Just for the record ...

[percival]

I am not fandom_scruples, nor do I know him or her. I do not have children. In fact, I am very likely to be infertile.

I think that censorship is wrong.

I also think that blacklisting fics is not the right way to go about protecting teenagers from influences that their parents consider to be potentially harmful.

I have two reasons for this view:

1) Whether a person is impressionable or whether s/he can be damaged, hurt, offended, or plain squicked out by reading certain fics depends less on her age than on his or her personality, history, experiences, preferences, dislikes, and personal traumata. As far as I know, this holds for people 13+.

Therefore, out of courtesy to ALL readers, no matter what age, writers might do well to flag content that some people might not want to read.
This protects the right to free speech, while showing respect for other people's feelings. A win-win situation, really.

2) The internet is only one of the potential influences on teenagers. RL peers, books, TV, newspapers, magazines are just as influential. As far as I can see, if parents want to counteract certain of these influences, the best strategy might be for them to keep in touch with their child, and to live the values that they want their child to adopt, so that their child can do as they do AND as they say.

Has this cleared up some of the confusion caused by the fact that I was friended by a LJ that I did not know of until people started posting about it on their own LJs?

As always, feel free to agree or disagree. I welcome discussion.

Comments

Cont......from above

[ravensnape.livejournal.com]

As for ratings mentioned by these black listers, the idea of R or NC-17 comes from the movie industry. The movie industry is blanketed under the First Amendment. The rating system is strictly voluntary, and carries no force of law. Ratings are so subjective these days that what is R for some may be X for others. Then there is the whole NC-17 issue:

No One 17 and Under Admitted. This signifies that the rating board believes that most American parents would feel that the film is patently adult and that children age 17 and under should not be admitted to it. The film may contain explicit sex scenes, an accumulation of sexually-oriented language, or scenes of excessive violence. The NC-17 designation does not, however, signify that the rated film is obscene or pornographic

But who makes these choices with regards to rating? Parents give the movies their ratings-men and women just like you. They are part of a specially designed committee called the film rating board of the Classification and Rating Administration. As a group they view each film and, after a group discussion, vote on its rating, making an educated estimate as to which rating most American parents would consider the most appropriate.

The rating board uses the criteria you as a parent use when deciding what is suitable viewing for your child. Theme, language, violence, nudity, sex and drug use are among those content areas considered in the decision-making process. Also assessed is how each of these elements is employed in the context of each individual film. The rating board places no special emphasis on any of these elements; all are considered and examined before a rating is given.

Film directors do not have to be submit their works to this panel, nor do they have to abide by the panels recommendation. So where does that leave us, again? Back to being a responsible parent, with our own supervision of our own children.

In my not so humble opinion, the only thing a black list will serve to do is drive the very youth they are trying to keep out, right to the very stories they block. And they will unblock, unlock, and find them. Only OPEN discussion with our children about values, morals and, yes, even sex, will act as a rating system guideline for them to follow.

Elizabeth


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So Perceval feel free to use or deleate this as you wish. I hope things settle down for you. I know Wahlee and Corgi are both defending your good name.

Elizabeth aka Raven Snape from Suqarquill and FF.Net

Re: Cont......from above

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Hey Raven, contrary to what larissa_j assumed, I NEVER delete comments - except when they mention my full RL name, and that only happened once ;)

Just curious: on which forums are Wahlee and Corgi defending my name? Just to know how far this is spreading. If the kerfuffle isn't over yet, I'll leave this post on top of my public LJ for a while just to make sure that anybody looking to vent their anger at fandom_scruples knows it is not me and doesn't harass me on posts not related to that matter.

Re: Cont......from above

[ravensnape.livejournal.com]

We are mostly from Sugarquill and FF.Net. Corgi and I both chat on Weird Sisters (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Weird_Sisters/) , part of Jedi Boadicea's brillience, and Walhee (http://www.livejournal.com/users/wahlee_98/) is my Editor-in-Chief for my site Ancient Prophecy (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ancientprophecy/) . Both Groups are Yahoo sites and open to public over 18. I'll check and see if it has filtered on to Arabella's ATE group, but I don't believe so since I've seen nothing posted since we debated how many times Sirus' motor bike showed up in the story(things are slow there right now :D).

I do hope the links worked. I can quote the first 10 Bill of Rights, but computer 'stuff' stumps me.