HFF Essays.

my problem with hF

This essay was originally intended to be part of Hello Sailor! -- but, instead, it helped to spawn the hff.

Now, then, what could possibly be my problem with an innocent anti-sex campaign?

Well, it's partly the juxtaposition of less-than-innocent, though not always terribly explicit, series (Utena? Urusei Yatsura? DEVIL HUNTER YOHKO?!) with the mission statement in the buttons section, I concede, but that's just icing.

It's mainly in-your-face rhetoric like this:

hentai FREE is a club for hentai HATERS - those of us with a sense of morality and decency, who don't want little kids stumbling on what we believe to be perverted, disgusting junk! -- hentai FREE entry page

Now, I have a sense of morality, and one of decency. I believe that no one should be exposed to sexually explicit material against their consent (in the same way that I believe that no one should have any form of sexuality imposed upon them that they don't want). I don't rampage around killing people, embezzling corporate funds, drinking and driving, whatever. I just fail to see where morality and decency intersect with making available images of, or stories about, sexually engaged anime characters; it's always so irritating to find out that the picture of Haruka without her shirt on has rendered me a drooling, immoral maniac hell-bent on the destruction of all things good.

It's fine by me that there would exist a list of links to nonsexual anime sites, just as a thing in and of itself. Nobody particularly wants to be bombarded with erotica 24-7; one burns out. (I do wonder about pages that feel the need to promote themselves as nonsexual, though; it's kind of like selling cherry-flavoured candy with the slogan: "Proudly Chocolate-Free!" Yes, and?) But:

The purpose of this site is simple. Kids (and unsuspecting adults!!!) can access hentai very easily on the net. *We don't like that.* We have clean websites, and we're proud of that, and we are out to encourage more people to stand up for what a lot of us wish in private: a cleaner, kid-safe internet. -- hentai FREE mission statement

The Internet is never going to be "safe" for children. At no point in its design or implementation were children held in mind. At this point, the only thing you can say about it is that it is a means of information exchange that, in theory, anyone can use.

"Anyone" includes people over the age of consent, who may or may not have a moral code that matches the hentai FREE campaign's.

And that is what rankles me the most here:

This is a quiet protest to indecency and lack of morality in the world and on the web. -- hentai FREE mission statement

No, it's not. It's a quiet protest to something which some people don't like. That they dislike enough to be fairly judgemental about, too:

There's no way to get all perversion off the internet, but at least people can see our banners and know that OUR sites are safe! -- hentai FREE mission statement

"Perversion," rather like "morality" and"decency/indecency," is not defined, save for an implied tie on the entry page:

So what's "hentai"? hentai - pronounced "hen-tye" - a Japanese word meaning, "erotic and pornographic cartoons or sexually explicit writing and other material about cartoon characters". (Definition courtesy of WC-20)

Ah. So, regardless of how the sex is depicted, it's perverted. Depicted sexuality is inherently perverse. So no decent, upstanding person would ever have anything to do with hentai. (Especially not one who espouses 1 Peter 3:13-14, cited in the mission statement. Nice touch. My faith bleeds.) Despite the fact that the definition contains no inherent value judgement, of course. This is all perfectly obvious to the casual reader.

I'm sure that Naoko agrees.

And it's dangerous -- it must be, because the "clean" sites (you know, you never can get hentai out of the sheets) are safe, and you can't be safe unless there's a danger. *scratches head* Care to enlighten us, guys? Will the tentacles eat you? I must say, I prefer my anti-smut rhetoric to have some semblance of a backup argument; at least TRY to throw the Kitty* at the pussy, huh?

Sites like hentaiFREE will end up simply serving their own kind; the people who already believe that the sex you can see is bad, and don't want to go anywhere near it. Their justifications will be preset; they will either already be familiar with the rationalizations behind antiporn rhetoric (the children will be corrupted, the women will be objectified, and the people so exposed to erotica will be harmed in some ill-defined fashion that results in the generation's sexual and violent evils) or will be so entrenched in irrational fear of sex that they don't need that rhetoric to support their fears (upbringing, religious doctrine, media scare tactics, urban legends -- all these things can play a part in the subconscious association of porn and evil). At the worst, the ardent who carry on to political activism will assist in pushing through laws which drive the erotic back underground.

What's so good about that? Are we so masochistic that we need to feed on that shame? Erotica is the only field of art (visual or otherwise) that can be dismissed, regulated, and charged with terror because a vocal minority dislike it; if that's what "kid-safe" means, then I think I like it dangerous.

* Kitty: Catherine McKinnon, who, together with Andrea Dworkin, is responsible for the foundations of much of the anti-porn legislation in North America. [back]