Wow, this is a classic case of "don't trust someone who describes themselves as neutral".
To take the principal example under discussion, either you think lolicon is OK or you don't. "Neutrality" is actually the former position. The exact same thing holds true for the "Red vs Blue" thing. Either you believe Red harasses Blue or you don't. If you don't, fine, but don't pretend you didn't just pick a side.
> Either you believe Red harasses Blue or you don't. If you don't, fine, but don't pretend you didn't just pick a side.
I can imagine another possibility: you believe that Red harasses Blue, but also that Blue harasses Red. Then neutrality might be sensible, unless perhaps there's a big difference in magnitude.
Another possibility: you think that either you're not qualified to act as judge, you're not suited to act as executioner (what would the action be—retaliatory harassment?), or that, while you could serve as both, it would be better from a societal perspective if people in your position did not do so—it might be "vigilantism".
> Either you believe Red harasses Blue or you don't.
That's a bizarre dichotomy. Neither "Red harasses Blue" nor its converse is true in all cases. You've fallen into the trap of believing that when someone constructs a dichotomy, you must of necessity pick one of the two "sides". Do you support Hutu or Tutsi?
”not enough data for meaningful answer" is a valid answer.
It is, but in some circumstances it can then call intelligence, sincerity, or familiarity with the subject into question. If you say that data isn’t present for a meaningful answer to the question of the existence of an afterlife, I’m inclined to take your position seriously. If by contrast your position is that there is insufficient data to support a conclusion as to the existence of gravity I’d question your intelligence or sincerity.
I never thought of neutrality like that - thanks, +1 Insightful and such!
Although I wonder if that can be applied to other issues too. Like, if I were to have no opinion / consider myself neutral in the pro-choice / pro-life debate, which side would I actually be on? Or is there a neutral / indifferent ground there?
The quote at the bottom is from Desmond Tutu, who explicitly said that neutrality is a vote for the powerful/status quo. So if you were in Denmark, not caring that much could be treated as a pro-choice position, but in Texas it would be the other way around.
Just because you don’t understand that availability matters, people getting shot because they do legal things matters, and your entire entire Supreme Court being defined by and chosen on their attitude to a subject matters, doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
Attempting to obtain an abortion in Texas will have dramatically different outcomes to that of Denmark. Appreciating this is true should not be controversial.
The people in Texas are actively fighting against the status quo of Roe. If the people in TX simply took a neutral position, the status quo would reign. Thus, the example is a bad one.
If you do not understand the difference between neutrality and apathy, say that and I'll happily explain.
The difference is that neutrality, by itself, doesn't describe motivation (which could be apathy, but not necessarily).
As an example, if you apply that logic on countries which were neutral in WWII, that doesn't mean they were pro status quo or pro whatever the outcome was either in theory or practice. It means they have a different interest than the 2 power blocs. And if you look at who was part of Axis, you find Finland, who made a pragmatic and strategic decision due to their (recent) history with Russia.
Yep. I almost stopped reading (but read on) after this sentence:
The coverage, all from Blue-aligned media, largely presented Mastodon as a cool new alternative to Twitter that would be free of "harassment," which is a Blue code word for the mere existence of the Red side.
This is clearly not from a neutral person. He very clearly picked a side.
Yes, some people on the Blue side can be overly sensitive. No, I do not think that "a significantly noisy subset" of the Blue side finds a dissenting opinion to be harassment. Do you imagine these people responding to "I don't agree with that" with claims that they are being harassed? I burst out laughing reading that sentence in the article, it's such an obviously preposterous statement.
It's really quite comical that the author, in order:
1) Claimed that they were being objective and presenting the situation free of bias.
2) Claimed that any person on the Blue side who learns that anyone with a dissenting opinion is on the same site as them will feel that they are being harassed.
3) Claimed that the arrival of Blue users would ruin mastodon.
I skimmed over the rest of the article and it appears to include an "Actually It's Not Technically CP" argument, so I think I probably made the right choice here.
> Do you imagine these people responding to "I don't agree with that" with claims that they are being harassed?
Sadly yes. The logic works as follows:
If you don't agree with me (let's say on gay marriage), you're saying my belief is invalid. The things I believe constitute my identity; therefore you are attacking my identity and thus existentially threatening me.
On some forums this kind of disagreement is grounds for banning, no matter how politely expressed or well reasoned.
Okay, but you've now moved the goal posts from "mere dissent is harassment" to "people suggesting that I deserve fewer human rights than them is harassment" which, well, yeah.
Arguments containing a premise that the other side is a lesser human generally don't go well. I don't think that is unique to this situation.
To be clear: my company offers a maternity benefit that's more generous than their paternity benefit. I want to change that. If you offer any disagreement, then you are imputing I deserve fewer human rights, saying I am a "lesser human" than you, and thus you are harassing me. Correct? Nevermind which side is right: mere disagreement is harassment.
You provided a specific example of a topic with existential importance. I responded to it.
I do not think you can make an argument against gay marriage which treats all sexualities equally, by very definition.
If you feel you have an argument about why the government should deny homosexuals the right to marriage, but that does not treat homosexuals as lesser than heterosexual people, I'm all ears!
> I do not think you can make an argument against gay marriage which treats all sexualities equally, by very definition.
How can I reasonably be expected share my argument, if by your own criteria I'll be guilty of harassment if you disagree?
That's the stifling effect of "disagreement is harassment".
Think about it. By your criteria, discussion can't even happen if anyone's rights are at stake. Yet any meaningful disagreement will involve someone's rights - what is the extent of a right, and under what conditions can it be circumscribed. All of this talk is now off limits.
Maybe you should try to make sure you can win these arguments instead of preemptively banning them.
PS: I'm really not interested in gay marriage. As I said it's just an example of suppressing debate. Compare to how Red evangelicals will invite atheists to publicly debate evolution, which I think is more constructive. I can give more examples of Blue debate-silencing through harassment claims but this seems sufficient illustrative.
I think a very narrow segment of speech is harassment, namely that people deserve less because of their religion, race, gender or sexuality. I'm surprised you view this as contentious.
I don't think that's well-defined enough to unilaterally shut down debate. What if my religion tells me I can't work 6 months out of the year, and I need the same job protection Christians get for not working on Christmas and Easter? What if I'm asexual and I'm denied the tax benefits married people get? You're saying not only are these claims automatically granted, but that just discussing them is a punishable offense.
Also why is "religion, race, gender or sexuality" the holy quartet? Why not ageism, ablism, lookism, or my rights as a short person? Why are those open to debate while the others aren't?
1. I don't believe that religious people should be treated differently than non-religious people.
2. Asexual people can marry. They don't force you to have sex before they give you the certificate of marriage.
I did not claim that discussing these things was a punishable offense. You can discuss anything that you please, you are protected from prosecution by the 1st Amendment.
My only contention was that it was valid for someone to feel harassed because someone said they deserve less because of their sexuality.
> My only contention was that it was valid for someone to feel harassed because someone said they deserve less because of their sexuality.
Ok. I agree people's feelings are valid. I believe if someone feels harassed because of my opinion, my opinions may be just as valid as their feeling of harassment, and society is better served by open discussion than sparing feelings at all costs.
I realize that some people may abuse this to hurt other's feelings without making a sincere and salient point, which is regrettable. I'd like to think all my points can be articulated without offending anyone, though that's probably unrealistic.
I appreciate that you respect the 1st Amendment. It's a common Blue trope that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to speech involving supposed racism or sexism (which they refer to as "hate speech").
I'm all for open discussion. I'll discuss anything with anyone.
I was just responding in particular to the point about gay marriage because I think, as I said, by definition it's difficult to make that argument without a premise that you deserve more than the other side. Similarly, if you made the argument that someone does not deserve to vote because they use a wheelchair, I would think the same thing.
Perhaps in some Voltaire-ideal we should have an in-depth argument on the merits, but I don't particularly blame them for just saying "fuck this". It's not exactly a good faith argument that's conductive to a useful or productive conversation.
To use your parental leave example, contrast two arguments. One begins from "I think that both the mother and father deserve equal treatment" versus "Women are sinful, therefore they deserve fewer days off". You may earnestly believe both arguments and be attempting to make a reasoned, good faith argument, but one of them is more likely to result in "fuck this" and one of them is more likely to result in a useful discussion.
With regards to your point about a "common trope", you should consider talking to adults on the Left.
E: We've now reached the post column width that indicates that we both should have better things to do.
You're free to say "Fuck this, I don't want to argue anymore" if you like. The mistake is believing that makes anyone still talking a "harrasser" in the legally actionable sense.
>I skimmed over the rest of the article and it appears to include an "Actually It's Not Technically CP" argument, so I think I probably made the right choice here.
You'd do well to actually read the article then before making a comment like this. He goes briefly into that to show that you (english speaker) see it as a _very clear_ case of CP, whereas in japan it's not, that there's a distinction, and that they often won't understand why you'd confuse the two. And that difference in looking at it (regardless of picking a position on if it is or isn't cp) is what caused a bunch of issues.
This was an interesting read because it shows a culture clash and language barrier. Not so much red vs blue (if you believe such an abstract thing exists, and I find the distinction being made in this article completely and utterly wrong [1], pointless, irrelevant, a _terrible_ analogy, a distraction, and ultimately a _terrible_ element of an otherwise seemingly [I'm no expert on the topic] informative written text). Rather, it describes the difference in Japanese language/values vs English language and American-European values, as well as the difference between virtual and real-life, or what children should or should not be allowed to see. This is why there isn't "one" internet as well. We have different jurisdictions, values, enforcement, censorship, etc. Normally, you got a company behind the website who has local subsidiaries who ultimately listen to HQ; so FB is American culture, and that's the agenda it ultimately pushes forth. Which is, incidentally, the standard, but you can see all kind of local websites who don't have these values.
As for the first Japanese term (the "legal" one) I found it described here here: [2]
"Lolicon: Centered on prepubescent, pubescent, or post-pubescent underage girls, whether homosexual or heterosexual."
I didn't search for the other term because the description seemed telling enough.
[1] Sexual freedom was fought for by human rights activists in the 2nd part of the 20th century. Feminism movement (e.g. pro-abortion, voting rights), anti war movement (specifically war in Vietnam though also the Cold War), anti child labor / pro education movement, LGBT and general sexual freedom movement (the latter being an ideal of the hippie movement), anti-racism movement (not sure if that's the right word), even recreational drug usage movement. All of these were inherently pro-equality and pro-freedom (in that order), going against the status quo of that time. If you call that "US-blue" (yeah, cause in the rest of the world blue doesn't necessarily have the same meaning and indeed it does not since generally red is seen as left-wing and blue as right-wing although I find those terms rather lacking content), what's the freedom of liking hentai which harms no adult directly just like playing a shoot-em up? "US-red"? Really??? Well then, how utterly conflicting with the human rights movement from the 20th century. Its easier to just see it as a culture clash. The article does mention this eventually:
"Monday the 17th: the terminology of "free speech" versus "safe speech" becomes popular in English-language discussions for describing the growing ideological divide on how instances ought to be run. I first encounter it in this item from Spacedragon but am not sure if that's the first (or only) place it came into use. Free speech instances are generally aligned with the Red Culture War faction (hence also with GNU Social and the older parts of the network) and safe speech instances with Blue (hence Mastodon proper). However, I think it's significant that when we had the same fight on Livejournal ten years earlier, it was the opposite way: fictional "child pornography" in the form of explicit Harry Potter fan art and therefore "free speech" was a Blue/Left/aGG/SJW thing, with the Red/Right/Gamergate/MRA side taking what we'd now call the "safe speech" position. For that reason I'm inclined to think that the link between Culture War sides and free/safe speech is more a matter of historical accident than anything naturally flowing from whatever defines these sides."
However it was for the better if that whole part (and the gamergate nonsense) wouldn't be included. I don't see how it is related.
Yeah, the "neutrality" being touted here is so clearly a farce. This is ridiculous. I can't believe there's so many people discussing this pile of offal with such seriousness.
"The coverage, all from Blue-aligned media, largely presented Mastodon as a cool new alternative to Twitter that would be free of "harassment," which is a Blue code word for the mere existence of the Red side."
Give me a fucking break.
There's this baffling and unnecessary plug of US politics--done seemingly for the exclusive purpose of sneakily putting down one side while maintaining an absurd claim of neutrality. It's not really relevant to the other subject he's discussing, which, by the way, is also total bullshit.
Just look at how the subject is discussed. It isn't discussed, it's danced around vaguely. He not only refuses to explain the difference between the two genres of porn--he won't even spell them out. Uses "ロリコン" instead of lolicon, a term which is very commonly understood in the English-speaking world. Because it's a loanword from western culture and western concepts. It's not some mysterious eastern thing that we can't possibly comprehend, as he asserts.
Katakana, the very alphabet that "ロリコン" is written in, exists in a large way to spell out loanwords from other languages. So why doesn't he just spell it out in the language the rest of the article is written in? Same reason he never explains these mysterious, forbidden concepts from the mystical eastern lands™ in a clear way: because he's trying to hide it.
The idea that lolicon is not controversial at all--and to go so far to say that it is universally accepted in Japanese culture--is also an absurd falsehood and obvious bad faith in an argument that's trying to appear neutral but has a bald-faced agenda. Only otaku who knows of Japanese culture exclusively through cartoons and video games would ever think that was true.
This is so obviously an article by somebody who a. wants to bemoan the oppression of right-wing opinions online and b. enjoys lolicon in a sexual way and wants to discreetly defend that habit. It's not even ambiguous. At all.
I feel like the way the "culture wars" are presented in quasi-neutrality is meant to imply that any moral or political disagreement within a culture is irrational, that all sides are always the same, and he and other "neutrals" are above it all, yet they are simultaneously oppressed. That whole argument ignores historical fact that there are cultures which were objectively harmful and unethical, and it is not some irrational folly for current cultures to try to foresee that such a thing might happen again.
Of course both sides™ think they're on the right side of history and ethics, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless and it doesn't mean that right and wrong won't become clear one day in hindsight. We can't pretend we are the sole exceptions in history.
I really don’t think describing two sides of the “culture war” as red and blue is healthy for anyone. Most people have a mish-mash of beliefs, but lumping people together creates division and solidifies factions, rather than allowing people to be swayed or make up their own mind.
I think that 'red' and 'blue' are just plain confusing because the US has relatively recently taken its own bindings of these labels to political positions that are completely arse-backwards to the long term historical uses of these colours in the entire rest of the world.
I think it's best to use more descriptive terms that everyone can actually agree on
Blue/Red in the US used to be (deliberately) switched on TV broadcasts in every election until the 2000 Bush election where the continual coverage of how close it was locked the colors in for all time.
This wikipedia entry takes 6 paragraphs to explain the nuances involved and they are far more complicated than you state (not that I think you intended that way):
Which basically gets back to my original point in an international forum like this (or the one described by the above article) these colours don't really mean anything you can talk about and they're best avoided unless your goal actually is to sow confusion
That describes exactly what is happening. An individual's nuanced stance and well reasoned argument doesn't matter so much as their use of a hashtag does. Anyone on the fence is fraternizing with the enemy. The sides are ill-defined, but certainly delimited by what the self-ascribed gatekeepers at the top of the social jenga tower consider personally "deplorable", through blacklisting and social pressure.
This is exactly the problem that is happening on the big english speaking Mastodon instances and the reason I left mastodon.xyz
I went to a GNU Social instance that doesnt block any other servers and its like a whole different network. I prefer to have my beliefs challenged and not be punished for speaking with people the instance admin didnt agree with.
From what I've seen, one of the more common "blue tribe" beliefs these days is that there are in fact two sides - either you're a good person who holds all of the correct beliefs that every decent person has, or you're the enemy. A few months ago, a whole bunch of the social justice-y folks on Mastodon actually turned on its creator in #ForkOff because he introduced a popular tags feature that (in their eyes) every good-thinking person should realise was a bad idea, and therefore was a bad person and should be shunned. (Not sure how tightly-policed the red tribe is these days.)
It's called "outgroup homogeneity," when you are part of an us-vs-them scenario your "us" always seems to be a coalition of diverse viewpoints whereas your "them" is a single collective viewpoint.
So for example if you are in a team of white males you might want to get a token black person or a token woman on your team to "bring the black perspective" or "bring the female perspective" to whatever you're working on: that's a systematic bias, you're implicitly assuming that there's not going to be a diversity of black/female perspectives the way that you already know there's a lot of white male perspectives.
In fact the broader issue that will lead the US inexorably to civil war even if present communications difficulties abate is that we do elections by dividing our electoral bodies into independent seats and then run first-past-the-post elections for each seat. The issue is fixed-point theorems. Each election is a polity -> polity map; the fixed point of split-FPTP-elections is a polity which is 50% one party, 50% the other party, both parties are completely spineless chameleons which shift however they need to in order to maintain the 50/50 status quo, and people are loosely affiliated with one party while disgusted by the opposition. As the first US civil war showed, this disgust will naturally build without bound until the highly prominent issues at the time cause movements toward secession which then lead to active conflict.
I was going to say "if you're coming from a place that does proportional elections this probably seems like nonsense to you," but that is my own outgroup homogeneity effect rearing its ugly head again! The truth is that even proportionate systems have problems with this sort of divisiveness; witness Brexit in the UK and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands for two examples. But I would insist that there is a characteristic spinelessness that pushes this further from just "we are one nation with serious divisions to reconcile" to "they are awful and we will never reconcile, let's just get a divorce" in the US system.
Wilders funding [1] suggests that US conservative money (previously under the guise of anonymity) is manipulating the Dutch electorate perhaps in a similar way as some wealthy Russians manipulated the US electorate.
I don't really know what these red/blue tribes represent, but the way you describe "social justice-y folks" seems to coincide with the way Jordan Peterson and Sargon of Akkad criticise third-wave feminism for being marxist and controlling. Ironically marxists are traditionally identified by the color red.
Unfortunately, authoritarianism and the desire for thought control is never tied to one political ideology. It will always seem like an option to those in control.
I don't know if the Japanese softcore child porn wave seems to be a symptom of people being unable to find a safe middle, or if it's a late consequence of cultural globalism. Lacking an over-all perspectives in a foreign culture makes this kind of analysis hard.
Unfortunately, authoritarianism and the desire for thought control is never tied to one political ideology. It will always seem like an option to those in control.
Obviously the latter statement is true, everything will seem like an option, but the sentiment you're getting at here doesn't seem to be true.
The US Congress could have repealed the first amendment at any point since it was introduced. They never have. And the US, for all its problems, has significantly freer speech than most of the world. America is also a notoriously conservative sort of place.
Places with alternative political ideologies very rapidly encounter authoritarianism and thought control. See: China.
I tend to agree fully with your assessment of the labels, but is it a coincidence that people's behavior online during these kinds of situations are divided already? And the labels aren't creating the divide, but only describing it?
I've found on both sides of an argument about a person's behavior (ie, depraved, evil, despicable, etc...) was ignored when the arguer discovered that person shared their "groups" view point.
I think (in my experience) it's extremely rare that people don't pick a side, and generalities do have uses in communication.
Unless you think only one side uses labels to create two sides? Where the other side is innocent of this behavior? (a silly question)
> I tend to agree fully with your assessment of the labels, but is it a coincidence that people's behavior online during these kinds of situations are divided already? And the labels aren't creating the divide, but only describing it?
Yes they're divided already but not nearly as neatly as red/blue. Being that unnecessarily divisive (and I've been just as guilty as anyone) pushes people further apart, even people that agree on a lot more than they realise. On the flip side, when you agree with someone simplifying like that it just pulls your bubble tighter and tighter, you can lose perspective on how the other side really feels, which is usually much less extreme than the built up charicature.
>...when you agree with someone simplifying like that it just pulls your bubble tighter and tighter...
I don't "agree" with it, I just find that style of communication clearly indicates their perspective, which I find useful. I try not to use labels like that on groups dogmatically, because I overlap agreements with almost everyone on something.
But, if we are talking about "one topic", as soon as you disagree with someone, you are now on different sides on "one topic". This article seems to be about "one topic", not a bunch, so I am not so sure it matters to much, because I have an opinion about that topic, so I am clearly on one side of it.
>...you can lose perspective on how the other side really feels..
I guess I just don't care to have "perspective" on how someone "feels" about kiddie porn, it's repulsive, sick and horrific. I don't need to empathise with them. Everyone has limits to their empathy, that's certainly one of mine.
The concept of red and blue tribes described by Scott Alexander [1] isn't so much about belief, but environment, upbringing, and who you associate with.
It's a convenient term for describing the sides in certain situations that devolve into these kind of identitarian tribal battles. I think it's appropriate for this Mastodon discussion. The people with a wider spectrum of belief and no strong tribe affiliation generally aren't the people engaging in these intense social media "wars".
It's a descriptive, not a prescriptive, explanation.
Yes, the red/blue divide is essentially accurate and using it doesn't create the divide, which is already there. The only real simplification is that it's more like a spectrum rather than a hard cut, but it's still a single dimension variable (there is less complexity to it than lots of people like to believe).
The best explanation for what it truly is and why it occurs throughout history is in "Conflict of Visions" by Thomas Sowell. I'll give a précis of the argument here:
The red/blue divide is ultimately a disagreement over the span of human nature. All humans develop intuitive beliefs about human nature merely through the act of living, so nobody is actually neutral or truly 'centrist' - people who appear to be are usually just people who haven't been in a situation where the differences actually matter. But if they were to be, suddenly you'd find they picked a side.
The "free speech" side believe that human nature is limited and relatively static. Humans are corruptible, always have been and always will be. They can't perceive or handle the true complexities of reality, never could and never will. Because human nature is flawed and unchanging, there will always be war, there will always be unfairness, there will always be a divide between the rich and poor and so on. Progress is an endless struggle to find incrementally better tradeoffs, but attempting to make one thing better over here frequently makes something worse over there, and our limited abilities mean it's easy to think you found a better tradeoff when really it was worse. Attempting to change any of these things is naive, futile and usually dangerous.
The "safe speech" side believe that human nature is essentially unlimited and relatively flexible. Humans may be imperfect but they can improve or be improved over time and in the long run are perfectible. This process of improvement occurs through debate, thought, learning and reflection. Intelligence and expertise are paramount, so the best outcomes come from putting decisions in the hands of the best people. That's an important point: because the span of human nature is very wide, some people are much further along the path of enlightenment than other people are, and it's important that the less developed people don't get too much influence in society.
Almost all left/right/red/blue/free-speech/safe-speech/conservative/liberal disputes in life flow from this disagreement over one thing.
With respect to Twitter, we can see the following ideas at work:
- Safe speech side: Ideas are important, spread easily and most people are easily influenced by them. Therefore speech can be dangerous because the mere act of someone speaking can significantly damage the human nature of the listeners, making them literally worse people. Speech control is thus highly important and a moral imperative; free speech by "bad people" can seriously damage civilisation itself. The best way to stop bad ideas spreading from bad people to the lumpen proletariant is moderation by better people, who can use a variety of speech-limiting tools to ensure the best ideas win.
- Free speech side: Ideas are pretty harmless, because people are robust and can easily reject bad ideas that other people talk about. Free speech is essential because nobody has the big picture, all we have are small fragments, and because power corrupts so being able to speak out against power is fundamental. Speech controls and moderation are themselves a form of power which will corrupt the moderators, so it's better to have no controls at all and put up with some level of abuse and spam than submit a free speaking place to the tyrannical will of a handful of self-proclaimed moral overlords.
This is not a US specific thing of course. I don't know why anyone thinks that. You can see it everywhere. For instance, in Europe the EU is essentially controlled by "safe speech" types. This can be seen most visibly in the reaction of the various EU leaders to Brexit. Martin Schulz who was at the time an important figure in the EU Parliament (and went on to be briefly important in German politics), said this:
For decades the UK tabloids have performed mass brainwashing, and the leave campaign force-fed their readers with intolerance of foreigners. No change to the EU will convince those who have fallen victim to these factors. A bonfire of the EU is therefore not the way forwards.
The safe speech / perfectible-human ideas are everywhere in this short quote. People are easily "brainwashed" by ideas that they would naturally reject, except they were "force fed" them and have become "victims" - Schulz believes that people are reprogrammable biological FPGAs whose political beliefs are entirely controlled by those who speak loudly and frequently. These sorts of people also have frequently referred to dislike of the EU as a "virus" that's "spreading". Because people's views are entirely created by listening to charismatic speakers, there is little point in actually changing how anything is really done.
It is impossible for people with such wildly different takes on human nature to co-exist in the same space. If a new space was created by people with free speech mentality, the safe-speechers will not rest until they have taken it over and imposed speech controls on it, because they feel that to not do this is literally dangerous. Hence their name!
I think that this binary thinking is more of result of two party system. Eventually you have to pick a party and from that moment on you are bound to see everything as us vs them.
In fact, bothers parties are uneasy coalitions, but in order to win this or that debate the most effective action is to rally "your side" on you identity as red or blue. Thus red people who are pro gun control will be more likely to be silent (and similar process on blue side) and be louder where they agree with their side.
There is no single set ideological divide and majority of actual people hold much more complex and inconsistent opinions.
Like in here - there are plenty of conservative right Christians who areally not ok with pretty much any depiction of sexuality. That is how they treat students in their schools (including colleges), how they preach and who they socially sanction among themselves. However, rough red blue analysis treats them as non existent - despite them really wishing for power to influence what is available (and sometimes suceeding, through they have less power then they used to).
They are ignored, because their existence is uncomfortable for political point being made. Likewise, anti sex blue feminists coexist with straight pro-porn blue feminists, but which side gets pushed to prominence largely depends on what is beneficial for whoever is trying to frame issues to red blue to rally own side.
>The best way to stop bad ideas spreading from bad people to the lumpen proletariant is moderation by better people, who can use a variety of speech-limiting tools to ensure the best ideas win.
I take two issues with this: it's a very greatly simplified version of the real story, and the idea that the "safe speech" people wish to use legal means doesn't really hold very strongly; the idea is not framed within the liberal framework, the idea of rights doesn't apply here, it's something deeper than that.
Secondly, why did you specficially refer to the lumpenproletariat rather than the proletariat?
I also think that your generalisations are pretty poor; you lump a whole anthropology and sociology and psychology into two groups and act as if they are mutually exclusive and in total opposition; the truth is that authors everywhere hold very seprate views on these topics, including those of human nature. What precisely makes you categorise the idea of "there will always be poor people" necessarily in with "free speech advocates"? How do you know this is a valid dividing line to draw?
The fact you cited Sowell, and your general tone about the "safe speech side" (again, I hate the fact that this dichotomy is being made on totally false grounds) suggests that you have quite a bias. The dispute is in terms of various perspectives spanning various fields, you may even go one step up from your description to get to the very idea of politics, the very idea of epistemology even.
I'm interested in what reading you've done from people on the "safe speech side" in particular; are you familiar with the works of the Frankfurt School of critical theory?
Re: lumpenproletariat. A possibly misplaced attempt to exaggerate the views to make the differences clearer, I could have said proletariat and it could have been more accurate.
the idea that the "safe speech" people wish to use legal means doesn't really hold very strongly
Why not? In the USA it may appear that way because the first amendment is such a strong protection, so they end up using approaches that aren't based on changing the law (e.g. pushing for corporate censorship policies on large communication services).
But everywhere else in the world doesn't have the first amendment and there you see a proliferation of hate speech laws and other "crimes" that boil down to offending people on Twitter. In the UK the police arrest tweeters so actively that it's become a rolling criticism of the force, like, why are they arresting people who are just sitting on their ass tweeting instead of going out and catching "real" criminals? Answer: because the law expects them to.
What precisely makes you categorise the idea of "there will always be poor people" necessarily in with "free speech advocates"?
Because policy positions follow logically from the underlying intuition about human nature.
Let's start with the assumption that the existence of poverty is a problem. Sowell didn't use the term "free speech" vs "safe speech", he coined the terms constrained vs unconstrained instead. People with the constrained vision look at poverty and agree that it's a problem, but disagree that there's any solution. They see the world as offering only tradeoffs. We could raise taxes and redistribute to the poor through welfare (making poverty better), but that might discourage them from working and reduce the tax base as a whole (making other government services worse). They see hateful or offensive speech and maybe they agree that is a problem, but doing anything about it would only create bigger problems elsewhere. Thus "free speech" types tend to default to a position of inaction or leaving things alone, i.e. shrink the state (less action), if something is traditional best to keep doing it (don't change things), etc. Hence the description 'conservative'.
People with the unconstrained vision see a problem like poverty, but are sure there must be solutions out there, if only the right people can be found and put in power. They therefore spend a lot of time worrying about whether politicians are good people, moral people, they tend to suggest solutions like "tax the rich, feed the poor" and don't worry too much about possible negative side effects: if they acknowledge such side effects might exist at all, their view is usually that these effects are small and controllable, and at any rate, such worries should not stand in the way of experimentation and progress.
are you familiar with the works of the Frankfurt School of critical theory?
Those people who looked at Marxist philosophy and concluded communism was just a bad implementation, not that the outlook on humanity itself was flawed?
I haven't read much by the Frankfurt School, although I have studied what Marx himself believed somewhat extensively (well, relative to most people I guess). Marxist thought is such a nonsensical set of beliefs that anything derived from it is likewise guaranteed to be nonsense, so there are limits to how much time I want to spend on that.
Marx wasn't completely self consistent over time, but in the Sowellian framework of visions, Marx was one of the rare people who had an entirely and utterly unconstrained view of human nature. He believed literally all flaws of human nature stemmed from capitalism ("alienation") and if institutions and markets were abolished, problems like people wanting more than their fair share would disappear as well. That's why he was stupid enough to believe that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was both (a) not a self-contradicting concept and (b) would simply wrap itself up and dissolve itself once its redistributive work was done.
The naivety about how people really are that's required to believe that could only come from someone living Marx's entirely cloistered life - any school of thought that descends from it deserves no respect.
>People with the unconstrained vision see a problem like poverty, but are sure there must be solutions out there, if only the right people can be found and put in power.
This seems to more describe a very limited range of people (as much of a range as a binary separation can convey) oriented entirely around the center of the political spectrum. The Socialist left dosen't talk about finding the right people to put in power, it talks about putting the people in power, over capital. They have no time to talk about taxes or tradeoffs or redistribution - to them, these are nothing but empty gestures that do nothing to change the power relations that make up the world.
I (and many in contemporary philosophy, sociology and anthropology) disagree with the assessment that Marxism is necessarily a "nonsensical" set of beliefs; we see it as a mode of analysis that must be constantly subjected to questioning (hence the origin of the Frankfurt School, post-Marxism, anarcho-Communism etc.). He didn't believe that all flaws stemmed from capitalism, rather, he believed in the materialist doctrine of history - that changed circumstances produce changed men (with some caveats).
Not only would Marx have markets abolished, he would render them useless; the market requires capital and money, it requires private property and all the relations that will drag with it - the double separation of the worker: separated from the means of production, and from the products of production. If this double separation is abolished, then markets can no longer exist.
But the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't a "dictatorship" as you may understand the word in terms of Hitler or Stalin, it literally means that society is under the dictation (direction) of the proletariat, not that there is some elite group which takes control and dictates things. The "wrapping up" refers to the concept of withering away of the state, which would happen in the case where the functions of the state have been transferred to the people. But there are other theories too, such as Kropotkin's anarcho-Communism.
But under no circumstance can you claim Marx lived a cloistered life; having the pressure of his father in particular weigh down on him to study Law for money, he chose philosophy, then exiled from his own country for publishing newspapers, he fled to London and with Engels collected hundreds of factory reports and studied them for theirty years in nearly abject poverty. This man was the very opposite of cloistered. But plenty of non-cloistered people have adopted his views and indeed many have been theorists too - check out Robert Tressel.
The Socialist left dosen't talk about finding the right people to put in power, it talks about putting the people in power
Yes, but that's a meaningless slogan. "People" can't be in power in general, only individuals can, that is the nature of power. And so when it comes to actual implementation time, socialists put specific individuals in power - often a lot of power - and they spend a lot of time trying to ensure those people are good/moral/intelligent/wise/etc.
This is why left wing movements have a habit of becoming obsessed with specific leaders. Mao, Stalin, Chavez, and in more modern times Jeremy Corbyn, to a much lesser extent Bernie Sanders etc.
You later assert that "dictatorship of the proletariat" doesn't actually mean dictatorship in the e.g. Soviet sense even though that's exactly what it always turns into. Because, again, dictatorship of the people is a meaningless slogan.
[Marx] with Engels collected hundreds of factory reports and studied them for theirty years in nearly abject poverty
I'm well aware of Marx's life story, that's why I said it was cloistered.
He spent his entire life doing nothing but reading books in his library and writing political philosophy, sponging off his friends to make ends meet. For a man who claimed to think about the poor so much, here are some notable things he appears to have never done:
* Visited a factory
* Gone down a mine
* Socialised with the working class
* Attempted to win votes or take part in any kind of political process at all
Basically, his life was devoid of reality checks of any sort, which is why his ideas turned out to be so useless and disastrous. He even turned down an invitation from Engels to visit his factory, iirc - that's how much he cared about real workers!
This entirely sealed off existence is one reason he ended up engaging in so much intellectual fraud. His books were notorious even in his lifetime for false claims and faked citations. In particular he frequently found himself making false claims that industrial capitalism was in a downward spiral, because he was citing decades old reports from factory inspectors. Those reports had gone on to trigger changes in legislation and factory conditions, which later improved. His entire thesis was that industrial capitalism would have an apocalyptic end, but it simply wasn't happening, in fact the opposite was happening.
If he had actually spent any time doing real work, or had even joined the factory inspectorate himself, he could have observed this improvement directly. But he lived entirely through the experiences of others, in a dreamworld of his own making.
Not even slightly. If asked to identify a particular place or institution where debate, thought, learning and reflection take place most people would point at universities.
And in the west, where is freedom of speech most restricted , imperilled and where is most obsessed with safe spaces and safe speech? Universities!
You’re painting all universities with the same brush. The universities that engage in debate are, unsurprisingly, not the ones that restrict such debate.
Interesting! I'm inclined to feel that the 'red/blue divide' is more about individualism vs collectivism, but I don't necessarily disagree with your interpretation.
Other considerations (individualism vs collectivism) are tightly related to the "human nature" consideration.
It's way far easier to control speech on a collectivist society, for example. You need a degree of totalitarianism to ban speech and ideas.
How about "balanced speech"? People that want to listen both/all sides of an argument and form their own opinion on then. Free speech yes, but presenting a different perspective to this as well. People can be changed by being subjected for a long period to just one perspective, but are able to resist foreign ideas for a while.
Reality is far more nuanced, yes. By some of the author's measures I'd be on Red's side (Even though I think the whole GamerGate ordeal was thoroughly idiotic) and by some others I'd be on Blue's side. People don't fit neatly into tags and categories, and for that opinion I've been attacked by members of both sides before.
IMO it was also a naming problem. GamerGate doesn't refer to anything precisely, it just encompass the whole mess. The ones who had interesting claims should have forked the movement under an unambigous name.
It was impossible to be fully pro or anti gamergate because both sides had so many claims and their fair share of trolls.
It's not about your basket of beliefs, it's about the fact of coalition and the feeling of tribal alliance. When you see the armies forming you increasingly feel compelled to pick a team. I never cared for that sort of thing, but at some point in 2016 it happened to me.
The "culture war" isn't about beliefs; it's about satisfying the human need to blame (scapegoat) someone else for your problems, meanwhile not becoming the target of blame yourself (or at least, being blamed by anyone you care about). The solution that's been devised is to designate two groups to mutually scapegoat each other.
I think the real problem with those type of binary (false dichotomies) situations, other than fostering thinking inside the box and extremism is that it's a setup for the Hegelian dialectic. Problem-reaction-"solution", or thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis.
Setting aside the author's clear but oblivious bias in the English speakers "war", he documents a fascinating problem: how do we globally integrate societies that have very starkly different reactions to specific topics, ideas, etc? We aren't even good at answering these questions within the same culture (liberty vs discrimination, public safety vs 2nd amendment, 'Red' vs 'Blue', and so on).
Given the internet's existence, the lowering barriers to trade, immigration, and travel, Pandora's box isn't going to be closed here- we need to figure out how to approach the topic of cross-cultural disagreement on moral quandaries. And it's not fair to just say "Our culture is right and theirs is wrong". That just demeans them and silences the minority.
My favorite example: I go to a small men's barber shop usually staffed by two or three male barbers. A woman enters saying "I want a man's haircut". All three barbers are devout Muslims who cannot touch a woman, by their religious beliefs. Yet the customer has a right to be served even though she is female. This isn't hypothetical, it really happened. They sorted it out amicably, but this sure could have gone to court- where a decision would probably be made that makes a lot of people angry.
In the case of "ロリコン and 児童ポルノ", can Western culture even perceive that a difference might exist? Or are we bound by laws that grew out of our cultural view that the two are both the same horrible concept?
>Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor
I am not a lawyer, but given that language it gives the impression that even art may fall under the scope of U.S. law.
Am I correct? Possibly not, however that ambiguity will cause many to avoid crossing the implied law to ensure they don't break the actual law.
So this doesn't apply to cartoons of the fictional character Mitsuki, a tiny blue-haired girl in a school uniform who is totally 21 years old and not 9 according to the dating simulator's lore. So this would probably be legal in the US.
See, this guy isn't even right about that. He lies about the idea that it's totally non-controversial and accepted as ethical in Japanese culture, and he lies that it's universally illegal in western culture. This whole thing is a big pile of straw men invented by an otaku who thinks he's an ambassador of an entire culture for some reason.
Moral psychology is fun. Lolicon is one of those odd moral black holes for westerners. Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind talks about a bunch of similar examples of victimless but "immoral" actions that we find wrong and will desperately try to find a victim for when one doesn't exist.
Similar examples: incest with 100% guarantee of no conception. Consensual cannibalism (edit for clarity: of someone very well cooked). Eating of a dead dog. Sex with a dead chicken and then its consumption.
We find all of those repugnant, immoral, and will try to come up with victims, even when there are none to be found.
It's a good example of how morality for humans is much more than just about harm. It's about conformity and cohesion with a set of rules that identify a specific tribe, regardless of harm.
> Lolicon is one of those odd moral black holes for westerners.
Not just for westerners. Despite the author of this post's protestations to the contrary, Lolicon is quite controversial in Japan. While it's certainly more mainstream there than in the west, the idea of it "inciting abuse" is a common argument in Japan, with the fact that criminals on trial happen to be Lolicons often being reported. In this way it has something of a parallel to linking violent video games to violent crime, which western media often does.
There may be good arguments against this idea of "inciting abuse", but the author's supposition that there's this stark divide between Japan and the West and that Japanese simply can't comprehend Western perspectives on Lolicon is just nonsense.
"Inciting" in general is the usual argument against otherwise "harmless" activities you mention like incest and necrophilia: the idea that the act of performing such will normalise other more harmful acts.
Makes sense. I can think of a lot of other, mass-accepted, lower hanging fruit we could blame for reprehensible behavior before we point out finger at art, music, movies, cartoons and video games, but that's a whole other can of worm that's not worth opening.
I understand your point, but I feel like I should point out that consensual cannibalism does have a victim, the cannibal.
Humans eating human meat (and likewise, cows eating cow-meat, pigs eating pig-meat) can cause some very very weird and very serious and very rare illnesses. (social?) Animals have not evolved to eat their kind, or perhaps put differently; animals have evolved _not_ to eat their kind.
Sure. But let's say it's fully sterilized and fully cooked so you have 100% guarantee of not getting sick from it. Is it still wrong?
It's similar to the objection you hear about incest: "Yeah but what if the woman gets pregnant", thus you set the conditions that there is 100% no chance of conception.
And actually, our closest relatives, the chimps, have evolved wonderfully to eat their own kind. In fact they find each other delicious during constant raids on the enemy's territory.
> let's say it's fully sterilized and fully cooked so you have 100% guarantee of not getting sick from it.
I'm being a pedant here, and this isn't really relevant to the previous commenters point, but worth noting that one of the known dangers of cannibalism (CJD) is less related to typical sterilisation and not quite as well understood in general, so 100% guarantees are hard to come by.
Yep. It's more of a philosophical experiment than something that is backed by perfect hard science. The point remains that most people (at least outside of the tribes that practice it) would find it completely wrong even when given hypothetical perfect guarantees.
I get that it was not your point, but the problem with cannibalism is the transmission of prion proteins. Not really an infectious disease per se. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
One could make an argument (and it has been made) that the victim in such situations is the perpetrator themselves. More specifically, that their "sense of virtue" and/or psychological well-being is being corroded by such activities. (Note: I tend to lean toward personal autonomy/liberty in such manners.)
The list of activities that could be argued to corrode someone's "sense of virtue" or psychological well-being, yet the vast majority of people agree should be legal, is very long. One should run into that objection immediately.
You say there are those who make this argument. Do they happen to be the small subset of the population that actually would maintain that it's immoral to do all or most of the following: drink alcohol, stay up until 4 a.m. watching TV, watch horror movies, play violent video games, have a one-night stand, eat an unhealthy diet, spend your free time on games instead of work or study, etc.?
I guess I'm jumping to the term "legal". BadassFractal merely said they "find [it] repugnant, immoral, and will try to come up with victims". Do they stop short of saying that their moral opinion should dictate others' behavior?
Amusing that people could find lolicon to be corrosive of one's virtues or psyche, but worshipping a corpse nailed to a cross and consuming its blood and flesh on a weekly basis under the penalty of eternal torture is perfectly acceptable.
We sure are great at missing the log in our own eye.
Hmm... I’m not Christian but your comment doesn’t make sense. Jesus on the cross is presumably a symbol of sacrifice and unconditional love. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends” and all that. I don’t see how altruism and self-sacrificial love of that nature is morally corrosive.
The threat of eternal torture, on the other hand, makes more sense.
This is an interesting saga I didn't hear anything about when it was happening. I recall seeing that Pixiv had launched an instance, but I'm honestly shocked that it took off like it did. It makes sense that it was appealing to artists in part due to a more lax policy regarding sensitive images.
The author would've done themselves a significant favor by not wasting a bunch of space on an attempt to neutrally and imprecisely classify 'red' and 'blue' groups before dispensing with the neutrality halfway through. The neutrality wasn't especially helpful in the first place, but his "free speech" and "safe speech" labels later on are (from my interpretation of everything he describes in the series of events) both clearer and more neutral than any attempt to group sides together as 'SJWs' or 'aGG' or 'MRAs' or whatever because it describes the general point of view underlying their behavior. It may not describe those groups as entire individuals but it seems to accurately classify most of the split here - people seeking mastodon instances that are a Safe Environment (hence the incredible threat posed by federated instances not honoring privacy settings) vs people seeking mastodon instances that are moderation-light and rules-light where they can do whatever they like. The legal threat posed to server operators by caching is an interesting side angle that puts the operators in a nasty spot.
It sucks that issues with fair treatment of French and Japanese speakers on Mastodon have to get sidelined by getting pulled into right-vs-left US culture wars - what Japanese artists choose to post on social media really shouldn't have anything to do with how Americans feel about concentration camps or no-platforming. In a sense, even this attempt to depict the way Japanese users were impacted by this whole saga falls flat because it centers the western parties ('red' and 'blue') in the story despite the fact that the Japanese users featured in it outnumber them.
On a final note, it's interesting to see Twitter described as Blue here, as at the present time Twitter's company leadership is actively and openly courting the right wing in business meetings and online discussions (including "alt-right" leaders), presumably for business reasons but perhaps for others. I guess the political winds shift quickly.
He notes later in the article, that at some point in more distant past the "free speech" and "safe speech" claims were used in reverse by the Blue and Red "factions":
"However, I think it's significant that when we had the same fight on Livejournal ten years earlier, it was the opposite way: fictional "child pornography" in the form of explicit Harry Potter fan art and therefore "free speech" was a Blue/Left/aGG/SJW thing, with the Red/Right/Gamergate/MRA side taking what we'd now call the "safe speech" position. For that reason I'm inclined to think that the link between Culture War sides and free/safe speech is more a matter of historical accident than anything naturally flowing from whatever defines these sides."
Interestingly, I remember reading somewhere some time ago (I think on some kind of "rationality" website, but not 100% sure, and probably via HN; but maybe actually in a paper book), that particular concrete views associated with some distinct political "sides"/"factions" (like "rightist vs. leftist") are often surprisingly accidental and "just" of random historical origin. Though usually explained as "rationally/logically founded on basic principles [of the faction]", in reality it seems to often be rather kind of "we say so because we say so". Unfortunately I cannot recall particular concrete examples from the article, I only remember the general idea, as it was quite shocking and surprising to me, as you can see it left a lasting impression. However, in case of the OP story, the "safe speech" vs. "free speech" swap seems a nice example of such mechanism.
I don't think they can really avoid touching on this, because a lot of this really is more about those tribes than about any particular underlying principle. For instance, a while back there was a controversy over a US Nintendo employee who worked with kids calling for it to be legal to own photos and videos of actual kids being raped. She was blue tribe and the people who discovered this red tribe, so the entire blue tribe insisted that anyone who was with them must side with her. There was even this narrative that she wasn't really calling for this, just defending Japanese culture, and anyone who claimed otherwise was lying. (Which didn't hold up - she'd used this as one flimsy justification as to why this should be legal, but hadn't even backed this with any evidence that any Japanese people supported this, and she was calling for it to be legal in the US and everywhere else too.) The idea that Japanese works shouldn't be policed by Western cultural standards is, in general, very strongly rejected by blue tribe folks, but that changed the moment an American of the right tribe needed defending.
I was around during the controversy you refer to, and it was largely manufactured. You're generally right about the issues in question but it's a classic case of someone being accused of being a pedophile (regardless of their position on the political spectrum - this is done frequently to right wingers and left wingers as a smear tactic) and then repeated for years without verification.
After some thought, I'll give some context and depth here that the original article lacks. To begin with, I'm just going to use romanized versions of some terms from the article: ロリコン and 児童ポルノ to be specific, the former of which people tend to romanize as 'lolicon' (you may recognize that this is a shorthand for 'lolita complex') and the latter which I've never seen used, but we can call 'child pornography' as the author notes.
The concerns of operators regarding federation and explicit content are actually quite significant in regards to lolicon content. If you live in Canada you don't want to be anywhere near it. There are (likely apocryphal) stories that bounce around between colleagues and friends of mine about people who were unfortunate enough to import a sex toy or anime product that had a risque piece of lolicon art on the packaging. Customs and law enforcement in Canada happen not to be particularly interested in the fine details of what is or isn't obscene, so you can end up doing some jail time or (if you're lucky) deported. This applies to other sorts of content as well. Canada is hardly the only country where you could get in trouble, it just seems to surprise people to find out that they have an aggressive stance on this compared to (for example) the United States.
I mentioned "other sorts of content". Like what? Well, for example, there is a directly related concept referred to as 'shotacon', and it will also appear frequently on pixiv and other websites - not to mention on anime-focused websites like 4chan and reddit. You can treat this term as a direct equivalent to lolicon, except instead of girls it features boys. Oh, right. So since the author originally neglected to explain this, a brief summary of these two terms:
Lolicon roughly describes a genre of works depicting prepubescent girls, or girls who appear to be prepubescent. Typically it is not explicitly sexual but it often has very sexual undertones, framing, or at the very least the subtext is sexual. It typically involves older men (say, high schoolers or college students) if not extremely older men. Sometimes it involves older women instead (this is basically a subgenre, with terms for it like 'oneeloli').
All of this is extremely complicated, especially if your only interest is in figuring out what the heck is going on. If presented with some of this content it can be difficult to figure out why someone might find it obscene, or why someone might NOT find it obscene. Content that is inoffensive if viewed without context can become very distressing if you learn that it's placed in a highly sexualized context.
If you are a translator, or animator, or moderator, or any other sort of creative working in comics, animation or video games, you will probably run across all of this. It tends to create a fuss any time this content shows up in storefronts - Valve's Steam storefront has had lots of issues with explicit lolicon content appearing in games for sale.
To return to what I brought up above, so there's a related genre called shotacon. All of the above description for lolicon applies - people draw art and animated content and make video games for these genres and subgenres. The distinction is that shotacon is about prepubescent boys, not girls, and this distinction is surprisingly important when it comes to people's determinations about whether content is obscene. It's even important in Japan, to an extent that you might not expect from reading the original article here.
Some of this is because societies are used to seeing very young women married off to older men, and some of it is due to the ongoing scandals and fear regarding younger boys being exploited by older men and women. The reality is that in some parts of the United States it's legal and accepted for a 14 year old girl to marry a much older man, but if you swap the genders many people would suddenly be upset - and the same holds here. There was an incident a few years ago where a magazine in Japan publishing relatively uncontroversial shotacon comics shut down permanently, reportedly due to government threats to enforce obscenity laws against it.
Now that we've gone down the rabbit hole a bit, it might be easier to understand why the mess with pixiv and the 'safe speech' vs 'free speech' types was so complicated.
On the one hand you have the 'free speech' advocates who really just want to be able to say what they want and post what they want. Some of them want to post death threats, harassment, or lolicon content - but let's be honest, it's not THAT many of them. For some of them it is also not targeted at any one individual, so harm is harder to argue even if it's content (like death threats) that would normally be considered harmful and even get you a visit from the police.
On the other hand you have the 'safe speech' group the article talks about, generally classifying them as people who are overly sensitive and want to police speech. This is true for at least a subset of that audience. Some people in that audience have come away from years of internet harassment and just decided they want a space where those people don't show up, so if it means hanging out with people who are really upset about anorexia, not much of a price to pay.
The problem is that lolicon and shotacon content conveniently blur the lines between these groups due to the intense legal threat they pose and the cultural controversy they present. At least for a western viewer, the moral and ethical implications of this stuff are VERY complicated and they might turn your stomach. That alone would make a server operator wary of letting this stuff get federated onto their servers - but the reality that it could get you tossed in jail is very real and it would make any sensible small business owner or individual run for the hills. Are the feds really going to care about the distinction between federation, caching or distributed cloud services when they show up to your door with a photo of some Clearly Not Appropriate lolicon content appearing in a social media timeline on YOUR website? Probably not. I hope you have a good lawyer.
The end result is that many server operators will end up fleeing directly into the "safe speech" territory, even if their personal preferences lie towards "free speech". This will naturally make the free speech group feel very oppressed or threatened when in reality the people making things hard for them are lawmakers and law enforcement. Naturally, in these sorts of disputes people tend to swipe at the target in front of them so you end up with trans women and proud boys shouting at each other on the internet.
I am not sure it is that simple in West. Where male teacher having sex with girl is seen as predator by pretty much everyone, young boy having sex with older women is seen or talked about as "lucky" by many.
I believe that's right. Which makes the author's point of view rather odd - in that they are obviously mistaken to think that Westerners don't see a difference between the two, or don't think that 児童ポルノ is worse than ロリコン. (Of course we do.) It's also rather funny that the author uses the word "nerd" to describe people who consume this stuff, because it clearly doesn't fit the ordinary use of the term. No one is denying (I think) that the appeal is a sexual one. Even assuming the interest is above board, we'd never label a fetishist a nerd. So it's (I think ) extremely misleading to describe them that way.
I also don't think the Red vs. Blue framing made much sense. For one thing it's not clear at all how the .jp instances are related to the "Red" servers.
There's an actual question to be answered about whether ロリコン is morally wrong and if so, a harm that should be prosecuted. If reason that ロリコン is appealing is fundamentally the same as 児童ポルノ (i.e. that there are children portrayed), it seems like the moral case against it is very clear. I don't know enough to say whether that's the case. On the other hand there might be more societal harm from banning it than allowing it. At any rate it's not hard to see why one might be troubled by it, and so I'm suspicious of the author's claim that it's accepted without controversy in Japan.
Note: perspective from non-Japanese observer. And unfortunately has to be posted from an pseudonymous account.
"it's accepted without controversy in Japan."
While not completely true as an absolute, this is close enough to the truth to be a fair statement.
Even some 児童ポルノ wasn't illegal in Japan fairly recently. And like the other Japanese censorship laws, was brought in as much due to a desire to align with Western pressure and laws as due to any moral sense. (I'm not trying to diminish the second aspect here; I'm saying that both were strong pressures to create the law).
Remember that Japanese morals are much more Confucian than Christian. Breaking a law is immoral in Japan in and of itself because laws exist to create harmony and breaking harmony is immoral. So the fact that 児童ポルノ is illegal, and ロリコン is not forms a large part of the opinion of whether it is immoral or not.
Also remember that the Western hatred of pedophilia and child porn is partially Puritanism. We've successfully thrown off the Puritan yoke, but that part of our culture was deeply rooted, so rather than disappearing, some of it has transferred over to perversions that it's still acceptable to demonize, namely pedophilia.
And I think the Confucians have it right on this one. Pedophilia and child pornography is one of those things that needs to be banned and made illegal for social harmony reasons, and practicers of softer forms of it like ロリコン should be marginalized. Different from, but mostly compatible with the somewhat commonly held opinion that pedophiles are "sick, not necessarily evil".
> perversions that it's still acceptable to demonize, namely pedophilia.
The wording here implies that we shouldn't be demonizing things like pedophilia, or that somehow, we needed Puritanism to realize that we ought to be demonizing pedophilia, or that this is purely a western construct. Puritanism has just lead westerners to demonize sexuality in general.
For westerners, lolicon is no different than child pornography. And lolicon is still controversial even within Japan.
That's not quite true. I remember being part of some debates over whether cartoons of young-looking people (rarely can you accurately guess the age of a cartoon) were child porn or not, in a western company.
The legal and moral justification for banning images of child porn is that distribution encourages production, and production of it is dangerous to real children.
This is a second order effect that's already somewhat debatable (does getting rocks off to porn cause fewer paedophiles to try and sate their desires in the real world, thus lowering abuse rather than raising it?), and it's therefore not entirely clear there's a strong moral or legal justification for banning cartoons or pure text, i.e. trying to ban people imagining child porn. For all we know, if it's true that paedophilia is caused by some sort of brain condition (and why would it be false), then these things could actually be helping children rather than hurting them.
Why should you demonize pedophilia? Presumably the GP is referring to the correct definition (a person who is sexually attracted to children), as opposed to the incorrect definition (a person who sexually abuses children).
The author is being disingenuous by saying that these are different. The form of the “art” is different, but the motivations behind it are the same; lust for youth. It’s the motivations that people have problems with, not the form that the art takes!
> It’s the motivations that people have problems with
I don't agree with you there and I don't think the author is being insincere. The problem with child pornography is the harm, or potential for harm, of children. Why would you care about a person's motivations as a root issue?
It's not just the harm to children that people have problems with, it's the power difference between an adult and a child. Adults have power over children, they place their trust in us. We are supposed to use our power over children to make them better people, to make their generation better than the previous. Society (perhaps only Western society it seems) does not like relationships where one person uses their power over someone else to the betterment of themselves (Harvey Weinstein and the rest of the #metoo movement comes to mind).
So I think that's the root cause of the "disgust" for this type of art and the motivations behind it; it facilities dishonest use of power.
But when you only look at drawings, no one is using their power over someone else. Photographs, however, do require someone to have used their power over someone else, namely the photographer. Which is why I would consider looking at (and hence stimulating the production of) the latter immoral, and less so the former.
The desire is the same, whether it’s animated or not. That’s the issue - you still desire sexual power imbalances. It’s not about using the power, it’s about the desire.
Anyways, these are just my musings on the matter. I am not an expert or familiar with the subject at all. I just was curious as to why society still is disgusted by child porn even when the harm is removed
So that's what OP disagreed with. Some people might care about intention, but when you said
> It's not just the harm to children that people have problems with,
then "people" sounds like "most people". Now I don't know what most people feel like, but at least for me and OP, harm to children is what we have problems with. Desire for power, not so much.
(Obviously, just musings from my side as well. Disgust for child porn when harm is removed happens to be one of my pet peeves - I believe that it is easier for people not to act on their desires if they are able to discuss them with others without being rejected by society.)
I found this article to be interesting, but framed in a very strange way. The author continuously promotes that there is a left-right "war", and while several of their examples seems to definitely imply a political spectrum split like that, most of the issues they're recounting come from a cultural divide. This basically boils down to English/Western vs Japanese/Eastern cultural differences, but with political opinions pulled into the mix. Their choice to not even define the two types of content is telling as well: by simply defining it, they know the Western audience of their article won't want anything to do with it.
It's an interesting story, but framed in a strange way with key details left out to fit the red-blue narrative, in my opinion. Some, I would assume more Eastern-oriented users, would argue that they are being censored for content that is perfectly acceptable in their culture. Others, primarily Western audiences, would argue that it isn't culturally acceptable here, and that this is what Mastodon was designed for, to choose who you wish to include in your Federation. I don't really know which side I agree with personally, both seem to have their merits, but it's an interesting situation, one of several I've heard whispers of from Mastodon.
I'm an outsider to the whole story, but I read the article as detailing two different clashes, the blue/red and the English/Japanese, though partly intertwined.
Labelling the sides as Red versus Blue is convenient (as in; people know what you mean) but boy is it damaging to simplify like this. It's not the authors fault at all, he's simply using the nomenclature of the time, but it makes me sad to see how polarized we've all become.
Ultimately I think the labels act as a screen that people use to bucket people in, and if you ain't in my bucket, I ain't going to listen. Which just perpetuates the polarization.
The author is hilariously non-self-aware about their own bubble-inhabitance. It starts out with a tone of ostensible I'm-above-this-so-I-can-analyze-it-objectively but doesn't take long to devolve into:
> Some of this alliance was expressed overtly, for instance by creating an "advisory board" to guide Twitter culture and staffing it with some of the most hateful of Blue leaders
> "shadowbanning" persons identified as Red by AI systems
> But there were also many on the Blue side angry that the Red side still had not been completely annihilated
When people adopt a behavior, no matter how damaging, it's because they get something out of it. What might people be getting out of such a polarized worldview? Maybe they'd rather ally themselves with half the world, and be the enemy of the other half, instead of feeling vaguely indifferent about everyone.
Blue/red thing is mostly american politics, while I'd argue that tumblr vs 4chan is mostly abstracted from politics and more about world views and has lesser of a chance of hurting ego, which I believe would lead to more productive discussion. I know it's just semantics, but a lot of people are very emotionally invested in those colored labels.
But what is the actual difference between the two? Is the second more extreme? Is one drawn and the other real? Or is the second drawn but based on real models ( like the fine)? Is it the difference between nude and naked?
Pixiv is generally drawn but there are no examples of the other. The book Lolita is ok in europe, a bit weird but not banned. There is even
nude art of children - though it is controverial.
The refusal of the author to describe the difference between the two (while expending so many words to emphasise that they are different) is a bit odd. Especially as Lolicon is a relatively well-known term in the English-speaking world, and is even derived from an English-language/Russian-American-written/French-published book.
It sounds like the author would like to use stronger, more direct words but is skirting the issue to avoid apparent bias (though the bias is really quite apparent) and ends up sounding vague throughout.
The author does an absolutely great job of describing the actual subject which is the devision and different perspective. This is not an article about the difference and if he went into any sort of detail it would only deraile from the actual point of the article which is that there are two different perspectives on the same thing and that the people involved in general do not understand the other side.
That's certainly the author's thesis: binary division, lumping a spectrum of opinion into two diametric extremes. It's a popular narrative and rarely, if ever, representative. It would be much easier to assess how true it is in this case if there were any insight given into the issues themselves.
> The book Lolita is ok in europe, a bit weird but not banned.
I don't think people even consider it weird, as most people haven't read it. People who do read the book tend to be predisposed towards appreciating literature as an accepted vehicle for exploring ideas and thoughts that would be condemned in real life — including all kinds of murder, sex, drugs, illicit liaisons, and assorted forms of destructive behaviour.
Incidentally, it is for sale in every decent bookshop that has an English literature section; Penguin publishes it in their modern classics line.
As far as I'm aware, lolicon is about fantasy, while child porn is about sex with children. The difference is not so much whether it's drawn or not, but whether it actually harms any real children.
To be specific, "Lolicon" is a Japanese word that's partly a loanword from "Lolita" in English; in the way the author is using it, it means "drawn or simulated representations of fictional children engaged in sexual activity", though in common Japanese parlence the word literally means "pedophile". The author has decided to say that lolicon is "child pornography" and this itself is a matter of debate; some authors (such as Young, in "Resolving the Gamer's Dilemma") consider child pornography to be synonymous with abuse, and hence "virtual pedophila" (as he calls it) does not fall under it.
The "other thing" is literally just child pornography through and through, photographs or videos of real children engaged in sexual activity.
The fact that the author has neglected to specifically state the difference is strange, and I honestly can't think of a good reason for doing this, or why it was left in Japanese script.
Furthermore, there's something else here; a while ago I read an article which claimed that 81% of the Japanese public based on an extrapolated study would be fine with lolicon being made illegal. So how does the author say that lolicon being acceptable is a mainstream view? The author writes too,
>The idea that ロリコン is bad in the same way 児童ポルノ is bad, or even that there could be a meaningful category including both ロリコン and 児童ポルノ as if they were somehow comparable, is incomprehensible from the mainstream Japanese point of view.
Does this make me an honorary holder of the Japanese point of view? I honestly can't see a way in which drawings and real life photos in this case are comparable at all, it's incomprehensible to me how one could lump them together other than by the subject matter they represent, which is extremely broad and ignores the whole point of the classification - that is, one necessitates child abuse to be created, and the other doesn't. I very much align with the Japanese point of view here.
On the other things the author mentioned, I agree with another commenter in saying that it's not at at all useful to frame this as "red" and "blue"; I consider myself rather "blue" on some issues (being a socialist) but the liberal idea of free speech is one I hold very dear to myself, and I am vehemently opposed to laws that target any kind of expression, even if that does entail "lolicon"; I believe the harm principle can stand here on its own, though I'm not sure if I'd bend even if it was proven conclusively (how?) that lolicon "causes" people to molest real children.
Oh, so ロリコン is lolicon? Thank you. I can't read japanese. Even a direct translation would be useful, because even google translate doesn't translate both as child pornography. The assertion in the text that both are translated as such is needlessly confusing.
> […] "Lolicon" is a Japanese word that's partly a loanword from "Lolita" in English; […]
Etymologically, it is a Japanese portmanteau derived from 'lolita complex', which is waseigo (Japanese words comprised of English words) meaning someone attracted to, or an attraction to, prepubescent girls (not boys, so it is not completely analogous to paedophile).
> So how does the author say that lolicon being acceptable is a mainstream view?
He seems to extrapolate from the acceptance of it in (large) online Japanese communities.
The term paedophile means an adult (of any gender) who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children of any gender. Lolicon (when applied to a person) means an adult (again, of any gender) who is sexually attracted specifically to prepubescent girls (not boys). Hence the terms are not equivalent.
A term used for the latter is shotacon, but it is not as common a word as the above.
Your views (liberal/socialist,....) can change over time too as some of them are age related. As the saying goes "If you're a conservative as a youngster, you don't have a heart, if you're not a conservative at middle age, you don't have a brain.".
Also, you can be exposed to a different culture and learn to like things, for example, most Europeans don't understand why on earth someone would like to watch baseball, but some learned to like it due to prolonged exposure.
Another example: I think most Europeans have their guards up talking to Americans about politics, as they know the other side would probably just consider them to be a 'pink commie bastard'(TM).
That old saying is a special kind of unfalsifiable crud that's just used to either discard the views of young people or mock the views of old people as stupid. There's plenty of old people who aren't conservative, and tons of conservative old people who are brainless. And plenty of every other combination imaginable.
That is the whole point of this "war". People not being able to understand or accept a culture and having to reduce it to something they can grasp or argue about.
No, the whole point of portraying it as a "culture war" of intolerance is to obfuscate and legitimize what it's really about. There's a reason he's so vague about what he's talking about and uses Japanese characters to spell out western words--to inhibit people from working out opinions for themselves. And mainstream Japanese culture does not share his opinions at all.
It's obviously trying to push an agenda from an unassailable position of false neutrality. This is just NAMBLA with a fake veneer of noble eastern mysticism. Trying to conflate disagreement with cultural intolerance in order to game the debate is the message.
To take the principal example under discussion, either you think lolicon is OK or you don't. "Neutrality" is actually the former position. The exact same thing holds true for the "Red vs Blue" thing. Either you believe Red harasses Blue or you don't. If you don't, fine, but don't pretend you didn't just pick a side.
"the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality"