#this is not a debate about the appropriate age to be on the internet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

artemisdesari-blog · 22 days

Text

Sometimes being the mum who exists in fandom spaces leads to awkward, even concerning, conversations. Such as the one which happened this morning. The mum of my daughter's best mate asked me if one of their mutual friends had sent her a specific message. This message was a link to a fic on ao3, if this had been a G rated fic this conversation would not have happened. It was not G rated. It was an E rated fic. Our kids aren't even 12 yet. As it happens, both of our kids have their internet access heavily locked down and monitored. They have phones because of how their school manages homework. The mutual friend, however, is not so monitored. Or she wasn't, given what her mum found she's about to be. This kid had found a fandom, joined it, and found it chock full of antis. The fic had been sent to her by one of them as an example of the sort of terrible people out there who need to be harassed and attacked because they wrote a smutty story.

Someone thought it was appropriate to send written porn to an 11 year old to encourage her to attack the author.

This resulted in a very awkward conversation where I had to explain to multiple horrified parents the anti culture that is becoming so prevalent. The fact that there are adults who use that purity message to groom kids. The way they escalate and how it bleeds into real life. One parent told me she'd wondered why her 14 year old was suddenly concerned about the two year age gap between her parents. The more I explained, the more absolutely ludicrous it sounded and the more baffled these poor mums looked. More than once I was told "but the characters aren't real, it's really weird but it isn't hurting anyone". Which is the point. The fictional situation isn't hurting anyone. The person who sent porn to an 11 year old is.

Was the person who sent it the author? Doubtful, that thing was tagged in the extreme. Was the person who sent it an adult? Almost certainly. The parent who's child received the original message has found more concerning stuff and gone to the police, but from the language the person doing the sending was in the US. We aren't. Did my daughter receive it? No, she isn't interested in that fandom and therefore wouldn't have bothered with it. Is this the fault of the author? No, they didn't send the link, they didn't ask to be harassed, they wrote a story and put it on ao3, the website created in response to rampant censorship and designed to allow for all kinds of fiction. Is this the fault of the parents? Partially, they should have been looking at their daughter's internet use and clocked what was happening sooner. Is this the fault of the child? No, she's 11, she didn't know better.

This has been a difficult day. Multiple parents have had their eyes opened to parts of fandom culture they had no idea existed. And the thing of it is, they aren't concerned about the why of anti rhetoric. They don't care about the adults writing about teens or rape or incest or torture or any of the rest, because they looked at the clearly tagged and rated fics and figured that it worked the same as a warning on any streaming service. They only cared because some utterly vile individual decided to expose their child to something this girl might not have looked at for years.

Proshippers did not cause what I have spent afternoon helping several sets of parents navigate. Antis did. Normally I'm fairly quiet about the whole debate because I just want to get on with my life and share my experiences. Today I got dragged into that mess in my every day life and the adults in the equation didn't react the way Antis like to think they would. They didn't condemn the author. They condemned the anti who shared the work with a preteen.

#fanfiction #proship #fuck antishippers #seriously #my mum life and my fandom life should never have crossed over #but look at those antis causing it to happen anyway #purity culture is bullshit #get over yourselves #just let writers write #and let artists create art #mum life #antis suck

492 notes · View notes

the-whumpening · 1 month

Text

Re: Anonymous hate messages

[Image ID: Screenshot of an anonymous message sent to me, @the-whumpening. Several lines have been annotated by me with colored highlights. All text has been transcribed exactly as typed. The message reads:

i would not be protecting a (yellow) pedophile and incest supportor (/end yellow) but for each their own!:)))

(green) we do not claim (/end green) (blue) her. she (/end blue) (green) is not even doing "whump" at this point. (/end green) just plain (yellow) depraved pedoincest fantasy stories (/end yellow) while thinking (blue) she (/end blue) has (purple) one more personality every week. people do not need to see that, (/end purple) it is not okay. none of it is. (orange) maybe all those bans should have been a sign. /End Image ID]

As expected, I received my first ever hate message after talking about the situation with "antis" attacking whump community members. The "proship"/"anti-proship" debate has been around for fucking ages, and I'm personally sick of it, but I thought this would be a good teachable moment for any younger/less-internet-savvy folks here.

This ^ is trolling. Whether they believe everything they said or not, ultimately their goal was to rile up emotions and cause friction. Having been on the internet a good, long time (my main blog is from like 2009, y'all), I have seen my fair share of trolls. I've fallen for a few, too. It's inevitable. But to save your sanity and help you all deal with users like this, I've decided to share this message and break down the clues that told me it's not worth interacting with.

Yellow Highlights: What I've highlighted in yellow are the "scare words," I'll call them. They're flinging the most extreme, most obscene terms they can think of at the situation, even if it doesn't fit, because they're trying to scare me in to either complying or arguing. Nobody looks good if they're "arguing for" incest or pedophilia. They're setting up a no-win situation where my position looks absurd and unsupportable. Edit to add: my position, by the way, is that you can write/make whatever you want as long as you tag it appropriately and post it where it abides by the Terms of Service, which my friend did. I do not support censorship of any kind. I didn't think it needed to be said but I don't "support" real life pedophilia and incest, either. No one does, including my friend who was banned. That's a nonsense claim.

Blue Highlights: I referred to the specific user who got banned by his preferred pronouns in my original post. I exclusively used he/him, multiple times. By using she/her in this message, I know this user isn't arguing in good faith because either A) they didn't read my post clearly and think it's about someone else, or B) they're intentionally misgendering my friend. You cannot argue with someone who isn't approaching in good faith.

Green Highlights: This anon says that "we" don't claim the user I mentioned as a part of the whump community and that "[he's] not even doing "whump" anymore." Here we have a logical fallacy: that user doesn't belong here because they're "not a real whump writer." They've essentially made up a rule to exclude this person, and that justifies (to them) how that person was treated. (Who is "we," by the way? Anon is implying that they are aligned with the majority of the community, thus threatening to place me as an outsider.)

Purple Highlights: Blatantly ableist rhetoric towards someone who presumably has Dissociative Identity Disorder. As above, they're trying to justify why it's okay to bully and harass someone off the platform. "People do not need to see that." Nonsense. We don't exclude anyone from the community on the basis of their disability. Once again, Anon is not engaging in good faith.

Orange Highlight: Finally, their closing line feels like a threat. They claim that this user should have expected to be harassed, even that they deserved it. They imply that being banned/reported automatically implies guilt, regardless of the fact we know tumblr staff is less than charitable regarding bans--especially with queer and disabled users, and double especially anyone who posts any kind of remotely mature content (like your standard whump fare). We all remember waves of transfem users being banned out of the blue this year, as well as anyone sticking up for them. It happens all the time. I also mentioned in my original post that this user had been mass reported multiple times which led to his bans, which I think the gravity of is missed here. He was targeted, multiple times, by a ton of people falsely accusing him of breaking Terms of Service. Mass reports are rarely trustworthy, imho, and especially not if they happen to the same user multiple times. You know what most folks do if they don't like a person's content or behavior? They block them and move on. Maybe a single, accurate report if it seems necessary, but a reasonable person should never sic their followers on other users to mass report or harass. It's bad internet etiquette, and it has been for decades. The golden rule of the internet: if you don't like someone, block them and move on! If it sucks, HIT DA BRICKS!

And that's why I did not respond directly to this anonymous message. Nothing in its content gave me any indication that Anon and I could have a real conversation and gain an understanding of one another. I hope this helps some of you deal with any potential hateful messages you receive. The goal, above all, is to push you to an emotional high and make you have an angry outburst on them. That's what trolls feed off of. And if there's one thing being on the internet for longer than some of you have been alive has taught me: don't feed the trolls. Do not engage. Do not argue. Delete or block, and move on as much as possible. Turning off anonymous asks (or asks in general!) is always okay. Remember: you alone control your internet experience. You curate what you do and don't want to see and what kind of interactions you allow. Blocking is always an option. Turning off replies is always an option. Filtering tags is always okay. Be better than these folks, and remember you are in control of what you see and do--but you cannot control anyone else.

Side note: I did get a very lovely message from someone (who I will not name to prevent harassment) showing me support and being really kind, so that 1000% makes up for shitty messages like this.

#whumpblr #whump #writeblr #whump community #not whump #discourse

28 notes · View notes

sir-yeehaw-paws · 2 years

Note

how does anyone say this guy isn't gay look at that FACE

I KNOW YOU sent this as a joke but HONESTLY some of the DEEP DENIAL I have seen in *coughing* some communities regarding him and the other characters is TRULY astonishing. It ends up being so pathetic and rooted so deep in homophobia, biphobia etc that it just cycles back to being pathetic and kinda sad.

I'm not intending to turn this into a rant, but to me-and to pretty much any queer MGS fan (or LGBTQAI if you dislike queer) it's....obvious. He doesn't fool (us) for a hot second. It's not even a debate. Yet to deeply toxic dudebro *and other toxic het communities, or just the same 'uber masculine' gaming communities that haven't left the mindset of the 90's yet that used to print naked women in magazines just to appeal to them (Link to a video from Caddicarus here that goes pretty good into how atrocious some of this shit got in regards to magazines) he's gotta be ANYTHING but gay.

I genuinely didn't think it was still going to be an issue-but I have seen it still up for debate as early as 2022 and people so desperate they will argue against Vamp being bi even tho Snake LITERALLY SAYS SO in the text. But Snake could've just 'been joking with Raiden'.

We've all seen the posts, we've all seen the stuff, and while it's largely so pathetic it's not worth dwelling over except for amusement-it's kinda sad too.

NO, we never just plain old get "Ocelot is gay" In text but I wanna explain something else too.

I'm *for tumblr anyway* an old man. I'll be 32 years old at my birthday this year. When I was in HS, meterosexual was still a thing. "Gay" was the biggest insult you could be called. A friend had to TELL ME I was bi because I HAD NEVER heard the term.

Gay marriage was legalized in Canada when I was 14-the same year Brokeback Mountain came out. I remember watching the first legally married gay couple on tv and my uncle gagging. When I was much younger, and a teenager, the 'gay character' wasn't called 'gay'.

Instead, they didn't like the opposite sex. Instead, random jokes were made about them being 'abnormal' or 'eternally single'. Instead, incredibly subtle nods were put in to make references to things you would generally only understand as 'this character is gay' if you were an adult with at least SOME exposure to it.

Ocelot, is *in my opinion* absolutely written that way. If you go through the series, there are as many 'hints' and 'nods' and little references that all point in that direction. Is it a cop out? Depends on how you look at it (keep in mind gay marriage still isn't legalized in Japan) I'm not here to discuss another culture though that I'm not a part of-I'm a white Canadian man; I have no say on what is or isn't appropriate for Japan. But I DO remember how homophobic the world used to be-and at times can still be.

The dude bro's making arguments against Ocelot being gay-denying it so hard they turn blue, are usually guys my age or older. I am NOT excusing them-we've got the internet now, 'gay' stopped being an insult a decade ago, it's time to grow up. But I do know how gay characters were written at the time-Ocelot's a perfect example.

Sure, Vamp is stated to be bisexual in 2001. THAT WAS NOT THE NORM AT ALL. And Volgin being Raikov's lover was made obvious in those textual clues-but still only ever stated outright in the original MGS4 Encyclopedia.

I wish these dudes would open their minds a bit (I'm also generalizing a bit, it's not just men in denial). But at the end of the day, it will never not be interesting to me how obvious Ocelot is to us, but not to them.

(THIS GOT OUTTA HAND SORRY-)

#asks #answered asks #revolver ocelot #thoughts posts #mgs #nate rambles #MESSY RANT NOBODY WANTED SORRY-

82 notes · View notes

leggerefiore · 2 years

Note

So there a hat called Square Cap Elefish in Scarlet/Violet that has a design based off eelektross. What if s/o saw it while on the internet and thought they should get one for Emmet-

perfect timing, anon. i was just pondering a scenario to write for em

debated buying it for inka but decided she's more of a beanie girl (it'd still fit her though)

cw: fluff

------

It had caught your eye as you were scrolling endlessly through your social media. A group of Paldean people just doing things and their pokemon out with them. It was not their foreign pokemon that caught your attention, however. (Though, you would admit, the samba peacock poses were something you were a bit envious of.) It was the hat on one of their heads. A square cap with a certain familiar pokemon's pattern on it. That certain familiar pokemon happened to be sprawled across your lap at the moment, too, in fact. Rubbing your hand affectionately on the slimy skin of the creature who gave an electric hum through his body, you immediately set out to find that cap.

It would be a perfect gift for Emmet.

You grinned as you saw sneaked into the station. A gift for him would be best given after all his battles for the day were finished, and he was whining about the actual managerial duties he had to do. Sitting on the office couch, you felt certain you had managed to avoid every Depot Agent save for the one in the office area, who you knew would comply with your plan. The cute box sat in your lap with carefully tied white ribbon on its lid.

Pleading with Emmet's Galvantula for some silk, she agreed and gave you some, which you quickly fashioned into a ribbon. You shuddered when something seemed to try to squirm its way into your sleeve. Moving your arm away to a point where you could peer at it, four blue eyes stared at you innocently. A stowaway. The Joltik was plucked away and placed on your shoulder. If there was one thing that was inescapable while living with Emmet, it was his Joltiks. They were literally everywhere.

Outside the door, you heard quick, paced strides heading your way. It was quiet, save for a polite greeting shared by them and the Depot Agent. It was either another agent or your boyfriend, as Ingo tended to hold people hostage in conversation for a moment. The door handled turned and a white-coated man entered with a certain Galvantula clinging to his waist. You barely held back a giggle.

“Hello, Emmet,” you said with as much monotony as you could manage. He actually jumped for a moment before turning over to you. His eyes relaxed, and his smile shifted from its momentary tenseness to its normal playfulness.

“Darling! Verrrry mean,” he teased you before walking over, “Hmm? What's that?” His attention lied on the present in your lap. You held it out to him, and he quickly acted to take it. It was held close to him as he worked to undo the ribbon. When he finally did that, he popped the lid off and looked inside. He hummed curiously at the sight before placing the box down. His white cap was taken from his head.

Placed on his head, now in its place was the Elefish cap. “Mmm, not very work appropriate,” he noted. You would agree that the more casual hat certainly did not mix with his business formal attire. It did suit his face, however. “I could wear it later. Yep! During our dates,” he nodded to himself. You smiled.

“Do you like it then?” you asked him with a tilt of your head. He nodded at you this time and grinned brightly. A specific aged pokeball on his belt was removed, and the creature inside was tossed out. Eeelektross floated just above the ground and looked around. Emmet's hand immediately went to pet his beloved starter.

“Heehee, we're matching again after all these years,” he giggled and pointed to his hat. The eel stared at him before wrapping its body around his leg. Galvantula hissed at the creature and scuttled away from Emmet. Ah. The girls were fighting. Eelektross's arms went around Emmet's torso. He smiled down at his beloved eel. “Aww! I don't think you have been this clingy in a while,” he cooed.

You had to admit he looked adorable with his starter that he had known for so many years cuddling him and the matching hat on his head.

Emmet's head looked up at you as grinned at you. “Thank you, honey,” his voice was soft as it usually was, “You made Eelmmet verrrry happy.”

“Oh, Emmy, it was no problem –” you were going to express your feelings when something hit you like a tonne of bricks, “E-Eelmmet?”

“His name is Eelmmet.”

“Emmet, sweetheart, baby, please be joking.”

#emmet x reader #emmet/reader #pokemon emmet x reader #pokemon x reader

107 notes · View notes

rachelsfav-queer · 10 months

Text

I just need to put this out there, even though I don’t believe I myself have been incorrectly tagging my posts, I still want to make my stance clear.

I won’t name any names, and I won’t mention anyone specifically cause I am NOT in the business of drama.

But, there has been some issues in the wenclair tag and quite a few people have made their… upset opinions known. And they have every right, I’m not debating that. Again, not here for drama. But, I was involved with a few people who were considered to be causing issues. And I have seen these opinions of these people and the content we were discussing and they were… accusatory, to say the least.

This is where I come in. I don’t want to force anyone to have to see my content if it contains things that they don’t want to see. Which is why I’ve been doing my best to tag this content appropriately so that others can block it properly. But, of course, this isn’t a fix-all. There’ll still be people accidentally exposed to my content and of course there’s the issue of minors engaging with content they shouldn’t. And I’ve tried to solve this issue by making my blog strictly 18+ and blocking all ageless accounts and minors.

Then, there’s the other problem. But this one doesn’t really fall on me in the end. I have been trying to tag my content properly and I hope that I’ve been doing so well. But beyond that, I can’t do much else. It is up to others to block tags relating to content that makes them uncomfortable. I understand what it’s like to be triggered by content that I don’t want to see. Which is why I take the personal responsibility of blocking tags and keywords and phrases so I can reduce the possibility of seeing it as much as possible!

I am genuinely sorry if my content has made you uncomfortable, seriously. But please, just block me. Don’t go on and talk about me as if I’m some creep. Because I guarantee that what some people have been accusing my content of being, just isn’t true.

My age regression is not a kink, nor a fetish. It is a coping mechanism that I use to deal with the trauma I suffered as a child and it allows me to feel what it’s like to just be a kid, cause I very rarely got that when I actually was. So to see people calling it gross and weird and all other sorts of actually horrible things? It really affects me and I’ve had to take the time to block others myself, just to avoid that negativity.

Seriously, I am open when I tag and I try to keep my little section of the internet with as much warning as I can. Don’t like? Don’t read, and JUST. BLOCK. ME. That way, we’re both not exposing ourselves to things we don’t want to see.

So, again, to anyone I have potentially triggered, I apologize. But I will not apologize for sharing what I love with others who also like it. So please be respectful of that and just use the block function. Thank you.

Much love, Rachel ❤️

#rachel talks #rant post

8 notes · View notes

age-of-moonknight · 1 year

Note

hi! hope you're doing well. i got a question for you about the what if with marc's funeral, if that's okay, and please let me know if i'm missing the mark or overstepping in any way. as a jewish guy, seeing a non-jewish funeral kinda felt bad to me. like marc was already buried, no one who loved him or knew him participated in the burial, and yes the heroes wore their gear instead of traditional mourning clothing, but putting a star of david on the tombstone felt like an afterthought. marlene's 'may your memory be a blessing' was nice, seeing gena and the kids and crawly was like yes those are his people! but overall idk the setup and eulogy wasn't working for me. tldr my question is, what's your take on marc's funeral?

Hey! Thanks for stopping by! I guess before I say anything I should preface this by mentioning that I’m honestly just some dude on the internet and I really shouldn’t be considered an authority on anything. I’ve just read an unfortunately large number of comics and while I do dedicate a lot of time to learning as much as I can about anything, I definitely shouldn’t be considered an expert on matters as richly complex and integral to people’s very identities as religion or culture. In other words, I definitely appreciate you starting this conversation, but I really can’t offer anything more than a personal opinion that everyone should just take with a grain of salt.

But!!! thank you for sending this message, because, yeah, I realize that sometimes I can get so swept up in any writer even acknowledging that Marc is Jewish that I forget that, “oh yeah, this could be better and we should be well past the age where we had to hope for even the barest crumbs of representation.”

Accordingly, I fully see where you’re coming from and you’re probably right in that there was more the writer could have done. Even as I write that though, I can already hear the long list of excuses that could be made by devil’s advocates about why Marc’s funeral in What If…? Dark: Moon Knight was presented as it was. Most probably could be pretty easily refuted by anyone that wants better from the comic industry, but, hey, that’s comics: they thrive on intense, impassioned reader discussion and can somehow be ahead of their time in terms of cultural sensitivity AND painfully slow in breaking out of some really poor ways of depicting cultures, races, and religions.

[Putting in a read more because this got a little long (sorry all, mea culpa)]

But yeah, some of those excuses I can imagine include, first among them, space limitations. The creators had one page to depict the funeral in the single issue allotted to telling Marlene’s story of becoming Luminary. People could easily say something offhand and questionable like, “oh yeah, Marc’s mom sat shiva, but it all happened off panel,” but that explanation always feels a little cheap to me, as I know for fact that comic artists can get very creative with how they format a page to include critical information, but, eh, there it is.

Some people in these situations sometimes bring up the point that authors that share a background with the characters they depict can approach matters with a good understanding of what’s appropriate/significant. I can see the validity of that approach, but from the (admittedly brief) research I did, I haven’t found any conclusive statements on the writer’s background at least and I personally would rather not make any assumptions/speculations. (Again, that’s strictly a personal thing, because in my line of work, I come across a lot of bad actors who, from their perspective, “““accuse””” people of being certain races or ethnic backgrounds and I am,,,,very tired). Plus, that’s not necessarily a cure all, at least that’s what I’ve gathered from the heated debates on Bemis’ Moon Knight run that I still stumble upon on occasion.

The next thing that comes to mind, well, I don’t want to sound like I’m entirely absolving the creators since, sure, they probably could have done more, but I’m so used to grappling with the bad hands comic books deal me, that sometimes I propose what I guess could be referred to as Watsonian interpretations??? Like, yeah, this was ultimately written like this because creators are flawed, but I cope by trying to puzzle out in-universe explanations. In this case, I see this as potentially being some sort of hazy, not quite well constructed, reflection of Marc’s complex relationship with his background that characterized his adult life. Elias Spector, who frequently represents Marc’s connection to his past and how he wrestles with really complex questions of religion and identity, is dead by this point of time in both of Marc’s established origins, and while I am sure the organizers of Marc’s funeral, like Marlene and Frenchie, fully and deeply loved him, I’m just not sure if Marc ever communicated to them what they should specifically do for his funeral (fully traditional or as small/nondescript as possible if he even thought he deserved/would get a funeral), as enigmatic and….not always forthcoming in discussing such matters Marc circa Marc Spector: Moon Knight was, so they did their best.

But gosh, even as I write that out, that’s such a load of copium. I’ll admit that my fondness for the comic book genre results in me desperately trying to hammer something worthwhile out of sometimes (or frequently????) mediocre material, so thanks again for sharing your thoughts! You are well and away within your rights to not be satisfied with how the matter was handled and I know I thoroughly appreciate your critical eye. Arguably, it is only by such a capacity for critique that the industry will ever shake off some of its worst aspects that still haunt it and evolve into something really consistently worthwhile.

#Knight Mail #@anon my apologies I hope this makes sense because it seems I get out of work and I promptly forget how to put the bottom line up front #thanks to anyone who bothered to read it all hahaha and to anon in particular #as this turned into stream of consciousness commentary on rep in comics (????) or something???#because yeah….I’m just some person who’s read a lot of Moon Knight comics #I always love discussing things with people but my thoughts/opinions are technically of no quantifiable value #so I always love hearing what other people think :D

12 notes · View notes

maxim-a · 6 months

Text

related there are also vanishingly few spaces for kids on the internet to go to. you can crow all you want about how the kids need to get out of adult spaces/discussions, but we need places for the kids to actually go

like at least when i was younger shit like neopets, club penguin, etc., were still widely used, and there was moderation in those spaces to make them more child/teen friendly. broad social media doesn't have that at all

alternatively you also have adults who regard takes from children and teens way too seriously (or don't even know it's a kid/teen saying it), and instead of kids/teens having places where they can talk about shit with other peers or in spaces more appropriate for them and develop, they're stuck in the exact same spaces as adults all the time. this isn't a "minors need to be separated from adults" but when you have adults taking on the social mores of school aged people and acting like they're in middle school again, and children being unable to have discussions about the world around them without adults being the most (AND vice versa! but kids are still kids and have less experience and wherewithal to understand these kinds of nuances and boundaries), yeah that's gonna cause a million problems for the health of serious discussions lol

we should not be basing how we discourse on how school aged people do and school aged people should still be allowed spaces to discourse in their spaces with their peers without adults waltzing in, or at least the adults who are present are talking on their level

note: by "discourse" i don't mean stupid ragebait discussions about shit that don't matter, i mean actual discussions/debate/etc. about the world/life/politics

4 notes · View notes

ukrfeminism · 2 years

Text

3 minute read

Children are being exposed to online pornography from as young as nine, according to a study for the children's commissioner for England.

A quarter of 16-21-year-olds first saw pornography on the internet while still at primary school, it suggests. By the age of 13, 50% had been exposed to it.

The findings have been linked to low self-esteem among young people and harmful views of sex and relationships.

Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said it was "deeply concerning".

In a nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 16-21-year-olds, 38% had found pornographic content accidentally.

Joanne Schneider's son stumbled across a pornography website, aged eight, after typing swear words he had heard at school into a search engine.

"We'd put all the normal safety features in place and had removed apps such as YouTube but didn't for one second think that my son could find himself on adult-entertainment sites within a few seconds," Ms Schneider, from London, said.

"As soon as I saw what was happening, I closed the site - but both him and I were left in shock at what he had seen. I felt so terrible about the whole thing.

"All of a sudden I was having to explain it all, including the fact that what he saw was artificial and far from what real people look like."

'Strangling' seen as normal

Of the 18-21-year-olds, 79% had seen pornography involving sexual violence as children.

Almost half of young people say girls expect sex to involve physical aggression, such as airway restriction, the commissioner's report says.

One 12-year-old told Dame Rachel her boyfriend had "strangled" her during their first kiss. He had seen it in pornography "and thought it normal".

The commissioner urges "every adult in a responsible position" to take the findings seriously.

The Online Safety Bill, going through the House of Lords, should be used to protect children from internet pornography, she says.

"It should not be the case that young children are stumbling across violent and misogynistic pornography on social-media sites," Dame Rachel says.

"I truly believe we will look back in 20 years and be horrified by the content to which children were being exposed.

"Let me be absolutely clear - online pornography is not equivalent to a 'top-shelf' magazine.

"The adult content which parents may have accessed in their youth could be considered 'quaint' in comparison to today's world of online pornography."

Dame Rachel encouraged parents not to shy away from the topic at home and make it clear extreme pornography is "not real, it's acting".

She told BBC Breakfast children "want their mums and dads to talk to them often, even when they're really young, in an age-appropriate way about the things they might see so they're not confused".

She said conversations about "simple boundaries" like why it might not be right for youngsters to have internet-connected phones or social media accounts were also important.

The Online Safety Bill is due to be debated in Parliament this week amid calls from some MPs and peers for it to include tougher measures on age restrictions on social media.

Dame Rachel said parents "can't stop the tide of this stuff" without government intervention and backed the law, before adding"frankly [tech firms] are multi-billion companies, they should be having a moral compass and doing this now" .

Twitter is the primary source of pornography for young people, the study suggests, with 41% saying they had accessed it there.

Dedicated pornography sites came next, followed closely by Instagram, Snapchat and search engines.

'Extreme material'

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children charity has long been urging the government to implement strong measures in the Online Safety Bill to protect minors.

Policy lead Richard Collard said the impact pornography could have was "deeply worrying".

"Ofcom must be given the powers to set minimum standards which ensure the rollout of robust age-assurance measures on platforms where pornographic material can be viewed," he said.

"This will ensure children are protected from immediate and future harm."

Andy Lulham, from safety-technology provider VerifyMy, said the report was "extremely worrying but sadly not surprising".

"As it stands, there is nothing to stop children from easily accessing pornographic and other extreme material online," he said.

"This issue has existed for far too long - it's time for politicians, regulators and the private sector to finally come together and help safeguard children, the most vulnerable section of society."

22 notes · View notes

cozza-frenzy · 1 year

Text

We're The Magbox System!

OSDD-1b System - 22 alters as of 9/19/2024

(Bodily) 36 years old

System Host: Terry

We are Anti-Endo; endogenic/"mixed origin" systems and their supporters Do Not Interact

Collectively Queer and Poly (married to our husband, but in an open relationship)

Partner System: @rinjak3 Not all our alters are super active on tumblr, but there's a list of all our alters and their personal tags (if they have them) here. Our headcount fluctuates frequently due to repeated rounds of discovery/splitting and fusion. We like getting asks! If you have questions for us, our askbox is usually open (Anon is currently: ON) Extra/more detailed stuff under the cut. Thanks, and have fun!

Before you interact: If you're a system, please keep in mind that most of what we post about here are our personal experiences. We're actively working towards recovery, and have been seeing a therapist for several years. We also have an unusually vivid Inner World, and we're working on "taming" our subconscious through IW actions and "rituals", in order to counter our symptoms and solve problems. If you're not a system, feel free to ask questions in good faith. Just don't be weird about it. We don't suffer from delusions - we're aware that what happens in the IW isn't "really real" - and we don't appropriate cultural/spiritual practices like tulpamancy. What we're doing is closer to self-guided Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and it's a lot of hard work. If there's something specific you'd like us to tag so you can block it before following, please ask! Our personal views: ACAB, Land Back, Black Lives Matter, Protect Trans Kids, Free Palestine. We're pro-union, pro-immigration, and believe in safe conditions and fair compensation for all workers (including sex work by consenting adults). Politically we're mostly Democratic Socialists, with a few of us leaning further left in terms of ideals. We often jokingly refer to our system structure as an Anarchist Commune because we have no internal hierarchy, and see ourselves as a collective working towards mutual goals. We don't reblog a lot of activism and "awareness" posts unless they include resources to take direct action. Do not send asks about: - Anything to do with our Littles/underage alters; we do not post detailed information about them in public spaces, and we do not allow them to front unsupervised. This is for our safety and our mental health. - Anything to do with "source calls"; we feel this isn't a healthy basis for forming friendships, so we don't engage in it. If we have alters that share a source, don't make that the thing that makes you want to be friends with us. - Internet safety; we are bodily 36 years old, our abusers are an entire continent away, and although we are mentally ill we do not need or want sane people's intervention. If seeing us being open about mental illness makes you uncomfortable, it's on you to deal with your own feelings. - Syscourse; our views on supposedly "endogenic" systems are non-negotiable. It's our opinion that being a system is not possible without trauma, and endos/pro-endos keep invading spaces created by and for DID/OSDD systems, posting things that spread misinformation and cause paranoia and derealization. We don't want that shit here. - Our former relationships; yes we have a toxic/abusive ex, no we don't want anyone else involved. They are mentally ill and traumatized, and while that doesn't justify their behavior, we want to be the bigger person(s) here and leave them alone.

We block the following on sight: - Anyone who thinks adults shouldn't talk to minors for any reason, and shouldn't date other adults outside their immediate age range - i.e. an adult in their 30s shouldn't date an adult in their 20s. We try to treat everyone with respect and maintain healthy boundaries, but if you think our actions are inherently abusive, we're not going to debate you - TERFs/SWERFs and Queer Exclusionists; i.e. those who don't accept "contradictory identities", say that asexuals don't belong in the community, or claim that masculine trans men/transmascs don't experience transphobia - Self-identified "radqueers" and "transID", including transabled/transharmed/transplural (if you don't know what this means do not google it, trigger warnings abound) - Drama, cringe, "receipt" and callout blogs, "tar pits" (people who engage with positivity posts just to drag others down), and people who engage in bullying others for harmless things - Endogenic systems, their supporters, and any anti-endo blogs that engage in harassment and endo tag invasion. Also people who try to separate systems from the rest of the Mad Community, or claim DID/OSDD is not a mental illness - People who sympathize with/make excuses for authoritarian states and ethnostates, regardless of political alignment (this includes Fascists, Zionists and Tankies) - Anyone who's just here to Cause Problems On Purpose - People who spam the tags (nothing personal, it's just annoying)

16 notes · View notes

mutedrainbowxo · 1 year

Note

hey

I saw your reblog about the KOSA bill. Did you actually read through it? If you did would you be cool with giving a summary? I don’t wanna have too read the whole thing lol

Hello! Yes, I did. Here’s a quick summary:

KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act) is a bill that was proposed by Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn on February 16, 2022. The bill aims to aims to set out requirements for major platforms (apps or servers that both connect to the internet and are likely to be used by minors) in order to protect minors from online harm. The bill requires platforms to disclose how they use algorithm and targeted ads in regards to minors (I am sticking with this term in order to be consistent with the language of the bill, as it directly provides to distinct definitions for minors and children), restrict access to minor’s personal data, provide both children and parents with the ability report any harm taking place on the platform, refrain from advertising products that are illegal to sell to minors, and report annually the foreseeable risk to minors posed by them using the platform. It also requires platforms to give parents/guardians the tools to supervise minors’ use of the online platform, and establishes a program to run “relevant public interest research”.

Those in favor of the bill are in favor because it would require platforms to act in the best interests of minors, which would include taking more steps to prevents things such as cyberbullying, ads/posts promoting disordered eating/other forms of self harm, and sexual exploitation/abuse. They also cite the various studies that indicate that social media can do more harm than good to children/minors, and argue that additional filtering by the parent could help to mitigate this.

However, those against it point out that if can lead to over-filtering. This is because it will leave it up to the parent/guardian of the minor to decide what they wish for their child to see. This could result in minors not being able to access resources that they may need, such as resources/information about LGBTQ+ subjects (this concern is strong for many, especially due to the recent debate over whether or not these subjects are appropriate for minors/children), resources/ways to report domestic abuse, as well as numerous other subjects that the parent/guardian may not want the minor to be able to access (Note: The amended bill gives the FTC responsibility for training platforms on how to avoid parental misuse, but many believe this to be very unlikely to solve the problem). Additionally, there is the simply concern that it would give almost no privacy to the minors in question. There is also concern over data collection, as this bill would most likely cause platforms to retain more personal information from users, whether that be to verify age or to retain information for the parents/guardians of these minors.

#mutedrainbowxo #ask #KOSA #kids online safety act

4 notes · View notes

briarpatch-kids · 1 year

Note

Can I ask where about is Tay developmentally? He’s interacted with some of my posts but I feel like they ain’t exactly appropriate for him and I’ve debated blocking for his own wellbeing. I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and presume competence, but I also don’t want to accidentally traumatize the kid.

I dont want to place Tay developmentally because it's not my job and it's pretty rude and I don't believe in "developmental age" but he needs a pretty censored version of the internet so do what you're comfortable with. I use the tag "Tay dont look" for stuff I don't want him to see. But also it's pretty normal for him not to follow his friends back for the same reason. (People worried they'll hurt him)

#i use a can it be shown on daytime tv approach for Tay and blocking things #tay dont look

6 notes · View notes

sixstringphonic · 1 year

Text

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies. (NYT, 7/17/23)

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

#jesus christ this is terrifying #Republicans are terrifying #U.S. elections 2024 #American politics #jesus #christ #next he'll try to do away with term limits #he wants to be Putin #i just #key smash

1 note · View note