( No Title )
pls look up your local obscenity laws and take in just how vague they already are before you decide that increasing sexual censorship won’t be a huge blow to gender and racial minorities in the US
in my state material is considered Obscene “if (a) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to the prurient interest in sex, and (b) it depicts or describes in a patently offensive manner, actual or simulated: sexual intercourse, criminal sexual act, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sadism, masochism, excretion or lewd exhibition of the genitals, and © considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value. Predominant appeal shall be judged with reference to ordinary adults unless it appears from the character of the material or the circumstances of its dissemination to be designed for children or other specially susceptible audience.”
I don’t think I trust an average resident of my state to not be extremely homophobic, transphobic, and racist in their judgement of what “appeals to the prurient interest” and also “lacks serious artistic, [etc.] value.
Like porn is very legal here! Unless it’s obscene! What’s obscene? Fuck if I know! Personally I think leathermen fisting is very artistic. I doubt that’d be the average opinion even in my relatively progressive state.
I briefly worked with a queer porn studio in an administrative capacity. It was generally recognized that, when making gay bdsm content, the legality was murky. You basically just hope that no one takes issue with it and reports you.
It works very similar to adult content on tumblr. Some things are outright banned. Some things are obviously allowed. And there’s a lot of grey area in between. But even if you follow the community guidelines perfectly all it takes is a big enough group of people to take issue with what you posted and now your content is flagged, or removed, or your blog pixelated, or your account deactivated. Depending primarily on how many people you pissed off.
Any censorship of sexual content is always going to work like that.
Discussion ¬