When people used to be more sane and not take drawings seriously, nobody was batting an eye on the fact that NSFW drawings depicting minors existed alongside the whole rest of NSFW stuff. Then like with most wonderful beginnings of fascism, people figured out you could drive a hysteria-laden wedge between “us” and “them” for clout and open-but-socially-acceptable cruelty, and this is sadly where we are until mankind learns to treat such “undesirables” with as much protected-minority consideration as every other.

There is no doubt in my mind that the growth and ability thrive of such a community would go a long way to erasing the stigma. But it seems hard to grow when everyone’s out to get you. Nevertheless, a few anchors of sanity have emerged. But we are fractured. I believe we can do better with what we have.

And to this end, I’ve decided to make a posting here. I am nobody and I’m not even speaking to a central place of attention, but I’ve seen a bit of discussion here and it has been sane. I’d like to lay out my ideas for improving our position through cohesion and solidarity. Here are some ideas:

1. I believe first and foremost of all, it would be useful to get this conversation started in the first place. What begin to discuss here should be started also on other like-minded websites. So if you see this thread, you agree with what is here and believe it of your competence to spread this action, then I cannot stress enough how of utmost importance it is to go to other platforms you hang out on and start this same discussion there. It can be your own words or even a link back to here. But it has to be something. People do not seem to naturally and logically gravitate to this step. Meanwhile antis are brainstorming everyday how they can make our lives more miserable. We need to be actively practicing solidarity. So please, start this conversation wherever you’re able to. It may be a site, like-minded friends, any group.

2. One of the main things I can think of to resolve the fragmentation is affiliation. Back before the Internet was this easy to jump from place to place on, sites spread word-of-mouth about similar websites via an affiliates page or a footer, where they placed links or banners to similar sites. This allowed a cohesive community of the same individuals to grow on other websites. You could find the same users on multiple sites and once a new person registered somewhere, chances were they’d end up quickly also registering on the other sites. Many people on lolishocub-friendly websites don’t know about this place. For example, linking from here to AO3 and viceversa.

3. Social options for the userbase. Ideally it would be great if there was one unified server, but otherwise it would be very useful to have community Matrix servers in more places. Say a website is more furry-adjacent and another more anime-adjacent. Chat is a good format for immediate interaction. On-site social media or personal journals are another useful form of interaction. If possible, it would be good if websites could offer a wider bundle of social interactions in the package.

4. Very explicit, strict rules on attempts to exclude others. The tolerance paradox stands here. If your users are congregating around discussing how “icky” or “disgusting” or “degenerate” what other consenting adults are celebrating on the platform or among themselves, they should be banned. People who proceed to shame or harass over this should be banned. People known to be meaningfully engaging in this behavior and plotting outside the site should be unwelcome.

5. Site-run periodic spotlights and interviews with particular artists or art topics. These keep the community engaged and deepen connection by getting to know one another or partake in organized events of discussing particular topics whereas users would by themselves not be as motivated to start these themselves.

6. Expansion into the greater topic of open-mindedness and tolerance where there is no harm. While loli stuff gets especially attacked, it is far from being the only social area where people have dumbly agreed that a norm should be upheld in the idea that it somehow nebulously protects against some harm. Being able to use “retard” as an insult to one’s intelligence and calling out the fact that the disability community refused to reclaim the word making it fair game, as well as the fact that the vast majority use it strictly as such a petty insult, is another matter. More recently this idea that the n-word cannot be uttered or quoted for any reason in any context without it being racist unless you have enough melanin. Society oftentimes seems to fall into the trap of such non-solutions. Likewise we have mechanisms to separate zoophiles from furries, child molesters from loli enjoyers, bigoted people from those who are incidentally quoting something. We have thresholds for something becoming gratuitous, we can tell when the whole punchline of a joke is just that “this minority is dumb” or “this is a specific thing that only happens within the minority, and it’s hilarious”. We’ve had common sense and the ability to discern for ages. People just lapsed into groupthink and laziness where you just have to avoid some specific no-no at all costs because it can’t ever be anything but the worst thing. People have attacked works of fiction where there’s rape just because the rape exists without any of the literacy to discern how that fits into the story context or what it’s trying to say in the greater narrative over just dumb assessments like “there is rape so it is bad”.

7. Creator solidarity. Are you proship? Do you draw stuff that isn’t porn or specifically loli? Start posting your art and stories outside mainstream sites and expand to places like Pixiv and Inkbunny. The sites don’t have to be specifically loli/cub content, just more open to more content. You enrich them with your presence and also potentially bring your fans over to them. It also dilutes the stigma that these are strictly “problematic sites” the more “normie” art gets posted alongside the rest. The idea is to normalize lolisho being part of the big melting pot. Places like Inkbunny especially could use more normie art as they are close to reaching that magical threshold where the social association is just that there’s outreach into alternative websites that are a bit sussy as opposed to just posting on “the pedo site”.

8. Active cross-site staff networking. Site admins, reach out to other similar sites. Create groups. Share technical and business expertise. Ran into legal trouble for what you host? Maybe there’s someone who knows an arrangement that works. Help one another with moderation and hardware resources. Have a private forum, or chatroom where you can easily poke one another.

9. Proper and full Lefty engagement. We are anti-child abuse. We against moral panics. We stand with trans people. We are for the mentally unwell to be treated as humans and be given help. We are pro-rehab. Criminal justice reform. We are young and have gotten fucked over by late capitalism. We oppose fascism. We are sex-positive. There is a real and serious discussion out there about how many fascists just want to fuck kids and if you look at where things end up it is true. We get lumped in a lot with anime avatar 4channers but we stand for none of that. The more we organize to engage and support these causes, the harder it will be for the purveyors of simple and stupid narratives that’ve come to dominate the left to box us in with right-wingers. Even if we’re disavowed we can keep supporting these causes. Eventually, they will have to confront the uncomfortable truth. Right now, both the left and the right hate us.

10. We need a name. No seriously. Building on point 9, we don’t really fit into any of their terms. They want to believe all lolicons are fascists. Or pro-contact pedophiles. The emergence of the term MAP has been meaningful as the word Pedophile has lost all distinction from child molester. So where to start? “Pro-fiction” is straight to the point, but if we’re also gonna be distinctly open-minded on social norms, then what? Furries used to be exactly this. The limit between taboo and actual harm was comfortably the norm and there was some critical discussion, all within the decorum of “we’re not exactly human, so we criticize humans”. This not only fell off with the recent wave of normies but had been hijacked for some time by fascists into a narrative of “we are better and humans are inferior”. So what to do? I honestly think there is a population that grows more distinct each day that is tired of oppression from the right - taking away rights, making minorities afraid - and from the left - extreme policing over words and fiction, no real empathy, purity testing, cancellation pushes. As far as I’ve been able to see the lefty streamer Vaush has gotten the closest to this though he also fell for the trope that all lolicons are fascist 4channers. They call themselves “vaushites”. Still on the lefty streamer side, Destiny got the right take on this stuff but he is wrong about so much else. We need a distinct identity. And I don’t think I’m gonna be the one to come up with the term. I encourage all to chime in.

11. Integration of Japanese language and translation tools for user content into the websites. Let’s start bringing in the Japanese artists who want to extend to our spaces. These are already people whose non-erotic, non-loli art tends to be mixed in with their other creations. This goes back to my point 7 and further helps to expand community on both sides. The more dilute the loli-specific content is, the stronger the message that “art is art”.

12. Association and support for anti-child abuse organizations, of all kinds. Furries did the same for animal rights and there was initially a lot of hysteria that these are people who rape/abuse animals. It becomes really difficult to keep going the association between places and people like us when we’re actually doing advocacy. I know there’s a lot of orgs that would feel icky about this situation, but there are some like Prostasia Foundation and B4U-ACT who are not only fighting child abuse, but also making the point that the fight against it involves a medically-informed approach. They know attraction and action are two different things. They understand fiction as an outlet or way to cope. They are against wasting police resources going after drawings and tearing down myths like “stranger danger”, that it’s the random creepos getting radicalized by drawings on the internet who would rape your children when over 90% of perpetrators are family, friends, teachers, and priests.

13. Integration of cryptocurrency donations as a possible avenue. Yes crypto sucks in a million ways. But as it stands right now, it is one of the few uncensorable ways to get money across. Payment processors had already been cracking down on loli sites and now they’re going after regular porn too as the true fascist nature of this moral panic is revealed that it was only ever a gateway to a new war on porn. Crypto just works. It’s not the most stable thing but setup is pretty straightforward. They’ve been more recently going after artists who take paid commission money for taboo art. We gotta expand.

14. Discuss common sense on where the line is drawn. Drawings or fiction involving real people in sexual situations must be off-limits. Even if it doesn’t involve children, you can get into real trouble for writing or drawing erotica of your neighbor and posting it online. What happens in your head’s own privacy is all your business. But putting up sexual content about other real people is sexual harassment. Also loli drawings of real children have real victims. This is pretty well understood and was even before the whole loli conundrum.

I want to see more ideas and input from your end, but also action. Like I said at the beginning, starting this conversation on boards, forums, and art sites or writing to site staff is encouraged. If you are part of some community or group, consider linking to this post. Start a conversation.

Love to everyone.