Censorship in Blogs
I'd like to thank Gatochy for pointing me to "Heroine Girl: From the Gutter to the Stars." HeroineGirl received a notice from Blog Explosion, a blog networking site, telling her she had "excessive profanities" and that her banner can't be accepted (Isn't the banner just the picture that her post links to? There weren't any profanities in it.) I browsed through her blog and although there is some cussing, it isn't anything that stands out as excessive (It seems to be pretty rare even). In fact, I enjoy her writing style and would recommend that you check it out.
As for Blog Explosion, I think their stance is ridiculous. I found their policy regarding profanity on their FAQs page:
"Each blog will be also be manually checked for profanity. Members are given the choice to view sites with profanity or without profanity. So yes some profanity is accepted BUT BlogExplosion will not allow sites that contain severe profanity, hate blogs, blogs that contain any form of racial prejudice, blogs that promote violence and death, or blogs that encourage or support any type of illegal activity. Blogexplosion strongly believes in the freedom of expression but there are limits to what most will agree is in good taste."
I definitely wouldn't call HeroineGirl's blog severely profane, nor is it in bad taste. Blog Explosion "strongly believes in the freedom of expression but there are limits to what most will agree is in good taste"!!! Good taste or not, people who truly believe in freedom of expression will not try to control the material that other people put in writing, on film, etc. Since Blog Explosion gives users the choice of not looking at blogs that contain material that may be offensive, they shouldn't even bother with controlling "profane" content. I thought the whole point in blogs was that your average person is able to publish, allowing people to voice opinions in their own unique writing styles that wouldn't be heard in mainstream media.
Profanity is only vulgar and disresepctful if we consider it to be so. It is arbitrary-- only words that WE assign meaning to. We could just as easily take away that meaning.
posted by Kira @ 1:56 PM
1 Comments:
I agree with you. I think Blogexplosion is also right in saying that are limits to what one may consider is in good taste. It's usually unnecessary to use swear words and it would indeed be more elegant to do without them. And so we would, if elegance was the objective of human communication, which is not. The objective of communication is to communicate, and sometimes the message is elegant and sometimes it isn't. It's immoral to censure it when it doesn't fit the profile of good taste.
Good taste is an option in style, and it should remain so, as an option, not as the law. If Heroine Girl cussed up and down like a sailor it should make no difference.
Like I said in her blog, no one has ever been damaged by hearing profanities. It's the content that can have the power to hurt you. A deeply hurtful message can be delivered with all the style and elegance that is so dear to Blogexplosion, whilst a message that is kind in its content can be delivered using swear words.
But even if her blog was all about being disrespectful of people, should she be censored then? I'm not talking about spreading Nazism or anything like that, I'm saying what if their worst fears were real and she just wasn't a very nice person with nice things to say - who never swore once, what then? Would they also distance themselves from her writing? Or would they be ok with it, as long as there were no profanities?
I just think they haven't really thought this one through.
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