Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
21hr ago
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Notes -
The Guardian: An Australian woman has been found guilty of producing, possessing, and distributing illegal child pornography for writing and distributing (for pre-publication review, not yet actually selling) a 210-page book in which an 18-year-old woman engages in sexual "ageplay" (pretending to be a toddler) with an older man. It does not appear that a transcript of this local court proceeding is available in Australia's judicial database. But the article indicates that, in the judge's view, the author's descriptions of this "18-year-old woman" were just a sham intended to evoke the visual image of a child. (See also the "9000-year-old loli" meme.) Reddit comments indicate that, in addition to what is described in this article, the book also includes a passage in which the man fantasizes about the future woman while she is only three years old.
Australian AO3 users in shambles (1 2)?
Given how deep the non-US Anglosphere is into thoughtcrime suppression and digital fascism, it's kinda hard to care especially strongly about this particular one. I mean, you could be arrested and fined or jailed for displaying national flag or asking people to speak English, not to mention about publicly stating something really politically controversial and offensive to wokeness. Am I really surprised somebody walking the edge between barely acceptable and woodchipper-worthy and dipping the toes in the waters of madness is persecuted? If it were the US, we could talk about artistic value, "People vs. Flint" and all those nice things. If we're talking about countries where freedom of speech doesn't exist, yeah, it's a bad place to be an edgelord (or should I say edgelady?) there, because it's a bad place for any non-approved speech there, so duh...
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Hard to tell what the actual story is, here.
The Guardian story talks about some deeply unpleasant ageplay focuses and grooming-adjacent stuff that squicks me the fuck out but would be fairly novel to get a conviction over, but the reddit comments suggest that the actual story had a mix of 'just' ageplay and sexualization of fictional children that have parallels (cw: gross-as-in-violence-to-children) to convictions in the United States (cw: gross-as-in-Simpson's porn). Now, that might just be people on the internet lying, since they point to a Goodreads listing and you're saying the story was not actually sold, but it's a mess and one I don't really want to look into deeper.
There's some philosophical and foundation of law problems even with the latter, but it wouldn't be new and Australia doesn't have freedom of speech in the American sense (instead having a mess of toothless international treaties and a limited right to political communication). In the defense of Australian authorities they tend to target people who make at least moderately unsympathetic defendants rather than those with Romeo And Juliet - Extra Spicy Edition, just as a lot of the more 'does this pass the Ashcroft test' convictions in the US tend have lots of reasons to plea guilty, but the Australian populace is generally supportive enough of aggressive policing that it might not matter anyway.
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