“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.
“I’ll never forget it - being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”
The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least 8 in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.
At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.
It’s upsetting how western voices wouldn’t matter in this discourse but I hope progressives in china will be able to campaign against this and make porn legal and commercially available or atleast present under a government organisation
Yeah porn is so empowering.. Very progressive
Yes because only unethically-produced porn exists…? I don’t get your point.
the exploitation industry if writing erotica for the fun of it and putting it online.
would anyone think of the exploited IT workers who maintain the wattpad servers
writes a book that is 57 petrabytes large
Clicks “save to cloud.”
As much as I like to stan China for how they treat their billionaires and corporations, this is wrong. Sex work, in all its forms, is a valid, lucrative, and old line of work across the world. China is one of the most developed nations on Earth. They should also be the most progressive when it comes to this. Smh
it’s valid to support some policies in some places without it making you a fervant supporter of everything that state does.
like I love how china actually invests in infrastructure, including housing and public transit and walkable cities.
I dont like what they do in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
They should also be the most progressive
The tankie government that denies Tiananmen Square doesn’t have much regard for individual rights?
More like porn is illegal, just like in half the US. Give it two years we’ll hear much worse about gay erotica artists being arrested in Texas and held without trial
just like in half the US
It isn’t.
States are banning pornhub and making websites require ID checks. They’re banning porn.
That’s not illegalizing it & it’s not throwing erotica writers in jail. Don’t believe me? Cite the laws. It’s legal.
So if it’s prohibited by a law then it’s not illegal?
My state literally made pornhub illegal today please stop doing apologia and/or propaganda
China has always banned porn, if that is an issue or you oppose this woman being arrested for producing pornography then you should probably take efforts in america to prevent these exact same laws from being passed in your state (something that is already being done whether you choose to pay attention or not)
Arguing against anything I said wouldve been more productive and more interesting than promoting an abject lie that american states arent currently implementing the same authoritarian restrictions on legally produced pornography as the CCP with the list of states doing so ever expanding.
You’re welcome to sleepwalk into authoritarianism but I will continue to call it out in spite of people who choose to plug their ears or derail the conversation away from the growing surveillance state in america. Americans cant influence Chinese internal politics, so when something is wrong there they should look at what they can do to prevent the same thing from occurring here instead of just braying about how bad china is for doing what we will be doing within the decade. Why even come here just to be pithy and wrong?
Weirdly they are more progressive when it comes to prostitution; prostitution isnt illegal, but soliciting it is.
From what i take from the article, it’s mostly about people who earn money through erotic fiction?
I.e., i personally see a difference between producing erotic fiction for fun, and producing it for monetary rewards. I guess the argument could be that if you do it for a monetary reward, you’re not contributing to society in a measurable way, which is why it’s difficult to earn money with it; similar to gambling or making money on recreational drugs.
I guess a counterargument to that could be that writing erotic fiction does contribute to society, similar to how developing video games does, because it contributes to the mental wellbeing of the people.
I’m not saying that the arrests were right; just trying to come up with possible ways to look at this (by playing devil’s advocate). And countering these arguments as well.
Nothing to do with that, China bans all explicit content, whether it’s porn videos, photos, or in suggestive text form.
You know this is bad when even Hexbear isn’t defending it. https://hexbear.net/post/5403841
LGBT rights are human rights, everywhere.
All the posts I read were defending or excusing it.
Applying nuance and researching more context instead of jerking off while grunting “china bad authoritarianism” isnt defending or excusing. You’re just annoyed they dont join your circlejerk.
I read all the comments, there was no research, just saying “It’s pedos for sure”.
Yea… porn in illegal in China, erotic stories is just “word-porn” basically, this is nothing new.
This is what conservatism does. Same in China, same in the Deep South of the US (the only reason why porn is still legal-ish in the south is because of the first amendment, but the constitution is being eroded so that might not last long)
Conservatism is a disease that many countries still have. Take a look at this map:
Porn being legal is mostly only a thing in the “western world”.
Even if China has a liberal democracy like in the west, people would still elect conservatives. See democratic countries like: India, South Korea, Ukraine, Phillippines, Malaysia, they all made porn illegal despite being democratic.
I’m cisgender and probably straight (or asexual not sure tbh), but if I was trans or gay, my parents would’ve disowned me for being “mentally ill” and gave me zero inheritance. I mean, even currently with depression, my parents are already thinking about leaving me out of the will for being a “useless eater”, imagine if I was LGBT. For context, parents are from Mainland, PRC, currently we’re in the US, they are conservstives that just thinks everyone who’s is depressed is either “faking it” or crazy psychopaths and/or “useless eaters”. I hate my life.
Yeah porn is so empowering..
Why do you keep posting this? Your problem isn’t with people looking at naked pictures or lewd stories, it’s with exploitation. That’s a capitalist problem, not a porn one. Are you suggesting that in cases of capitalist exploitation we ban the exploited industry instead of regulating the capitalists?
Antarctica
Data unavailableWhy am I reminded of one old comic? It went like this:
(Scientists on an Antarctic base)
Scientist 1: (Finishes talking about something normal)
Scientist 2: (Disheveled and visibly unhinged) “Well none of that shit matters. Do you know what happened to my stack of Playboy magazines?”
Scientist 1: (Now also suddenly disheveled and visibly unhinged, whips out a knife) “They’re mine now!”
Scientist 2: (Also whips out a knife) “Oh yeah?”
Scientist 1: “Yeah! What are you gonna do about it?”
(Altercation ensues)Yeah India is a striking example of a place where porn really NEEDS to be legal. Way too many horny single men there.
What “broad restrictions” is NZ and Australia under?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_laws_by_region#Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_laws_by_region#New_Zealand
Basically a lot of fetishes/kinks deemed “weird” by the government
Everything on the NZ list is illegal pretty much anywhere in the world though.
No golden showers for the Auzzies though.
The background of the matter transcends conflicts over gender concepts. In recent years, many local governments have been unable to cover their expenses, resulting in a phenomenon known as “distant sea fishing” (远洋捕捞), which refers to “profit-driven law enforcement,” aimed at plundering money from other places. These female writers are just a tiny fraction of the victims. There are also well-known entrepreneurs who have lost their lives due to such extortion.
There are also well-known entrepreneurs who have lost their lives due to such extortion.
I’d be interested to read more, but I’m not sure I’ve heard about “distant sea fishing” before. Can you pass the articles/links to the stories you’re referencing?
I’d be interested to read more, but I’m not sure I’ve heard about “distant sea fishing” before. Can you pass the articles/links to the stories you’re referencing?
This matter is not a secret on the internet in China; there are many open discussions about it. The police in many places have taken proactive measures against this.
The content of the image is: “Note: Police from other regions are not allowed to illegally enter enterprises to investigate cases.”
This Chinese article explains quite clearly: The chilling new trends in ‘distant sea fishing’.
The Supreme Court has already paid great attention to this kind of phenomenon:
To prevent ‘distant sea fishing’ style law enforcement, the Supreme Court has taken action.
I have to say, the effectiveness of these measures is limited. If these types of actions have decreased, it is mainly because companies have become more vigilant, making robbery more difficult.
Yeah well you support a genocide, so you are the last to point fingers at China and anyone else.
bbc
yeah, probably not.
Sticking your fingers in your ears while screaming like a baby does not make reality disappear.
“reality”
every single time i read a bbc article about china it has been a lie upon closer inspection.
you should take western propaganda out of your ears.
Weird. I was told state atheism was the hallmark of human rights.
Weird focus. How about you considering that a one-party authoritarian regime isn’t exactly the hallmark of human rights, atheist or theist?
Because whenever a religious person or entity does a bad thing internet atheists are quick to say “see? This is PROOF that religion SUCKS! This would NEVER happen in an ATHEIST utopia,” sometimes coupled with a call to ban religion or something equally insane. Sometimes you gotta point out the hypocrisy. I wish I was making this up, but yeah.
But .ml communities promise meChina has mote free speech than the West! How is this possible?
/s
To be clear, writing and posting erotica isn’t illegal, its profiting off it that was illegal, which is still fucked, but less of a free speech issue.
It’s really only a matter of degrees as you can sell other things for a profit so why not your literature?
Correct. But at the same time, once you understand your speech is limited by your reach, which is determined by how big of a megaphone the capitalists will let you have, it becomes more murky. You can say whatever you want in America, and if the government doesnt like it, you will be silenced and ignored. The same applies in China, but there is a greater record of the government actually listening, though often to the worst groups, such as nimbys protesting the expansion of the Shangai maglev and assholes protesting even limited lockdowns in the city with the most covid that keeps infecting the rest of the country.
Clearly, the BBC made it all up. Because it contradicts them. /s
Literally the newest top-level comment right now.
You don’t even have to be charged with anything before ICE grabs you off the street at throws you in a van in the US…
Very typical .ml whataboutism. Both things can be bad at the same time. This is not a null sum game.
They’re on .world, how is this .ml Whataboutism to call out that both countries are horrid to their citizens?
It’s not whataboutism to tell the pot to shut the fuck up when it’s calling the kettle black
WAHHHHH THE (non atrocity causing civilians of) COUNTRIES THAT COMMIT ATROCITIES ARE CALLING OUT MY TEAM AND I FEEL MORALLY OBLIGATED TO DEFEND MY TEAM FOR THEIR ATROCITIES.
-you
Can you connect these dots for me?
Nah.
And I assume you wish the US to keep doing that because China is doing that and it’s clearly working?
I’m simply responding to the commenter’s comparison to “the west”. Like, if that’s the game we’re gonna play I think I just scored a point. Both situations are obviously terrible duh
Very USA-Centric of you lol
USA =/= “The West”
USA is very much the “west”.
The “west” is a code for “country who think of themselves as white and civilised”.
The US is part of the west. If it happens in the US, it happens in the west, because the US is in the west.
Also useless whataboutism. The sign of someone who has no arguments left to defend their beliefs.
Use of the expression to discredit or deflect a claim of wrongdoing by attacking the originator of the claim for their own similar behaviour (rather than acknowledging the guilt of both) is the tu quoque logical fallacy.
My own similar behavior? I’m not shoving gays into prison, you fucking idiot.
This isn’t high school debate club and knowing two latin words doesn’t make you smart
Yeah, unfortunately the US is becoming more and more like China in this regard.
Yes it’s fucking horrible, I have the misfortune of living in the US but the same goes for China, North Korea, Russia and I could go on.
Which is true for China as well
Che Guevara, from Desalinas PFP, was also rather homophonic. I wouldn’t make it a point of purity testing. People in the past did things according to their time (not saying its justified).
The .ml crew has enought to criticize today. Big part them being a different flavor of impiralism
This isn’t a purity test. This is me making fun of the tankies on .ml
Che Guevara, from Desalinas PFP, was also rather homophonic
Which other word did he sound like?
Wdym?
You accidentally said “homophonic” instead of “homophobic.” A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another but with a different meaning, e.g. “weight” and “wait”
Liberals are homophonic.
They all sounds the same
They’re actually not. That’s the problem – they can’t all agree on enough things to vote in the same direction!
What do you mean? They all voted for genocide.
lol those were typos.
It’s really weird and kinda reddit-like to see a human rights violation and twist the story to be about some online community.
THIS IS JUST LIKE THAT ONE ANIME
“some” = the one that’s the basis of and technically closely tied to the one you’re using right now
This isn’t about some online community as much as it is a comment on tankies.
Obsessions with “TAnKies” is very much a reddit / lemmy thing, or at least internet slang.
Before 2010 it was mostly used to mean “actual tank fighters”.
Nope, that’s been used for decades you are just seeing the limitations of google’s tools as it happened in places they do not index
I mean there’s something very hypocritical in westerners, living in the countries who manufacture, sell, sometime give actual tanks all over the world, calling people “tankies” lmao
We get it, the ussr sent tanks in the 80ies. Your country sent tanks half a dozen time since then, idiot. There are tanks doing genocide right now in gaza.
No, there isn’t. Anyone claiming to support the liberation of the working classes while praising authoritarian systems that are cracking down on those populations looking for freedom are hypocrites.
It’s weird you would make this about geographic location. Are you doing that because you don’t have a valid critique?
The thing is in your westoid brain, “praising authoritarian systems” just means “not wanting to bomb iran”.
How’s lockheed martin dick taste like? Enjoying it?
Prove it
The term continued to be used into the 1980s, especially in relation to the split between the reform-minded eurocommunist wing of the CPGB and the traditionalist, pro-Soviet group, the latter continuing to be labelled tankies. The term is sometimes used within the Labour Party as slang for a politically old-fashioned leftist. Alastair Campbell reported a conversation about modernising education, in which Tony Blair said: “I’m with George Walden on selection.” Campbell recalled: “DM [David Miliband] looked aghast … [Blair] said when it came to education, DM and I were just a couple of old tankies.”[26] In 2015, Boris Johnson referred to Jeremy Corbyn and the left wing of the Labour Party as “tankies and trots”, the latter referring to Trotskyism.[27][b]
Used by great people like tony blair and bobo the clown lmao
You need to provide a source if you are quoting one.
It’s the same article you fucking idiot
Yes, that’s exactly what they’re talking about and you’re being extremely weird in making it a priority of discussion on something at best tangentially related.
It’s just a straw man writ large because you’re miffed at another online argument you had somewhere else.
You are using straw man incorrectly. Don’t even try to go down the path of rhetorical flaws if you fuck that one up.
You’ve literally defined the argument of an opposing group to look stupid so you can dunk on them. You’re arguing with a straw man. This isn’t even a critique of your rhetorical basis though, it’s just normal Internet lameness.
You cannot present a strawman argument when the side you are arguing against isn’t present. Thus I was not making a straw man. That’s just insulting tankies
Don’t bring these up unless you understand them and in this case you do not.
Lol, what? Do you seriously think you cannot create a straw man argument in anything but direct debate? Sure Mr. Smartman.
Hint, logical fallacies are about the logic, not the debate.
We are referring to the staunch defenders of the oppressive system which this thread is about, defenders who are very proactive on lemmy. The fact that you cannot see the relevance is on you.
Just because you feel like the straw men deserve it doesn’t change that you’re arguing with hypotheticals versions you’ve created instead of actual people.
These authors are being accused of breaking China’s pornography law for “producing and distributing obscene material”. Writers who earn a profit could be jailed for more than 10 years.
The law targets “explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions”.
Jesus I thought there might have been some bullshit pretense, but apparently it’s just straight-up illegal there.
China is not the West, haha. There’s a reason we’re suspicious of them.
“The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.
It’s the same among “Conservatives” in the US, Russia, and now apparently China.
They all say that we’d need “high birth rates”, which is just not true.
Think about it: Automation and AI have the potential to put lots of people into unemployment in the next 20 years. For the sake of preventing that unemployment, it’d be good if people had fewer kids. Yet for some reason, governments struggle really hard to comprehend that simple connection.
Automation and AI have the potential to put lots of people into unemployment in the next 20 years. For the sake of preventing that unemployment, it’d be good if people had fewer kids. Yet for some reason, governments struggle really hard to comprehend that simple connection.
Because they assume all people will be consumers of goods. So if they have more people, there will be more consumers to buy things.
Now the assumption falls apart in any rigor since automation means that less people are needed for labor and would have money to buy gods. But that requires a government that thinks beyond the limited lifetimes of those running the government.
I generally want to have sex with my husband after reading erotica. You know, because it’s arousing. How did this not occur to them?
How many straight men do you know who have a sound grasp on women’s sexuality?
Man, it’s wild to see them go from one-child to this in a single generation.
Overcorrection in policy is not uncommon in authoritarian regimes. I’d imagine because policy carries the threat of imprisonment, not just guidance.
The machine needs meat
This will eventually be the U.S. if we don’t stop the erosion. Right now they are going after trans, brown people. They will turn attention after to others.
Which is funny because I think most conservative and religious politicians are actually into gay sex.
This article has nothing to do with the United States and did not need a US centric comment.
This will happen in your country as well if you are not aware of it’s typical process and spread.
This article serves as a warning against authoritarianism and should be discussed in every context.
I know nothing about Chinese child care, but reading that the government wishes for more child rearing, might it be that there are other systemic problems like no access to child care facilities, a culture that doesn’t value women and people exhausted by long work days? I might have read that this is part of the root cause in korea. But sure, some gay novels might also be the reason for significant numbers. Overall the Chinese are somewhat known for pragmatic approaches, why chasing illusions in this case? The total number of readers and writers can’t be that huge can’t it?
I cant speak about all of China, but of the 6 cities Ive been to, each had far more accessible child-care-related facilities than the US, from schools within walking distance of tower blocks to more parks and infrastructure/personnel to help kids get there without crossing busy roads, to massive libraries with play places, movie theaters, family restaurants, to tiny amusement parks.
Chinese child care is the adults going to work and the older generation (the grandparents) take care of the child.
Or sometimes my mother brought me to her workplace and I just sat there playing a video game on the portable dvd player thing with the games loaded on a dvd (or a cd, idk the difference) and with controllers attached to it. (She worked at an electronics store as a salesperson).
My parents were in an arranged marriage (the consensual type, I think, but there was high pressures to enter into a marriage), and they argue a lot.
When we first immigrated to the US, my maternal grandparents weren’t part of the “immediate” family, so they weren’t allowed on the immigration visa, my paternal side of the family (who are already in the US) didn’t like the responsibility of taking care of us (unlike my maternal side of the family), so my older brother who was around age 13-15 at the time when we first arrived, had to pick me up from school, and he resented having this responsibility, my brother didn’t really like me, we were frienemies (now, present day, actual enemies).
But eventually, like around 6th grade I just walked home by myself. Most of the time, the house was empty (other than my brother). I barely talked with my parents, never had real emotional connections with them.
Childcare in China isn’t that different from the US. (Well… in the US, kids get like a small child credit in their parent’s tax returns, and some food stamps, but that’s about it) The lower class is really very similar regardless of country. We the lower class people have more in common with each other than we do with the rich that runs our respective countries.
(If you are confused at the “Older Brother” part, my mother “illegally” gave birth to me. Then they sterilized her to make sure she can’t violate the one child policy again. I was literally not even supposed to be born.)
Crazy amount of side information you have there. The sterilisation part is wild, i had the impression that the one child policy was only very scarcely enforced anyway and people had less kids due economics
Here in germoney there are church, state and private run kindergartens where you drop off your child 6 to 12 hours, they are not super easily available in big cities bit its a widely available system
I mean whats the alternative? Everyone lives in some big city but grandparents usually remain in the old desolated villages. Confining women to a life as care taker for at least 6 years?
This reflects a typical right wing approach to “increasing birthrates”: Reinforcing “”““traditional family values””“”, vilifying defiance of gender norms and addressing anything but the root cause.
Overall the Chinese are somewhat known for pragmatic approaches, why chasing illusions in this case? The total number of readers and writers can’t be that huge can’t it?
Probably enlightened despotism giving way to regular despotism. Facing economic problems, and having shed all pretense of being socialist, the Chinese ruling class likely needs a scapegoat for the country’s troubles.
Sounds plausible, crazy how that always works
Maybe still effects of the one-child-policy times. It’s probably much easier to punish people for having too many children than it is to incentivise having more.
The future is here.
The future of our countries, if we don’t act and stop conservativism.
