Yet another post about why Six Apart sucks

[rusty_halo]

If you haven't seen it, check out bubble_blunder's open letter to Six Apart (and, y'know, sign if you agree).

Lots of interesting stuff in metafandom today.

I'm too busy reading to post any coherent thoughts, but I will say that one of the things that really gets to me is the underlying sexism and homophobia going on here. Both users were suspended due to homoerotic art. Would we have seen the same response to a piece that depicted a heterosexual couple? The younger party was clearly post-pubescent--he could've been anywhere between 16-24. If that had been a young woman instead of a young man, would Six Apart still be screaming kiddie porn? The idealized woman in our youth-obsessed culture is 16-24, so I have a hard time believing there'd have been a similar outcry.

I think that part of SixApart's underlying discomfort with this type of art is that it reverses the male gaze. The (male-dominated) company is worried about upsetting its (male-dominated) advertisers who are worried about a offending a (male-dominated) culture. Sexualize young women, fine, we'll look the other way. But sexualize young men and now we have a problem. They're getting a taste of the same discomfort that women have to put up with every day, and they don't like it--so they're banning us and trying to make us feel like dirty perverts.

It makes me really sad, because this community has been such a wonderful place for women to explore their sexuality in creative ways--and a refuge from a culture that objectifies us and stigmatizes our desires. Now the real world is intruding on our safe haven, and it totally sucks.

[I'm cross posting this to my InsaneJournal, which feels totally scary!]

Comments

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I doubt they're *consciously* motivated by homophobia and sexism. But I think it underlies their reaction--the kind of reaction that looks at a sexualized young male body and goes "eww, perverted," but wouldn't think twice about a sexualized young female body. Of all the porn out there on LJ, they could've easily found het examples, but they went after the slash. Why? Do they actively hate gay people? I doubt it. But did the gay porn just "seem" more egregious? Probably.

(As for the Dawn thing, well, this horrid movie was in mainstream theaters everywhere and was treated as completely normal. Swap Trachtenberg for Radcliffe in this photo and you'd probably be accused of kiddie porn.)

I also highly doubt they deleted anything out of concern for the *law*. They were concerned about losing advertiser money (and maybe about selling the company).

I agree that Six Apart has the legal right to delete anything they want off of their servers--and I have the right to think they're assholes and to take my business elsewhere. (Especially considering their failure to clarify their policies, communicate with their users, and allow the accused to defend themselves or even to save a copy of their deleted content.)

They want us to come in here, pour out our hearts, build lifelong friendships, and buy paid accounts ... and they want to be able to randomly and arbitrarily delete any of us at any time. Legally, sure, they can do that... and I can point out how stupid it is, and leave.

[jerrymcl89.livejournal.com]

I think there's a distinction between Michelle Trachtenberg, who is a real person with a real birthdate whose age can be determined, and either Dawn Summers or Harry Potter, who are not. But that is really neither here nor there.

As long as people rely on for-profit companies to host journals, those companies will be susceptible to pressure, either legally or in terms of advertising. That's perhaps unfortunate, but it's true. I don't expect any of the LJ alternatives currently being bandied about to be more ideologically pure in the long-term than LJ is. Although I guess it can be hoped that they will have more PR sense.