It is. You’re handwaving away criticism of laws

How so? I don’t think having a culturally appropriate and historical understanding is hand waving. Do you?

that are being applied improperly and unequally.

To my knowledge I am the only person making note of Inconsistent enforcement. Rather than criticizing it to “hand wave” I introduced the topic.

Even if this was a local failure, which it isn’t since this type of content is illegal all over China, that doesn’t excuse failure to equally enforce in this circumstance.

National laws are often fleshed out and enforced at more local levels, leading to inconsistency. Your logic does not make sense, as a local failure in applying national law occurs regularly and tends to be the impetus for more consistent national enforcement and is related to the anti-corruption campaigns of the last decade and more. I have added this context because Western chauvinists broad brush their designated enemies from smaller or isolated incidents that are blown up into xenophobic and often racist talking points.

Can you describe, for me, how you believe national, regional, municipal, and local governance generally operates in China?

Plenty of comments are defending China’s actions here saying it’s necessary to fight sex work.

Please show me these comments.

It isn’t. It’s an authoritarian action taken to stifle sexuality and exert control.

Is that so? Can you show me your methodology and source materials for how you have discovered these root causes?

You see this most often in fascist governments when setting up dictatorships.

Oh? Most often? So then you have done a fair comparison across different political tendencies, cultures, histories, and governments and can show me some statistics?

And before I get dumb comment, China isn’t fascist. But they are authoritarian in several of their tendencies.

You rely heavily on that ambiguous and selectively applied term. Why not be more direct and descriptive?

I couldn’t

K.

Does this mean you are uninterested in good faith dialogue?

It’s dictating human nature and what is allowed based on governmental morals.

That is a lot to unpack. The concept of human nature is itself poisoned by reactionary ideas, it is used to actually reinforc a desired status quo by claiming it to be an immutable ot otherwise “natural” way of things rather than something that is mutable and socially constructex. For example, European Christian concepts of original sin have been used to rationalize a misanthropic view of people as inherently bad and in need of subservience to the ruling powers of different eras.

I have yet to see appeals to human nature used in a way that was not reactionary, but maybe you are thinking of something that is not. Can you state this more concretely?

Re: government morals, all state policies and enforcement is political and social, and has some kind of a moral component. So this would not distinguish this from any other state policy. Are all state policies authoritarian? If so, do you describe all of them as such, consistently? Or do you think you may be inclined to use the term for certain countries more than others, as is more common?

You say this is in reaction to the sexual and war crimes that have occurred in China. While that may be the root of the law, that does not make it just in this application of the law.

I did not present it as a sufficient justification for any particular thing. I added it as context for understanding a culture and history that most people here will be unfamiliar with and onto which they are eager to project their biases. You are assigning conclusions and motivations that aren’t there and are being uncharitable.

Consenting adults in the privacy of their own home writing/collecting their own written material are not engaging in or even condoning such tragedies.

Yes everyone knows this and nothing I’ve said contradicts it.

To harken back to such tragedies when talking about something unrelated is yet another excuse to give cover to authoritarian actions.

You think that the historical and cultural origins of the law are irrelevant to its existence and application? What?

It feels like you are just cobbling together negative sentiments to throw at the wall, facts be damned.

If we were talking about pictured/video pornography or prostitution that would be one thing. But this is written erotica. There is no physical person being engaged with. This is at best reactionary and at worst authoritarian.

Is it reactionary, a holdover from a progressive law that doesn’t always map neatly onto modern times (this law is actually about distribution, not “writing in their own homes”), a regional variation? Is it a composition of the three in different ways? Is there more to it? How do you distinguish the law from enforcement? How much do you know about these specific cases?

Also reactionary actions can still be authoritarian. Was the term “purely authoritarian” hyperbole? Yes. Are you being a complete pedant in pointing this out? Also yes.

I still cannot tell you what I think you mean by the term “authoritarian”. In my experience it is a term used selectively, like calling designated enemy states “regimes” and designated good or neutral states “governments”, and it means little aside from trying to communicate a negative connotation despite presenting itself as political theory. Its modern usage can be traced back to imperialist cold war PR campaigns to try and flatten the difference between Nazis and the communists that defeated them.

It is important to be humble and self-critical about one’s own unexamined biases.

By using “inconsistent enforcement” as an excuse to ignore criticism.

I didn’t do that. Please do your best to not invent things about me to get mad about.

There is no justification for these arrests, and yet excuses are being made for what occurred.

I haven’t seen the latter once. And I cannot address the first without knowing more about the situation.

On top of all of that: inconsistent enforcement is a tell tale sign of authoritarianism as the law is used as an excuse to arrest whoever offends.

Arresting whoever offends would be a consistent application of the law. And again I cannot imagine what you mean by “telltale sign of authoritarianism”. What are your examples? Have you done a fair comparison? What do non-authoritarian law enforcements look like?

Even though said laws aren’t applied uniformly. Thus manufacturing pretty much any consent needed for an arrest.

This does not make sense. Regional variation is not the same as selective application at the point of declaring warrants, which is the kind of inconsistency you are describing as bad.

Also, manufacturing consent is a term about how capitalist media creates its narratives through the amplification of thise biased towards ruling class interests, even if they themselves do not think of themselves as corrupt or as political operatives.

You can claim things like western chauvnism and orientalism, but those words have actual meaning that you debase when you throw it out at any criticism of China

I don’t do that. You are, again, making things up about me. Please do your best to talk to me, the human on another screen, and not the person in your head that you are angry at.

The people I am replying to in this thread are often guilty of sweeping generalizations and sinophobic remarks.

This arrest was, once again, reactionary at best and downright authoritarian at worst.

Okay, so what about the rest of my comment that you didn’t reply to?