FA+
Shop
The New AUP
15 years ago
General
*I wrote most of this a few days ago and then hesitated to post it. It’s a lot of rambling, but the short version is that I’m unhappy about the new AUP and afraid some of my stories will have to be removed. I’ve created an Inkbunny account and will likely begin uploading my existing stories there soon.*
Hello FurAffinity,
I had a nice Thanksgiving with my family down in the Outer Banks. I celebrated my 24th birthday on Friday. I had no Internet access for four days. It was nice and relaxing.
And then I came home. And logged onto FA. And saw the new AUP and the explanation. And my heart sank.
”FA does not permit content containing minors involved in sexual situations. This applies to humans (Loli, Shota) or otherwise human-like characters (i.e. Cub) who are, without question, under the general legal age (18). Images or stories where the character is of questionable or indeterminable age will be up to the discretion of the administration.”
Cub porn is not my kink; usually it doesn’t do a whole lot for me. However, considering the sort of things I do like I know I’m in no place to judge. It’s not hurting anyone and there is no sound logical reason to ban it. I didn’t think a ban of this sort would ever happen on FA.
The wrongness and the unfairness of the situation are just sickening. I understand that this was a decision forced by financial necessity, but the end result is the same. All day Monday my mind was preoccupied. It was hard to concentrate. I didn’t know what to do, and honestly I’m not yet sure that I do.
I am concerned that many of my own stories may be in danger. With no offense meant to any dragons who may be reading, a draconian interpretation of the new rules would be very bad for my gallery. I’ve always assumed “cub” referred to prepubescent furs; therefore I’ve never considered myself a cub artist. I usually prefer characters that are young but sexually mature or maturing. The new AUP outlaws any characters in “sexual situations” who are under the arbitrary age of 18, regardless of sexual maturity. I almost never state the ages of my characters, preferring to leave that open for interpretation, but there are some characters of mine who are certainly not 18 years old. Depending on how broadly “without question” and “sexual situations” are defined, their stories may be forcibly evicted from FA (Rhetorical: Why would snuff be acceptable but sex wouldn’t?).
I’ve heard good things about Inkbunny, but I don’t want to have to leave FA. I barely have time for FA anymore, and I don’t want to have another website to get addicted to. I like it here, but I don’t know if I’m welcome any longer.
I was thinking about my dilemma the other night in the shower, and something occurred to me. There are three main stances on cub porn: those who are against it, those who support it, and those who are ambivalent. Those who are ambivalent are unaffected by the new AUP and will stay. Many of those who support cub porn will leave. Those who are opposed to cub porn will stay. And this was my thought: I don’t want to stay if the sort of people who joined Cub Protest and Intolerant Furs get to not only stay but also claim a victory, regardless of whether they actually influenced the decision or not. They say they don’t want to be associated with a website that allows cub porn; I say I don’t want to be associated with them.
There’s more. Sunday night after I saw the new AUP, I had a dream. Many of the details have escaped me, but there was a person who identified himself as Alfador. I’ve never met Alfador in real life, so my subconscious made him look like a guy I knew in high school. Through some series of events, I ended up on a leash being led by Alfador. I went along with it; in my dream I was having fun. I very rarely have dreams that I can remember when I wake up and I don’t tend to assign any meaning to them, but maybe my subconscious really is trying to tell me something. I know Alfador is pretty much leaving FA for Inkbunny. Perhaps I should follow.
I have created an account at Inkbunny at http://inkbunny.net/KintoMythostian . I haven’t done anything with it yet, but I plan to in the near future. I will likely upload my existing stories in chronological order over the span of a couple weeks.
That said, I’m not ready to quit FA cold turkey; there are too many great artists and great people still here. In the future I will probably upload new submissions to both sites (I’m still writing, just not as prolifically). If the submission contains material that will violate the FA AUP, it will only be uploaded to Inkbunny.
I’m normally a very passive person. It’s not like me to speak out or get involved in controversy. However, I feel like I need to take a stand on this. I didn’t think that cub porn was my kink, but apparently that includes anything under the age of 18 so maybe I thought wrong. Even if I wasn’t directly affected by this, I would still be opposed to the new AUP. I’m watched by fewer than 50 people, so my opinion will probably go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things, but I didn’t want to stay silent.
Thank you for reading this far,
Kinto
P.S. There are snacks and horny, willing 17-year-old vixens in the back. Enjoy them while you still can.
*huggles* See you there!
(Rhetorical: Why would snuff be acceptable but sex wouldn’t?)
This caught my eye, and I think I know the answer.
Basically, it simply boils down to this: Our culture glorifies violence, and demonizes sex. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. It's okay to show photo-realistic violence and gore - very few people will get in up arms about that, because violence = good, or at least acceptable. You can even kill children in fiction, in lovingly graphic detail, and no one bats an eye.
But sex? A simple five-second flash of a female nipple is enough to get thousands of people worked up into a very vocal, outraged uproar. Overt sexual content is relegated to PG-13 movies or higher (and the more graphic the content, the higher the rating.) A movie or TV show can have very little violence, or even no violence at all, but it can be slapped with an R-rating if there's a single graphic sex scene.
And if you involve minors in any way, God help you. Because, even though owning every single Saw and Hostel film (Director's Cuts, even!) doesn't make you a murderer, because, well, it's only fictional violence... a single hentai featuring underage characters automatically makes you a filthy, disgusting pedophile and you deserve to rot in prison - or in the ditch, depending on who you ask.
It's a gross double-standard and blatant hypocrisy. If every other form of fictional "immorality" gets a pass due to not being real, so should sex, even if it involves (fictional) minors. I'm not even a supporter of "cub porn" (in fact, I find it distasteful at best,) and I still can't stomach the ignorance, hyperbole, and sheer hypocrisy surrounding the whole matter. I'm not called a murderer, kidnapper, thief, or rapist simply for owning (and creating) fictional works involving those subjects, so I find it disturbing that someone should be called a pedophile simply for owning and/or creating fictional works involving minors in sexual situations.