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.
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Notes -
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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