Criticize, Don’t Criminalize

Academic, Boys' Love / Yaoi, Steampunk Comments (2)

Many types of speech may be considered offensive and unpleasant. I’ve addressed two such types recently — virtual child pornography and VictOrientalism — reluctantly defending the first while  critiquing the other. Does that seem counterintuitive? While I believe it’s important to object  — preferably calmly and rationally — to those types of speech that one finds problematic, I think it’s equally important to refrain from seeking to silence such speech. And that’s why I have objected to censoring virtual child pornography but argued that “VictOrientalism” is a term that writers should avoid.

I started thinking about this issue yesterday, when I was told that metropolitan Tokyo is considering an amendment to its child welfare ordinance that would define child pornography “to include sexually provocative, ‘visual depictions’ of characters who sound or appear to be younger than 18 years old” — that is, virtual child pornography.

Anime and manga artist Yoshitobe ABe’s criticism of the Tokyo bill has been translated and posted at Datacomp. He ends his comments with, “Humankind has been entrusted with much power, but if we abuse that power to do away with things that we do not like, then thinking in that way, we will give birth to this sterilized room kind of society. The purpose of freedom of speech, in my opinion, is to defend against precisely that sort of thing.”

Virtual child pornography is also included, problematically, in the new Australian internet-filter legislation that researcher Mark McLelland analyzes and criticizes in his guest post to Henry Jenkin’s blog Aca/Fan.

Are these writers trying to defend virtual child pornography? Not per se. The issue they’re addressing is larger and more complicated than that.

Some time ago author and artist Neil Gaiman asked “why defend freedom of icky speech?” with regard to the Christopher Handley case; Handley was recently sentenced to six months in a federal prison for “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children” in manga. Gaiman pointed out, “If you accept — and I do — that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don’t say or like or want said.”

Or, as the French author, humanist, and philosopher Voltaire once wrote in a letter to M. le Riche: “Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”

So it’s not about defending child pornography, which harms minors and thus deserves to be banned. And it’s not particularly about defending virtual child pornography, which, the U.S. argues, doesn’t harm minors, but is certainly considered “icky” by most. It’s about defending individuals’ literary and artistic freedom of expression. Because once lawmakers begin to prosecute fictive representations, society will find itself upon the proverbial slippery slope, facing the strong possibility that limiting speech will become less a matter of protecting the safety of living and breathing individuals than of protecting various authorities’ political interests … which is precisely the sort of government infringement on individual rights that the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights was written to avoid.

All of which brings me to my post about the controversy surrounding the term “VictOrientalism” and the problem with using a term, or writing within a genre, that appreciatively references a long history of imperialist and racist attitudes. The Gatehouse‘s essay “In Defense of Victorientalism” argues that one shouldn’t be offended by the term “[b]ecause steampunk is fiction, not research.”  The assumption seems to be that fiction can’t be offensive.

On the contrary, fiction can most certainly be offensive; all we have to do is look at the history of censorship to acknowledge how often fiction has offended others. And when fiction is offensive, it’s the responsibility of those who are offended by it to object and point out why they find it offensive. Because, as has been pointed out many times in the past, silence = consent.

So if you think virtual child porn poses a threat to children, or if you think VictOrientalism perpetuates racist discourse, by all means, object.

But objecting isn’t the same thing as censoring. Nobody in the VictOrientalist debate tried to shut down Issue 11 of The Gatehouse, no matter how much they objected to its theme. On the contrary, for the most part the disagreements between various viewpoints were polite, respectful, and thought-provoking. And, in general, the same has been true for discussions about legislation protecting or banning virtual child pornography — different countries may hold different policies toward it, but that’s their right, just as it’s the right of citizens within those countries to voice their objections to those attitudes.

I find virtual child pornography highly distasteful, just as I do virtual violence toward women. I believe the world would be greatly improved if everyone agreed to stop propagating such material in stories, novels, songs, video games, and comics. However, at the same time I believe that criminalizing any of them would open up the door to criminalizing types of speech that I don’t find offensive … such as the genre I research, male/male romance manga and novels. And I wouldn’t like that at all.

Criticism plays an important part in intellectual growth and development by propagating a diversity of opinions and perspectives. By contrast, criminalization puts intellectual growth and development at risk by restricting that same diversity.  Yes, there are good, humanitarian reasons for putting some limits on human expression, but censorship and criminalization should always be a society’s last choice, after all other alternatives have been considered and rejected.

Related Reading:

Asahi Shimbun’s article on the ordinance (in English)

drupagliassotti @ March 16, 2010