can see, I just dropped the whole thing and moved on. Not, I think, a conscious or even brave or cowardly decision on my part: from what I recall, I just forgot about it as I got immersed in other stuff. And since only one person commented, and that directly after my post, there was nothing to remind me of it. So maybe it wasn't that big an issue, or I chose (consciously or not) not to make it one.

I suppose in the end there's no real simple answer to this. I'd like to think though that if I wrote something like our friend writes above - in a purely fictional, character-driven way - that I'd be at pains to point out how wrong it/he/she was. Whether I would do that skillfully or not would be, I guess, a reflection on how good a writer I am, or not, as the case may be. But I would never want anyone thinking I supported or even conceded such notions.


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## BadHouses (Sep 24, 2019)

Funny, music reviewer Anthony Fantano (aka theneedledrop) on the YouTubes recently removed a review of a French metal band Deathspell Omega.  Seems sensible enough, and it's an action I also wouldn't exactly call censorship.  See the quote at the end for his reasons.

I think Anthony has a slightly different perspective on this though as someone whose videos are supporting him financially.  As we know, the social media Borg can latch onto the slightest crumb of association and make people's lives very difficult.  If Anthony were to be associated with the group, and thereby the alt-right, he could possibly face endless harassment that would affect his ability to pay the bills (i.e., social media stirring up people to go to his house; people contacting and harassing YT, advertisers, Patreon, etc.)  I'm inclined to call this social censorship, since it is technically different to legal bans, such as with _Tropic of Cancer_, _Mein Kampf_ or _Huckleberry Finn_.

That said, it is still incredible powerful and frankly it is behaviour I believe to be inescapable.  All cultures at all times have taboos and words/actions/beliefs that are beyond the pale.  We are always orienting within a culture.  Lenny Bruce was not afraid to flout the times, but he certainly paid a price.  I think in Lenny's case we'd say we owe him a debt of gratitude.  Going down for some wanna-be Nazi probably won't earn the same.

So you have that to consider as part of your reputation.  You also have to decide whether you, by your dissemination of your views on this, will be bringing this person greater audience.  This again can have a big impact, especially with someone like Fantano who can literally break bands by reviewing them positively.  As such, his reach has the potential to help this fellow whose views he objects to, and thus he wouldn't want to contribute.

If I were in your shoes regarding this Johnson fellow, I'd probably still write about him as well.  Especially since he's a small-time crackpot with ALL the taboo views of our day and age from what I can tell.  Exposure would be unlikely to strengthen his influence since I have no audience to bestow/sic on him.

Guess I haven't offered much for answer, but it was fun to think about.

BTitG:


> Just thought I’d jump on here and quickly explain the sudden disappearance of my DsO review:
> 
> Given the band’s elusive nature and the lack of information on such things in mainstream sources, I was unaware of the deep ties band member Mikko Aspa has to the NSBM scene. And, yeah, that’s pretty concerning to me, warranting a removal of the review—even if Aspa wasn't responsible for the lyrical content and my interpretation of the album's themes somehow wasn't off-base.  Maybe things would be different if I knew about all of this beforehand and had an opportunity to expound upon it and voice concerns in the review, but I came into this info after the fact and I figure it’s more sensible to move onto the dozens of other records pressing on me instead of trying to pull off a time-consuming redo.
> 
> ...


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## luckyscars (Sep 25, 2019)

I was listening to British radio this morning for a bit of Brexit Schadenfreude and in a short segment they were discussing that Amazon (I think it was Amazon) is being pressured to withdraw an autobiography by Tommy Robinson, who I understand is generally considered a far-right/neo-nazi bastard of some pedigree (there's so many around I can't keep up). Anyway, the interviewer pointed out that Amazon sells Mein Kampft, Mao's Red Book, etc. Which does sort of undermine the argument somewhat.

What actually interested me was there seemed to be a distinction drawn between books and more casual merchandise - t-shirts, etc. The interviewer suggested it might be appropriate to censor the latter but that the idea of banning books was unacceptable, that books have a special privilege because they are books. The person he was interviewing kept repeating the line about how the book triggers hate speech and that makes it unique. 

I don't know, I don't really have a full-formed view on it, but I thought it was interesting. I guess I tend toward thinking books (and other forms of art) do have a special allowance when it comes to that stuff. I mean, it occurred to me I have and probably would again read autobiographies of individuals I don't agree with. I used to like reading books about the KKK, because I found it interesting. 

So where would that censorship line even be drawn, right? On the other hand, wearing a T-shirt with a swastika on the front seems totally different. However, I don't know how that difference would necessarily be expressed. Would a poster advocating Nazism have that 'artistic allowance' or not? Is there a major difference between a poster and a coffee mug if they both espouse a similar statement? I used to collect posters of Soviet propaganda art because I enjoyed its aesthetic. I don't read Russian, so god even knew what half of them said, certainly I never gave it any thought, and I hate the idea that somebody might think I was supporting Stalin because of it.

So, I think I generally tilt toward the notion of less regulation and censorship with this stuff, understanding that others are still entitled to oppose it and that if you try to walk into a restaurant wearing something objectionable they can tell you to fuck off.


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## Rojack79 (Sep 25, 2019)

For me i see books as an expression of the artist. If my book deal's with Nazi's, Racism, and other taboo subject's then guess what I want those details to be as close to real life as possible so I can educate people. Even if the book is completely fantasy I all still use the knowledge I have of the real world to make some truly vile and despicable characters. That means they're going to have to do some horrific things. So no I do not advocate for censorship in writing. It blunts the impact and dulls the action of the whole book and in the end just leaves a bad taste in ones mouth this condemning the book to become a glorified door stop, or paperweight. Whichever one you choose.


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## luckyscars (Sep 25, 2019)

Rojack79 said:


> For me i see books as an expression of the artist. If my book deal's with Nazi's, Racism, and other taboo subject's then guess what I want those details to be as close to real life as possible so I can educate people. Even if the book is completely fantasy I all still use the knowledge I have of the real world to make some truly vile and despicable characters. That means they're going to have to do some horrific things. So no I do not advocate for censorship in writing. It blunts the impact and dulls the action of the whole book and in the end just leaves a bad taste in ones mouth this condemning the book to become a glorified door stop, or paperweight. Whichever one you choose.



So here's a hypothetical for you, Rojack. Imagine a book came out that explicitly called for the murder of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (it doesn't have to be her, use who you like) as part of an argument that she is an existential threat to America. Imagine that suddenly Looney Tunes all over were threatening her, and eventually one of them managed to kill her. Imagine that a copy of that book, well-thumbed, showed up in the assassin's apartment and that numerous social media posts had quoted it, essentially credited it with being the motive. 

Would that be grounds to ban the book? Before it is dismissed as a hypothetical consider just how many books over the years have wielded life-changing influence over their readers - religious texts most notably. However in order to ban a book there would need to be a legal case, and probably a SCOTUS decision as it flies in the face of the First Amendment. In America, there's no such thing as 'hate speech' in terms of books.

So, now you have a problem: You ban the book, you now have a problem of suddenly books being considered accessories to crimes. That's fine, but that means next time there's a Jihadist terrorist attack you're going to be expected to ban the Qu'ran under those same terms, which does have several passages that directly or indirectly call for the murder of non-Muslims (e.g. “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and capture them, and blockade them, and watch for them at every lookout") and in order to avoid applying the same rules, you're going to have to figure out how to make that case without sounding like you are making an editorial decision based on your own biases. You _dont _ban books, you're going to have a problem of a book existing out there, accessible to anybody, that is inciting violence. You ban _certain _books but not others, for whatever reason, suddenly you're making editorial decisions for the rest of us. Google has this problem all the time with its search results.

I don't have an answer to this, by the way, but it's the basic problem with censorship.


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## Trollheart (Sep 25, 2019)

I think possibly the problem comes up if you don't make it clear through your writing that you, as the writer (and therefore you assume the reader also) does not condone the behaviour or share the beliefs of your character(s) if they do something or advocate something that is basically reprehensible. When I wrote Behind the Mask, it features Goebbels, but I made it very clear that I considered him to be what history has painted him as, and what he was: a bigoted, evil, anti-semetic manipulator of the truth and of people. That's only a short story, but I would always go to the best lengths I could to distance myself from such beliefs, even in fiction.

However, the OP was and is not really about fiction, but asks the question: if you're writing about someone, a real someone, who is alive right now, on a blog or whatever, as I was, and you realise their views are basically hatespeech, do you censor yourself and not publish or do you take the risk of tacitly allying yourself to them by allowing yourself to write about them? Like Lucky said, it's not really a question that has any answer, nor do I expect one. I just wanted to see where people stood on the issue.


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## Rojack79 (Sep 25, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> So here's a hypothetical for you, Rojack. Imagine a book came out that explicitly called for the murder of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (it doesn't have to be her, use who you like) as part of an argument that she is an existential threat to America. Imagine that suddenly Looney Tunes all over were threatening her, and eventually one of them managed to kill her. Imagine that a copy of that book, well-thumbed, showed up in the assassin's apartment and that numerous social media posts had quoted it, essentially credited it with being the motive.
> 
> Would that be grounds to ban the book? Before it is dismissed as a hypothetical consider just how many books over the years have wielded life-changing influence over their readers - religious texts most notably. However in order to ban a book there would need to be a legal case, and probably a SCOTUS decision as it flies in the face of the First Amendment. In America, there's no such thing as 'hate speech' in terms of books.
> 
> ...



For me this argument boils down to one thing, The human that reads said book. Doesn't truly matter what the book is about, it could be about kitten, if someone reads that and then thinks "the good Lord wants me to murder someone today" then they are a very flawed individual that needs to rethink how they perceive reality. My point Is that it's the person that should be held responsible not the book.


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## velo (Sep 25, 2019)

Another classic is the Anarchists' Cookbook.  Banned in many places, was still widely available.  Censorship fails at its ultimate goal 100% of the time.  It's not only morally corrupt, it's ineffectual.  We are like kids, tell us something is verboten and that's what I'm going to seek out.  

The only rational choice, based on the evidence, is an entirely open marketplace of ideas.  What is and is not acceptable will then be sorted out.  People will choose.  

The real issue here, as I see it, is the inability of the average Westerner, Americans specifically, to have a nuanced or multi-tiered view of the world.  This hasn't always been the case, but since the rise of the interwebbez and soshull MEdia (extreme emphasis on 'ME') the polarisation of thought has exacerbated to the point of utter irrationality.  You are no longer allowed to think outside of your group's clearly defined boundaries.  You can't be liberal if you want immigration reform, you can't be conservative if you are pro-life.  The entire paradigm has upended rationality and replaced it with emotion-based dogma of the most incomprehensible sort.  

If you can't entertain that someone else might have a valid view outside of your own, you are part of the problem.  

The youtuber who removed the review of the racist band made a practical decision because of the screaming hordes of social justice warriors and virtue signallers who happily destroy the reputation and lives of anyone who happens to brush up against something they consider distasteful.  And yet they'll say they are coming from a standpoint of compassion.  

I really don't struggle with this anywhere else in my life save in my role here on the forum.  To his credit for the foresight in doing so, Trollheart reached out to me and asked if this thread would be acceptable.  At first I wanted to say no.  We've struggled with several threads that got 'political' over the last few weeks and had to clamp down to maintain civility.  It took some time but I realised what I was doing was anticipating an outcome instead of making a valid determination about the content.  I've said to many people that we don't censor content on this forum and that's how we want it.  

In the end I said yes and I'm glad I did, it was the right call.  If things get to the snarky, name-calling stage then my team with deal with it but the point is that censoring for the sake of maintaining order is the worst kind of slippery slope.  This is a legitimate conversation and is precisely what this forum is about.  

I heard a highly esteemed professor speaking (online) the other day who was discussing the fact that even in academia you are now no longer allowed to even allude to the glaringly obvious and well-proven fact that men and women are different in some physical and psychological ways.  Every 5 year old can show you this with accurate scientific observations but university educators are now being actively censored from talking about this.  It's beyond stupid and I'm frankly tired of it.  

Let's call it what is really is- censorship is merely an intellectual power grab.  It's a way to try and force others to see and think the way you want them to.  I have, and will continue to, call bullshit on that fuckery.


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## BornForBurning (Sep 25, 2019)

> Funny, music reviewer Anthony Fantano (aka theneedledrop) on the YouTubes recently removed a review of a French metal band Deathspell Omega. Seems sensible enough, and it's an action I also wouldn't exactly call censorship. See the quote at the end for his reasons.


That Deathspell Omega thing really annoyed me partly because getting mad about racism in a genre that openly advocates for the extinction of the entire human race is comically ridiculous, but also because the people condemning the vocalist for Nazism barely made a peep about the fact that he has _literally produced child pornography. _
But really, these metal 'journalists' getting mad about racism are utter hypocrites. Sacrificing virgins to Satan? Thumbs up. End the world in nuclear hellfire? Thumbs up! Gas the Jews? Oy vey! Where'd all this violence in Black Metal come from!?


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## BadHouses (Sep 25, 2019)

I think to sidestep the accusation of "hypocrite," a censorship advocate would put the two things you cite into two general camps: Speech which advocates terrible things and is likely (or has a history) of causing harm, and speech which advocates terrible things which is unlikely (or has no history) of causing harm.  What harm may come of that speech may be highly contextual. 

Other than a few exceptions which probably exist, I don't think there's any movement to sacrifice virgins or exterminate the human race. Obviously no metal head is at risk of controlling even one nuke, let alone an arsenal. Thus metalheads can growl out all the violent lyrics they want in that regard. 

Conversely, there *is* a Nazi resurgence lately with a lively audience that holds rallies, attracts minor members of the intelligentsia and the media, and *has* been associated with a few violent acts. If you're a central scrutinizer, that kind of movement presents a potential political challenge (and maybe they're a threat to some minority group or whatever). Threats like that may require suppression.

I've seen clips of a neo-Nazi public access TV show from the 80s or 90s (I think it was called "Race & Reason" ). Such a show, even on local public access TV, would have a much harder time getting on the air today, in my estimation.


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## BornForBurning (Sep 25, 2019)

I've heard this argument and it would hold water if not for the fact the Black Metal _has _had a violent impact independent of the far-right stuff. Faust, Dissection. The infamous Norwegian murders. Let's not forget the numerous homicide convicts who mailed Quorthon saying that he 'inspired' them. And I'm sure the poor squirrels on Glen Benton's front lawn would take issue with the idea that their lives aren't at stake. I suppose you could argue that the far-right has a 'bigger' impact but I don't see how that justifies anything. Violence is violence. Either it's all okay or none of it's okay.


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## Cephus (Sep 25, 2019)

Rojack79 said:


> For me this argument boils down to one thing, The human that reads said book. Doesn't truly matter what the book is about, it could be about kitten, if someone reads that and then thinks "the good Lord wants me to murder someone today" then they are a very flawed individual that needs to rethink how they perceive reality. My point Is that it's the person that should be held responsible not the book.



Absolutely agree. While we don't accept direct calls for violence, if anyone does commit violence because of something someone wrote, the fault lies with the one who does the violence, not the one who called for it. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Trying to stop someone from speaking, no matter how much you dislike the content of their speech, is unacceptable. The only counter for speech is more speech. It is never censorship.


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## velo (Sep 25, 2019)

BornForBurning said:


> I've heard this argument and it would hold water if not for the fact the Black Metal _has _had a violent impact independent of the far-right stuff. Faust, Dissection. The infamous Norwegian murders. Let's not forget the numerous homicide convicts who mailed Quorthon saying that he 'inspired' them. And I'm sure the poor squirrels on Glen Benton's front lawn would take issue with the idea that their lives aren't at stake. I suppose you could argue that the far-right has a 'bigger' impact but I don't see how that justifies anything. Violence is violence. Either it's all okay or none of it's okay.



The violent actor still has to make a choice.  There is psychological imbalance in anyone who says a song 'caused' them to do something.  Suppression free thought in a society is a greater evil than risking the aberrant actions of an incredibly small minority of whackaloons.


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## velo (Sep 25, 2019)

I've unfortunately met David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, who said the dog told him to do it.  The problem there wasn't the dog (i.e. the message), I assure you.


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## luckyscars (Sep 25, 2019)

Cephus said:


> Absolutely agree. While we don't accept direct calls for violence, if anyone does commit violence because of something someone wrote, the fault lies with the one who does the violence, not the one who called for it. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Trying to stop someone from speaking, no matter how much you dislike the content of their speech, is unacceptable. The only counter for speech is more speech. It is never censorship.



I agree mostly, however it gets difficult. 

We talk a lot about personal responsibility, but we live in a world where car manufacturers are right now installing sensors on new cars in America because parents (and quite a large number of them) can't even be responsible enough to remember to drop off their kids off at daycare so they're getting baked to death while they walk merrily into work. 

We also live in a world where between 1 in 200 and 1 in 400 people are psychopaths, incapable of socially-focused personal responsibility, with untold numbers of other mental disorders causing similar inabilities. Do we ignore them? Just wait for them to do something - or not? It's difficult.

As a former lawyer I can tell you: A huge number of people are largely stupid and prone to moral failure. They really are. And the basic problem of that stupidity is that it manifests itself very differently from person to person, changes over time, and can be affected by external circumstances that are really hard to address. It also invariably affects other people.

So, when we talk about personal responsibility, its easy to say that...until the breakdown affects us personally. At which point, when it does, something crazy happens: People start to really give a shit about solving problems. They want something done. Just look at these vast numbers of, presumably rather conservative people, the kind who would in their past lives have probably railed against the nanny state, but as soon as Junior gets shot at Middle School...woah! Suddenly they become gun safety activists, marching with the snowflakes and the pinkos they used to dismiss as being for Big State. That could, and likely would, be you or anybody else who has suffered the consequences of 'personal responsibility'.

Psychology has proven the link between stupid people and their playthings. It has shown that actually, censorship does work to control undesirable behavior. Most heavily censored places have pretty low crime. There's far more violent crime in South Korea than North Korea, for instance. I'm not saying that North Korea has it right, not for a moment, but it seems to show that freedom does come at a cost. So, there's a balance to be struck.

 Like the AR-15, if a specific book or song or whatever can be empirically linked to a spike in malevolent outcome, even if it is true that the ultimate culpability lies with the person, you're going to have a really tough time persuading those who are affected that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'. Which puts you in a difficult position, especially if your job and livelihood relies on solving problems - or at least appearing to.

The Anarchist Cookbook is a good example. I read it once, before it was illegal, and was both amazed and appalled when it gave me specific direction on how to make a bomb out of a tennis ball. There is no apparent literary or artistic merit to that book - it was literally a how-to guide. For that reason banning it wasn't a big deal, but where is that line drawn? What happens when a fictional book is written that combines the how-to with a legitimate, or seemingly legitimate, story? What if it became the norm for those who want to teach others how to make bombs can simply do so by threading their true message with a legitimate 'artistic' one and arguing that in a courtroom? Suddenly it's going to be down to the fallible opinion of judges, who have a track record of making very poor decisions when it comes to deciding what is or is not art. It's not their job.

In my opinion there's no literary or artistic merit to the manifesto and testament of somebody who shoots up a mosque either, but we're suddenly in difficult territory aren't we? Now we have to study motives and reasoning and make a value judgment that balances different sides of the political, cultural and religious spectrum. I don't feel comfortable doing that, but I also accept that ignoring the presence of material that is empirically known to inspire violence isn't exactly a winner either.


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## Irwin (Sep 25, 2019)

Cephus said:


> Absolutely agree. While we don't accept direct calls for violence, if anyone does commit violence because of something someone wrote, the fault lies with the one who does the violence, not the one who called for it. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Trying to stop someone from speaking, no matter how much you dislike the content of their speech, is unacceptable. The only counter for speech is more speech. It is never censorship.



That's true, unless it's a leader who incites the violence, even if he or she does so indirectly. It's called stochastic terrorism. 

Take, for example, a purely hypothetical leader of a country who demonizes a certain group, claiming that the said group is composed of murderers and rapists, and are destroying our country. He doesn't explicitly call for violence against them, but by inciting hatred against them, he infers that violent acts against them would be acceptable and even welcome.

While it's true that we are responsible for our own actions, innocent people suffer the fallout from acts committed by unstable people who are easily manipulated and aren't concerned with their own lives--which is especially true when people have no hope for their future.


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## Irwin (Sep 25, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> As a former lawyer I can tell you: A huge number of people are largely stupid and prone to moral failure.



Late last night, while perusing YouTube videos as I am want to do before bed, I stumbled upon an interview of James Holmes--the Aurora theater shooter. He was brilliant in the realm of science, math, and computers, but utterly inept, socially. Put him in an environment where all that matters are social skills and he'd inevitably be deemed _stupid.
_
What struck me was his immaturity and complete lack of remorse for what he did. He was kind of giggling when he talked about things like the "tasty meal" he ate before the interview. He claimed that he committed the murders because he was depressed and thought that shooting up a movie theater would ease his depression. When asked if it worked, he shook his head _no_. He was depressed because he was unable to relate to and connect with people. Autistic people are often like that, but I don't think he was ever diagnosed with that disorder.

Holmes' committed a horrific act, but I doubt that his moral deficiencies were in any way related to his intelligence as it is typically measured. Another example is Ted Bundy, who was considered to be extremely intelligent.


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## charles003434 (Sep 25, 2019)

I don't think we should censor anything.


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## velo (Sep 26, 2019)

_Note- I'm writing this from an entirely emotionless and academic point of view...I am not advocating any course of action or viewpoint...._



luckyscars said:


> We talk a lot about personal responsibility, but we live in a world where car manufacturers are right now installing sensors on new cars in America because parents (and quite a large number of them) can't even be responsible enough to remember to drop off their kids off at daycare so they're getting baked to death while they walk merrily into work.



These are the people that should have died a long time ago, from an evolutionary standpoint.  Society and technology has subverted and changed the course of evolution for the last 10k years at least, moreso in recent centuries.  The mom who leaves her kid in the car likely never would have made it to child-bearing age as a hunter-gatherer.  Most people in the Western world drawing breath today could not survive should society collapse.  They will huddle in fear and die in some ignominious fashion before too long.  

I hunt and fish and camp in the wilderness, though I am still a dilettante compared to many, and it would be a crap shoot if I could survive more than a couple weeks, if that long, out there.  

There is an underlying social dependence in our psyches.  This existed prior to the agricultural revolution, of course- we are a social animal that relies on community for survival.  But back then we were only one step away from the person that hunted our meat or helped build our shelter.  We were all connected and interdependent.  Everyone in the group directly contributed in some way to the survival of that group.  Today, the only time I truly have any idea where my food comes from, for example, is when I pull an egg from the coop or some meat I've harvested myself from the freezer.  We live in a world where a person with absolutely zero survival skills can survive and even thrive.  This has to do something to the underpinnings of our human psychology.  

We have no agency any longer.  We do what we're told when we're told.  Bosses and governments and social pressures...everywhere we look we are being told how to be, act, and think and rarely have to do it for ourselves.  The parent that forgets their kid in the car has been programmed their entire life to be a lemming, an automaton dancing to the jangly tune of commercialism.  

There are moments, and they are becoming more and more frequent, where I think the best thing for the human species would be a complete breakdown of the social order where we return to a primal state.  Maybe some remnant of a memory of the idiocy of this time might survive and, should we survive, there could be a do-over.  

Back to the point...I really don't have a thought to spare for the outliers at either end of the bell curve.  If someone reads something I wrote and decides to go on a killing spree, I'm not responsible for that.  If we only do the things that are acceptable to 100% of the population we all might as well check out now, what's the point of living in that world?  In that world I could not even have made this post.


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## Dluuni (Sep 26, 2019)

Speaking as someone who is targeted by the people in question, I can assure you that there is no shortage of censorship. Unfortunately.

In various media, social and public, people regularly air views that I should be harassed, tortured, or killed, often with somewhat credible plans of action and sickening levels of detail.

These are always allowed to stay up. No action is taken to remove them.

If I express annoyance about the cultural behavior of any subset of violence or historical verifiable bad behavior from xtn c/h yt mn as a statistical entity, I immediately am attacked and censored. At no point did I ever suggest that people should be killed, like the people who are always defended in such issues. Any anger about being exposed to danger is unacceptable and treated as a moral defect.

Earlier this week, a good friend of mine was "assaulted in several ways" for existing. She is 6'3", and immediately suspect for not having a stereotypically small feminine build. I learned it from a social media post that was carefully moderated and couched cryptically. 

From hard learned experience of me and people like me, if I express anger about the unfairness of this publicly, I will be seen as "too political", subject to take down. It can be used to jeapordize any traditional publishing contracts I might have, possibly even to the point of the publisher demanding a refund of my advance.

When I see mention that the people who actively promote my death have had some loss of platform *too*, I smile. If only because it is evidence that in the black box world that judges what I say once it gets beyond people I don't interact with directly, their platform of murder and hate is _almost_ as socially unacceptable as my saying "Please don't rape, torture, and murder me for the crime of being born".


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## velo (Sep 26, 2019)

Thanks, Dluuni, that's an important perspective.  And that's a tough call, honestly.  As a white, heterosexual male in the US I have a lot of luxury/privilege to say nothing should be censored, that we should let the nutjobs out themselves so we know who they are and they can be marginalised.  But that doesn't take into account those that are the targets of said nutjobs.  No matter what, this is a highly complicated topic.


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## luckyscars (Sep 26, 2019)

velo said:


> Back to the point...I really don't have a thought to spare for the outliers at either end of the bell curve.  If someone reads something I wrote and decides to go on a killing spree, I'm not responsible for that.  If we only do the things that are acceptable to 100% of the population we all might as well check out now, what's the point of living in that world?  In that world I could not even have made this post.



The problem is, we already do cater to the 'outliers at either end of the bell curve'. That's basically the entire premise of civilized society.

Take something like alcohol: I am personally an absolute champ with alcohol. I can consume twice the legal BAC limit and driven across an entire state with no problem at all. I did that sort of thing a few times as a youngster, enough that I'm fairly certain it wasn't just dumb luck. I have never got a single traffic ticket in twenty-three years of driving, much less a DUI. This suggests to me that the BAC limit, as it is, was not designed for people like me. On the other hand, they were most definitely designed for people like my brother-in-law, who is the same age and yet has already lost his driving privileges twice for driving while intoxicated - once in a McDonalds drive through going approximately zero miles per hour and yet still managing to ram a bollard, once for crashing his car into a neighbor's house in a neighborhood going twenty. He, and people like him, are the reason we have the alcohol limit set how it is. Because people like him do not know their limits, cannot take mitigating action, and their poor choices cause harm to themselves and others. 

But who is the real outlier there? I don't think it's me. If the majority of people could not drive safely with a BAC at 0.9 when the law says anything above 0.8 is intoxicated, then practically everybody who gets into a car after visiting a bar would end up dismembered or in jail. But, of course, that does not happen. Not everybody, or even most, people who drive slightly drunk end up causing accidents. OVI/DUI laws are therefore clearly crafted as a baseline, a line that takes into account the reasonable benchmark of hazard for those who are most prone to getting it wrong, and the rest of us have to deal with that. And we accept this, or should, because we understand the rules cannot be tailored to individuals as part of the social contract. That relying on personal responsibility in areas where there is a potential for harm to result just doesn't work.

So, when we talk about censorship in art, I think it probably has to be thought of the same way. I feel like there's no point in saying 'nothing should be censored' or 'why should idiots spoil it' or any version of those arguments, not beyond wishful thinking anyway. The idiots will _always _spoil it. Unless we want to start killing off or otherwise removing them from the picture, we therefore have to take them into account. 

Dealing with it then becomes a matter of balancing the freedom _to _own a gun versus the freedom _from _getting shot by an idiot or a psychopath. That's not an easy dilemma. It requires nuance in the crafting of legal framework. It requires debate (and not on Writing Forums). For me, it is certainly debatable whether a book should be spoken of in terms of its propensity to inspire havoc...but its much less debatable that if a book was found, after thoughtful and qualified review, to be the primary cause behind crimes being committed (crimes in the plural, I don't think a one-off should necessarily be sufficient - it would need to form some sort of pattern of behavior) then that book could and should be censored. Doing otherwise would seem to be an abdication of responsibility. It's largely a hypothetical at this point, in terms of fiction, but not a terribly unfathomable one in today's climate.


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## velo (Sep 26, 2019)

Couldn't agree more.  Where to draw the line is always the question.  Balancing the needs of the many with the dangers or vulnerabilities of the few.


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## luckyscars (Sep 26, 2019)

Dluuni said:


> When I see mention that the people who actively promote my death have had some loss of platform *too*, I smile. If only because it is evidence that in the black box world that judges what I say once it gets beyond people I don't interact with directly, their platform of murder and hate is _almost_ as socially unacceptable as my saying "Please don't rape, torture, and murder me for the crime of being born".



Yeah. I always find it deliciously ironic when this sort of thing happens. Like when Trumpers express outrage at getting denied service at a restaurant. These are the same people who, a few short years ago, were all about letting bakers deny service to gay couples. It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to not see the problem there, but here we are.

I think the kind of censorship you describe is a little different, in that it largely stems from an individual's belief system rather than any justification based on possible harm to society. Even the most bat shit crazy homophobe tends to argue their wish to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people based on their 'conscience' rather than any wider social risk. It's a tough one, because those people aren't arguing from a perspective built on evidence but belief, and you really can't argue with people whose world view rests on 'because the Bible says so'. I don't think anybody, at least not on here, is going to argue that censorship against a person based on identity is acceptable. 

I generally support free speech, on the understanding that free speech is not 'the freedom to spout gibberish or nasty shit without consequences'. No platforming should be a last resort, but I support it as an individual or organizational choice. I also support the right for a University to let David Duke speak if they so desire, again on the understanding that we are all free to drag said university through the mud for mainstreaming malignant views - _especially _if the university receives any kind of public funding.


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## CyberWar (Sep 26, 2019)

I think censorship just proves the censoring authority is insecure about its position of power and feels threatened by the ideas it tries to suppress. Which in turn proves that its propagandists have been doing a piss-poor job indoctrinating citizens with the desirable ideas, whatever the authority in question defines them to be. A properly-indoctrinated populace will flat-out reject undesirable ideas on their own, making censorship unnecessary.

On a personal level, I would gladly see certain groups suppressed and persecuted for spreading ideas with the potential to cause very real detriment. I would not support censoring them in any way, however, for the aforementioned reasons. Let them speak out loud, so that if and when the time comes, the authorities and the citizens alike will know whom to drag out in the streets and shoot first.


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## velo (Sep 26, 2019)

CyberWar said:


> I would not support censoring them in any way, however, for the aforementioned reasons. Let them speak out loud, so that if and when the time comes, the authorities and the citizens alike will know whom to drag out in the streets and shoot first.



Well, citizens anyway.    I don't think the gov't should be involved at all.  There are a lot of market forces at work here.  I do think, in the vast majority of cases, the nutjobs will be marginalised and dismissed as crackpots.  There is a right to free speech, but there is no right to be listened to.


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## Cephus (Sep 26, 2019)

velo said:


> Well, citizens anyway.    I don't think the gov't should be involved at all.  There are a lot of market forces at work here.  I do think, in the vast majority of cases, the nutjobs will be marginalised and dismissed as crackpots.  There is a right to free speech, but there is no right to be listened to.



Indeed there isn't, but there is absolutely no right to feeling good about the things around you and that's what a lot of people are insisting. "It makes me feel bad, so ban it!"

No. Screw you.


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## luckyscars (Sep 26, 2019)

Cephus said:


> Indeed there isn't, but there is absolutely no right to feeling good about the things around you and that's what a lot of people are insisting. "It makes me feel bad, so ban it!"
> 
> No. Screw you.



Is anybody suggesting that on this thread? Just wanting to clarify.


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## CyberWar (Sep 26, 2019)

velo said:


> Well, citizens anyway.    I don't think the gov't should be involved at all.  There are a lot of market forces at work here.  I do think, in the vast majority of cases, the nutjobs will be marginalised and dismissed as crackpots.  There is a right to free speech, but there is no right to be listened to.



Problem is, that works both ways. Practically any "nutjob" ideology can, with sufficient effort, be normalized (well described in the concept of "Overton window"). If you told the average American in the late 1950's that 50 years from now, United States would have a Black president and homosexuals would be allowed to marry, he'd laugh you off as a nutjob. Same thing if you told any German on the eve of the Great War that in another 20 years, they'd be burning books in the streets of Germany, to be followed by people soon thereafter. Things deemed unthinkable in any given period of time do not become acceptable all of a sudden, but through gradual normalization.

Which is why it is the government's job to maintain the status quo within practicality, to make sure that those currently in the nutjob category never become anything more than a small minority of extremists. Of course, no government is immune to gradual ideological shift itself, but I think any responsible government certainly should regulate and temperate the minds of the citizenry, so that any ideological changes take place gradually, peacefully and without excess.



Cephus said:


> Indeed there isn't, but there is absolutely no  right to feeling good about the things around you and that's what a lot  of people are insisting. "It makes me feel bad, so ban it!"



Sounds very much like the mentality of SJWs.


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## velo (Sep 26, 2019)

CyberWar said:


> Problem is, that works both ways. Practically any "nutjob" ideology can, with sufficient effort, be normalized (well described in the concept of "Overton window"). If you told the average American in the late 1950's that 50 years from now, United States would have a Black president and homosexuals would be allowed to marry, he'd laugh you off as a nutjob. Same thing if you told any German on the eve of the Great War that in another 20 years, they'd be burning books in the streets of Germany, to be followed by people soon thereafter. Things deemed unthinkable in any given period of time do not become acceptable all of a sudden, but through gradual normalization.
> 
> Which is why it is the government's job to maintain the status quo within practicality, to make sure that those currently in the nutjob category never become anything more than a small minority of extremists. Of course, no government is immune to gradual ideological shift itself, but I think any responsible government certainly should regulate and temperate the minds of the citizenry, so that any ideological changes take place gradually, peacefully and without excess.



You've somewhat contradicted yourself.  By saying any "'nutjob'" ideology can, with sufficient effort, be normalized" and then giving examples of how that happened such as having an AA President you've sort of made my point...the market forces will win out and determine what is nutty and what is not.  The market in the US decided that equality was the goal vs segregation and, even though we still have a way to go on that, that's where we are headed.


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## CyberWar (Sep 26, 2019)

velo said:


> You've somewhat contradicted yourself.  By saying any "'nutjob'" ideology can, with sufficient effort, be normalized" and then giving examples of how that happened such as having an AA President you've sort of made my point...the market forces will win out and determine what is nutty and what is not.  The market in the US decided that equality was the goal vs segregation and, even though we still have a way to go on that, that's where we are headed.



Just like the same "market forces" in Germany decided they'd rather have a totalitarian ultranationalist dictatorship replace democracy in the 1930's. Just a decade before, the NSDAP had been a small fringe party of radicals, the proverbial "nutjobs". A system of governance based on popular opinion can inherently sway both ways, not just towards the so-called "progressive" end. The government's job therefore is to regulate the market of ideologies, ideally by creating demand in one particular sector at the expense of all others.


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## Irwin (Sep 26, 2019)

CyberWar said:


> Just like the same "market forces" in Germany decided they'd rather have a totalitarian ultranationalist dictatorship replace democracy in the 1930's. Just a decade before, the NSDAP had been a small fringe party of radicals, the proverbial "nutjobs". A system of governance based on popular opinion can inherently sway both ways, not just towards the so-called "progressive" end. The government's job therefore is to regulate the market of ideologies, ideally by creating demand in one particular sector at the expense of all others.



Yikes!  (Where's the afraid emoji?)


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## Irwin (Sep 26, 2019)

charles003434 said:


> I don't think we should censor anything.



Even books that show you how to build bombs or other implements of destruction from commonly available materials?

Just asking. I haven't really given this much thought.


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## luckyscars (Sep 26, 2019)

Irwin said:


> Even books that show you how to build bombs or other implements of destruction from commonly available materials?
> 
> Just asking. I haven't really given this much thought.



I wouldn't bother giving it much thought, it's libertarian rubbish. Brain rot stuff. 

What, we're going to allow kiddie porn now? Why not? If we're not censoring *anything*, there's no problem with putting upskirt pictures of seven year old girls in top-shelf magazines at truck stops.

 If we're not censoring *anything* then I can buy the Washington Post and start printing articles accusing random people I don't like of  being terrorist/drug addicts/donkey shaggers and they just have to deal with it. Because 'no censorship, man'.

The only people who advocate zero censorship are people so consumed by their privileged status they cannot possibly comprehend the reality of what that would mean.

Honestly.


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## CyberWar (Sep 27, 2019)

Restricting certain forms of expression like child pornography or defamatory articles is not censorship, but law enforcement, because such materials violate the law. Censorship is widespread and systematic regulation of otherwise legitimate media content for political purposes. Sometimes these purposes aren't necessarily nefarious - for example, a government may opt to censor the media in wartime to prevent demoralizing the public or accidentally disclosing sensitive information to the enemy.

I don't think anyone here was objecting to laws being enforced, but rather against censorship of legitimate material based on arbitrarily-imposed political or moral standards.


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## luckyscars (Sep 27, 2019)

CyberWar said:


> Censorship is widespread and systematic regulation of otherwise legitimate media content for political purposes.




Actually, that’s your selective and very narrow definition. 


Here’s the dictionary definition entirely. You can google it in two seconds. It’s also, more or less, the definition used in law.


“...the suppression or prohibition of *any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene*, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.”


^Child pornography certainly falls under the category of obscene (I assume we can agree on that) so it’s illegality definitely falls under censorship. Certainly in many cases it is _also_ illegal because it tends to also involve battery/statutory rape, which is why I honed in on up-skirting specifically as that would not usually involve an assault (the victim likely wouldn’t even know it happens) but is nonetheless (rightly) illegal as it is an obscene form of pornography.

If you want to claim you are against ALL censorship, you have to allow child pornography (at least the non violent kind that is not already criminalized through another unrelated statute). Either that, or you have to redefine what the word “censorship” actually means, in which case - irony! - you’re censoring the English language by moral/political fiat. 

Bottom line: You don’t get to have it both ways, guyz! I mean, Jesus Christ, you can’t decry all censorship as an abhorrence on the one hand, and then say you don’t want to accept the most unpleasant pieces of 'creative output' on the other. This is what’s known as the law of unintended consequences: "Free speech" fundamentalists and those who preach the philosophies of laissez-faire in general are constantly surprised by this problem when they realize, holy shit!, if you make _everything _legal, if you censor _nothing_, suddenly you're living in a world which does not make sense. A world in which the worst aspects of the human psyche are thrust (pun somewhat intended) into your face and next thing you know Hugh Heffner started up a necrophilia magazine (another technically victimless yet obscene form of pornography) because he saw a few dollar signs and just who the fuck was going to stop him since we all agreed censorship was bad m'kay? And that’s why these 'advocates' are pretty much all full of shit. Because _nobody _wants to live in that world, unless they are deranged.

Best bet: Admit that censorship is certainly a necessary evil - that some forms of creativity are absolutely without license - understanding you can then reasonably engage in the entirely legitimate (and always boisterous!) debate regarding what form and to what degree specific texts and genres of texts should or should not be censored. But anybody who wants to seriously say that nothing should be censored is either endorsing some vile things being allowed into the public sphere...or they’re just ignorant as to the actual meaning of the term they are railing against.


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## Dluuni (Sep 27, 2019)

I'd settle for actual white supremacists/antisemitic/etc terroristic radicals being treated with the same standard responses that people with darker skin, etc. have learned to expect as the norm from law enforcement and government. Alas, we have known that hate groups have been pushing all their membership towards law enforcement careers and getting promoted to HR for over twelve years now without taking action. 
The government is not to be trusted with enforcement. So I'm not a fan of silencing hate groups—I just wish I had even half the freedom to speak on private platforms unfettered that they enjoy.


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## SueC (Sep 27, 2019)

Trollheart said:


> I suppose in the end there's no real simple answer to this. I'd like to think though that if I wrote something like our friend writes above - in a purely fictional, character-driven way - that I'd be at pains to point out how wrong it/he/she was. Whether I would do that skillfully or not would be, I guess, a reflection on how good a writer I am, or not, as the case may be. But I would never want anyone thinking I supported or even conceded such notions.



I, also, do not care for censorship and I kind of bristle a little when I even hear the word. However, I think - whether we realize or not - there is a _standard _so to speak, that has limits as to what is acceptable or not acceptable.  A person standing in the middle of an intersection, spouting foul language or yelling about a particular person in office, would be offensive to most, and someone may even call the police to remove him. He's exercising free speech, in a public place, but very inappropriate in his delivery. So can the person who called the authorities be accused of censorship? I think we are generally willing to listen, to recognize a person's right to free speech, but having said that, we still can be affected by content. We may feel the choice of language used to express an opinion, for example, infringes on our own rights to a peaceful existence. You just got to know the limits, and that's where our wordsmith skills come into play. My two cents!


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## velo (Sep 27, 2019)

Lucky is spot on.  Yes, the illegality and suppression of child pornography is absolutely censorship and it's censorship that our society has deemed appropriate.  However, we are talking about writing in this thread...or at least we should be.  (<--- hint)  Child porn (assuming the common usage meaning it exists as visual media) isn't writing nor is the rise of the National Socialist Party in post WWI Germany.

So what about literary descriptions of sexual acts by children?  Should they be censored?  Lolita is the classic example of this and the arguments about whether or not the titular character was a culpable actor at her age are decades long and ongoing, not going to get into that one.  I've read multiple pieces on this forum where bad, violent things happen to children with nary a peep about its appropriateness.  I think no matter what we have to look at our cultural biases and take them into account, not that they will change the outcome of our views but just to keep things honest and authentic.  

I think this is a very fine line we are talking about with child porn.  I can think of multiple stories where kids have been hurt, even sexually, and the story is not considered pornographic.  The difference isn't so much the subject matter but the intent and context.  A piece that went into lurid and lascivious descriptions of sex acts involving a minor might still not be over the line if it's coming from, for example, a memoir of a victim, or a cautionary tale whereas another story might.  

I agree the censorship conversation is not black and white, as with all things there are grey areas and unique cases that break all the rules.  I tend to decry censorship in all but the most obvious cases of necessity or appropriateness.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Sep 27, 2019)

I think it depends on the sensibilities of the people who want to censor. There was a movement to ban Mark Twain from school libraries over the use of racial jargon that would have been common during Twain's time. This, despite the fact that Twain himself was very much an abolitionist. Nothing came of that as it turned out but even now you have people that want to ban books like To Kill a Mockingbird because it's something they don't agree with. It's probably why people can have access to hate laced books like Mein Kampf and even the Turner Diaries. Because where can you draw the line? The same goes for a book like Lolita, which I happen to think is a fascinating read even as you have contempt for the protagonist.


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## Aquilo (Sep 27, 2019)

I always remember _The Anarchist's Cookbook. _Australia banned it, the UK sent a teenager to court for possessing it, and the FBI in America hate it, although give it 1st amendment protection under mass production. It was written by a very angry young man (Powell) who was being pushed into the Vietnam war, and the book was a mish-mash on crude bombmaking, chemical warfare (in its very basic form), with a very basic premise: fight violence with violence (which in itself questions 'anarchy' *winces*). Although a lot of the novel is bullshit and out of date, it's still seen as a threat (with the FBI it was hated because it contradicted their propaganda on the Vietnam War, with the UK, it was argued (with the kid who was taken court) that it would radicalize and get potential terrorists to migrate to Syria etc). Powell himself said he wrote when he was young and very pissed off, and he's tried to get it pulled but no longer holds the copyright. That's 'censored' across countries, but each country giving a different  reason depending on the threat at the time.


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## velo (Sep 27, 2019)

mrmustard615 said:


> I think it depends on the sensibilities of the people who want to censor.



Absolutely.  But again, that is subject to market forces for lack of a better term.  Some folks from the shallow end of the gene pool wanted to ban Twain but the more rational forces eventually won because they were the majority.  

This is where, as an author, you have to be mindful of the environment in which you want to publish.  Darwin sat on _Origin of the Species_ until close to his death because he knew the backlash he was going to get from the hidebound.  Kind of a dick move, now that I think about it, because his family surely had to deal with that backlash whilst he was taking a peaceful dirt nap...


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## Rojack79 (Sep 27, 2019)

Another example of censorship that got nowhere would be Harry Potter. Parents thought it was teaching there kid's witchcraft when in reality it was a made up hogwash and didn't even contain an ounce of real witchcraft. For me personally I just wish people would have common sence and if they don't know about a particular subject then do the research before they open there mouths and shout "Fire!". It would definitely be better than causing a panic over literally nothing.


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## luckyscars (Sep 27, 2019)

velo said:


> Lucky is spot on. Yes, the illegality and suppression of child pornography is absolutely censorship and it's censorship that our society has deemed appropriate. However, we are talking about writing in this thread...or at least we should be. (<--- hint) Child porn (assuming the common usage meaning it exists as visual media) isn't writing nor is the rise of the National Socialist Party in post WWI Germany.
> 
> So what about literary descriptions of sexual acts by children? Should they be censored? Lolita is the classic example of this and the arguments about whether or not the titular character was a culpable actor at her age are decades long and ongoing, not going to get into that one. I've read multiple pieces on this forum where bad, violent things happen to children with nary a peep about its appropriateness. I think no matter what we have to look at our cultural biases and take them into account, not that they will change the outcome of our views but just to keep things honest and authentic.
> 
> ...



The problem is almost every controversial book is in that gray area, at least to some people.

A book titled, say, "Child Rape For Dummies!" would (hopefully!) be an obvious case of universally acknowledged unacceptable reading material, but that kind of book will obviously never be written nor published. The books that are censored, the ones that are actually out there causing problems, are almost _never _obvious. 

Even The Anarchist's Cookbook is potentially defensible. If the guy who wrote it had been a little shrewder, all he needed to do is insert a fictitious scenario of, I dunno, a zombie apocalypse and claim all his bomb advice was to stop White Walkers. The actual content could be basically unchanged, but because of the fictional narrative overlay, suddenly it becomes just another one of the countless 'survival guides' that already exists. A court would have a really hard time figuring out motive there.

This is one of the most interesting and important issues in writing, I think. Awhile back I started a thread saying I don't think people should be writing sex scenes unless they absolutely have to and can do it well. The reason, which I'm not sure I argued very well, was to do with how motive and intent can be perceived. I don't dislike sexual content in books (the opposite actually!) but there is a basic issue: If you write a book with a lot of gratuitous sexual content, especially if it's 'obscene', people are going to make assumptions about your motivations.  

Lolita it seems is okay in part because there's not very much sex actually in it. Mostly, Nabokov only addresses the emotional and psychological aspects of his character's pedophilia. But if he wanted to, and if he was writing in a more accepting environment, he could absolutely have included a bunch of explicit detail. It could easily have become some kind of 'how to' for grooming an underage girl wrapped up in a fictional story. At which point, there would be a strong case for telling Nabokov to rein that shit in. And, if he didn't, and if the subsequent book had become a kind of Bible for pedophiles committing real-world crimes against children, then censorship could probably be reasonably argued at that point. But it still wouldn't be easy. We still wouldn't be able to prove his intentions. He could still claim he was only trying to be 'realistic'.


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## velo (Sep 27, 2019)

re; sex scenes...again it goes to intent and context.  Every concept exists on a gradient from universally accepted to not accepted at all.  Stories about fluffy, happy bunnies who are nice and never swear would be pretty close to universally accepted, a story about a pædophile from the perspective of the perpetrator would be a hard sell to a lot of people.  The farther to the right on that spectrum you are the more your sex scene, for example, has to be integral to the narrative.  If simply implying there was an act of Biblical 'knowing' is enough for your story, it saves the author some headaches not to put any detail in.  Putting that unnecessary detail in anyway is bad writing.  

Yes, I know that's a slippery slope about avoiding the attention of the prudes, that's not what I'm talking about.  If you need to show the act in writing for a reason, then by all means do it.  My only point is that save for the fluffy bunny type of story you are going to run afoul of someone's entitlement.  We can't please everyone.  The more potentially controversial a scene is, the more it HAS to be necessary to the narrative.  Even a reader like me who is damned near impossible to offend is going to roll his/her eyes at gratuitous sex in a story.


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## luckyscars (Sep 27, 2019)

The problem is, for censorship to be effective, it has to please everyone. Or at least a majority.


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## Cephus (Sep 27, 2019)

velo said:


> So what about literary descriptions of sexual acts by children?  Should they be censored?  Lolita is the classic example of this and the arguments about whether or not the titular character was a culpable actor at her age are decades long and ongoing, not going to get into that one.  I've read multiple pieces on this forum where bad, violent things happen to children with nary a peep about its appropriateness.  I think no matter what we have to look at our cultural biases and take them into account, not that they will change the outcome of our views but just to keep things honest and authentic.



Anything that is not actually a violation of the law should be permitted. You don't have to like it, you are welcome to speak out against it, but what you cannot do, what we cannot allow anyone to do, is to stop other people who might want to see it from doing so. If you don't like it, don't read it. Go ahead and talk about it. Maybe try to convince others not to read it. Do not attack the author or their publisher or bookstore that carry it or anything else. Your rights end where someone else's rights begin. Certainly, that's not being advocated in this thread, necessarily, but it is undeniable that it's a common occurrence in the real world. It cannot ever be acceptable. It simply cannot.

I think this is a very fine line we are talking about with child porn.  I can think of multiple stories where kids have been hurt, even sexually, and the story is not considered pornographic.  The difference isn't so much the subject matter but the intent and context.  A piece that went into lurid and lascivious descriptions of sex acts involving a minor might still not be over the line if it's coming from, for example, a memoir of a victim, or a cautionary tale whereas another story might.  

I agree the censorship conversation is not black and white, as with all things there are grey areas and unique cases that break all the rules.  I tend to decry censorship in all but the most obvious cases of necessity or appropriateness.[/QUOTE]


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## velo (Sep 27, 2019)

Cephus said:


> It cannot ever be acceptable. It simply cannot.



In the world in which you and I live, to be sure.  I think it's important to realise that this is just because there has been a social agreement that this is never acceptable.  We have a bias to this view because this is how we were raised.  In ancient Rome, for example, slaves had no rights* and could be used for sex at any age their master chose.  There were social proscriptions on sexual behaviour, even that done in private, but they were quite different from ours.  A Roman child would never be treated this way, of course, but slaves and non-Romans had few protections in this regard.  

Thomas Jefferson infamously had relations with a slave girl who was anywhere from 14-17, we can't be sure.  Saint Augustine was betrothed to a 10 year old...though what actually happened there is not recorded.  John Newton, prior to becoming a reverend, regularly raped slaves as young as 10.  Muhammad consummated his marriage to a 9 year old.  

We have to look at the times...these acts were all socially and legally acceptable.  These men were acting according to the biases they were taught and grew up with.  Aisha, Muhammed's wife, met the criteria for being a woman in his society. Today we find the concept repugnant, then it was entirely normal.  

Bringing this back to writing, these facts create another pitfall for the author.  What if someone wanted to write a novel about Thomas Jefferson that included his relationship with the slave girl?  (I assume this has probably been done but I don't know and haven't searched)  I can't help but think the rabid patriots who give the American founding fathers demi-god status would scream and rant and call for all sorts of censorship.  Should it be?  Hells no.  TJ was a randy bastard and got isome where it was legally allowed.  It's historically accurate even though it violates our modern mores.  Now, what about the detail into which the author delves?  Would a description of a sex act between the third US President and teenaged slave girl be considered obscene or pornographic, even to the point of being illegal?  

I think the point I keep trying, somewhat ham-handedly and with terrible verbosity, to make is that 'it depends.'  Censorship, to my mind, is only acceptable in the most extreme of cases but they do exist.  Reading a story about a white man raping (as I typed that word I recognised my bias....it wasn't considered rape then) a 14 year old slave girl would make me highly uncomfortable, perhaps enough to put the book down.  I always have the right not to read something, this does not mean it should not be written.  if that story about TJ is written in a way that seems to delight and promote the concept of that relationship...maybe it should be censored.  It depends.  


_*disclaimer so that history nerds don't call me out- slaves did gain some rights and protection in Rome over time, but they were still property and treated as such throughout the days of the republic and later the empire.  _


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## luckyscars (Sep 27, 2019)

Cephus said:


> Anything that is not actually a violation of the law should be permitted.



But this is a circular statement because censorship is an inherently legal concept, entirely distinct from protest, boycott, avoidance, dislike, etc. Censorship requires official sanction from a body with the legal authority to suppress it. What you're saying here is 'legal things should be legal'. That is not a meaningful statement.

People constantly misunderstand and misuse this term. The lack of platform for something is not remotely the same as censorship. If a book store refuses to sell a book, that is not censorship, because a book shop is not an authority and other book stores can still sell it if they want to. That is a decision they are entitled to make at their own risk or reward as a private entity. Even if all the book stores in the world refused to stock it, that still wouldn't technically be censorship. You could argue it amounts to the same thing, but it doesn't, because the law would still theoretically permit a new store to be created which could sell that book freely - and that how the free market works. We don't complain about censorship because no furniture store in the world sells furniture made of ice cream sandwiches. We don't talk about ice cream sandwich furniture being _prohibited _just because it isn't available and no furniture stores want to stock it.

As long as a book is still _permitted to exist_ it is not _censored_. A book can become censored only if/when an authority (typically the government) stops it from existing entirely.


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## Terry D (Sep 27, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> But this is a circular statement because censorship is an inherently legal concept, entirely distinct from protest, boycott, avoidance, dislike, etc. Censorship requires official sanction from a body with the legal authority to suppress it.



That is one, very narrow, definition of censorship and not one which fits the original post. In no definition I can find is censorship restricted to a legal concept. Censorship exists whenever any entity -- Writing Forums as an example -- decides to restrict the dissemination of information it deems unfit. Censorship by governments, from local to national, has a long and ignominious history, but the act of restricting the flow of content determined to be unacceptable happens all the time. When a bar owner asks an obnoxious drunk to leave his establishment for insulting a hostess, that's censorship. Like-wise I'm self-censoring when I choose to change the wording of a sentence in an effort not to offend a reader. 

As usual, the real message here is being buried under a lot of discussion about definitions. Censorship isn't a bad word. It is not a problem. There will always be topics and ways of expressing one's self that are considered 'inappropriate' or 'dangerous' and are subject to restriction (censorship). That's okay. Any moral person should have limits beyond which they refuse to go in their reading and writing. Those limits vary between all of us, but, in the aggregate, those limits get tend to get pretty well delineated because we live as social animals and societies have written and unwritten 'rules'. 

We all expect to be censored. I can't shout obscenities in church and not expect to be asked to leave. I can't write a personal attack on another member here at WF and not expect that attack to be removed (censored). Censorship is simply a tool used by social groups to maintain limits they have voluntarily established for themselves. Over time those limits evolve and there are people at the vanguard of that evolution -- or at the rear guard digging in their heels and shouting for a return to 'better days' -- being censored. In the middle there are the rest of us censoring ourselves and willingly submitting to the censorship of forum managers, agents, publishers, editors, bosses, loved ones, and coworkers.


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## luckyscars (Sep 27, 2019)

Terry D said:


> That is one, very narrow, definition of censorship and not one which fits the original post. In no definition I can find is censorship restricted to a legal concept. Censorship exists whenever any entity -- Writing Forums as an example -- decides to restrict the dissemination of information it deems unfit. Censorship by governments, from local to national, has a long and ignominious history, but the act of restricting the flow of content determined to be unacceptable happens all the time. When a bar owner asks an obnoxious drunk to leave his establishment for insulting a hostess, that's censorship. Like-wise I'm self-censoring when I choose to change the wording of a sentence in an effort not to offend a reader.
> 
> As usual, the real message here is being buried under a lot of discussion about definitions. Censorship isn't a bad word. It is not a problem. There will always be topics and ways of expressing one's self that are considered 'inappropriate' or 'dangerous' and are subject to restriction (censorship). That's okay. Any moral person should have limits beyond which they refuse to go in their reading and writing. Those limits vary between all of us, but, in the aggregate, those limits get tend to get pretty well delineated because we live as social animals and societies have written and unwritten 'rules'.
> 
> We all expect to be censored. I can't shout obscenities in church and not expect to be asked to leave. I can't write a personal attack on another member here at WF and not expect that attack to be removed (censored). Censorship is simply a tool used by social groups to maintain limits they have voluntarily established for themselves. Over time those limits evolve and there are people at the vanguard of that evolution -- or at the rear guard digging in their heels and shouting for a return to 'better days' -- being censored. In the middle there are the rest of us censoring ourselves and willingly submitting to the censorship of forum managers, agents, publishers, editors, bosses, loved ones, and coworkers.



It's not narrow, you just don't understand it.

"Legal" is the adjective for matters relating to law and the word _law_ doesn't have to mean solely national law. I never once said it did. A law is just another word for an enforceable rule, the legitimacy of which has been consented to by both parties. So, churches have religious laws. Science has scientific laws. Writing Forums has Writing Forums laws. Soccer has the Laws Of The Game. All of these have their own versions of judges, prosecutors, and courtrooms, too. And, yes, countries have national laws (there are also international laws). The scope, size of dominion, and method of consent differs wildly, but they are all nonetheless the same basic concept.

But if you want to quibble semantic preferences, okay. Call them rules if you want. Call them regulations. It doesn't make any difference in this conversation. 

What I am saying is laws (or rules, or regulations, or prescriptions, or directives, or policies, or edicts - pick your favorite) come from authority. All the examples you provided involve authority, so all you have done with your shower of tangential examples is prove the exact point I am making: Self-censorship comes from the authority you have over your body and its actions. A bartender throwing out an unruly patron comes from the authority the bartender has in their bar. And so on and so on. The common thread is the word authority. Authority is always required for censorship. It's not debatable. This isn't me spouting off, I studied this for years.

But a book store (or publisher, or customer, or whoever is being referred to when people assert that books are being routinely censored against) has zero authority over the absolute existence, or not, of any given book.  So if/when a book store or other person or entity decides not to assist with the availability of the work, it is not censorship. It's also not censorship when people, either singularly or _en masse_, decide something shouldn't exist, for whatever reason and try to restrict it through private action/inaction. Only the relevant _legal _authority can apply censorship.


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## Terry D (Sep 27, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> It's not narrow, you just don't understand it.
> 
> "Legal" is the adjective for matters relating to law and the word _law_ doesn't have to mean solely national law. I never once said it did. A law is just another word for an enforceable rule, the legitimacy of which has been consented to by both parties. So, churches have religious laws. Science has scientific laws. Writing Forums has Writing Forums laws. Soccer has the Laws Of The Game. All of these have their own versions of judges, prosecutors, and courtrooms, too. And, yes, countries have national laws (there are also international laws). The scope, size of dominion, and method of consent differs wildly, but they are all nonetheless the same basic concept.
> 
> ...



I understand perfectly. It's a "legal" concept until you choose to change your definition of "legal".


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## luckyscars (Sep 27, 2019)

Terry D said:


> I understand perfectly. It's a "legal" concept until you choose to change your definition of "legal".



I don't believe I defined the word once in this entire thread. But since you seem intent on pushing this detour into semantics, let's take a look...

[FONT=&Verdana]*le·gal*
[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]*/ˈlēɡəl/*
[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]_adjective_
[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]

1.*of, based on, or concerned with the law:*

[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]*law*
[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]*/lô/*
[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]_noun_
[/FONT]
[FONT=&Verdana]

1.*the system of rules* which a particular country* or community* recognizes as *regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties:*"they were taken to court for breaking the law"_synonyms:_rules and regulations, system of laws, body of laws, constitution, legislation, code, legal code, charter, jurisprudence_antonyms:_anarchy
*▪an individual rule as part of a system of law*:"an initiative to tighten up the laws on pornography"_synonyms:_regulation, statute, enactment, act, bill, ... more
*▪systems of law as a subject of study or as the basis of the legal profession*:"he was still practicing law"_synonyms:_the legal profession, the bar, barristers and solicitors collectively
▪*statutory law and the common law.*_synonyms:_rules and regulations, system of laws, body of laws, constitution, legislation, ... more_antonyms:_anarchy
▪*a thing regarded as having the binding force or effect of a formal system of rules*:"what he said was law"
▪the police:_informal_"he'd never been in trouble with the law in his life"_synonyms:_the police, the officers of the law, the forces of law and order, law-enforcement officers, police officers, ... more
2.a* rule defining correct procedure or behavior in a sport*:"the laws of the game"_synonyms:_rule, regulation, principle, convention, direction, ... more
3.a *statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present*:"the second law of thermodynamics"
▪a generalization based on a fact or event perceived to be recurrent:"the first law of American corporate life is that dead wood floats"
4.*the body of divine commandments as expressed in the Bible or other religious texts.*_synonyms:_principle, rule, precept, directive, direction, ... more
▪the Pentateuch as distinct from the other parts of the Hebrew Bible (the Prophets and the Writings).
▪the precepts of the Pentateuch.

From Wikipedia:

*Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior*

^What definition among the various ones provided above do you claim I am using and what are your grounds for supposing so?
[/FONT]


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## velo (Sep 27, 2019)

*SUPERVISOR NOTE

The topic of this thread is censorship as it relates to writing, publishing, or some aspect of authorship.  This topic was allowed in order to have a valid conversation on the subject, not derail into tangents or discuss other members' posting styles.  Because of the potential volatility in this subject we are asking that the highest levels of civility and decorum be adhered to.   This is a proactive reminder to keep the conversation strictly on topic.  Thank you.  *


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## Aquilo (Sep 27, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> This is one of the most interesting and important issues in writing, I think. Awhile back I started a thread saying I don't think people should be writing sex scenes unless they absolutely have to and can do it well. The reason, which I'm not sure I argued very well, was to do with how motive and intent can be perceived. I don't dislike sexual content in books (the opposite actually!) but there is a basic issue: If you write a book with a lot of gratuitous sexual content, especially if it's 'obscene', people are going to make assumptions about your motivations.



I remember the debate.  I think a lot of this can come down to your (generic your) understanding of the genres, or the distinctions between romance, erotic romance, and erotica in particular.

Romance: plot and relationship development based. Doesn't have to any sex. If sex is suggested, most times its fade-to-black (not on page).
Erotic Romance: plot and relationship development based. -1-3 sex scenes, but on-page, more explicit.
Erotica: lit or art portrayal of *substantial* sexually arousing content. 

Even those category's above can be split further. But it's why tempers flare when romance and erotic romance get slammed for being gratuitous when it comes to sex. Romance and erotic romance isn't erotica, just like erotica isn't porn. Why isn't erotica porn? Sex in fiction, in general, will look to do 2 things: tease the head _and_ the parts that need heating. Porn will usually just take you a walk south, or make you fast-forward to the parts that take you south! 

My last 140k novel had just 2 sex scenes in it. Unfortunately what our genre also faces is how anything in the LGBT spectrum can automatically be tagged as 'erotic'. This can even go for novels where there's no sex. There's still censorship in this genre. Sex, in general, has faced enough of it over the years, but add LGBT+ fiction, it gets more unfair and complicated.

It's also why I don't read straight romance anymore. I was spoon-fed straight romance through school and universiy, with no glance over at diversity. And I'm not keen on being spoon-fed or censored like that.


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## ironpony (Sep 27, 2019)

Since I'm into screenwriting I am using a movie censorship example, but I found what David Cronenberg had to say about movie censorship in Canada, to be very interesting at 7:40 into the clip:

https://youtu.be/F9VfvUVrlgs?t=460


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## seigfried007 (Sep 27, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> The problem is almost every controversial book is in that gray area, at least to some people.
> 
> This is one of the most interesting and important issues in writing, I think. Awhile back I started a thread saying I don't think people should be writing sex scenes unless they absolutely have to and can do it well. The reason, which I'm not sure I argued very well, was to do with how motive and intent can be perceived. I don't dislike sexual content in books (the opposite actually!) but there is a basic issue: If you write a book with a lot of gratuitous sexual content, especially if it's 'obscene', people are going to make assumptions about your motivations.
> 
> Lolita it seems is okay in part because there's not very much sex actually in it. Mostly, Nabokov only addresses the emotional and psychological aspects of his character's pedophilia. But if he wanted to, and if he was writing in a more accepting environment, he could absolutely have included a bunch of explicit detail. It could easily have become some kind of 'how to' for grooming an underage girl wrapped up in a fictional story. At which point, there would be a strong case for telling Nabokov to rein that shit in. And, if he didn't, and if the subsequent book had become a kind of Bible for pedophiles committing real-world crimes against children, then censorship could probably be reasonably argued at that point. But it still wouldn't be easy. We still wouldn't be able to prove his intentions. He could still claim he was only trying to be 'realistic'.



The biggest issue for me is that "intention" isn't definable from outside. I do worry about how my intentions are perceived and am more than aware that people will judge me (without even reading my stories) based on what I write (or what they think I wrote or what they think I mean/intend). Especially when it comes to sex in fiction--and triply so for sex that involves minors--people judge for "intentions" and"motivations." How is authorial intention judged?

"Obscene," "gratuitous," "erotic" and "explicit" all have similar issues of subjectivity regarding their definitions. What's the checklist for objectively defining these things in fiction?  Are there magic words in the prose which instantly qualify a work as any of these things?  What makes a work obscene? What makes a sex scene or its details gratuitous? Is explicit defined by scene length? word count? mystic levels of detail? specific words being used? 

Obviously, the last thing I want is give some pedo-bear out there material with which to get his jollies--even in the name of 'realism.' I think the 'realism' is more that I'm portraying the abuse of minors to begin with and trying to give a realistic description of the abuse and its aftereffects. However, I'm also giving as much emotional weight with as few physical details as possible and doing my damndest to keep as much implied as I think I get away with. Because otherwise it's more likely to come off as porn or torture porn. 

There's a level of detail which just becomes sickening or even deadens the reader to what's happening on-screen, and I never want to approach that level because it would mean the scene has the opposite effect as what I'm going for. An act can be disturbing--though social mores change over time and across cultures--but what really makes something abuse isn't so much what happened as how it happened and how the characters respond to what's happened. 

While I do loathe censorship, I can definitely see a case for censoring works which come off as pedo pick-up guides. However, such works are protected, oddly enough, by freedom of speech (look up NAMBLA). 



Aquilo said:


> I remember the debate.  I think a lot of this can come down to your (generic your) understanding of the genres, or the distinctions between romance, erotic romance, and erotica in particular.
> 
> Romance: plot and relationship development based. Doesn't have to any sex. If sex is suggested, most times its fade-to-black (not on page).
> Erotic Romance: plot and relationship development based. -1-3 sex scenes, but on-page, more explicit.
> ...




Ugh, all that has me once again wondering what the hell anyone's going to make of Pinocchio once I get it finished and start sending it out (maybe, still pretty terrified of that).

As you've mentioned, it's hard to get LGBT out and read, and it tends to get more flames added to its heat level rating. Book's got the GB parts covered. Multi-partners and threesomes raise the rating too, and book's got those too. 

But it's also got minors. I try to keep those scenes as non-explicit/implied as possible and focus on the emotional weight of said events. And you mentioned in another thread that I can't call it erotic at all if anything even kinda happens involving a minor--even if the minor isn't having 'erotic' sex on screen (at least, if I understood you right and am remembering it right). There's also the issue of Pinocchio's age being nebulous. While adult, Pinocchio may or may not be a minor (He doesn't know how old he is, and it's never confirmed exactly how old he is or isn't).

Given that it does have more erotic content, I feel like it's lying to imply that it's just 'horror.' Hubs called it "horror porn" earlier today, which I took exception to but snickered at anyway. There are something like 45/127 chapters which involve on-screen sex of some form so far in 157K. Something like 20-ish might be considered more explicit (?). The two longest ones are ~2K, which still isn't terribly long, I don't think (pretty sure lots of other books have substantially longer ones--even if they have fewer sex scenes overall). All the others cap off before the 1K mark, and the majority of scenes are in the blurred over few-sentences-to-a-couple-paragraphs ballpark, if I recall correctly. And for the most part, I tend to keep it focused more on character development and psychology.

Also, I was under the impression that erotica was basically all about porn-in-literature-format. I suppose this format likely necessarily gives more character development than a lot of porn, however, so I suppose you're still right. Again, it's an "intent" thing. Is the intention to do nothing but arouse? Don't know where the line's drawn or how such a thing is measured even.


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## Phil Istine (Sep 28, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> But this is a circular statement because censorship is an inherently legal concept, entirely distinct from protest, boycott, avoidance, dislike, etc. Censorship requires official sanction from a body with the legal authority to suppress it. What you're saying here is 'legal things should be legal'. That is not a meaningful statement.
> 
> People constantly misunderstand and misuse this term. The lack of platform for something is not remotely the same as censorship. If a book store refuses to sell a book, that is not censorship, because a book shop is not an authority and other book stores can still sell it if they want to. That is a decision they are entitled to make at their own risk or reward as a private entity. Even if all the book stores in the world refused to stock it, that still wouldn't technically be censorship. You could argue it amounts to the same thing, but it doesn't, because the law would still theoretically permit a new store to be created which could sell that book freely - and that how the free market works. We don't complain about censorship because no furniture store in the world sells furniture made of ice cream sandwiches. We don't talk about ice cream sandwich furniture being _prohibited _just because it isn't available and no furniture stores want to stock it.
> 
> As long as a book is still _permitted to exist_ it is not _censored_. A book can become censored only if/when an authority (typically the government) stops it from existing entirely.



Indeed, it's not unheard of where the lawmakers are the censors and end up censoring anything that puts themselves under scrutiny.


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## luckyscars (Sep 28, 2019)

seigfried007 said:


> The biggest issue for me is that "intention" isn't definable from outside. I do worry about how my intentions are perceived and am more than aware that people will judge me (without even reading my stories) based on what I write (or what they think I wrote or what they think I mean/intend). Especially when it comes to sex in fiction--and triply so for sex that involves minors--people judge for "intentions" and"motivations." How is authorial intention judged?



Mmm, I don't know how authorial intention is judged. I just know it is judged and often without evidence, and that doing so is not something that can really be helped.

The thing about books - all art, really - is it's quite rare for people to sit on the fence. The point of a book is to create a response. It's not like reading a "Please Wash Your Hands" signpost. Most books, especially ones that deal with emotive subjects like sex, force a value judgment of some sort. With that in mind, I think intention is _definable _from outside, on the understanding that definition is not necessarily going to be the same for everybody. The author's job is to try to anticipate those definitions and the numbers of people who might share in it.

 If you were to write a horror story that involves child rape and, once completed, the response for a large number of your readers, or all of them, is not to find it sad or frightening or shocking or whatever sensation you were shooting for, but rather to think you're a creep who is engaging with the subject matter for the purposes of some perverse thrill....that's a failure on the author's part. Provided the readers actually read the book, and did so with an open mind, their impression is legitimate whatever it is, they are allowed to think whatever they want and if what the general response is 'wrong' then that's the writer's failing. It's certainly nobody else's.

So, for example, since _Lolita _was mentioned...I do have a sense that Nabokov was probably a pedophile, or at least had some lingering interest in one or more underage girls. I don't _know _that of course, but it was the impression I got when I read the book, and honestly I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, because it seemed way too obvious a reaction. But, it was my reaction. Not because he was writing about a pedophile, mind. There are plenty of books that involve children having sex that I have read and didn't think that. V.C Andrews, for instance. Stephen King's kiddie gangbang. But Lolita was almost too well written... The pedophile MC was too...articulate, too human, the whole thing too autobiographic. I can't really explain it, but it was the feeling I got. It's a feeling I still have, years later. 

So, I do understand the mechanism by which a reader can assume unsavory motivations and intentions behind stories and I can imagine how some people could then feel hostile. Whenever I read a story I find myself thinking about the author, trying to hear their voice and their passion(s) in the text. I think that's acceptable. Often it actually brings the book to life. But it does cause a problem when we talk about censorship, because obviously wanting books _banned, _is a much bigger step and one that is obviously problematic. I sure don't want Lolita banned. It's a brilliant, important book which does not seem to be in any way linked to the prevalence of actual pedophilia, with a lot to say about a relatively untouched subject...

...but, what if it wasn't any of those things? What if it was a poorly-written piece of smut? Same author, same basic premise and theme, but mostly just a bunch of sordid kid fucking with lip-service paid to story, character development, 'the heart'? Well, suddenly censoring seems a lot easier. Desirable, perhaps. And that's where we have a problem. That's where we can start to see the intent behind the piece more clearly and be sure of just how goddamn dangerous it is. And the moment it starts inspiring people to hurt other people in real life...I think we can start to judge authorial intent more assertively, and do so rather...harshly.


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## seigfried007 (Sep 28, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> Mmm, I don't know how authorial intention is judged. I just know it is judged and often without evidence, and that doing so is not something that can really be helped.
> 
> The thing about books - all art, really - is it's quite rare for people to sit on the fence. The point of a book is to create a response. It's not like reading a "Please Wash Your Hands" signpost. Most books, especially ones that deal with emotive subjects like sex, force a value judgment of some sort. With that in mind, I think intention is _definable _from outside, on the understanding that definition is not necessarily going to be the same for everybody. The author's job is to try to anticipate those definitions and the numbers of people who might share in it.
> 
> If you were to write a horror story that involves child rape and, once completed, the response for a large number of your readers, or all of them, is not to find it sad or frightening or shocking or whatever sensation you were shooting for, but rather to think you're a creep who is engaging with the subject matter for the purposes of some perverse thrill....that's a failure on the author's part. Provided the readers actually read the book, and did so with an open mind, their impression is legitimate whatever it is, they are allowed to think whatever they want and if what the general response is 'wrong' then that's the writer's failing. It's certainly nobody else's.


This put me in mind of something I watched and can't remember well. Think it was an SNL skit with Orlando Jones and Will Ferrell, where one man is showing abstract paintings to another. The viewer keeps seeing naked little boys in the paintings--even though that is absolutely not what the artist intended--and starts making all kinds of accusations of perversion at the artist, and then impounds the paintings. 

I've met too many people who "see what they want to see' or "see what will offend them the most" or "see whatever will let them look down upon the artist." Doesn't necessarily matter what the intention was--people read into art what they want to see. Art is an intensely subjective experience. 

Now, if we're going "majority rules" then it's all about which side gets more press. If someone tells you (generic you) in advance about some great mystery, you're more likely to find the clues that will point you in a given direction. People who hear a book or movie is great or terrible or whatever are more likely to come out of that experience with a similar or dissimilar feeling (depending largely on tastes and personality--some people are just contrary, or the reviewer might not have had similar taste in art). 

It's why reviews are so important, and why good ones can help a lot and bad ones can kill a book. 

Maybe I just have that little faith in humanity and how the mind works, but I don't put much faith in someone's ability to go in with a totally open mind--especially not if press has gotten out about a book. It's why it's hard to try cases that have a lot of publicity--people have already made up their minds without hearing the evidence, the arguments--without reading the darn book. 

I also don't have a great deal of faith in reviews because I've seen so many times where someone reviews something they didn't read. I've also seen people who jump to all the worst conclusions and people who parrot other reviewers. 

So, along with _authorial intent_ being an issue, _reader intention_ and bias is a big issue too--and the leading factor behind books getting censored, banned and burned.


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## luckyscars (Sep 28, 2019)

seigfried007 said:


> So, along with _authorial intent_ being an issue, _reader intention_ and bias is a big issue too--and the leading factor behind books getting censored, banned and burned.



That is true, however only one of those things is within our ability to control, as authors.


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## Aquilo (Sep 28, 2019)

seigfried007 said:


> Also, I was under the impression that erotica was basically all about porn-in-literature-format. I suppose this format likely necessarily gives more character development than a lot of porn, however, so I suppose you're still right. Again, it's an "intent" thing. Is the intention to do nothing but arouse? Don't know where the line's drawn or how such a thing is measured even.





luckyscars said:


> What if it was a poorly-written piece of smut? Same author, same basic premise and theme, but mostly just a bunch of sordid kid fucking with lip-service paid to story, character development, 'the heart'? Well, suddenly censoring seems a lot easier. Desirable, perhaps. And that's where we have a problem. That's where we can start to see the intent behind the piece more clearly and be sure of just how goddamn dangerous it is. And the moment it starts inspiring people to hurt other people in real life...I think we can start to judge authorial intent more assertively, and do so rather...harshly.



In the end when it comes to sex, you aren't going to know how it will be truly judged until it's out there. 

I consult with a psychologist with mine, and for an MC who has OCD and conduct disorder, I'l get advice on treament, on coping strategies that someone with OCD will use to cope and get through life. This MC is also into BDSM, so I'll use my BDSM consultant and psychologist to ensure BDSSM isn't seen as a mental disorder, or that BDSM isn't being used to ease a mental disorder. Readers rightly get very angry when BDSM is portrayed is a mental disorder. However, in one of my novels, I wanted to look at a rape-to-straight, or twist on that version. How with someone looking in on my MC, they wanted to 'cure' him of both, but instead of rape to 'cure' sexuality, it was rape done in a drugged state, where only BDSM techniques and OCD coping statgies only happened in his nightmare state, in his own home, with his rapist being his safe 'haven' in the daytime. So rape-to-straighten out all the kinks and disorders, because some basketcases out there do see both as something to be cured. There are some brutal chapters in that novel, and I rewrote and rewrote to ensure it was realistiic and hard on the reader. It won some awards along the way, but I always remember the one reader, just the one who'd loved the series up until then. Her words were: "Put this in the wrong hands, you have a manual on how to 'cure' anyone of BDSM and any diagnosed disorder. There's no what if: but when with this. The author's created a new rape-to-straight culture, and when it happens, it's on her head.'

I wanted to take the novel back a few decades and show just how sick treatment was surrounding mental disorders in the UK, but to do that, I needed a modern-day setting with a healthy BDSM lifestyle and care done the right way with disorders that are nothing to do with BDSM in order to turn it on its head. the novel is about psychological reconditioning and how the mind can be put back together. But it's written as fiction. And on the author responsibility side, it gutted me thinking that writing about it could do exactly what I'd tried to highlight as wrong about society. It was only one reader, but....


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## velo (Sep 28, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> So, for example, since _Lolita _was mentioned...I do have a sense that Nabokov was probably a pedophile, or at least had some lingering interest in one or more underage girls. I don't _know _that of course, but it was the impression I got when I read the book, and honestly I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, because it seemed way too obvious a reaction.



It's also important to take our own biases into account.  A new reader today will read this with different sensibilities even than when it was published in 1955.  It quickly became a well-respected book and it was made into a film in 1962.  

Imagine if this were published today.  I feel like the outcry would be insane.  So when you say you felt Nabokov was a pedo that may or may not be the case, but just recognise that even though he wrote this when, for example, my mother was alive, it was still a different time with different social boundaries.  

As for intention, I agree that as a reader you can never know the true intention of the author.  I was referring to the perceived intention which, as seigfried says, is often out of our hands.  Such as in writing sex scenes, when I read a sex scene that goes into more detail than I think is necessary then I perceive the intention of the writer to be gratuitous...perhaps trying to shock, perhaps trying to rebel, or maybe just trying to appeal to every type of reader in one book.  No matter the real intent, the perceived intent is off-putting in that case.  

The honest truth is that I would never write anything like Lolita or have anything to do with a child being involved with anything sexual in this day and age.  The blowback would be crazy.  God forbid it went viral.  What I may intend as art others may very possible view as perversion and promotion of illegal acts.  Maybe this is the big difference between 1955 and now- art was still allowed to  push boundaries in areas it no longer is.  

And this, too, is censorship albeit of the social kind.  Those things we dare not write about for fear of reprisal from our peers, such as the youtuber who removed his review, are just as censored as those we are not legally allowed to.  This is also not something unique to our modern age, there have always been social taboos.


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## seigfried007 (Sep 28, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> That is true, however only one of those things is within our ability to control, as authors.


Which is why most people don't write at the boundaries and fringes. Safe art is safe. Safe art doesn't get censored, doesn't make waves.

It's self-censorship. 

And by self-censoring for fear of reprisal, we're denying the public the chance to even read things which push those boundaries, start some conversations, get offended. Getting offended is good for people. Even if I don't like people being offended with anything I do, I at least anticipate offending people with a lot of my stories and can brace for impact, so to speak. Some people get offended over damn near anything, and I've gotten pretty used to people assuming the worst about my intentions--  

Particularly when it comes to sex, rape and child abuse. There are lots of people who get offended with the scantest mention of any of these things. It's why I've got to stick trigger warnings on these things. And no matter how much sensitivity and respect I'm trying to show for said subjects, *somebody* out there is going to call me a psychopath and a child molester and a shock jock. I can't control other people's reactions--even if I try to mitigate those reactions, minimize those reactions--even if I think I'm taking as many precautions as I possibly can. Someone out there is always going to put those goalposts for offensive content, obscenity, gratuitousness, etc. in different places than I would. But I know my intent, and nobody else has guarantees of that, so the best I can do is hedge my bets (or chicken out and just not write anything offensive).


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## velo (Sep 28, 2019)

*Note- Moved to Advanced Writing Discussion because the discussion is pretty advanced.  *


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## luckyscars (Sep 28, 2019)

velo said:


> Maybe this is the big difference between 1955 and now- art was still allowed to  push boundaries in areas it no longer is.



I don't know about that. 1955 was an incredibly conservative place in terms of art (in terms of everything, really). Half of Hollywood was blacklisted for being Communist sympathizers, homosexuality (and therefore anything that would show it) was illegal, a white actress couldn't kiss a black actor without a shit storm, and even something as minor as having long hair was liable to have you beat up in a bar. Incredibly regulated time.

Anyway, I feel like it's a little difficult measuring and comparing backlash and outrage? I'm not sure how old you are, but I'd guess you probably weren't a fully-cogent living person in 1955 Neither was I. So, we are sort of limited to second (these days more like third) hand anecdote and what survives in terms of documentary evidence. The former is obviously a problem, the second is tough too, because what the news media might decry as 'outrageous' doesn't necessarily reflect what regular humans 'on the street' think.

But, parking that, it appears there _was _a lot of outcry about Lolita at the time. From Wikipedia:



> Lolita was published in September 1955, as a pair of green paperbacks "swarming with typographical errors".[36] Although the first printing of 5,000 copies sold out,[citation needed] there *were no substantial reviews*. Eventually, at the very end of 1955, Graham Greene, in *the London Sunday Times, called it one of the three best books of 1955*.[37] This statement *provoked a response from the London Sunday Express, whose editor John Gordon called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography".*[38] British Customs officers were then *instructed by the Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom.[*39] In December 1956, *France followed suit, and the Minister of the Interior banned Lolita;*[40] *the ban lasted for two years*. Its eventual British publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London in 1959 *was controversial enough to contribute to the end of the political career of the Conservative member of parliament Nigel Nicolson, one of the company's partners.[41]
> *



The outcry sounds fairly similar to what I would probably expect now. A little more, actually, because there was actual censorship in some places that are not necessarily known for censoring books (the UK, France) which I don't think would exist these days. 

Either way, I think the main difference between the outcry now versus in 1955 is that modern society would judge the book's content much less as a piece of 'filthy pornography' (we now live in a world where The Human Centipede exists) and more as a specious apology for child rape and misogyny. It would be a different kind of outrage, more political, less religious.



seigfried007 said:


> Which is why most people don't write at the boundaries and fringes. Safe art is safe. Safe art doesn't get censored, doesn't make waves.
> 
> It's self-censorship.
> 
> ...



I think what you might (correctly, for the record) call self-censorship, others might call knowing and adapting to their audience. All readable art has to be 'safe' to some degree, otherwise there would be little need for editors, much less a need for beta readers, still less a need for reviewers. We all have to compromise on our 'vision' in order to keep people interested, or at least keep them from throwing up in their mouths. I take the point on it, but feel there's ultimately not much point in worrying about reader bias, for the simple reason all readers are different. We have to focus on ourselves, our intent, and take into account the anticipated response of readers on a holistic level, not by worrying about people or small groups.

I am reminded of a novel by Charlotte Roche I read a few years back titled _Wetlands. _If you like transgressive fiction, it doesn't get much better: A novel about an 18 year old girl in a hospital for an anal fissure who basically has all kinds of weird sexual fantasies, including a hatred of bathing, incest, and a weird fetish for ingesting her own and other people's random body fluids - sperm, earwax, blood, feces, everything. There's way more to it, but it gets quite NSFW. Anyway, so I read that book and it was a good book. Well-written, the protagonist equal parts repulsive and sweet. But it was a good book in spite of, not because of, the gross stuff. There were several scenes I found myself wanting to flip through, ones where she was talking at length about her hemorrhoids or whatever, not because they were gross but because they were boring. They didn't add to the story, for me. All they added was shock value.

And that's, I think, what I'm saying about dealing with controversial content. There's a balance to be struck. If you're something of a polemicist and wish your work to deal in risky subject matter, I have the utmost respect for that...on the understanding the risk is _yours _, that we are entitled to scrutinize your work more closely, and that you can't later complain if your book isn't one that a middle school library or Oprah Winfrey wants to read. 

I'm fine with outrageous stories. I'm even fine with outrageous-for-the-sake-of-being-outrageous to an extent. There's a need for that. A writer like Edward Lee with his splatterpunk stuff, they're pretty good books and definitely entertaining. What I am NOT fine with is whiny fools who want to write obscene, pornographic garbage and then complain that there's a negative reaction. Of course there's a negative reaction. But it's not censorship just because Barnes & Noble chooses not to stock your crap.


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## seigfried007 (Sep 29, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> And that's, I think, what I'm saying about dealing with controversial content. There's a balance to be struck. If you're something of a polemicist and wish your work to deal in risky subject matter, I have the utmost respect for that...on the understanding the risk is _yours _, that we are entitled to scrutinize your work more closely, and that you can't later complain if your book isn't one that a middle school library or Oprah Winfrey wants to read.
> 
> I'm fine with outrageous stories. I'm even fine with outrageous-for-the-sake-of-being-outrageous to an extent. There's a need for that. A writer like Edward Lee with his splatterpunk stuff, they're pretty good books and definitely entertaining. What I am NOT fine with is whiny fools who want to write obscene, pornographic garbage and then complain that there's a negative reaction. Of course there's a negative reaction. But it's not censorship just because Barnes & Noble chooses not to stock your crap.




It's not censorship really until the book's banned by law, though the law can't ban a book that's never written or published, so there are pre-censorship levels of sorts. But a writer should definitely expect a harsher level of critique with every boundary they push. Totally agree. Can't rain shit on a story and expect it not to stink--or others not to notice the smell.  

I'm not stupid or naive enough to think people won't be offended, and I'm not going to blame anyone for being offended. I know damn well _Pinocchio_ and "Joanna" are hard sells and likely to piss off/disgust/offend about everyone on the planet--and I'm not going to blame people for that. Fully expect negative reactions--to the extent that I've never sent "Joanna" out, despite the story being finished more than a year now. 

The weirdest part to me is that I didn't write either of those stories intending to be shocking or disgusting or obscene, but they're both certain to be called that (and pornographic, for that matter). Both stories feature victims of child sex abuse in prominent story positions--and much like actual victims--these characters have serious issues in the aftermath of said abuse (including becoming physically, emotionally, psychologically and/or sexually abusive with the POV character in both stories). It's a  very unpopular and controversial take because I'm portraying the victims as being abusive with other people, and this seems to be a taboo, even though it's par for the course with real life abuse victims, which are generally treated in fiction as hapless crying blobs, angsty battleaxes or vicious psychopaths/villains. I wanted to show a darker but still redeemable side of victims--not to be shocking (and certainly shock-for-the-sake-of-shock-value) but to give such victims a voice in fiction. Reality is often more shocking than people want to think it is.


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## luckyscars (Sep 29, 2019)

I do think we live in a time when a kind of _de facto_ censorship (which is _not _real censorship, as has been established) exists through social media. I would imagine that is what these people who whine about 'censorship' are referring to. 

In the pre-internet era, it was really hard to institute nationwide boycotts of anything. Now all you need is a good hashtag, on point meme game, and a 'movement'. Regardless of what happens, Harvey Weinstein has been effectively censored from ever making movies again. Ditto Kevin Spacey. Spacey was a fantastic actor regardless of what anybody pretends now. Whether he 'deserves it' or not is irrelevant, it's a shame to lose that talent.

On a more micro level, a writer who becomes famous for bad writing/unacceptable messaging could arguably be _de facto_ 'censored' from having their future work judged according to merit. If Stephanie Meyer somehow managed to come up with a work of mainstream literary genius tomorrow, I would suggest it would require some excellent PR and quite a bit of luck for her to win a Pulitzer, or even to obtain any readers at all, simply because she is known far and wide for very poorly-written teenage novels. A form of typecasting now exists stronger than it ever did before: Meyer is arguably 'censored' from serious literary conversation. A hundred years ago a well-known artist could probably reinvent themselves, could try a different tack. It's harder now. Impossible, even.

Is that bad? I don't know. I suppose it depends on what is being targeted and why. Ultimately in a free-market society this is inevitable. On the one hand, its definitely a more democratic way to determine value. On the other hand, it is prone to unfortunate consequences, sometimes based on reality, other times based on ignorance and hysteria.

 If Twitter had existed in 1955 it's possible Nabokov could have been ostracized overnight for his 'pornography', his book boycotted and his career trashed - #VladThePerv has a snappy ring to it, doesn't it? But, as it was, the outrage at that time was almost entirely driven by newspapers, which have a limited capacity for influence and are generally only read by the intelligentsia anyway. Hence all these important historical figures were allowed to live double lives back then, simultaneously changing the world for the better while not necessarily being good people in ways that would likely hobble them in the 'Age Of Information'.


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## Ma'am (Sep 29, 2019)

Also, I think authors can get away with a lot more if a novel is categorized as "literary."

For example, _All the Ugly and Wonderful Things _was published in 2016. The blurb begins: "A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives."

This "beautiful and provocative love story" is about a man in his early to mid twenties who starts taking care of his meth head buddy's neglected eight-year-old daughter, then buys her an engagement ring when she's thirteen and... After he gets out of prison for the child molestation, the two ride off in the sunset together. 

I was horrified but it was a New York Times bestseller.


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## Aquilo (Sep 29, 2019)

Ma'am said:


> Also, I think authors can get away with a lot more if a novel is categorized as "literary."
> 
> For example, _All the Ugly and Wonderful Things _was published in 2016. The blurb begins: "A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives."
> 
> ...



Oh god, yes. Getting the genre is vital. Even _try_ and sell that as romance and you're given a short-sharp reject slip from a publisher, and banned from Amazon. But it boggles the mind how the reject cries go up in one genre but not others.


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## Sustrai (Oct 26, 2019)

In the United States we, thus far, enjoy freedom of speech.  The idea behind it being; curb that guy's speech, pretty soon they'll be curbing mine.  This, as a result, finds us having to endure some pretty extreme speech from more directions than I'm sure our founding fathers could have considered at the time of their penning our constitution.  Even so, I staunchly defend our right to free speech in the U.S., and it has to be continually defended as there are also people almost constantly trying to squelch the speech of those with whom they disagree.

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.  This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." _Thomas Jefferson

_I think I'll side with Tom on the issue of censorship, even today when flagrant and puerile speech abounds.  A feature of today's U.S. is a questionable education system, especially at the middle school/high school level.  One has to wonder if some of what is appearing in the U.S. today might be a result of that; trying to use the education system to indoctrinate, losing complete control of it as a result, then engaging in the blame game.

Sustrai​


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## Jan1989 (Dec 7, 2019)

As a working book editor and author, a few thoughts. Censorship is necessary. Art is no excuse.

The material my company produces is going to a wide audience. The public good is a concern because we sell to the public. Years of research, and feedback, has shown that the average person/reader is average, with a small number who fall outside that group, mostly imaginative types who want to be artists or writers.

Society consists of individuals who must get along with other individuals. Good parenting should prepare most people for that.

Offending people is not good. There is no excuse for it. You don't meet a stranger somewhere and offend him. You have a conversation. The same with books. The same with movies. The average moviegoer is not an expert or a screenwriter. They are looking for entertainment and they do bring their kids.

Pre-internet, it was easy to boycott things and physically carry protest signs. The level of FBI and other surveillance on the internet has made it easier for law-enforcement to spot troublemakers.

Prior to 1971, certain words could not be said on TV or the radio. Certain things could not be shown. That meant everybody, religious or not, could watch most anything.

Finally, this fiction about 'power.' How much freedom do you want? You can publish anything as an ebook. It's entirely up to you. I would add that social responsibility exists. Just read the rules of this forum.


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## Ralph Rotten (Dec 7, 2019)




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