thanks to th_esaurus for the link

[luciazephyr]

I'd like to be the first person to say Thank you to Six Apart and Livejournal.

No, I am not joking. I now have a strong urge to slap anyone who's bitching about LJ's bannings. 'Cause, fuck, we have things good right now.

-Luce

ETA: miriam_heddy calls shenanigans in the comments here and raises a few points against the essay. Keep it in mind, folks.

Comments

[zooniverse.livejournal.com]

That post actually really wound me up. Though I agree, and said so in my last post, that Fandom needs to grow a pair and calm down, and that the things that get too close to Child porn should be deleted, to call Fandom a Peversion and in such an accusatory tone is taking it way too far.

Yes, the average joe on the street wouldn't get excited at he mention of fanfic, but they'd just think you were nerdy for referencing it, not an all-out pervert.

As for the legality of non child porny stuff, I think it's safe to say that in this web 3.0 age, Fanfic and such are actively encouraged, and, to continue to use Harry Potter fandom as an example (seeing as it's seemingly the one worst effected), it's become acceptable to the point where the canon creators are reading and enjoying and commending fanfic/art communities. (JKR gave a fansite award to Immeritus (http://www.immeritus.org) A sirius Black Fan community, and even went so far as to admit that she'd used fanart from there as her Desktop wallpaper. It's also believed she loves shoebox project, not that it's possible not to ;))

I think it's far to say that nobody is going to sue for fanfic anymore. It's now almost badge of honor for celebrity, a "you know you've made it when someone writes filth about you" kind of benchmark (Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh is perhaps the best example of this sort of attitude, given his tendency to read booshslashhaven and tell Julian about how horny it'd made im on their dvd commentaries ;)

IN conclusion, Fandom is not, by any stretch of the definition, a peversion, it's merely a particularly creative avenue of ones Geekdom. Trainspotters are not perverts (well, excet for CHristopher Lloyd's character in Track 29), ramblers are not perverts, scrabble enthusiasts are not perverts, yet they all receive the same reaction from the joe on the street.

And as for LJ's handling of it, I think this time around they're showing that they've learned from the mistakes of the strikethrough incident. Fandom, however, clearly has not, unless that lesson is "how to be ridiculously paranoid and blinkered"

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Large numbers of people in the USA view homosexuality as a perversion, and in some states, sodomy is still illegal. So even if Mr. Terrible were at all right in his legal speculation (which he is not), he fails to acknowledge that sometimes, the law is wrong, the people are wrong, and it's okay to be a "pervert."

Just imagine if he'd said "gay" instead of fan.