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April 4, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
22:28
#ChangeTheCover - A Response to the Justicar
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So I woke up the other day to find a video request for myself from one of my favorite YouTubers called The Justicar.
Now if you're not familiar with him, I'll leave a link to his channel in the description.
You should check it out.
And I'll just let him tell you what he's asking of me.
When you look at the cover, there's nothing about it that says I'm being raped.
It says, well, you've seen it.
It's got the Joker and the bad girl, and she looks scared because the Joker is this big, evil, bad guy who does horrible things to people.
Anyway, so the argument was that it's not appropriate for children of that age, children, 12, 13-year-olds, or whatever.
And Sargon said that he agrees that it's not an appropriate thing for people of that age.
It's wrong.
Words to that effect.
And I really wished that this point had been pressed and argued more because I really wanted to see where this was going to go.
I tried to get some clarification from Sargon on Twitter.
He didn't respond.
I'm not saying anything sideways here.
He has many, many times as many subscribers as I do.
I'm a very small fish in a very large pond.
I understand that.
He's a busy man.
So anyway, when I hear someone say that, I take it a bit of a different way.
And I would like for people who are arguing against this, this want of feminists to control what people can put in literature.
I really wish they would stop making these points and stop conceding this shit because it's nonsense.
Whenever you hear someone say for any of the parade of horribles that people engage in, rape, murder, whatever it is you want to pick, you will find a story about that in the collected works of Shakespeare, the greatest playwright of the last 2,000 years, perhaps the greatest playwright ever to have existed.
Take any subject you want.
He's written about it.
It's in one of his works.
One of his publications will have it in there.
At least one of them.
So when I hear someone say that that's not appropriate, what I hear that is saying is, my parents were wrong to have let me read Shakespeare.
My teachers were wrong to have forced me to read Shakespeare for a grade.
I was wrong for having chosen to have read Shakespeare.
Whatever else is true about us, we've now reached a state of development societally or individually where we're beyond the point at which it's appropriate for us to read Shakespeare at that age.
We're just too good to read Shakespeare at that age.
So I really wish, among doing a lot of wishing today, I wish in that conversation with the feminist and Sargon of the Cod, they really could have fleshed out the dimensions of what is and isn't appropriate for children to see and why rape is unique, that it's not appropriate for them, but other things are perfectly fine.
Murder, war, kill, all those things are fine.
This is, well, I don't want to speak for them because I didn't flesh it out.
So Sargon, if you happen to catch this, not on Twitter, please, please, please do a video explaining what you meant at one minute, I'm sorry, one hour, 39 minutes, one hour, 40 minutes into your debate with that feminist.
I would love to hear what you're actually proposing.
Fair enough.
That's a perfectly reasonable request.
Before we go on, here's the clip of the debate so you guys can have context for what I'm about to say.
Like you say, it's because, in your opinion, they're pitching it to kids, and you worry about the damage it will do to kids.
Yeah, on a conceptual level.
Is that not the Jack Thompson argument, then?
The Jack Thompson argument was censoring a broad range of titles based on a bland generalization characteristic.
I'm pointing to a single issue, and I'm not calling for legislative action, and I'm not calling for legal action.
Fuck no.
I don't want the government anywhere near comic ratings.
All I want is DC to consider that a large portion of the market, me, would like them to knock this off.
I would also like them to stop raping Batwoman, but I'm not going to litigate against it.
Yeah, but the point is, it's the same principle.
Jack Thompson was concerned about children having access to Grand Theft Auto and it causing various similar sort of, you know, I worry about what it will do to.
I imagine in his case, he was worried about young boys being violent.
But it's the same sort of thing.
He was worried about the magic voices in his head.
I want to agree with Elle here.
Well, not this particular case, I mean, I don't think this comic book variant is rapey, as she believes.
But if something is marketed to children, right, I wouldn't want there to be a rape story in it.
So I agree with this.
I mean, I can't believe it.
I'm not saying that it's not legitimate.
I agree with this as well.
But I'm just trying to establish how this isn't the Jack Thompson argument because this is the Jack Thompson argument, as far as I can tell.
And I agree with that.
I agree that kids shouldn't have stories that involve rape.
I believe it's not the Jack Thompson argument because Jack Thompson was asking for government legislation while Elle is asking for peer pressure.
Well, the action is different, but the principle is the same.
It isn't, because there's a tremendous difference between parents and groups who are like me, because my group is with children, cognizant of these things and concerned about them, are concerned about this and would like them to reconsider, versus the government or some overall entity should be in charge of what content children get.
The parent wants to give their kids.
That's cool.
My concern is that this is on one of very few books that kids can get in DC Heroes because people, kids want DC heroes.
And the parents don't know what's going on in a lot of cases.
You know, parents are kind of dumb.
And the rating system can't be relied on for DC.
All they can do is rely on things like the cover image because they don't know there's no rape story in there unless they read Batgirl.
Yeah, and unless they involve.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
But the thing is, that's not what the principle is.
The principle is to protect children from harmful content.
No, it's not.
The parents are to protect children.
The principle is the companies who release books should damn well be cognizant of what parents are concerned about.
So that was the portion of the debate with the feminist who I really don't think was understanding my argument.
And so what I'm going to do is get straight to the point.
And it's going to be fairly disappointing.
I was agreeing for the sake of argument because I was trying to show her that her argument was indeed the same argument that Jack Thompson was making, that media causes X in children, when I actually don't agree with that.
Or at least I think if it does, then a certain other set of circumstances must be true also.
I guess I'll get into a bit of a ramble since that's pretty much all I had to say on it.
And let's.
I mean, I don't know what should and shouldn't be given to kids.
And I think that's quite a broad subject anyway.
There's just the very term kids.
I mean, I think that we probably need more nuance in the terms that we're using.
Yeah, this is going to be an unedited ramble, and so it's not going to be professional.
So yeah, I think that we need a few more nuances with the terms that we're using here, because saying kids kind of implies anyone 18 or younger.
It could be anyone, you know.
And so if we said children being up to, say, 12 years old, then yes, I think that certain subjects probably Should be left out of whatever materials are given to those ages and below.
I don't think I'd want such young children engaging with those kind of topics because I think that that is probably a bit too young, really, to really just understand it properly.
You know, and I'm not saying that that's universal.
I think that there are probably going to be plenty of kids who can, but I think that there are probably going to be more kids who can't.
And so I would recommend that that would be my choice, say, I don't know, 11 or 12 and younger, not having certain subjects, naming like murder, war, you know, if possible.
And again, really, I think it depends on how graphic these things are.
Because if they're alluded to, but never really shown, that's fine, I would think more of something that it's kind of preparing them for things they'll learn about later in life.
You know, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I guess it's how it's done that's the issue.
But when they become teenagers, I think that for teenagers, most teenagers anyway, I mean, I'm just thinking about when I was a kid, and then I'm thinking about the.
I've got quite a large family, and a lot of them are quite younger than me.
And so when I was in my 20s, they were in their teens.
And so I got to observe how they thought and acted while being an adult.
So I paid attention.
And all of this is anecdotal.
I've got no stats and figures or anything like that.
And I'm not trying to say that my word here is law or anything like that.
I'm just speculating, just spitballing.
But yeah, so I personally find that teenagers seem to have quite a good grasp on average.
And again, I'm sure there are going to be exceptions.
But your average teenager, I think, is savvy enough to know the difference between fancy and reality.
And they're going to know well enough the difference between talking about something bad and then doing something bad.
And I think that they're going to know that by talking about something bad, that doesn't mean you should do something bad.
I think that, frankly, even with adults, I think the only people who have issues with these sorts of things are the people who are the ones who are likely to be committing those sort of crimes anyway.
So I don't really know what you can do about it.
Because when they become adults and they can have access to this sort of material, and I would absolutely argue against any kind of censorship of content for adults at all, then they're going to have these thoughts, feelings, and they may take actions.
So there's no point trying to worry about what could happen or what sort of person could have it.
Because I don't think you can really predict in advance with any kind of reliability.
So going back to the set of circumstances that I think might lead to people being particularly influenced by media in profoundly negative ways.
I mean, I guess that I'm well aware that I'm talking from the perspective of someone who had two loving parents who were knowledgeable enough in how to parent that they knew when to take a hands-off approach and when not to.
So There's definitely, I don't want to say privilege, but I was quite lucky to have had that.
Whereas if I'd been born into a household with a drunk and violent father and an absentee mother or something like that, I can quite well see how that might psychologically damage someone so that when they enter their teens and they start becoming exposed to materials that talk about rape and murder and whatnot, they might not be able to tell the difference between fancy and reality.
Again, I don't know.
I'm not saying that my word is law.
I'm not saying I know any of this, really.
I'm just speculating.
But I could see it being possible.
And you're always going to have the moralistic busybodies.
And they're usually women who are just hell and love doing it all over the place.
Just when someone think of the children because, I don't know, I guess because they're too lazy to do any real parenting of their own.
So I think that realistically, you can't really prevent people who are going to do bad things from doing bad things.
They do bad things because they're bad people.
And they're bad people usually because of the way they were raised.
And so there's not a lot you can do about that.
And I don't think it's fair to punish the majority for what a minority does.
And that is entirely what the moralizers, the mothering moralizers would like to have done.
So the question is, what do we do?
And this is bearing in mind that I'm sure, I mean, I'm just going to go on a bit of a ramble.
I can't remember the name of the book.
I really can't remember.
It's a shame because it was a really well-written book.
But it was a book, it was, you know, my parents were quite avid readers.
And so when I hit my early teens, I would basically go and find a book on the shelf and read it.
And there was some pretty, pretty adult content in these books.
And I remember reading through this one book.
I really can't remember the name of it.
I really wish I could.
But it was about a young lad who ends up getting involved somehow.
And I read this God over 20 years ago now, so I can't exactly remember.
But this young lad gets involved with a satanic cult or a group.
And it's very debauched, as you can imagine.
It's about that.
They he, he joins the Satanic cult and he initially really enjoys it, but then he becomes frustrated because he feels that they're wasting their like magical powers or energies in sex and gang bangs and orgies and stuff, instead of um restraining from you know, releasing it physically and building up and using it for I don't know so many demons or something.
I can't remember now.
But the whole, the whole thing was it was pretty depraved stuff that was going on in this book, and I must have been about 14, 15 reading this and I read it.
It was an interesting book and it, you know, introduced me to interesting ideas and I just didn't think anything of it.
Really, I just thought oh, that's interesting fiction.
I can't really see myself ever wanting to do many of the things that were mentioned in the book, but maybe that's because of the life circumstances I was in, you know.
Maybe maybe it's because I I hadn't been abused, I hadn't had anything particularly wrong done to me, and so I could enjoy these things as abstract thoughts rather than triggering any kind of memory or dredging up any trauma.
So I guess the question is, should a 15 year old have read that book?
And I can say that in my case, no harm came from it.
But does that mean that no harm would have come from it if it had been someone else who had had a slightly less secure background reading it?
May it have given them ideas?
Maybe.
I can't say that it wouldn't have done.
And should those people be prevented from reading those things?
Well, you know, maybe.
You know, it was a pretty adult story.
You know, I get the feeling that my parents probably wouldn't have approved of me reading it had they known that I'd been reading it.
But again, did it do any harm?
And I used to watch horror movies when I was 12 years old, 13 years old, you know, and honestly I found them quite scary, you know, when I was that age.
I remember, you know, staying awake at night a few times because we'd watched some sort of terrifying, me and my friends had watched some terrifying horror movie and I couldn't get back to sleep.
So, I mean, maybe I was too young for it, but did it do me any harm?
Not really.
Not in the long run.
You know, maybe I was a bit tired the next day, I imagine, but you know, it wasn't anything that especially disturbed me.
And again, these are just, it's just anecdotal bullshit, this.
But so yeah, just basically, I think we come to a position where the chances are these things don't do any harm, except for a very small minority of people who probably were fairly disturbed and were always going to do something.
The first piece of racy media they came across that gave them some horrible ideas, and maybe they didn't even need racy media to give them horrible ideas.
They probably would have thought of stuff on their own.
They were going to act out on it.
And do these things scare kids?
Well, yeah, I think they probably do.
I think a lot of this sort of stuff probably does scare kids.
And I don't want to presume to speak for women.
I mean, maybe as a 12-year-old girl, the story about a woman being raped is far more terrifying than it is for, you know, like myself as a 12-year-old boy.
I don't know.
You know, I don't know.
And I don't want to say that it's not.
So I can see it could be.
And I'd be interested in hearing from women who would have an answer for me on that one.
And so basically we come to the point where, right, okay, so how, I think that basically anything especially graphic probably shouldn't be shown to teenagers.
So to 12 and below, sorry.
I think you can probably get away with some fairly racy material for teenagers, but probably nothing too brutal and violent.
And then, you know, keep all the brutal and violent stuff for 18-year-olds and over.
And I know that these are wildly, wildly broad categories.
People fit into them mentally or they don't.
I do understand all those arguments.
But the thing is, there's also another angle I want to introduce to this, which is kids always get hold of things they shouldn't have.
They always do.
And so, I mean, you know, we used to watch 18 horror movies when we were like 13.
You know, and kids are going to be able to download all this sort of shit off the internet.
And so how much difference really does putting the 18 certificate on a game or a book or a movie?
Even though the books don't have them do that, I don't think.
How much difference does it really make?
And probably not a huge amount of difference.
I think they probably still get hold of them.
And, you know, is that actually a bad thing?
Because I guess one thing that I know this is going to sound probably retarded, but there's, I think, that kids do like to break taboos.
I think everyone does to a certain degree, but it's especially prevalent when you're young and this is all new and exciting.
And I think that if we had certain societal taboos that kids were breaking that were quite mild, for example, seeing a horror movie when they were 14 or 15 or something instead of when they were 18, then I, you know, that would be something exciting for kids to do that would probably have very few ill effects.
Very few ill effects at all.
And so if they were going to do something, I would rather them do that.
But that's a very middle-class perspective and probably doesn't really apply to many other circumstances.
But yeah, so this is some rambling for you.
Yeah, so yeah, to sum up, I was just really agreeing with her for the sake of argument because she was trying to avoid the fact that she was saying, oh, what about the children?
This media is going to affect the children.
And that is just Jack Thompson's argument inside and out.
Whether she's trying to get it censored through peer pressure or through government legislation or whatever, it's still the same principle.
And I disagree with it.
But conversely, there are always going to be these moralizing busy bodies.
And honestly, just as a society, it would keep them happy if we just said, what harm would it do if we said, yeah, okay, these are for 18-year-olds and over.
Fine, you know, whatever.
Just shut your fucking mouths.
Because that would shut them up, at least for a time.
And the chances are kids would probably still get hold of things.
You know, the worst damage I think that we're going to do to kids by doing that is mean that they're fairly naive until they reach adulthood, which is that, I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world, you know.
I don't think it's too awful.
But I don't think any great harm comes from kids from reasonably well-adjusted households seeing this media.
I don't think any harm comes from it at all.
And I think the worst they're probably going to get for a few nights of maybe bad dreams.
So I hope this answered your question, Jessica.
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