Update: Apple Bans Saga #12 For Gay Sex Scene

[geizr]

Apple uses oppressed commie child labor to increase their quarterly earnings reports, what do you expect? They don't care because most of their customers don't care.

If you're going to use that, you've pretty much decided to not use a large chunk of modern computing devices. Here's a list of just the major clients of Foxconn:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)
Apple Inc. (United States)
ASRock (Taiwan)
Asus (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
EVGA Corporation (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)
Intel (United States)
IBM (United States)
Lenovo (China)
Logitech (Switzerland)
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Netgear (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)
Panasonic (Japan)
Philips (Netherlands)
Samsung (South Korea)
Sharp (Japan)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)

As far as I know from reports, of those, only Apple has actually been DOING anything about the Chinese labor issue. If I recall correctly, Hewlett-Packard even complained about Apple doing audits and petitioning for higher wages for the workers because Hewlett-Packard was afraid of price increases to their own products. Pretty much, all over the web, it has been shown that anyone using this little bit of tripe to hold against Apple is just being a hypocrite and a tool. So, you might want to find a better reason than this one, cause, in general, it just makes one look silly rather than being a truly valid reason.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

From the sounds of it, I'd be glad to see it banned for being entirely gross and twisted and not suited to the platform.

 

[Scrimshaw13]

The big question is this, did they ban it due to gay sex or just due to sex?

Saga has several depictions of full on sex, like here's a penis, and its inside someone kind of sex, as well as a ton of "here's two people doing it, buck naked, in a sexual postion, but no penis" stuff too. It goes from HBO level to above back and forth a bunch. This is not the first time in the series we've seen a penis, and not the first time we've seen one inside of someone, it just happens to be a dudes mouth this time.

 

[Madman123456]

-Snip.-

And that attitude gets us where? *snip again*

Nowhere. I wasn't trying to move anything anywhere and my Point was: neither does Apple. They didn't remove this Comic because they're staffed by homophobes, they did that because they thought they'd make more money. It doesn't have anything to do with anything being ok or not because they're a corporation.

They chose whoever they like to pander to and if i don't think they're motivated by something that i object to, being a backwards prick would fit that, i'm ok with whatever pandering they're doing.


Bleh, we should limit our use of "homophobes" a bit since homophobia is an actual mental Illness; since you don't chose to be a homophobe, like you don't chose your sexual Orientation i'd be ok with a homophobe if that person seeks professional help. Because unlike sexual Orientation you do hurt others and unlike sexual orientation there can and should be done something about that.

 

[Milanezi]

Apple uses oppressed commie child labor to increase their quarterly earnings reports, what do you expect? They don't care because most of their customers don't care.

If you're going to use that, you've pretty much decided to not use a large chunk of modern computing devices. Here's a list of just the major clients of Foxconn:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)
Apple Inc. (United States)
ASRock (Taiwan)
Asus (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
EVGA Corporation (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)
Intel (United States)
IBM (United States)
Lenovo (China)
Logitech (Switzerland)
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Netgear (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)
Panasonic (Japan)
Philips (Netherlands)
Samsung (South Korea)
Sharp (Japan)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)

As far as I know from reports, of those, only Apple has actually been DOING anything about the Chinese labor issue. If I recall correctly, Hewlett-Packard even complained about Apple doing audits and petitioning for higher wages for the workers because Hewlett-Packard was afraid of price increases to their own products. Pretty much, all over the web, it has been shown that anyone using this little bit of tripe to hold against Apple is just being a hypocrite and a tool. So, you might want to find a better reason than this one, cause, in general, it just makes one look silly rather than being a truly valid reason.

If this was Facebook, I'd hit "like" on your comment sir.

 

[Lightknight]

I actually just picked up the first trade (a compilation of issues and the first one includes this issue) and read it a few nights ago. It's funny but I actually read this article's headline thinking "If they banned issue number 12 then why didn't they ban the first trade too", but then I saw the picture and realized it was exactly what I was thinking about. This bounty hunter guy is on some sort of prostitute world/themepark as the article says. The series in general has a lot of nudity and it certainly isn't for kids. But most of these scenes are actually leading up to something, as in they have a purpose. This one in particular illustrates the pointlessness and lack of fulfillment of meaningless (non-relationship-based) sex. It's a legitimate point to be made and once it makes that point there is actually a reason for him being there. It is character development.

As for the "postage stamp sized images..." comment. That's completely bogus and the only direct complaint I have with the article, though you did mention this was just a quote and not necessarily factual. Not that the size of the image matters, but we're talking a two page-spanning orgy with the main character walking down the center. Maybe if you're reading it on a small phone or something but that's more of formatting constraint than an actual comment on original image size. I also question the claim that this ban was because of it having gay sex as opposed to the sheer amount and variety of sexual acts being depicted here.

My question is how consistent is Apple with this policy regarding other sexual images? It's their prerogative to make such a curation of their products but it would be unethically sound if they aren't consistent. I'll admit that this issue is significantly more graphic than the others which contain single sexual acts here and there between people who actually care for eachother. But that scene is only one of several, the next page then has a bunch of frontally nude men in a pyramid while a woman spanks them with a whip. He is then offered a six-year old girl (fully clothed) who had been trained to respond in certain ways while asked if she was decent. I mean, if you're going to have any policy against such things, this comic would clearly throw a flag. The point of this scene was for him to meet that girl though.

I'm not a fan of nudity in comics. But there is a difference between gratuitous sexual drawings and ones that actually serve a purpose. There is also a lot of silliness in censorship that just doesn't make sense. This series as a whole is a remarkable story and has really stuck with me. Absolutely one of the best ones I've read and enough to make me overlook the nudity.

If apple is consistent with blocking these kinds of comics even when just heterosexual ones, then I don't really care about this being blocked. If not, then they're presenting a double standard.

Either way, if you're going to buy comics, buy them from your local comic book store. I recommend buying trades instead of individual issues.

 

[Lightknight]

Nowhere. I wasn't trying to move anything anywhere and my Point was: neither does Apple. They didn't remove this Comic because they're staffed by homophobes, they did that because they thought they'd make more money. It doesn't have anything to do with anything being ok or not because they're a corporation.

Huh? You're going to have to explain to me why you think blocking a popular comic would get them more money somehow.

I have to repeat my complaint about the assumption the the issue was blocked because of the gay acts. The very next page has something like seven men in a human pyramid (weiners fully exposed) while a woman spanks them with a whip. The page that includes gay sex was a full two-page spread (from what I recall, I'm at work, not at home where the trade is) of graphic nudity of what could be described as an orgy. And, as I said in the post immediately above, this character was then offered a six-year old girl who I believe will serve as an important plot device later on. While she was fully clothed and of course the guy rejected the atrocity in a pleasing fashion, it's still a rather troublesome scenario.

So all I mean to say is, there's a LOT going on in there that could throw red flags in the curation process and I'd be surprised if Apple said it was because of those two specific images rather than the entirety of the issue. If they did it because of the homosexuality being expressed, that's a double standard. If they did it because the issue crossed the overall line because of the variety and explicitness of images depicted then that's simply proper curation with standards we don't have to agree with.

 

[Xarathox]

So with Steve Jobs dead, Apple's still being ran by douchebags.

 

[Lightknight]

So with Steve Jobs dead, Apple's still being ran by douchebags.

The potentially slanderous thread title would indicate that. If you had read the comic you would understand why this issue may be curated out. FAR more is going on than just that scene. Read my post immediately above yours for a quick summary of just the stuff I remembered.

So Apple lets in...

multi-breasted centipede hookers, phallic architecture, evil pedophile aliens.

But the moment some gay love occurs the issue gets thrown out?

Did you also ban ME3 for its 'gay love' as well?

There is nothing that has told us that they would have let the rest of it in without those particular scenes. The claim that the issue was only blocked for that is disregarding that all those things you just quoted were ALSO in there. There's no reason why it being blocked wasn't the combination of all of them together in one issue. What we need to see is some sort of documentation that states this as the specific reason. As is, the issue is totally crossing the line as far as typical Apple curation is concerned (as far as I can tell) all by itself without the fact that members of the same sex (let alone members of different species) were with eachother.

Again, I love the comic and strongly recommend it to people who enjoy comics. But we're assuming a lot of things here without doing the appropriate research.

 

[JarinArenos]

So with Steve Jobs dead, Apple's still being ran by douchebags.

The potentially slanderous thread title would indicate that. If you had read the comic you would understand why this issue may be curated out. FAR more is going on than just that scene. Read my post immediately above yours for a quick summary of just the stuff I remembered.

So Apple lets in...

multi-breasted centipede hookers, phallic architecture, evil pedophile aliens.

But the moment some gay love occurs the issue gets thrown out?

Did you also ban ME3 for its 'gay love' as well?

There is nothing that has told us that they would have let the rest of it in without those particular scenes. The claim that the issue was only blocked for that is disregarding that all those things you just quoted were ALSO in there. There's no reason why it being blocked wasn't the combination of all of them together in one issue. What we need to see is some sort of documentation that states this as the specific reason. As is, the issue is totally crossing the line as far as typical Apple curation is concerned (as far as I can tell) all by itself without the fact that members of the same sex (let alone members of different species) were with eachother.

Again, I love the comic and strongly recommend it to people who enjoy comics. But we're assuming a lot of things here without doing the appropriate research.

I think you missed the facts of the case. The issues containing those elements (orgy, etc) were in *other issues that were not banned*. Apple *permitted* those elements, and only blocked some background images of what appears to be gay fellatio in an otherwise unrelated scene.

 

[HBaskerville]

Curious that the headline was not changed. Link bait, I guess.

 

[QtheMuse]

Journalistic Sensationalistic Article Title strikes again. Reporters are suppose to report the facts, not editorialize. Journalism 101.

 

[Lightknight]

I think you missed the facts of the case. The issues containing those elements (orgy, etc) were in *other issues that were not banned*. Apple *permitted* those elements, and only blocked some background images of what appears to be gay fellatio in an otherwise unrelated scene.

No, as I said, I've read the entire first trade which includes this issue. NOTHING comes even close to that. There's breasts and even one penis in the comic before this issue but this issue in particular has everything in spades over multiple pages. There's a married couple having sex at one point in previous comics but it's mostly sparse in other comics.

Again, there's literally a human pyramid of naked men with their penises fully in view while they're being whipped by a dominatrix. This particular issue has a section that about an everything-goes-wildest-sexual-fantasy-comes-true planet. Have you not read the comic? Do you honestly disagree that this particular issue isn't double/triple/quadruple the number of privates and sexual content flapping around?

I don't think Apple's goal is to ban all depicted sexual acts. I don't know what their standards are but I can at least understand the reasoning here as it's pretty blatant.

 

[Lightknight]

Journalistic Sensationalistic Article Title strikes again. Reporters are suppose to report the facts, not editorialize. Journalism 101.

I don't know if the author has both sides. The title of the article is certainly slander of sorts without Apple actually having issued a statement that this is why they blocked it. But I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here. As things appear, this is a pretty egregious example of sensationalism. But maybe that wasn't so intentional?

 

[QtheMuse]

Journalistic Sensationalistic Article Title strikes again. Reporters are suppose to report the facts, not editorialize. Journalism 101.

I don't know if the author has both sides. The title of the article is certainly slander of sorts without Apple actually having issued a statement that this is why they blocked it. But I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here. As things appear, this is a pretty egregious example of sensationalism. But maybe that wasn't so intentional?

Well there is no proof of why they blocked it just for the gay sex. Also it can just depends on the vetting process too. How many of the submissions do they always scan through. Maybe not many people blasted this content and when they finally got around to it they noticed oh crap. Also it matter how they decide to ban stuff. Was it one mod, a group effort, did it go all the way up to the desk of Tim Cook. "LOOK AT THIS MR. COOK TEH GAYYZZZ." There was a multitude of reasons why it could of been banned and why the other content wasn't banned. Also since it was many episodes did the scan through all the other comics or just this one. How thorough and un-bias are the Apple censors. That is the real issue. Saying that Apple as a company is out to ban gay content with just one piece of evidence trumped up to appeal to a pretty liberal reader base is pandering, borderline slander and is something that I would expect from Fox News.

As a journalist myself its just annoying to see it happening so often, and then using the shield of championing social progress as a flimsy tool to deflect closer scrutiny.

 

[Lightknight]

Well there is no proof of why they blocked it just for the gay sex. Also it can just depends on the vetting process too. How many of the submissions do they always scan through. Maybe not many people blasted this content and when they finally got around to it they noticed oh crap. Also it matter how they decide to ban stuff. Was it one mod, a group effort, did it go all the way up to the desk of Tim Cook. "LOOK AT THIS MR. COOK TEH GAYYZZZ." There was a multitude of reasons why it could of been banned and why the other content wasn't banned. Also since it was many episodes did the scan through all the other comics or just this one. How thorough and un-bias are the Apple censors. That is the real issue. Saying that Apple as a company is out to ban gay content with just one piece of evidence trumped up to appeal to a pretty liberal reader base is pandering, borderline slander and is something that I would expect from Fox News.

As a journalist myself its just annoying to see it happening so often, and then using the shield of championing social progress as a flimsy tool to deflect closer scrutiny.

Keep in mind what I've been saying up to this point. The other issues were nowhere close to this issue. Not by a long shot. Any sex contained in previous issues was practically a nun showing too much ankle compared to this one. So it's rather incorrect to say that Apple let the equivalent amount of heterosexual stuff through. This was the only issue that had a scene take place on a pleasure planet, like the author said.

I agree with you to the point that this is awfully one sided and is trumpeting the one thing that would get the most views. That is... technically, sensationalism as things appear. But hopefully we'll get an update from the writer or something more substantial like actual correspondence. So, while I am saying that this issue was above and beyond on the sexual theme compared to the other issues (and so had a lot of reasons to be blocked), I also can't affirm that Apple didn't ban it specifically for the gay actions and nothing else. What we have here is a lack of information and a one-sided quote and that's a pretty sketchy thing to do so wantonly if the goal is objective reporting. My apologies for any resulting insult for that comment. I'm just expressing my concern and I really appreciate this being reported as Saga is quite good. A fantastic universe that I thoroughly enjoyed and this pleasure planet was just a small thing.

 

[Nurb]

Apple uses oppressed commie child labor to increase their quarterly earnings reports, what do you expect? They don't care because most of their customers don't care.

If you're going to use that, you've pretty much decided to not use a large chunk of modern computing devices. Here's a list of just the major clients of Foxconn:

I know others do it, but we're talking about Apple and it's large liberal cutomer base.

And everybody SAYS that, but the whole point of using chinese is that they are oppressed by their government and cannot organize, therefore work cheap (And often commit suicide). If All these companies gave a shit about these people at all and treated them as a person with rights in their own countries, there would be no point in exploiting them.

Apple or any of them won't really do anything significant because they need their workforce to be under the boot of a communist dictator to make oceanic shipping cost effective.

 

[Darken12]

I have a hard time voicing my feelings over this.

Mostly because they are a tangled ball of rage, hatred, fury, pain, wrath and impotent roaring.

 

[geizr]

Apple uses oppressed commie child labor to increase their quarterly earnings reports, what do you expect? They don't care because most of their customers don't care.

If you're going to use that, you've pretty much decided to not use a large chunk of modern computing devices. Here's a list of just the major clients of Foxconn:

I know others do it, but we're talking about Apple and it's large liberal cutomer base.

...

And that's the same lame, trite excuse that's used to focus on Apple, yet, no other company is ever held to the same criticism on this issue. In fact, as far as I know, no other company is ever criticized AT ALL on this issue, only Apple. What makes it so bad is that Apple is the ONLY company that has shown that it gives even half a shit about the issue and has made ANY effort at all toward better conditions. The other companies have either been silent or have expressed disdain for Apple's efforts on the issue because they fear having to deal with price increases for the production of products. Basically, the one company that is actually the closest to being the patron saint in all this is always the only company that is ever burned at the stake over it. So, no, your excuse and argument just seem flawed to me. If you want to criticize Apple because you don't like the prices for the products, the marketing methods, the policies toward customers, the design of the products, how the products work, or the inadequacies of the Mac platform in relation to gaming, that's all well and fine. But to use such a fallacious pretense to lambast the one and only company that has shown any care in this issue and has made any effort at all to effect some change is just wrong.

Yes, we are talking about Apple, but the interesting thing is that this particular issue is never brought up in context when discussing any other company other than Apple. That's what really makes the "We're talking about Apple" excuse all the more lame. If we were talking about Sony or Microsoft or Dell and someone had some hatred for the company, you would never hear about their use of Chinese labor as an additional reason to object to the company. It just smacks of mindless parroting of ignorant haterade posts from the Internet in a shallow attempt to justify one's own negative opinion.

You may also want to be careful of such gross generalizations such as "liberal customer base". The specific censorship Apple is displaying here is more appealing to a conservative personality. A liberal personality would be far more accepting of the content.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

They were fine with graphic scenes such as the mentioned exposed organs, swearing, AND Lesbians having sex...yet they draw the line at two men having sex?

Can anyone say HYPOCRITES and DOUBLE STANDARDS!