79
New Texas bill could make incredibly popular anime & video games illegal - Dexerto
(www.dexerto.com)
Why would they put Persona spoilers in the middle of the article? 🫠
People should really read Patrick W. Galbraith. I've been reading his publications on moe (The Moe Manifesto) and it's really insightful. Related to this article would be Lolicon: The reality of 'virtual child pornography' in Japan which explains the complexity of the issue. Skip to the sections "Risk and pre-emptive discipline", "Juridification of the imagination", "Moral panic", and "The reality of fiction" (or read the entire thing!).
Excerpt from the conclusion:
Because there is no actual crime committed, it ultimately ends up an issue of how one interprets images, of a person’s private thoughts, and this is not something that can or should be regulated. All forms of imagination, regardless of how repugnant some may find them, are legal up to and until they present a real danger to self or others. The evidence suggests that those producing and consuming lolicon images pose no such danger. They have a nuanced understanding of the relationship between fiction and reality, and desire shōjo characters precisely because they are unreal.
Sexual violence against women and children is an unfortunate social reality, and censoring fictional depictions does not reduce it (Shigematsu 1999: 147). It does, however, make it taboo to even imagine sexual violence and denies a space to represent and respond to it. It positions women and children as “pure,” objectifying them every bit as much as the “Lolita effect” (Durham 2009: 12). [...] To the fear that images of sexualized children, even fictional ones, naturalize “cognitive distortions,” the response must be that learning is a social process. This is precisely why the lifeworlds of fans, including lolicon fans, should not be “juridified” out of existence (McLelland forthcoming). It is in these communities, in interaction with one another, that meanings are negotiated. Universal standards will not prevent someone, somewhere from getting the wrong idea, and limiting public interaction may in even encourage it.
It goes much deeper than this though, so I recommend just reading through it.
But I have to clarify that ani.social does have a policy on this which has similar wording, but I personally would not ban or remove discourse surrounding the topic.
