While the making of lewd content is legal in China, profiting off of it is very heavily criminalized. And erotic books, as absurd as it may seem, are categorized the same as pornography. So by selling or profiting off of these works, these authors were breaking the law.
So they aren’t registering their businesses correctly, because they literally can’t as the business is itself prohibited.
Then, because the sale of these works is prohibited, the authors sell under-the-table and collect untaxed income. Declaring income from their smut would be illegal, so they have to do fraud to hide it as income from other sources or just hide the income entirely.
And now they’re guilty of multiple crimes, selling obscene works and tax fraud, and so we see the prison sentences.
Okay? Now it doesn’t matter what I think obv but IMO it’s weird to have a government enforce laws & prohibitions that in effect say “hey queers, you’re not allowed to fantasize about this, find someone to fuck idk”. Legislating to fight the exploitative nature of esp. live pornography? Cool, good. Legislating against this nebulous sense of atomization from personally consumed fiction…?
While the making of lewd content is legal in China, profiting off of it is very heavily criminalized.
That is how it should be. Sexuality for enjoyment not profit. I don’t have a problem with this. Now if any of these people were not making money off this and just publishing it for free and got in trouble yes that would be something I’d be against and think it an area of improvement China needs to work on but also an understandable one given how rapidly Chinese society has progressed in just the last half century. I am confident that with time and effort by good comrades inside China that any such problems will in time be rectified. (Also I suppose I do have mixed feelings given the amount of capitalist exploitation China allows to disallow women to make money in this way which is relatively harmless and given they probably don’t have great financial means… an imperfect situation all around)
We shouldn’t be trying to restore profitability to art. Not taking a side either way concerning the porn stuff, but it’s extremely bourgeois to think the problem with art under capitalism is importantly that the artists aren’t getting enough money to do it.
I’m sorry but I think this take is ridiculous. Producing art is labor, and every laborer should be entitled to a living. That idea gets scoffed at a lot, but art has the potential to be an incredible expression of human experience.
I’d argue that authors and songwriters are in the same boat, using a form of expression to appeal to other people. Obviously if your art sucks people wont want it, you are mostly at the whims of your audience if you are lucky enough to have one.
That doesn’t really mean anything. Marxism is about social labour, not just work. It’s more important that people are able to survive and do art outside capitalist production than it is to try to make art profitable for workers in capitalism. All you’re doing is creating/sustaining labour aristocrats and petite-bourgeois sentiments in society. Especially when we’re talking about fucking explicitly-pulp smut literature here, which is definitely not something we need or want the state to be funding.
Porn is not inherently fascist, though. The way that pornography exists as an industry in our current time is exploitative and fascist, because we live in a fascist/capitalist society.
Im of the belief that pornography for the purpose of sexual gratification has basically always existed in some form or another. Fascist country creates fascist porn.
I do think 10 years is quite excessive but I also think western media would lie about that so I’m going to assume that with good behavior and reform they’d probably actually be out in much less than half that.
Secondly I don’t presume that this was per se special punishment because of the orientation, non-hetero nature of the works and that the law provides for the same for straight works. I admit there are likely problems with selective enforcement as with any law like this that runs into existing societal biases and prejudices so I think that would be another argument in favor of leniency but again I don’t really believe that sentencing is necessarily accurate or the whole story.
Thirdly we don’t know all the details about the ages of the characters or any aggravating factors about the content or the nature of payments or whatever.
While the making of lewd content is legal in China, profiting off of it is very heavily criminalized. And erotic books, as absurd as it may seem, are categorized the same as pornography. So by selling or profiting off of these works, these authors were breaking the law.
So they aren’t registering their businesses correctly, because they literally can’t as the business is itself prohibited.
Then, because the sale of these works is prohibited, the authors sell under-the-table and collect untaxed income. Declaring income from their smut would be illegal, so they have to do fraud to hide it as income from other sources or just hide the income entirely.
And now they’re guilty of multiple crimes, selling obscene works and tax fraud, and so we see the prison sentences.
Those erotica authors were no angels, did you know they were doing tax fraud?
Damn, those laws are fucking awful.
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well an erotic book is qualitatively different from exploitative pornography.
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Okay? Now it doesn’t matter what I think obv but IMO it’s weird to have a government enforce laws & prohibitions that in effect say “hey queers, you’re not allowed to fantasize about this, find someone to fuck idk”. Legislating to fight the exploitative nature of esp. live pornography? Cool, good. Legislating against this nebulous sense of atomization from personally consumed fiction…?
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think the order is the wrong way around there. or i can go catch covid from one of the plague rats and die trying to get laid
That is how it should be. Sexuality for enjoyment not profit. I don’t have a problem with this. Now if any of these people were not making money off this and just publishing it for free and got in trouble yes that would be something I’d be against and think it an area of improvement China needs to work on but also an understandable one given how rapidly Chinese society has progressed in just the last half century. I am confident that with time and effort by good comrades inside China that any such problems will in time be rectified. (Also I suppose I do have mixed feelings given the amount of capitalist exploitation China allows to disallow women to make money in this way which is relatively harmless and given they probably don’t have great financial means… an imperfect situation all around)
“Making art shouldn’t provide a living if it doesn’t fit my sensibilities”
We shouldn’t be trying to restore profitability to art. Not taking a side either way concerning the porn stuff, but it’s extremely bourgeois to think the problem with art under capitalism is importantly that the artists aren’t getting enough money to do it.
I’m sorry but I think this take is ridiculous. Producing art is labor, and every laborer should be entitled to a living. That idea gets scoffed at a lot, but art has the potential to be an incredible expression of human experience. I’d argue that authors and songwriters are in the same boat, using a form of expression to appeal to other people. Obviously if your art sucks people wont want it, you are mostly at the whims of your audience if you are lucky enough to have one.
That doesn’t really mean anything. Marxism is about social labour, not just work. It’s more important that people are able to survive and do art outside capitalist production than it is to try to make art profitable for workers in capitalism. All you’re doing is creating/sustaining labour aristocrats and petite-bourgeois sentiments in society. Especially when we’re talking about fucking explicitly-pulp smut literature here, which is definitely not something we need or want the state to be funding.
Notice Cuba, DPRK, etc. aren’t funding that.
You don’t have a problem with sentencing people to 10 years in prison for writing and selling gay smut?
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Porn is not inherently fascist, though. The way that pornography exists as an industry in our current time is exploitative and fascist, because we live in a fascist/capitalist society.
Im of the belief that pornography for the purpose of sexual gratification has basically always existed in some form or another. Fascist country creates fascist porn.
I do think 10 years is quite excessive but I also think western media would lie about that so I’m going to assume that with good behavior and reform they’d probably actually be out in much less than half that.
Secondly I don’t presume that this was per se special punishment because of the orientation, non-hetero nature of the works and that the law provides for the same for straight works. I admit there are likely problems with selective enforcement as with any law like this that runs into existing societal biases and prejudices so I think that would be another argument in favor of leniency but again I don’t really believe that sentencing is necessarily accurate or the whole story.
Thirdly we don’t know all the details about the ages of the characters or any aggravating factors about the content or the nature of payments or whatever.
Even half a year in prison for something that small is absolutely barbaric
DPRK film director:
how carceral