I think we have lost the war

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What war you may ask?

The war for sexual rights of course

Last month, France allegedly banned Hentai, and as of current the SISEA bill threatens to deliver a death blow to NSFW arts and sex workers across the USA and since the USA is both the leader of the west and host to the most sexphobic population on Earth, there is a high chance that this bill will pass.

I am convinced that the USA has always been fascist but every so often it experiences periods of ‘‘super-fascism’’. The USA’s most noteworthy period of super-fascism was the McCarthy era and I think the USA is steadily entering another period of super-fascism, one aspect of this new era of super-fascism is a new form of policing peoples fetishes and sexual activities albeit, now with LGBT support.

Honestly, the future for all persons and activists in this field seems exceptionally bleak and I don’t think we are going to win this one. It doesn’t help that human society, in general, is so sexphobic that no one wants to talk about the issues with sex laws so whenever governments dictate new legislation for sexual matters we kinda just accept it because arguing against it is ‘‘gross’’.

I think human civilization is going to enter another dark age of sexuality and anti-artistic-expression, who knows when it will end.

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Didn’t France only ban a single hentai site? They did it once before, in 2017 if I remember correctly. And I think it was the same site.

https://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/54e9d1de-7b2f-4bba-a6cf-79081e0c9ff0/oll20b20.pdf

According to this, the act will require consent forms to be sent before uploaded materials can be published. I don’t think it will affect hentai, since no real people are drawn in there. But it will definitely be an unnecessary waste of time for sex workers due to the simple fact, that such forms and verifications can be easily faked, and the companies still must handle them, which will be drastic for smaller sites.

The:
“PROHIBITION ON DOWNLOADS.—On and after the
date that is 90 days after the date of enactment of this
Act, a covered platform may not permit the download to
a retrievable data file of any pornographic image from the
platform.”

Is quite bothersome. In order for you to watch any material, you have to download it. Just because the browser does it automatically, doesn’t change the fact, that it’s downloading. And this rule seems to apply to any pornographic works in any instance. Meaning all pornographic websites must stop allowing any access to all pornographic materials instantly and forever. Another example of a law made by a person too old to understand how the technology works.

There is one petition I have found, worth signing if you are from the US.

But like with all things of such nature, I think people will realize something is wrong only once all porn sites will return error HTTP 404.

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I don’t think it’s over, at least, not yet. There’s an awful lot about that new law that’s just blatantly unconstitutional which is in direct opposition of SCOTUS precedent, most notably Austin v. Illinois which covers most of the points outlined in the new law.

The obscenity doctrine needs to be challenged directly. If conservative state lawmakers called their blatantly unconstitutional laws against abortion “arrows to the heart” of Roe v. Wade, then we need a napalm shell. We also need a liberal SCOTUS, which may be possible, assuming the democrats win Georgia.
The grotesque power play by Republicans in the Senate to rush in a religious extremist to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg right before the November election stands as a reason for democrats to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with liberals.

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I’m not an American so excuse me if I’m wrong about your political climate, but to my knowledge, Democrats have nothing to do with liberals.

Even this SISEA is a bipartisan effort, pushed by a single republican and single democrat that teamed up for that matter.

So I wouldn’t count on either of those parties when it comes to matters of sexual rights. Both groups seem to have a bias against porn in general, with Democrats using the card of “it degrades and objectifies women” and Republicans using the card of “think of the children”.

Also, don’t you have another party of Libertarians? Why they never get any votes?

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Democrats are in favor of preserving Roe v. Wade, separation of church and state, as well as other precedent relevant to healthcare and other things. If they want to keep those things, they’d best pack the Court with liberals.
That’s not to say all democrats are like that, though.

Mostly because of how easy it is to compare them to fringe groups, such as anarcho-capitalists and the tea party in regards to their view on socio-economic policy, namely taxation and regulation, which many perceive to be incompatible with the image of a green, lush planet with very little pollution.
I agree with a lot of Libertarian ideals regarding individual rights and freedoms, specifically their utilitarian approach with victimless crimes and “crimes against morality” but they’re not exactly the best vehicle for that kind of thing, in my opinion.

The American political discourse is…complicated.
You have the two-party system and within each party exists several factions, each with their own ideas on policy. There are “good old boy” establishment democrats who are described as moderates that maintain positions favorable to preserving the status quo, often adopting socially conservative views but still maintain the party’s stance on economic policy.

Then you have the “new age leftist” types who seem to adopt more socially favorable positions, often harping on about LGBTQ rights, which is good, while paying lip service to some feminist rhetoric with an attempt to appeal to young people. The problem here is that I’m afraid these types are the prudish Catherine MacKinnon or Andrea Dworkin types of feminist, rather than the liberal, sex-positive anti-censorship Ellen Willis types.

There are a lot of variables to consider here.

And then you have the malleable sheep who draft policy that goes nowhere but always vote within their party lines, no matter which faction is in control on whatever issues are pressing.

I prefer to think of myself as a Liberal Democrat, Liberal Independent, or simply an Independent in much the same way Bernie Sanders is.
Bernie, in my opinion, is a “classical liberal”, perhaps the only one who embodies the principle so strongly.

Senator Bernie Sanders was the only present Senator to vote “No” on the passage of the PROTECT Act after Senator Joe Biden attempted to fix issues regarding the inclusion of “obscene” material, as opposed to CP in the law, but Orrin Hatch wouldn’t budge on his law. That courage to stand up and say something to the effect of “this bill does a lot of good, but also a lot of bad… and I feel as though the bad may surreptitiously open the door to even more bad, so I can’t vote for it.” is what speaks the loudest for me.

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Undoubtedly I would say Republicans are closer to liberalism than Democrats are, especially since 2016. The closest thing they have publicly is Tulsi Gabbard and I don’t think she’s long for the party.

Basically the confusion on “liberalism” in the US comes from neoliberals and socialists each trying to co-opt the term for a few decades. It’s a mess. Most American liberals think liberals are their opposition, and so does their opposition. :upside_down_face:

The Libertarian Party seems to have a habit of not running libertarians. It’s about as ironic a name as the UK’s Liberal Democrats. Anyway, they have been getting more votes than usual, but having an FPTP voting system makes the smartest thing to tug on the leading two parties.

AHHHHHHHHHHH :rofl: See what I mean? Classical liberals across the 'net are tarred as far-right extremists while Breadline Sanders is a classical liberal.

(BTW, I don’t mean to make fun of you personally, Chie. It’s just a good example of the one problem I was highlighting. I like your thoughts and all generally. Respect.)

7

To reiterate my point, we haven’t “lost the war”. These ravenous, bloodthirsty culture vultures are doing everything they can to silence a form of expression they find repugnant. This isn’t a war on pornography or sexual expression, it’s a war on the freedom of speech and expression.

I found an article from the American Bar Assoc. that sort of talks about it from a dark tone, but it seems that the concept that the obscenity doctrine is incompatible with the robust tradition of freedom isn’t lost. I feel that if the SCOTUS decides to take up another obscenity case, they would decapitate it. But it’d have to be the right SCOTUS.

Whether it’s consenting adults or cartoons depicting fictional depictions of what only appear to be minors, the obscenity doctrine is unconstitutional. It is wrong. It is fundamentally incompatible with a society that values liberty and free expression, and this culture of censorship and suppression has only been counterproductive to the alleged harms related to pornography.

As is a consistent theme in the history of censorship, it doesn’t work. Our freedoms are not and should not be contingent on what people feel, or the contemporary mores, morals, or ideals of the time. Your neighbor, who is not an audience of a sexually graphic erotic Japanese publication, shouldn’t have a say in whether or not you are allowed to be an audience. So long as no real harm is involved, there is no reason why the First Amendment shouldn’t protect it.

A big reason why the SCOTUS, I believe, delineated child pornography from obscenity is because they had very little faith in the validity of the obscenity doctrine as a whole. They saw it as a form of pedantry not suitable for the court system, and, with the passage of time, it would wither and die. I believe that time is now.

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That’s because they’re not “liberals”. Conservatives have taken the term “liberal” and repurposed it as a general pejorative against leftists and democrats as a means to make it lose its meaning and erode what a true liberal is. Abraham Lincoln was considered a liberal, as was George Washington.
A true liberal values individual liberty above all else, including speech they find offensive or even morally harmful. I’d urge you to read John Stewart Mill’s “On Liberty” when reading up on things.

Leftist =/= Liberal.

9

So we have:
Chie - that says Democrats are more liberal
Saerain - that says Republicans are more liberal
Me - that says neither of those seems to be liberal, suspecting Libertarians are more liberal

I think fundamentally, we all are wrong. It’s not like those parties have any tests to check how strongly liberal you are, that is required to get a membership. Some individuals on both sides will be more or less inclined with valuing individual liberty above all else, so depending on who exactly you look at, the opinion will differ.

In the case SISEA, I think it’s a good example of that being the case, a nonliberal democrat and nonliberal republican joined effort to restrict peoples freedoms.

In a sense, you Chie and Saerain, are like liberal counterparts of them.

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I’m basing mine mostly off of what history has shown. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is a prime example of a Liberal Democrat, appointed by a John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, in addition to numerous others throughout history who so emblematically represented the liberal ideal. I think social conservatism has left an ugly stain on jurisprudence that just doesn’t seem to want to be washed away. Liberty and freedom transcend the arbitrary morality championed by their kind.

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But the people of the past are no longer present today, and they don’t influence those parties. While it’s a factor for people interested in joining a political party to look at the historical achievements given party has made, and might identify themselves with that history, I don’t think it’s that strongly significant for most people nowadays.

I prefer to look at political groups from a business like perspective, with parties being exactly like regular companies, competing with each other over the access to limited resources.

Companies do have some “goals” they proclaim to strive towards to, but are ultimately composed out of individuals who care primarly about their own interest.

A single agent with their personal goals in mind can easily manipulate others into implementing plans that benefit his personal or ideological goals, promising improvements of society in return. Like in case of pretty much every law in regards to disrupting online privacy passed under the disguise of “protecting children”.

I don’t think groups behind such propositions are corrupted to the core, I think that couple of individuals knowingly lie to the other members of their groups, promising them the same exact thing they promise others.

And because most of our polititians are really old, unexperienced with technology individuals, who dogmatically hold old values, it’s not a difficult task to achieve.

Having a blind devotion to a group that fundamentally is composed out of individuals with complex interactions seems like a dangerous bet, especially withing a society ideologically polarized as today. A lot of wrong people can use this occasion, and from what I’ve seen, there has been instances of nutpicking on all sides of the political spectrum.

12

sigh…

Maybe a revolution in this regard is needed, I suppose. These are people who are hell bent on taking away rights and liberties they simply do not like. They can’t seem to separate their emotions from the reality and use deductive reasoning to determine whether or not it’s actually a problem. I find it extremely difficult to reason with people of this type, but as someone who does routinely look beyond his own “kind”, so to speak, I do know that unspoken support for us, our viewpoints, and evidence exists.

The LGBT rights movements we see today wouldn’t have any weight if people within these groups didn’t abandon calls for morality enforcement.

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Should I tell friends about SISEA? And prod them to oppose it? Or is it just another one of those show bills which will go away on it’s own? I don’t want to waste people’s time prodding them with every civil liberties battle which pops up. There are so many anti-230 bills which will never go anywhere.

Wasn’t the U.S. like that before the Sexual Revolution? It’s the return of an unwanted era. But, I’m also convinced the Second Civil War would start, if it got as bad as before the revolution. Take away their porn, and people completely lose their minds.

I’d be happy to join the angry mobs in burning down the White House :stuck_out_tongue:

The biggest problem with doing this, is that if the Democrats do it once, then the Republicans will do the same thing when they get into power.

Two party system. Voting for them means the party you want the least will win. Australia has preferential voting, but America does not. In theory, the two main parties in Australia could be completely dethroned in favor of a friendlier one there.

Would a young hot-headed individual be much better? What if they think “sexualization of children” is an ultimate evil?

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I wasn’t talking about anything related to the topic of artworks depicting children in my post that you quoted. Of course, young hot-headed individuals aren’t better in that regard. But in the context of my post, I was talking about old people being more easily manipulated by malicious party members, who exploit their lack of knowledge about technology and their dogmatic beliefs to convince them, that their solutions are going to work. A young person would be less naive when it comes to technology, and young people tend to have more energy and will to at least sometimes question their beliefs. Older people are afraid of doing such process, they prefer to believe they were always right than to realize, that maybe their beliefs have led them to make wrong decisions they will regret, and possibly, not have enough time to fix them.

15

Young people don’t always know as much about technology as you would think. For instance, how many can really understand encryption, as opposed to just dumbly using Facebook, Instagram, or a messenger app?

On the other hand, they’re not going to be very happy when someone comes for their porn, or Congress passes a ridiculous copyright law. They tend to be more in tune there, but only because Google literally told them SOPA was bad, and to oppose it. Google wasn’t as villified as much as it is today as part of “Big Tech”.

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They don’t have to be Computer Science experts, to realize, that in order for a person to use an messaging app with end-to-end encryption, a person has to willingly download it, and use it, and that most people use apps without such encryption, like messager from facebook, therefore almost all kids right now also use chats without such encryption, so banning it right now is unreasonable, and there is something shady behind such intention.

Old people hearing about the topic thinks that end-to-end encryption is some new method of child grooming, so naturally they will agree for such laws.

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Young people also have really weird views of encryption and the dark web. They think of the dark web as this mystic place where you can hire assassins (honeypot), buy guns, watch videos of people getting killed (you can watch that legally without the dark web), and so on.

I’d be worried about the potential association with that sort of criminality.

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Yes, but compare it to older people, who don’t even know that darknet exists. When they see a drawing of a childlike character in a sexual situation, they instantly react the same way as a person would to witnessing a child being raped right in front of their eyes. They have no other reference, so they believe, that there is little to no child pornography, and that it’s what pedophiles get off too, while seeing the huge rates of sexual abuse of children in their country. So they conclude, that there must be relation between those works and the crimes. “Because why would otherwise a good person decide to commit such horrible atrocity, if it wasn’t due to some kind of brainwashing”.

With younger people, they at least might be aware, that there is a huge market of real materials with real children being exploited, simply hidden from the clearnet. So they have a point of reference they can use in developing their understanding of fictional works.

Anyways, I don’t think it’s necessary for us to delve further into this topic, because if I understood you correctly, you tried to point out that I might put some arbitrary value on youth when it comes to person ability to reason about various topics.

Because if that is the case, then I think you are correct.

I never intended to make a case about young people being better than older, I only pointed out that older people might lack the proper context of certain matters due to the circumstances of their upbringing, and at the same time, I never intended to make it out to seem like age is really that significant. Everyone can be gullible regardless of their age, and I can even counterargument myself by saying, that younger people can be exactly as vulnerable to manipulation, simply due to lack of experience.

So it’s my fault at not precisely describing that I intended to reference the age of people only in this specific instance of matters in regards to how technology is used by people and conviction that everything that is done to protect children is always the right thing to do, regardless if it’s true or not while adding, that young people are also likely to have such circumstances.

I certainly do have a bias, in which I believe that more young people should begin thinking about taking the seats in the government. So thank you for helping me realize this bias isn’t really as correct in this situation as I thought it might be.

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I doubt it. This is something that’s likely to only happen once every half century. I think the republicans know damn well the war they started, and packing the courts with a 6-3 conservative supermajority is NOT something that ought to go unanswered.
At the time of writing this, the Democrats are projected to hold a 48-50 Senate minority, with a special runoff election being held in Georgia wherein 2 democrats and 2 republicans are campaigning aggressively. My hope is that the democrats candidates win so the likelihood of expanding the high court becomes more evident.
My hope is to see the censorship end.

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Frankly, as far as young people go, we could teach more critical thinking skills, and knowledge on how to engage in democracy from a younger age. They should know enough to avoid letting the country fall into complete chaos.

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