utilitymonstergirl

Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Mr. Visa,

I could not help but notice that your "Tele-Phone" infrastructure has become utterly unusable as of late. Perhaps you are in need of more switchboard gals? I certainly hope you can resolve this before you are unable to help victims of, say, identity theft.

So thus, I am left with no choice but to "Snail-Mail" my concerns. In sum: I am joining the war on degenerate perversion on the side of degenerate perversion. Regardless of my opinion on any particular work of smut, I fail to see how it is any of your concern what pictures are bought or sold, unless they are, say, a private citizen's home address with an incitement to violence. You and "Master-Card" say you have conducted an audit and banned law-scoffing "Video-Games"; which laws have been broken, and by which games? I demand an itemized list and a fair trial in a court of law.

And even if you do permit individual bans to be appealed, it is not an artist's job to prepare a book report for a hostile jury; it is their job to speak truth, craft beauty, and, indeed, following the precedent of Diogenes, "Crank One's Hog" in the public square.

I know I am not alone in my concern. Many such civically-engaged perverts, along with friends and allies, have been contacting you and yours on this matter. All we ask is that you stop rolling over for extralegal censors, and to stop hand-wringing over your precious "Brand-Image"; if anything, it is worse now than before.

Speaking of image, it is curious that payment processors take no issue with a consumer electing to buy a copy of Ulysses, or a "Game-of-Thrones" "Box-Set" of "Digital-Video-Discs". From this, we can conclude that the verdict of "Irredeemable Porno-graphy" is rendered largely on the basis of aesthetics, or "vibes," if you will; any self-appointed judge who says "I know it when I see it" (Potter Stewart, 1964, Jacobellis v. Ohio) will be catastrophically wrong in both directions. Is Michelangelo Buonarotti's David not a bold expression of the sculptor's taste in men? Is Porpentine Charity Heartscape's Serious Weakness not a cutting portrait of the violence our world seeks to make invisible? Is Daleport996's "Sink-Dog" not a joyful tribute to the perversion inherent to domesticity, and vice-versa?

I assure you, I take no pleasure in talking your ear off like this. I would prefer to return to being an amiable scholar-pervert, just as I am sure you would prefer to return to matters of commerce. But so long as your industry forms an extrajudicial cartel with massive power to censor, it will from time to time be necessary to petition you for a redress of grievances.

I believe this petition has gone on long enough.

The next one may be longer.

-Alexi