Iexist
Engaged Member
- Jul 20, 2018
- 2,336
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I'm all for "writing law makers" and so on, but, if there's one thing I've learned after engaging with some Activist groups in the past... it's that the opinions of people outside of the US barely matter, or don't matter at all.
I live outside of the US. Worse. I live in some no-name post communist country of very little international relevance. My whole damn country could take a stance, and no one of note would give more than a shrug and "whatever".
That's a simple fact of life.
Right now, the only law that REALLY matters to VISA and Master Card is American Law, and it's Americans that need to take a stance on this. The only thing the rest of us can take a stance on is VISA and Master Card trying to apply their standards outside of the US, which will do jack and shit tbh.
That said, I get that taking a stance on porn of all things would be difficult. Hell, even if I had the opportunity to do something like that, it'd be difficult because I have at least one family member that might literally try to kill me if they knew I spend money on this sort of thing, much less try to take a stance about it in politics. How many of us would have issues with family or friends if they tried to take a stance on this and it inevitably became a public shit-show?
So instead, I believe that another angle needs to be used to approach this when it comes to law.
There needs to be a bigger focus in laws to distinguish fiction from reality, and to protect the freedom of expression in fiction, regardless of the subject matter and how screwed up it may or may not be. Worded correctly, and it wouldn't matter what sort of depravity people put in porn, because, well, it's fiction, who cares what happens there?
The fact of the matter is that this sort of crap happened before. Back when people were accusing GTA of causing school shootings. Before that too, when D&D players were accused of being satanists and whatnot. This is just a variations of the same thing. An inability to distinguish fiction from reality, and the stupid idea that fiction can get people to commit unreasonable acts in reality, even though that has literally never happened. (We obviously don't count people that are already insane here, because anything can trigger such individuals and they shouldn't be exposed to most forms of media anyway...)
At the end of the day, the angle that needs to be tackled is that a form of fiction can be discriminated against for whatever reason... then any form of fiction might be discriminated against for some reason or another. It's a gate that should be closed no matter what.
I live outside of the US. Worse. I live in some no-name post communist country of very little international relevance. My whole damn country could take a stance, and no one of note would give more than a shrug and "whatever".
That's a simple fact of life.
Right now, the only law that REALLY matters to VISA and Master Card is American Law, and it's Americans that need to take a stance on this. The only thing the rest of us can take a stance on is VISA and Master Card trying to apply their standards outside of the US, which will do jack and shit tbh.
That said, I get that taking a stance on porn of all things would be difficult. Hell, even if I had the opportunity to do something like that, it'd be difficult because I have at least one family member that might literally try to kill me if they knew I spend money on this sort of thing, much less try to take a stance about it in politics. How many of us would have issues with family or friends if they tried to take a stance on this and it inevitably became a public shit-show?
So instead, I believe that another angle needs to be used to approach this when it comes to law.
There needs to be a bigger focus in laws to distinguish fiction from reality, and to protect the freedom of expression in fiction, regardless of the subject matter and how screwed up it may or may not be. Worded correctly, and it wouldn't matter what sort of depravity people put in porn, because, well, it's fiction, who cares what happens there?
The fact of the matter is that this sort of crap happened before. Back when people were accusing GTA of causing school shootings. Before that too, when D&D players were accused of being satanists and whatnot. This is just a variations of the same thing. An inability to distinguish fiction from reality, and the stupid idea that fiction can get people to commit unreasonable acts in reality, even though that has literally never happened. (We obviously don't count people that are already insane here, because anything can trigger such individuals and they shouldn't be exposed to most forms of media anyway...)
At the end of the day, the angle that needs to be tackled is that a form of fiction can be discriminated against for whatever reason... then any form of fiction might be discriminated against for some reason or another. It's a gate that should be closed no matter what.