I had my first experience with deviantART censorship today: three of my pictures got nailed with:

"The work(s) listed below have been removed by staff due to a violation of deviantART policy or because its theme or content was judged unacceptable. Your deviantART submissions must obey certain guidelines and restrictions."

Obviously the pictures got deleted for sexual content...but since practically everything I have posted features sexual content I wondered why those particular three pictures got removed as opposed to something else. In two of the pictures a woman had her hand on a man's penis...so I guess that's a no-no for posting an image in deviantART. Strange, because if I were tasked to censor my own work for potentially offensive content, those two images would not be at the top of what I would consider potentially offensive. They were simple portrayals of a normal sexual relationship as opposed to anything overly kinky.

Like all censorship, what is "unacceptable" is in the eye of the beholder and thus is both subjective and arbitrary. I have seen a number of images in deviantART that I would consider "unacceptable" and that have actually offended and disgusted me. For example there is one Poser artist who has posted several images of babies being hung on meathooks or sitting screaming on bloody chopping blocks, and to me something like that would be "unacceptable". I have seen images of some rather nasty torture scenes, which, once again is a theme I would consider "unacceptable". There are far worse things to portray in art than a woman touching a man's penis.

But then again...censorship is the most subjective thing that humans do...