Ciarra Annis | Oppose HB293

I am twenty six years old. I, unlike many of the people who have weighed in on this bill, have grown up on the internet; and have experienced every horror one might have found there. I navigated the internet as a six-year old girl, largely unsupervised. The internet was far more lawless then than it is now, corportized and defanged as it is. Yet, still, I grew up safe, sane, and with no evidence to the contrary, entirely moral, compassionate and justice-focused. Yes, I came across material that was considered obscene at a young age. Yes, I came across material that is so far beyond what any of those in support of this bill is imagining. Yes, I was upset, yes, sometimes even scared. Once a boy a year old than me asked to see my nudes in turn for him finally listening to a band I'd been begging him to listen to. I blocked him immediately. Another, a user who I thought I had befriended on a video game market started trying to talk to me about BDSM when I was 14. Again, blocked. On the whole, I came out of each "exposure" unscathed. I cut contact with those who were trying to hurt me because I had the confidence instilled by my parents to not dwell on that which upset me, the trust to go to them if I didn't understand something with the knowledge that I would not be punished if what I discovered was bad. The fears arisen by this bill is the result of faulty parenting, not of the existence of obscene material and not of the technology companies creating access. Now that I've received enough eyerolls and scoffs from those who believe that I just proved why this bill should be necessary, I wish to point out the biggest flaw in this text. At the end of the day, obscene material is entirely and utterly subjective. Even with the caveats rendered within the text, it does not reassure me that this is not just an attempt at limiting free-access to information and education on the vast amount of diversity in the world. Subsection A stats that obscene material will be material that appeals to the arousing interest in sex, such as lewdness when applying contemporary standards. But I can guarantee if you, if I showed a picture of two men holding hands or hugging, there would be cries of outrage from an aging population. In the minds of those who want to see evil everywhere, even innocent displays of affection are repellent and vile. There is a video of an anti-gay professor on a college campus that once went around in about 2016. In it, two male students call his attention and one gives the other a very quick peck on the lips. The crowd reacts to this with cries of "aww", they see it as a cute gesture. The anti-gay professor proceeds to react violently, loudly exclaiming he's going to vomit and pushing the two students aside, the video ends with the sound of him retching. The contemporary standards that my generation hold are vastly different from the standards of those the age of the sponsors of this bill. To add to that point; Victorians once believed displaying the ankles was salacious. Goodness knows I'm glad we're far from that, but in the way that contemporary standards may change, there is no right way to enforce a law by them. Subsection B does not ease any worries. Again, it centers the definition of obscene material on the basis of offense. What is offensive to you is not offensive to me is not offensive to the person next to me, but might be to the person next. There is not a single way this can be enforced that won't lead to mass censorship. Subsection C is the funniest to me. "Lacks serious literally, artistic, political or scientific value" value is vague. Many works of modern art aren't considered "seriously" artistic by certain subsects of people, and there are some classical works that I detest giving it any credibility by assigning it that label. Art is a medium that can only be defined by the viewer - but too, that viewers definition is not the only definition that should be accepted. What about the two cases I mentioned where I, a child, had been directly approached with discussions that would be considered "obscene"? Well, that would have happened anyway, as both encounters happened on sites that would have never been considered either pornographic (which is, I /hope/ the actual sites that would be restricted) or "obscene" under any of the above definitions. One happened over SnapChat, and the other over Steam, the world's biggest virtual video game market. If you really wish to protect the children online, instead of developing tools that will only restrict freedom online, you should encourage the development of children-safe spaces online again. I grew up in a time where there were many safe places to play, to meet friends online and to explore my own identity as a person. Club Penguin, Neopets, ToonTown and others were essential to providing a space for kids to be kids. The vast majority of these spaces have been dried up, deemed unprofitable by the companies that ran them amidst a push to get children on social media. I wish to point out too, that many of the supporters are concerned about cases of child being abused. If that's the true worry, then they should be pushing to keep kids from being homeschooled, and pushing to keep access to educational information online for kids. After all, according to NCA, 77% of child abuse is from a parent. What scene then does it make to restrict access to materials that could help a child identify what they are going through? In some cases, education /can/ be graphic. I don't trust - and no American should trust - corporations to decide where the line is between education, scientific, artistic or just pure titillation.