Not done yet, apparently

[rivkat]

Thoughts inspired by cryptoxin's post, among others: No doubt where you stand on Recent LJ Events depends in part on where you sit. Here's where I sit: I don't consider myself a member of HP fandom, but my primary fandom for the last few years has been Smallville.

Here are some pictures of people the narrative told us were 15:

That's the poster advertising the show, plastered everywhere in public in mid-2001. Then there's the episode "Nicodemus":



So we're supposed to desire them -- bluntly, we're supposed to fantasize about fucking them -- but we're not supposted to say that. And we're not supposed to share our fantasies, because that would be sick. Contradictory and hypocritical are words you could use about mainstream depictions of adolescent sexuality -- which is not to accuse anyone in this debate, but to point out that the American social context is, at best, confusing. And to say that I'm basically with coffeeandink; one of the things I want from fandom as a community of women is the ability to say, "hey, that emperor [or in this case, kid] isn't wearing any clothes!"

NYU law professor Amy Adler wrote a very interesting piece, The Perverse Law of Child Pornography, available here, arguing that our cultural and legal discourses about child porn contribute to the further sexualization of children. I recommend it to those interested in the theoretical side of all this.

Comments

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

So we're supposed to desire them -- bluntly, we're supposed to fantasize about fucking them -- but we're not supposted to say that.
*claps*

For me, the moral issue of underage fictional porn often has very little to do with the age of the characters involved, and far more with a)how they are depicted (in terms of sexual maturity) by the source b)how the author deals with their age and maturity and c) the power dynamic between the characters.
That said, Smallville's a pretty difficult thing when it comes to all three points. The main issue is obviously Clark/Lex, and while they will eventually be pretty perfectly matched in terms of power as archenemies, they certainly aren't in S1. If an author wants to depict Lex as corrupting/seducing/abusing his position as older friend/mentor, then that's fairly easy to do. However, that has very little to do with age. Lana is of age in S5/6 and she and Lex still aren't equals in terms of power or experience.

In an case, Smallville depicts teenagers extremely preoccupied with romance and sexuality from day one. HP, on the other hand, has only been doing so for the last couple of books, and then still fairly harmlessly (nothing like Clark and Desiree).

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Early SV fic was often either explicitly concerned with the age of consent (or the then-in-effect ban on homosexual conduct in Kansas) or aged the characters up a bit. Specific stories, and I think SV fandom more generally, engaged with the question of whether it's legitimate for a 21-year-old to fuck a 15-year-old -- I remember one story in particular where Lex had already gotten in trouble for sexual conduct with a minor. Fandom, while certainly oversexualizing and using the "everyone's gay!" fantasy with a vengeance, was also more honest about teen sexuality than the official texts.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I think it's also very hard to equate the desire to have sex with either one of those depicted bodies (both of which are actually those of considerably older people, as I understand KK--already a couple of years older than Lana--had a body double for that scene) with the desire to have sex with a child. Which is not to say that having sex with a fifteen-year-old would be moral or ethical, but to experience desire for a body like that would be to experience desire for an adult body.

When I read Adler's piece last year I was surprised it hadn't been written ten years earlier.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree that those aren't fifteen-year-old bodies -- but the narrative is explicitly telling us that they are, and that's part of the problem. Teens are desirable, but you are not to desire them.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Without taboos, how would we sell things???

[thelana.livejournal.com]

Incidentally these bodies might be even older since they actually used a bodydouble for the Lana scene since KK (who is actually much skinnier/less curved) was uncomfortable shooting this particular scene (she must have been 18/19 around that time).
.

[chase820.livejournal.com]

Totally with you on America's contradictory attitude towards teen sexuality.

A lot of early BtVS worked off the pout-and-wiggle appeal of its heroine, too. But I guess Buffy having sex with a 300-year-old vampire when she was 17 was okay, because she was punished for it.

[corinna-5.livejournal.com]

James Kincaid's very accessible literary study Child Loving makes much the same point as you say Adler does - I cannot deal with that screwy web formatting to check if she cites him. He is mostly focused on the discourse about children and sexuality in the Victorian era, although in the final chapters he moves forward to 90s to talk about how some of those same cultural behaviors survive. He ends up walking a fairly fine line, and I think he pulls it off, but then again, the discomfort I felt even walking around a liberal university town carrying a book called Child Loving suggests how well-policed those mental borders are.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, there's a link to a Word version on that page, or if you google the title you will find a text version as one of the first results.

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

I never watched SV, and but wasn't the actor who played Clark twenty-five at the start of the show, or something? He was playing bait; he was actually my age or older. So I didn't feel bad about noticing he was sexy, and I thought nothing of a friend thinking he was sexy. (I used the same reasoning when I felt a little oogy over noticing early Buffy was hot; SMG was of age, about 20? when she played 16.)

I actually thought the casting of Welling (and showing his body that way) was a bit preposterous. I guess they could get away with saying he's an alien to explain how old he looked, but as you say, it was their choice to sexualize him as they did.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Yes he was 25, and it was silly then, but silly in a way reflective of our sexual screwiness (so to speak): he had to be really hot to sell the show, but the plot required a 15-year-old, and it's hard to find a real 15-year-old with a body like that -- I'm willing to bet he didn't look like that at 15, if only because of lesser access to physical trainers.

[thistle90.livejournal.com]

Very good points. And pics. :)

I was actually disturbed by the age of Clark when I first started reading SV fic (that wasn't future fic). But I got over it. I mean look at those pics!

[meret.livejournal.com]

The issue for me comes down to how old the actors are and how old they look. I don't read HP, but a lot of what I've heard about some of their stories does squick me. (I'm just talking about my personal reaction, not the legality of it or should it be banned etc.) However TW was 25 in season one and looked it, and I have no idea how LJ would react to that if it came up.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Thanks for this post.

[cryptoxin.livejournal.com]

You make a really good point. This is where I get very conflicted: I'm disturbed by the cultural trend of marketing adolescent female pop stars for eroticized consumption by the adult male (hetero) gaze. I'm thinking early Britney Spears videos (and the infamous Bob Dole commercial, when she was still 19) and things like the proliferation of websites counting down the days until teenage starlets become "legal" (i.e., the Olsen Twins).

This feels to me very much like a bad thing for teenage girls. At the same time, the repression and disavowal of adolescent sexuality also feels very much like a bad thing for teenage girls. And it's all tied in with all kinds of other broader cultural dynamics around sexuality and gender.

So I came to fanfic with a certain investment in -- well, let's call it something like empowerment and self-determination for adolescents viz. sexuality, paired with a desire to resist the normalization of adult (male) consumption of sexualized images of (female) teenagers. And in fanfic, I found a certain normalization of adult (female) consumption of sexualized images of (male) teenagers. And I wasn't sure what to do with that. I can recognize the various ways where these phenomena aren't exactly parallel or analogous, but I'm still troubled by the residual intersections.

I should qualify here that I have read and enjoyed HP fanfic that would count as chan -- and I'm pretty much at a loss as to identifying any potential harm involved with it. So this is more around my hope to resolve apparent contradictions in my own position than a critique of chan per se. And wherever I end up, I'd certainly object to any strategy calling for the suppression of chan fic and art.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I don't claim to have any answers, either. But I'm troubled by the idea, which I find persuasive, that the HP art at issue seemed beyond the pale whereas a gender-reversed version wouldn't, because we (societally) are used to looking at female bodies in the same age range and not thinking such images are beyond the pale.

I wish I knew what to do about the problems you identify. And fast -- before my toddler and my 3-month old start having to negotiate all this toxic culture that not even the adults can handle with any grace.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

So I came to fanfic with a certain investment in -- well, let's call it something like empowerment and self-determination for adolescents viz. sexuality, paired with a desire to resist the normalization of adult (male) consumption of sexualized images of (female) teenagers. And in fanfic, I found a certain normalization of adult (female) consumption of sexualized images of (male) teenagers. And I wasn't sure what to do with that. I can recognize the various ways where these phenomena aren't exactly parallel or analogous, but I'm still troubled by the residual intersections.

Excellent points, superbly put.

Since I just found myself writing a 16 year old Faramir (and the whole perception of Frodo as more Elijah Wood's age than the canon text's age 50 is rife in my fandom), I know what you mean.

And yet, as you say, the phenomena aren't parallel: although the number of stories of adult female teachers sexually involved with male students has gone up (or at least reporting has gone up in recent years), I'd guess (I have no proof) that the percentage is still quite low compared to adult male teachers/female students.

Just as I would wager the adult males involved with much younger females is much greater...and since the age difference between a minor and an adult can be only a year or so, well--that "barely legal" community somebody linked to the other day (not threatened with deletion) was scary as hell.

The confusion of six year olds with sixteen year olds is also frustrating as all get out.

I guess I would hope that socially the empowerment and education of young women and men would be seen as more important that it is (and living in Texas, well, don't even get me started).

However, the whole area is so complex--I appreciate seeing someone willing to so clearly lay out and think about the contradictions which I imagine many of us share.

And yes, I would completely oppose any attempt to suppress chan art and fic.

I mostly stay away from the HP fics because of my own major resistance to anything involving teachers and students, whether or not the student is legal or not. However, I there are issues even within LOTR fandom, especially LOTRips, so it's not just HP fandom.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

One of the aspects of the HP series that I've seen so rarely discussed is that in a way, JKR wrote the equivilent of a teacher/student relationship into her books, at least age-wise, when she has Remus Lupin (who's a classmate of Severus Snape's) marry Nymphadora Tonks, who was one of Snape's students. Had Remus been teaching at Hogwarts four years earlier than he did, he would have been Tonks' teacher, and before they became romantically involved in Book Six, there were tonnes of completely canon-compliant fics that had him teaching Muggle Studies or assisting another professor or as a library assistant during her first or second year. So while I can see the issue being an issue when one participant is in school, JKR has strongly implied that 14-17 year age differences are fine when one party is, say, 22 or 24.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Lovely post--superb thoughts--I see we have a couple of interests (firefly, terry pratchett, woot!) in common not to mention friends, so I friended you!

p.s.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Oops, sorry, meant to say I'd linked to your post (I cam here via a link so I hope that's OK). If not, let me know and I'll delete.

Re: p.s.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

No one ever needs permission to link to a public post of mine, but thanks for letting me know!

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry.

I'm calm now.

The image that got ponderosa121 suspended and caused the whole kerfuffle was a sexually explicit image that certainly seemed to me to be of an underage Harry, by virtue of seeming to be in the dungeon, where Snape (who died before Harry was 18!) hasn't been since the end of HBP (when Harry was 16). If the drawing had been posted before HBP came out, *maybe* I'd give the artist the benefit of the doubt that Harry was an adult, but since then, not so much.

The issue is a combination of the explicitness of the image and the age of the characters rather than just "suggestiveness."

Suggest all you want.

But if you're going to draw people interacting with each others' naughty bits, and transport them in interstate commerce, they'd better be above 18.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I have a teacher/student squick and spent about half a second looking at the picture, and I have no reason to disagree with you on that, though I'm terrible at age judgments myself.

But what I have trouble with is the idea that it's okay to suggest (as SV did) that we fantasize about sex with supposed 15-year-olds -- okay to show them stripping and, in Lana's case, soliciting sex -- but not okay to describe or show it. Assuming Snape and Harry were real, it would have been just as immoral for Snape to have clothed sexual contact with Harry. In other words, I'm not sure that explicitness is a good dividing line -- it seems to encourage us to fantasize about the taboo, as Amy Adler's article argues. SV entices us to imagine what ponderosa121 showed.

And I can't agree that sexual drawings featuring no actual people have to be limited to the (obviously?) over 18 as a matter of law -- as I said somewhere else in these discussions, I had legal sex before then; if sex before 18 is legal, I can't make myself say it should be unrepresentable, though I admit I'm not willing to fight about depictions of actual sex. I am not trying to argue you out of your reaction, but the "transport them in interstate commerce" language suggests you're talking about law, and I agree with the Supreme Court's Ashcroft ruling: when no real people are involved, you can't just have a blanket ban.

[lastscorpion.livejournal.com]

I am not now and never have been a member of pornish_pixies; I've only seen the drawing in the comments to the news thing, and I don't remember exactly where I "heard" this, so take it with a grain of salt, but somebody somewhere said that it was an illustration/accompaniment to a fic where Harry was older -- it was either an older futurefic story or a DH AU.

FWIW. :-(

[(Anonymous)]

That rumor's now been debunked:

http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/ponderosa121/2742.html

Sorry for spreading it around.

--LastScorpion--

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Ah! Now, you see, I am not an HP fan and haven't read the books, so didn't even *think* of all those bits of canon that would point to Harry being underage in America. I just assumed it was a fantasy piece (as slash is, after all), and made my age-judgement call on the appearance of the bodies.

[sapphoq.livejournal.com]

The thing is that Harry Potter is a fiction character. Not all porn is obscene under United States fed laws.

What I really wanted to say is the style of Manga art makes for younger looking characters as it is.

I don't want El Jay to ban all adult or controversial stuff, though I do wonder if that is what it will come down to.

A vanilla site.

spike

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

SV was the first fandom where I read fanfiction. And one point I've kept coming back to, the past few days, is just what you're exploring here - Clark Kent and Lana Lang were supposed to be 15 years old (although I think they ret-conned Clark to 14? Somebody said that about later seasons, but I'm no longer watching so I don't know for sure), but in no universe could Tom Welling be seen as anything other than a sexually mature male. KK is a slightly more borderline case, in my view, because she still looks very *young* to me. But either way, the characters were objectified and promoted as desirous in the narrative.

The disconnect between that treatment and LJs recent actions have me boggled.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I think it was less retcon than continuity error, but yeah. Actually, I liked that early SV fic often dealt with the age question overtly, because it was so obvious an issue.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I liked that too, and SV porn was a large portion of what I read. Had it not confronted the age difference between Clark and Lex directly, I suspect I'd have been uncomfortable. Clark's emotional innocence was quite apparent, even as his body was being used to sell the show (I know many, many women who watched because of the promo poster on the side of bus stops - they knew *exactly* what they were doing). And Lex had both maturity and a kind of decadence that allowed for exploration of their unequal levels of experience.

Other fandoms I've been involved in that have teenaged characters were Harry Potter (mostly as a reader), Everwood, and The O.C. To deny that sex could take place, when the TV shows were *showing* the teens (or at least suggesting strongly), is to deny the reality of life. If that's what LJ wants to do, the odds of my remaining here get lower and lower.

[andreth-47.livejournal.com]

Contradictory and hypocritical are words you could use about mainstream depictions of adolescent sexuality [...] one of the things I want from fandom as a community of women is the ability to say, "hey, that emperor [or in this case, kid] isn't wearing any clothes!"

You said this so well! The simultaneous repression/titillation of sexuality is one of my deepest frustrations with American culture. It's annoying and depressing, but I suppose inevitable, that it made its ugly way into fandom. Bleah!

ps - I'm an admirer of your fic from way back. You and mustangsally wrote some of the best Buffy fic I've ever read, you're all over my bookmarks! Would you mind terribly if I friended you?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You're certainly welcome here, though I must warn you that book reviews are much more common these days than fic.

[vaznetti]

Yes. I think I'm probably on the more conservative side with regard to the deletions and the range of things which I think should be easily available to outsiders to the fannish community, but that doesn't mean that I can't see the disjunction (or connection) between the panic about the corruption of childhood and the media pressure to desire children in their early teens.

[vashti.livejournal.com]

The minimum age for "glamour" models in the UK used to be 16. Gutter tabloid The Sun featured Samantha Fox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Fox) modelling naked at that age, 20 years ago.

Nowadays, of course, those pictures are illegal and the Sun campaigns for the burning at the stake of anyone who might have copies of them. Not in those terms, of course.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating -- some of the same things have happened over here, with Brooke Shields (that desert island movie; "nothing comes between me and my Calvins").

[beckaandzac.livejournal.com]

This is a really excellent point, really well made. I've been rewatching s1 of SV, and you've summed up a lot of my loose thoughts here. I was watching "Drone" yesterday, where Lana makes a comment about the need "to institute topless waitressing" if business at the Talon doesn't pick up. Obviously the viewer is expected to feel a surge of sympathetic lust with Clark when Lana says that. It's explicit in the text of the show, and raising the possibility that fan-discussion of that same lust is child porn is just headache-inducing. American culture is ridiculously hypocritical on this point. I'm looking forward to reading the Adler article.

(I've been lurking around SV fandom for several months, and I've read a bunch of your fic, which is fantastic.)

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[ciaan]

Thank you for linking to that article by Amy Adler. It was absolutely fascinating. It's something I've been considering for a while: how do we talk about things that are wrong without perpetuating them by talking about them so much? I know I've certainly been discussing "child porn" much more now that LJ is going after it than I ever was before.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found the article interesting. It's the same with me.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Queer As Folk had a 15 year old Nathan being seduced by a much older man in the first episode, and it was never shown to be a terrible thing. In fact we were encouraged to think that it was hot as there plenty of repeat performances, not to mention the scenes lingering on Nathan's chest as he stands around in just a towel. Although I'm not sure the age of the actor who played him, but he would obviously have been older than 18 to legally play the part

I think the issue with the HP is that a lot of people do associate it with children who really do look and act their age, which is quite rare these days as usually it's actors in their early 20's to play teens. The HP actors were seen growing up with the parts. Plus the films are more directly aimed at young children as well, so people probably find it creepier to see them sexualised and in explicit drawings with a schoolteacher. Whereas with Clex from SV, or with QAF, it's not seen as reading so much as reading things into the text that isn't there. Even if people don't see the Clex on SV at all, the gut response isn't that those characters are just kids, why on earth do you want to fantasize about them for, because, like you say, TW so clearly wasn't 15.

[romanyg.livejournal.com]

*here via bop_radar and IJ*

Yes. In many fandoms, the source text sexualizes minors. And society tells us that we're supposed to buy/consume products based on this sexualization, but we're not supposed to create our own product based on the same thing or deal with the issues raised in any kind of positive way. It's all backroom shame and plain brown paper wrappers.

Sexuality, and adolescent sexuality at that, is *such* an integral part of Smallville canon. And in S4 they do retcon Clark's age, reduce it by a year, so that his Las Vegas elopement with Alicia can in no way be legal. But there we go again with adolescent sexuality (17-year old Clark wants to get married so he can have SEX!).

But we're perverts and child pornographers for discussing, drawing or writing about the product sold to us.