DISCLAIMER: I live in the United States of America, and I wrote this journal with the morality and laws of the United States in mind.

Just a reminder to all you Social Justice Warriors out there who think that you're helping to fight the scourge of child molestation by punishing artists who like to make drawings of underage-looking characters, be they anthropomorphic or human (as in Lolicon or Shotacon): you are a bunch of idiots. You have no clue what the hell it is you're even bellyaching about. A drawing of a fictional character with an underage-looking body is not child pornography, no matter how much you scream from the rooftops that it is. Lolicon is not child porn. Shotacon is not child porn. Cub porn is not child porn. Get that simple reality through your thick skulls. For an image to be child porn requires that there be an actual child in an actual photograph of an actual sexual situation taking place. In other words, in order to make child porn, you have to molest a real child. A cartoon-like image is NOT a real child. If more people used their brains for something other than glorified paperweights this would be obvious, but sadly most people just jump on bandwagons and start cheering or jeering over whatever the new popular thing to cheer or jeer at happens to be.

From what I can tell, this is what happened over at Furry Network. People were like "oh god, those drawings offend me so I want them banned because pedophilia!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" And the FN admins caved to pressure from these tantrum-throwing kids who act like they aren't even old enough to have an online account yet, let alone be on a porn site, because they don't want the bad publicity. When I first read about this, my initial reaction was to be angry at FN, but to be honest it's not their damn fault that they've been harassed by cyberbabies who throw tantrums any time someone else doesn't cater to their demands. If anyone is at fault, it's the idiots who go all knee-jerk any time they see something that is potentially offensive. Their indignance reminds me of those homophobic preachers who get all up in arms over gay people having the same rights they do, only to be exposed later on as being gay themselves.

Personally, I think this stems from a much bigger problem that's been plaguing much of the world for quite a few years now. There's a Christian doctrine that says to "abstain from all appearance of evil." Attitudes like this encourage paranoid behavior, because suddenly any innocent thing you do might be perceived as evil by others, such as walking into a bar to use the telephone after you've just walked a mile and a half from your broken-down car... because some people might think you're going in there to get drunk, oh my gawd.

And then there is another way of thinking that tells us we need to prevent crime before it happens, which in itself is all fine and good, but when coupled with ideas like "abstaining from all appearance of evil" it becomes oppressive because it goes well beyond preparedness and knowing what to watch out for and enters into the realm of punishing people for what they might do. It's become a paranoid obsession that has nothing in common with preventing crime and everything to do with mass hysteria. You can't reason with hysterical people, and as a result you also can't reason with a group of hysterical people. And when the entirety of their reason for banning cub porn from a site like Furry Network is "OMG it's child porn, I'm so offended, what will become of the children, oh noes!" they've obviously thrown reason and logic out the window in favor of rhetoric and flat-out lies.

And that's another thing: why is it that when people point out reality in situations like this they're always hated on by so many people? If you were taught not to lie, why the fuck do you endorse people who lie and say that Cub Porn is the same thing as Child Porn? Why do the most sensible voices get repeatedly downvoted while the most hysterical, obviously paranoid voices get treated like they're the Gospel Truth? Well, it's obviously not because you value the truth, because if you did then you wouldn't shit on the people who tell you to grow up and blacklist stuff you don't want to see. You also wouldn't get all bent out of shape over someone else exercising their Freedom of Speech in ways that make you uncomfortable. If you don't want to see cub porn, blacklist it or go to a different site. Cub porn artists aren't hurting you, aren't hurting the furry fandom, and aren't hurting real children by drawing pictures of underage fictional characters in sexual situations. You're no more mature than a toddler who throws a kniption fit because his Mommy won't let him eat every cookie in the cookie jar all at one time. You're a far greater threat to the children than any furry artist who draws cub porn.