Reposting this everywhere because this discussion needs to not be over:
This is simple.
Some people enjoy drawing something. Drawing something hurts nobody.
Other people find that gross. Fine, so don’t draw it.
But then they decide that anyone who draws X must also want to actually do X, which, if they were to actually do it, of course that would make them a horrible disgusting person, but let’s not even bother to make the distinction of whether or not people have done anything, or even want to do anything, just the fact that they’re not as repulsed as you are by even the thought of drawing it makes it enough to condemn them as no different than people actually guilty of the actual crime. Because as we all know, if you enjoy creating or watching murder stories, movies, games, it can only be because you find the thought of actually murdering someone for real just as enjoyable and entertaining and appealing. The notion that enjoyment of a subject in fictional media is a sign that you’d enjoy actually engaging in the subject for real should be seen as the nonsense it is - and it IS seen as nonsense by almost everyone for any subject but this one.
If you don’t hold any distinction between someone who has committed a crime vs someone who has only drawn or written or imagined something, then YOU are the person with a serious concerning deficiency in your ability to distinguish fantasy from reality.
The person who sees a drawing, a story, a fantasy, as one thing, but an actual real life committing of an act as another thing, THAT is a person who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. That person is not the one you should be looking at sideways as if they’ll act on their fiction the moment they get a chance because they can’t keep fantasy and reality apart.
The person with the frightening lack of ability to separate reality and fiction is the one who sees a drawing and feels it deserves the same response as a photograph of an actual real world act being committed.
There are people who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and people who can’t. The ones who can’t, feel that thought and art and fiction and fantasy need to be restricted and controlled the same way real world acts need to be controlled. But they don’t understand that the justification for people to control the actions of other people is to prevent anyone from causing harm to others. Your right to swing a fist ends at the next person’s face. This factor has no bearing on the realm of art or expression or imagination and fantasy because nobody is being hurt. Drawing murder isn’t murder. Drawing rape isn’t rape. Drawing a thing is not doing the thing. Enjoying fiction of a thing is not enjoying the reality of a thing.
So it becomes about “comfort.” Some people are not comfortable unless the freedoms of others are being restricted and controlled to keep them from doing something because they don’t think they should be doing it. This presents a situation where you decide whether to CHOOSE to exclude and restrict and control so that those who NEED you to do that can be comfortable, OR, you choose to simply let people do what they’re going to do and only restrict that behavior which is actually harmful or detrimental, and you allow everyone to choose whether or not that environment is hostile to them.
You can MAKE your environment hostile to people by design and intent, as you have done with this decision (and it DOES grant people an avenue to attack or harass someone because no matter how much you say you won’t tolerate such behavior, you WILL still act against this content, so you WILL become the agent of someone’s desire to harass or hinder anyone they find who skirts too close to the line). Or you can be as open as possible to everyone, and simply accept that if a person cannot feel welcome without you actively making others unwelcome, MAYBE, just maybe, such a person will likely be detrimental to any desire of a welcoming environment in the first place. Why do you WANT people who can’t feel comfortable unless you condemn someone else for what they feel like drawing?
If it’s argued that it’s a moral question, then what separates drawing/writing/fantasy of THIS morality issue from all the other immoral acts still allowed? Murder and rape are pretty immoral. You think you won’t have people calling to ban all fictional/fantasy/art depictions of rape for the sake of their comfort? Even if you ban outright rape fiction, you think they won’t want you to eliminate anything even semi-non-consensual? Here’s the real question: Who are you to say they are wrong in any way to even ask that of you when you DO allow the removal of this other stuff for the same reasons? If you consider it acceptable to restrict content on the grounds of morality and appearances and the comfort of potential users, then SURELY rape is a subject FAR more commonly known and objected to and you’d be even more comfortable and appealing to a broader audience if you championed the cause of being the one and only art social network community that bans such a morally reprehensible subject, right?
What justification do you have to tell people “no, we won’t do that” when they ask you to ban rape? What possible defense is there for art of such a thing other than “look, it’s just art, it’s not actually raping anyone, and people making it aren’t actually rapists,” and how can you use that defense when it wasn’t good enough for this other subject? If you accept all the arguments that you accepted to ban THIS subject as being valid and right, and justification enough to ban it, then the ONLY reason you could possibly have to argue against banning rape as well is that you don’t want to. That you WANT to be open to rape fantasy. That you don’t want to lose the users who would leave if they weren’t allowed to share works of rape fiction on your site. That if forced to choose between users who enjoy rape fiction versus users who can’t feel safe on a site that allows depictions of rape - you’d rather have the rape artists.
All the philosophical/moral angles of the argument boil down to that simple choice: Be open to harmless fantasy/fiction/art and allow everyone to come or go as they choose, or listen to those who say they will only come if you keep those people out, and then deal with it as those people ARE absolutely and every bit validated and justified in their inevitable desire for you to push out more and more content for the sake of their comfort.
As for the legal argument: Last I checked (which was a while ago, please do your own research), the only instance in the US of a person actually being convicted for drawn porn of this type was a man who was only convicted because he pled guilty because his idiot lawyer told him to. Every other case where someone was tried over DRAWN pornography, it was thrown out because people understand that to be idiotic. If there has since been any case of drawn porn landing any person or business in legal trouble in the US, I am sure you will have that pointed out to you, and you can share it with the rest of us as reason to make that decision. Otherwise, you’re claiming legal concerns as a defense when it isn’t. You think InkBunny hasn’t had people try to take them down? You think they’d still be there if there was ANY chance of the law being a concern? Please.
The argument of “it’s more tangibly illegal in some other countries” would also apply to a great deal of other content, including homosexuality in general. If you aren’t acting to ban a SIGNIFICANTLY more common and prominent range of content that is just as illegal in many countries, and can even get people LEGALLY MURDERED in more than a few countries, then the idea that you’re doing it to protect users from the laws of their country is absolute horse shit.
None of this is new. This is all shit you people had awareness of before you foolishly allowed a vocal minority of complaints to pressure you into opening it for debate, which you ALSO knew would cause an eruption of heated passionate arguments that all boil down to nothing more substantial than “I will not participate in something that does not control or restrict the artistic expressions of others.” And you caved to that. A painfully obviously rigged/hacked/compromised vote doesn’t mean shit. Even if it had been legitimate, it is still on you for putting the question of freedom of expression up for a fucking vote.
So if this is ANYTHING other than simply caving in to pressure and hate-mongering, fill us in on what factor is different. What has changed. What, other than the bitching of pro-censorship hate-mongering, is different between your original decision to simply allow free reign of expression, and the decision to ban. The choice to cherry-pick this one single horrible subject on these bogus arguments of law/morality/comfort that ALL apply just as much, or more so, to numerous other subjects you have not banned and will unquestionably put more effort into defending when you are inevitably called upon to ban them as well.
Don’t stand your ground because you feel you can’t loose face by reversing this decision. It was a bad decision, and you knew that because you’d already made this decision before you had outside pressure clouding your judgment with fear. It was a hypocritical decision that will open up infinitely more headache and drama and need for work and moderation and administrative involvement in highly emotional issues around an entirely subjective topic, when the original decision meant anyone who had a problem simply had to use the built-in system to keep them from seeing it without CHOOSING to opt into it, or for the VERY few whose principles will actually outweigh the utility and service you’ll be providing, they simply wouldn’t be there, leaving all the wonderful people who can comprehend that art is just art to be able to enjoy a much more peaceful and live-and-let-live environment without them.
You made the right decision on this before you ever let people scare you into putting it up for discussion. Before you launched the beta, you’d considered this subject carefully and made the right call. Now you caved to fear and hate-mongering because you worried for this big business venture, but you guys underestimate the power of the tools you will bring. You have nothing to worry about by allowing it. You won’t lose face by admitting that you flinched, and resuming your former position of simplicity and openness to fucking art. Lots of hateful people or those who are perfectly decent but just can’t separate fiction from reality, they may leave, but they WILL come back. You will be the only game in town, and they will return, and they will use the fucking filters, and they will bitch and moan in their own spaces on the site about the evils they can’t even see unless they go looking for it, and that will be fine. Let them.
Because letting people bitch in their own space that those other people over there behind that curtain are doing that horrible disgusting ugly HARMLESS thing makes you better than letting those bitching people convince you to censor, and control, and restrict, and arbitrarily dismiss the innate humanness and worth of a group of people just because they draw something a lot of people don’t like.
Don’t insult people by trying to pretend that’s not what this is. Some people draw a thing, so people feel justified to treat them as if they actually DO what they draw, and that makes it okay to just disregard how SHIT it is to try and tell someone you’re not unfairly and unjustly excluding them because they can go over to that other place in their own part of town.
You caved to hatemongering. You let people convince you it’s no crime to exclude ‘those people’ because their thing makes them lesser than others.
Undo it.
Addendum:
FurryNetwork: This isn’t about winning back people turned away by the ban. It’s not about losing the people who called for it. It’s about where you want to stand.
Are you going to take the neutral objective position of consistency, and simply let people draw what they will draw, or will you take the biased and hypocritical position of banning one range of content when we all know you WON’T be banning other ranges of content that every bit fall under every criticism this one did, and have no defense other than the defense you did not consider enough for this one.
Will you be the site that chooses to protect rape and bestiality artists over people who understandably find those subjects uncomfortable, even though you have claimed to value the moral concerns and comfort of your users over the freedom of artistic expression?
Or will you remove yourself from a position of being defensive of any specific content because you’re not going to say what is or isn’t acceptable in fucking fictional/fantasy artwork?
To those on the “winning side” of this ban:
I know a lot of you. I know you to be decent, kind, nice people. I know you think you are in the position which protects children and condemns a horrible act. But that’s not what you’re doing. That’s not what this is. You’re not protecting anyone by censoring fiction or stifling fantasy. You’re not condemning people who have committed a horrible repulsive act.
You are those people who tried to end video games because of the fallacious claim that enjoying a violent game means you want to be a violent person.
You are a person who feels it’s okay to treat a writer of murder fiction as if he’s an actual murderer, or at least a potential one.
You aren’t dismissing vile monsters who have hurt people, or would hurt people given the chance. You’re hurting other decent, nice people, no different than yourself, and just as opposed to the reality as you are, but who just disagree with you on whether or not drawing something is comparable to doing it.
You’re wrong. You think you’re right, and if the situation was what you have convinced yourself it is, then you would be right, but it is not that situation. This is not about allowing or condoning actual monsters to commit actual monstrous acts. It’s about whether or not it’s okay to treat someone as if enjoyment of fictional media is comparable to enjoyment of the actual act.
You’re on the side that means it’d be okay to treat a person who loves slasher flicks like a potential murderer. The side that thinks a person who really enjoys murder mysteries would so obviously get off to it if someone around them was actually killed suspiciously.
You’re on the side of dismissing consideration of a human being’s feelings and relevancy to “the community” because of something they enjoy in fucking make-believe.
I’d like to believe many of you are better than that, and will speak up that you can understand you were wrong here. Please do not hesitate to fill me in if I am wrong in that belief, because clearly you and I will both greatly benefit from no longer associating with each other.
I don’t want to associate with someone who thinks if I draw murder, I may as well be a murderer, and I don’t want to associate with hypocrites who can’t understand how this isn’t any different than that.