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

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

the buggers caught you too? {{{hugs}} I wil not have it. no
more celebrety death matches and other negative-energetic
flamewars over things that relate to an un-real world.
I mean honestly some people apparentl ywant to do anything to keep form boredom. Heh. I found you through JK. It's godo to knwo there are stil lcalm and peaceful placesi nthis storm-ridden to ocrowded world. so her's a large amoutn of hugs for you,adn anyone who's had the same crap o their plate. I woudl defend any author who geds tripped overl iek that in the midst of their simply going through their daily life. It's low adn unneccesar yand so unbelievably silly. gah. [hugs}

[perceval.livejournal.com]

thanks, Yvonne. I still remember your habitual greeting from HPFGU: peace :)

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

you're kidding! that was liek three years ago? oh do refresh my mind, nwo I" mrealy curious. I simply foudn yo uon JK's pep-up post and when an lj itnerests me I bookmark it somewhere until I find myself comign back eveyr day and thin k'whatthe hack, it's eaiser to follow alogn in m yfriends apgge, right?"
THe world is small though, very small.