“…Do you think its worth sending someone to jail over?…”

Neither the Parramatta Local Court magistrate (not maned in the article) who sentenced Alan McEwan to a $3000 fine and a two-year good behaviour bond and zero jail time, nor New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Michael Adams who rejected McEwan’s appeal against the sentence, would think so.

In closing despite whatever your argument is here you and I seem to both agree there is a difference in thinking and doing as demonstrated by your argument that she was not actively trying to get anyone thrown in jail she was just applauding it.

With that I sign off to go make a donation to the CBLDF and hope I never find myself in court trying to defend my taste in web comics like Sexy Losers, or my wife’s interest in yaoi.

PS
(.Y.) <—- Can you tell me how old those are? Do you think its worth sending someone to jail over? would it be worse if it was drawn better?

I agree :)

Andre Says: “but thats far from making her right on the issue.”

The issue being discussed sure seems to have become whether or not McEwan is owed support from D’Orazio of all people. Doesn’t “She can do whatever she wants to with her money” make her right on that issue by definition?

Andre Says: “When someone pops up saying gay blood will give people aids it can and will scare people. Best way to fight this kind of magical thinking is with real critical thinking.”

I totally agree. :D Real critical thinking, not hyperbole or guilt trips or “if you’re not with us you’re against us!!!” or whatever. ;)

Andre Says: “Unless you have a better argument then gross, you need to stop patting Bush on the back and asking him to take a look in peoples bedrooms.”

Just curious, who is this statement addressed to?

Meanwhile, what sort of test does another argument closer to hers, “why should I defend this?”, fail? D’Orazio’s not bothering to help McEwan appeal the penalty he got in court (a $3000 fine, a two-year good behaviour bond, and no jail time), and neither are lots of other people. She says she wouldn’t donate to a fund if it donates to his court case, and lots of other people criticize specific charity efforts too. How much worse is she than everyone I’ve seen donate charity funds to Oxfam or Free the Slaves or Reporters Without Borders or whatever without also chipping in for McEwan’s lawyers and/or fine payments? How much worse is she than everyone I’ve seen question the United Way or the Salvation Army or whatever?

Something like this actually came up a few months ago on a comics forum I sometimes frequent. I mentioned a superhero-related promo I got from Children’s Hospital Boston’s Blood Donor Center. Someone else criticized one of the restrictions these places have on donating blood. Those of us on the thread who do give blood neither complained about his opinion nor badmouthed him for it. :)

If politicians get the support it will happen in time and its up to those that care about art, literature, expression, free press, and freedom to always question why anything NEEDS to be censored.
If the best argument you have is “its gross and why would you not want it cencored?” then it fails the test.

Wanting something is one thing, actually trying to make it happen is another.

If that is not the case then yah very very few people are going to mind.

No way am I arguing that! :) I was describing a certain strain of cultural relativism, not recommending it. I totally agree with you, that way does lie madness or at least stupidity. ;)

I just noticed that some of the self-proclaimed-tolerant people already are even more tolerant of intolerant jerks (whether they wish kids did want to get fucked ASAP, girls did want to get knifed, employees did want to get harassed at work, people did want to befriend them without expecting politeness in return, or whatever; and wish they weren’t expected to tolerate those of us who don’t want that) than tolerant of the rest of us.

Meanwhile, getting back on topic, Valerie D’Orazio’s statements here:

“So I shed no tears for the absence of porn based on underage cartoon characters on the Internet. Nor will I miss feeling like a party to an illegal act every time I do an image search for cartoon and comic book characters.

“However, there must be a rather sizable number of people actually visiting these XXX cartoon parody sites — not just those who get off on such images, but just regular people looking for some gross-out humor. Will the latter category find themselves roped in with these crackdowns, even arrested? Would having an illustration of a ‘Peanuts Orgy’ on your hard drive be enough to convict you as a sex offender?

“It would be helpful, I think, for these boundaries and determinations of what is or is not legal to view and download to be clearly delineated and widely broadcast, as to prevent misunderstandings.

“This is what I wrote in my first post on the Simpsons child-porn case. Please note the last two paragraphs.”

and here:

“I like the CBLDF a lot, but if they were fighting for the right of a publisher to print images of little children having sex, I’m not interested in supporting that fight. I’m not. I know I would be more popular if I did. But I just can’t do it.”

gave me the impression that D’Orazio’s not actually trying to get McEwan (the defendant in question) jailed or even fined $3000 and required to enter into a two-year good behaviour bond…but she isn’t actively defending his appeal of the fine and bond either, she’s talking about how she isn’t actively defending his appeal, and that still isn’t good enough for some people. Why do they have that problem with her? I can’t be sure. I can imagine several different possibilities:
An assumption that a professional in a field must support charitable causes overlapping with that field (comic pros must support comics causes first, medical pros must support medical causes first, etc.), with no ifs, ands, or buts? (this seems likely)
The attitude “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”? (this seems likely too)
Playing “Oppression Olympics” on the fine arts team, the male geek team, the white Australian team, and/or whatever?
Realizing that D’Orazio’s attitude makes her more mainstream, combined with a more-alternative-than-thou attiude or a kneejerk dislike of the whole entire “Big Bad Outside World“?
Relating to McEwan’s behavior so much that he or she takes it personally when someone criticizes it?
Something else altogether? (hey, I can’t read minds and imagine every possibility ;) )
More than one of the above (because not everyone with a problem with her is the same!)?

Last but not least, this all reminds me that lots of different comics fans and comics pros give some energy, time, and money to causes beyond the niche of comics, whether building homes, donating to food banks, giving blood, helping at animal shelters, pitching in against human trafficking, raising money for oncological research, and/or whatever. :D If you don’t give just like I or D’Orazio or Gaiman does, that’s fine – with so many problems in the world, we gotta divide and conquer. ;)

Also, for anyone wondering which part of Joel Bryan’s long and wide-ranging comment Bentcorner’s more focused comment reminded me of, it’s this:

“…But at the same time, they can’t explain why a convention must be a Total Asshole Zone. Why should people have the ‘right’ to be cretins and jerks but you’re somehow not allowed to wear angel wings with a bare mid-drift? Why should a harmful, jerk-ass behavior that impacts everyone negatively be protected at the expense of something harmless or even potentially beneficial?

“If we give in, then the assholes win and they have the conventions all to themselves and once again sci-fi and comic book fans marginalize themselves as fringe weirdos with no social skills…”

Meanwhile, to clarify another part of my comment in case anyone gets confused (for example, I bet not everyone reading an Anglophone blog is a native reader of English): of course the issues of FGM and sexual harassment involve direct harm to actual people that drawing imaginary people on paper doesn’t! Those 3 situations are not identical. What’s similar about each of the 3 cases (and other cases of people being jerks or worse) is the way some cultural relativists accept it and don’t accept criticism of it despite claiming to accept all values and opinions.

This reminds me of Geek Social Fallacy #1. It also reminds me of Joel Bryan’s response to one of Ami Angelwing’s blog posts.

Why is it that in hobby scenes like music, hiking, soccer, etc. society doesn’t expect you to like a hypothetical Cat Piss Wo/Man but in hobby scenes like comics, science fiction, video games, etc, society does expect you to welcome one crashing your party, say yes when one asks to date you, etc? Why do so many wider societies (at least in the West, I’m less sure about the rest) point to us to be the designated friends and lovers for unfriendly and unloving people?

Now I wonder how many GSF1 carriers are going to complain about Val focusing her charity efforts on helping victims of sexual abuse. After all, focusing on a cause excludes other causes…

Meanwhile, both ‘isn’t the sight of an adult fucking an 8-year-old sexy?’and ‘I don’t care if even drawn child porn disappears’ are speech. Funny how some people will defend the former speech, but not the latter speech, in the name of free speech.

It reminds me of how both cutting off a preteen’s clitoris and condemning that behavior are traditional customs of Kenyan cultures (for example, the former is a mainstream Masai custom and the latter is a mainstream Swahili custom), but some people out there will be wishy-washy about the former and proudly badmouth the latter in the name of supporting Third World cultures.

Also, when I was a kid and Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill were testifying in the Senate, I noticed that a whole bunch of people seemed to assume that siding with Hill against Thomas was anti-black racism (since Thomas is black) and siding with Thomas against Hill was not anti-black racism (even though Hill is black too).

What’s up with this trend?

Valerie’s stance on Phoebe’s work doesn’t really matter. She is calling for drawn depictions of children to be legally treated as photos of actual children. If she had her way, she wouldn’t be the one determining what is art and what is pornography. It would be the people who decided to rip apart Girl, Interrupted in New Rochelle or the people who banned the Tin Drum in Oklahoma.

That’s what is so sad about what Valerie is saying. I can agree with her that the Simpsons porn she is talking about is abhorrent, and the person who was caught with it should be shunned socially if he was using it to get off. She just doesn’t seem to realize the magnitude of what she is advocating. I think you really have to have lived under a repressive government before you can understand why all the freedoms offered in the US constitution are so important.

I hate sliding into moral relativism, but sometimes, it is all relative. Kids have sex underage. Is it exploitative to acknowledge it or is censoring to not discuss it in a work like A Child’s Life? I’m kind of torn here.