A subject that pushes my buttons. Thank you for the responses to the subject of censorship, my initial subject was the depiction of rape in literature. As I have said a few times we should censor what we read and watch. One reply I had was:
“If it’s fiction I should be able to make my own choice as what to read. If it’s really that’s totally between the people, I do believe in safe and consensual. I don’t think Amazon, B & N should make up these hypercritical decisions as what we are allowed to read”
another said:
“I don’t write rape scenes, but some of the scenes I do write depict rough sex. I have a large following and my readers seem to like what I have written. What I do write is fiction, in a made-up world surely I can take my readers anywhere?”
And I received many others airing the same point and I totally agree with them, as long as it is for our consumption. There are other areas of censorship I find equally irritating. There is a well known social media site where we are encouraged to post pictures and repost others from the same site. It is very addictive and you can find images of all kinds there. Periodically I get the notification that one of my pictures has been removed because it contains content not suitable for the site. The image may well be nude, but in my eye, it falls into the category of tasteful art nude. It is fair if that is the house rule, but why when I am looking on that site do I see porn, with no artistic value to my eye at all? My point is that I don’t mind people looking at porn, but who decided that the pic I had posted was too much?
I can talk about it more freely here than I can on other social media sites, but there is one that we all use that is a seriously confusing site. This is a site for all the family, so I agree there should be restrictions and families should be able to look without porn popping up. But…… there are seriously confusing signals being given off by this company. They say at every turn that they want to encourage business users, yet they have the oddest restrictions. They say “we do not like bare flesh”, okay so no beach photos? Oh, that seems ok. But there are restrictions of the bare flesh you can use in advertisements and in articles you want to post. Which makes it tricky for the publishers of romance stories. If it was a sensible policy that was uniform across the site, ok their site their rules. But it is ok to post a nude male torso, but a restriction on the amount of abdominal skin. I am talking about between the panty line and below the breasts. Had an article taken down the other day for too much tummy showing. I have had more than one picture of a back removed from the site too.
My question is who gets to say what is right and wrong? And what exactly do we have to conform to? How do you feel about censorship?
I’d love to hear any thoughts, experience or any views you might like to share. On here, the blog, Facebook or Twitter