Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Belle & Sebastian "Beautiful" ::
I have spoken about sex and sexuality and related things in the past (see: Rant 168 about fetishes, Rant 153 about polygamy, and Rant 309 about *ulp* Rule 34). A topic about pornography has sprung up in my life recently which I would like to discuss. If you take some ideas from the aforementioned previous Rants, you will know that I don't care what kind of freaky-deaky sex kinks you've got. Whatever works for you. If you're into orgies with seven people all dressed in pink bunny suits while humming the Canadian national anthem, hey go for it. You know, so long as all parties involved are CONSENTING and of LEGAL AGE, who am I to judge? But, those two points are key. Do whatever you want to get your rocks off so long as it isn't RAPE or PEDOPHILIA and I don't care. Which kind of sort of brings me to the issue: PORNOGRAPHIC DRAWINGS OF MINORS IN SEX ACTS.
While I may think that this is unusual and of questionable taste to want to look at, it doesn't bother me. The bottom line of it is: they are DRAWINGS. No actual persons actually performed these acts. These are FICTIONAL events. No children were harmed or molested in order to create it, so what's the fuss?
Well, "the fuss" is that there are laws in places, the United States being one such place, that outlaws "simulated" child pornography. I do believe that this is idiotic. I can totally see how such laws came to be, though. One of those "it's to protect our children" bullshit battlecries. If you want to protect actual children, go after people who have actually molested one, and stop wasting your time on people who have never done anything but own drawn depictions. Seriously. People try to believe that the people who look at such horrible images will "get ideas" and become child molesters and rapists because of it. Yes, I'm sure John Wayne Gacey was a lovely person until he saw an illustration depicting young boys as sexual objects. What a load of hooey!!
For starters, I hate to break it to everyone, but people who are "underage" have sex WITH EACH OTHER every damn day. I wouldn't want to hear about a 40 year old and and a 14 year old having sex (not legal), but two sixteen year olds (legal)? Who cares? See, the simulated porn laws are generally broad and don't make such distinctions! It would be every bit as illegal to possess an illustration of either situation, simply because an underage figure is in it.
Then there's the obvious part that no real people are "harmed" in illustrations. If I were to go to trolling the internets to see what odd and twisted stuff people have cooked up for Rule 34, I would come across EVERYTHING. If I printed out a copy of Bart and Lisa Simpson going after each other with purple dildos because I thought it was hilarious, I could get fined or arrested!! For real! Bart and Lisa Simpson porn got a man arrested in Australia! This actually happened!!
A manga collector in the United States was arrested for some loli-porn he had shipped to him from Japan. As an avid collector, he had manga of every genre, a small portion of which was pornography, and a small portion of that, depicted underage participants. Customs looked through his shipment as it entered the USA and didn't like it one bit. Officials searched his house and harddrive, and found no actual photographs of real young people engaged in sex acts. He had no previous criminal record and had never harmed an actual person. So, basically, they arrested and fined him based on the fact that he may be THINKING about sex acts with underage people. Yes, arrested for MAYBE possibly THINKING about something. Heck, I THINK about murdering people who annoy me every day, but have yet to be arrested.
Okay, I know that you probably think that illustrations of underage people involved in sexual conduct is gross. The people who draw it are gross, the people who look at it are gross, whatever. Okay, it's gross. I personally don't go for it, but we're talking about drawings, here! I am an artist. Well, sort of. Kind of an artist. I don't want people telling what is okay and not okay for me to draw. Not ever. Isn't the United States supposed to have freedoms? If I want to draw Wily Kit and Wily Kat from the Thundercats cartoon naked and groping each other, I should be allowed to do so, but it seems in many places that this would be illegal now. They're fictional characters! I'm not hurting anyone! When is the line going to blur and get into fan fiction, too? Could the fact that I WROTE A SENTENCE about two underage people molesting each other sexually get me arrested one day? And that's the big problem isn't it? Who draws the line? Where will it end? It should end now.
William the Bloody (drawn sexually)
