“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.
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.
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)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.
Ah yes, this is the democracy some people talk about
Authoritarians gonna authoritarian regardless of economic model.
Democracies can also ban porn. See: South Korea, India, Ukraine, Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, etc…
Its a conservatism issue.
You can add about a third of the USA at this post as well.
Don’t be silly, democracy is only when private companies do all encompassing AI powered surveillance.
If you’ve left a comment on a YouTube video, a new website claims it might be able to find every comment you’ve ever left on any video you’ve ever watched. Then an AI can build a profile of the commenter and guess where you live, what languages you speak, and what your politics might be.
According to the developer, they’ve provided the tool to cops in Portugal, Belgium, and “other countries in Europe.” They told 404 Media that the website is meant for private investigators, journalists, and cops.
Don’t Chinese private mega corporations do this too?
Chinese corporations do only what government allows them to do, any more and the CEO “takes an extended vacation”.
Well yeah and the government really wants to pry into every aspect of your life. So you’ll have the same shit
Now we only need to find a source of how many lgbtq+ fiction writers have been arrested in those same countries and we can proceed with the comparison.
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.
But .ml communities promise meChina has mote free speech than the West! How is this possible?
/s
You don’t even have to be charged with anything before ICE grabs you off the street and throws you in a van in the US…
Which is true for China as well
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.
Yeah, unfortunately the US is becoming more and more like China in this regard.
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”
Also useless whataboutism. The sign of someone who has no arguments left to defend their beliefs.
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.
Move the goalpost much? The US is in “the west” and they consistently set the tone and run the show. Welcome to geopolitics hope you enjoy your stay!
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?
Can you connect these dots for me?
Nah.
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.
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
Che Guevara, from Desalinas PFP, was also rather homophonic
Which other word did he sound like?
Wdym?
This isn’t a purity test. This is me making fun of the tankies on .ml
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”.
Can’t expect much from .world with such things.
And you can expect better from a .ml?
You’re siding with a tankie over an anarchist here btw.
Really? I see 95% of the comments saying it’s China fucking up and they don’t like it.
Most upvoted comment: Attacking the source - Defending
2nd: No proof, but it’s serious so people wouldn’t lie - Benefit of the Doubt
3rd: “Rare China L” - Criticizing
4th: Attacking source, attacking extent - Defending
5th: “If it is happening it’s probably because of taxes or some legit reason” - Defending
6th: “Making porn is illegal” - Defending
7th: “The whole thing smells a little fishy” - Defending
8th: Attacking source, ‘not inclined to believe it’ - Defending
9th: An author in another country wrote some pedophilic, this is probably the same - Defending
10th: Boo - Criticizing
11th: ‘porn struggle session’ - Unknown what way the comment leans.
12th: A quote from another article - Looks Criticizing
13th and least upvoted: “Hexbear users claim to unconditionally support queer rights and then try to run defence for this shit.” - Criticizing
Defending: 7
Critic: 4 (maybe +2)Where are you getting 95% from?
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.
“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.
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
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?
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.
and here’s why the BBC is blocked in Vietnam
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?
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.
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?
Crazy amount of side information you have there. The sterilisation part is wild
Not that wild. 150 years ago, during imperial rule, you get your head chopped off along with your close relatives for criticizing the emperor, this is tame in comparison.
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
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.
I dare say that that’s probably not the cause why women today want to have no or fewer children.
I suspect it’s more about economic factors, such as the prospect of having a stable job for the next 40 years, and the prospect of stability that this brings. Society changes so rapidly that it would be absurd to think that people are still gonna have well-paying jobs in 40 years. We’re already seeing a Cost-of-Living crisis today, or rather, a crisis of jobs not paying a living wage. That’s only gonna get more severe over time.
Compare that to other cultures around the world (consider developing countries such as rural africa was 30+ years ago, and medieval europe). They had rough lifes and often didn’t value women. But they had Stability: They could be reasonably certain that their living conditions should be roughly the same in 40+ years from now, so they can have some children. If they can feed them today, the children will be able to feed themselves in 40 years. Because society was static like that.
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.
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.
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.
Weirdly they are more progressive when it comes to prostitution; prostitution isnt illegal, but soliciting it is.
The future is here.
The future of our countries, if we don’t act and stop conservativism.
deleted by creator
no disrespect, what the hell are you talking about
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.
