Don’t do it for the children

I got to hear David Brin speak again today, on privacy. He has a book out about the advantages of openness, The Transparent Society. I thought I’d relate that to why I don’t believe in doing things for the children.

A person should have nothing to hide from children. I believe that anything out there that is bad for children (say, smut, or pre-marital sex) is also bad for adults. I don’t think there’s an age where bad things suddenly become good for you, or even acceptable indulgences for you. Behind every sentiment that such-and-such is bad for children is an unspoken admission that such-and-such is just plain bad.

On the other hand, anything that interests adults is going to interest children to some extent, whereas things aimed specifically at interesting children (such as David Brin’s plans to save fandom with Teen Appeal) go oft awry.

Enough about the children! There were some other good speakers at Boskone - which is not to say that the panels were all that informative, just entertaining. I especially enjoyed Darrell Schweitzer, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Allen Steele. I hope it’s not too fennish of me to say so. I’m not planning on getting into the sf scene - I get more than enough fandom on-line.

By the way, Allen Steele says he wouldn’t want anyone to write fanfic about his works - to do it to him I believe were his words. I arrived at the end of the derivative fic panel, but it sounded like it was all about media fic, not fanfic. I never heard a positive word about fanfic. If you ignore the most active portion of fandom, it’s no surprise that you think fandom is dying out. Hint: it’s only you dying out.

One thing I wish I’d known about was the NESFA Short Story Contest for unpublished authors. I’m hoping not to qualify by the next deadline, but you never know.

4 Responses to “Don’t do it for the children”

  1. R.J. Anderson Says:

    A person should have nothing to hide from children. I believe that anything out there that is bad for children (say, smut, or pre-marital sex) is also bad for adults.

    I agree on a moral level. But on another level, there are things which children are simply not yet equipped to understand or deal with. I don’t mean that we ought to lie to children about the existence of such things, or refuse to answer their honest questions about them — but if a five-year-old child asks about, say, the Holocaust, I don’t think it would be responsible, or kind, or even helpful to the child to sit him down with a lot of horrifying photographs and gruesome explanations. An adult who wants to know the truth about the Holocaust is capable of assimilating that information, but a child would only be confused and terrified by it.

    Likewise, I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong in an honest account of marital sex if a story calls for it, but would I feel right about exposing a child to such a frank depiction? Personally, I think that information, if requested/needed, would be far better conveyed by means of a child-parent conversation than by handing the child a work of fiction on the subject.

  2. Jemima Says:

    I’ve never read a story that required an honest account of marital sex, but in general, children who are too young for such information are also uninterested or actively disinterested in it. (Cooties!)

    In any case, I wasn’t talking about forcing pictures or stories on an unwilling child, but about hiding information by, say, keeping children out of chat rooms, mailing lists, or archives. If you can’t say it in front of a child, then you shouldn’t be saying it at all.

  3. R.J. Anderson Says:

    I’ve never read a story that required an honest account of marital sex,

    I can think of at least one off the top of my head — Komarr. In that particular case it’s a less than positive (indeed, I’d say tragic) portrayal, but it’s important to showing the nature of the relationship between Tien and Ekaterin, and just how far it’s degenerated. And no way would I want a child to read it, but I can think of some adults who ought to read it.

    Likewise, I would not be particularly thrilled to know that a child was reading some of my fics, but that’s not because I think there’s anything immoral in them (if I did, I wouldn’t have written them) — just that some of the issues and material are too mature for children.

  4. Jemima Says:

    I don’t know that the sex scene you’re talking about is necessary to Komarr, but I do know I wouldn’t stop a child from reading the book because it’s in there.

    My only standard of something too mature for someone is that they won’t understand it. For example, calculus is too mature for people who haven’t had trigonometry. If they don’t understand it then it won’t do them much harm reading it, though it may bore them. If they do understand it, and it isn’t actually immoral, then I don’t expect it to harm them. I don’t see a third case.