as someone that was actually groomed and harmed by that exact mentality I'm very disappointed that you're choosing to defend this, fiction DOES impact reality whether you like to admit it or not and frankly it's really messed up that you're defending this in front of your many many young followers
Listen. This ask came sometime after I went to bed last night. I woke up to this, and I have been staring at it ever since. I have been trying to figure out how to go about answering it in the most eloquent and perfect way. But there are a million people who have already done that way better than me, and if y’all want to read them you can find them elsewhere on the internet. This post is a quick summary of all the reasons that I am “pro-ship” or whatever it is that antis would call me. And when I say “quick,” I mean a 900+ word bullet essay, but whatever, here we go.
- Fiction does impact reality to an extent but it’s ultimately NOT reality and someone creating/enjoying fiction that you find distasteful for whatever reason does not mean they advocate that type of behavior in real life. (I like reading/writing fics with kidnapping and whump in them. That does not mean I want to or think others should kidnap and torture people)
- Someone trying to justify their behavior by pointing to fiction and saying “see, this means what I’m doing is fine” is a MASSIVE red flag, and to all my “young followers” that you are so concerned for, if you have someone in your life who is doing so, it is NOT okay and if you can you should talk to another trusted adult, such as a teacher or school counselor. We are mandated reporters, and are there to help you in situations like this.
- Not talking about this/pretending it doesn’t exist will not protect young people, if anything it will leave them more vulnerable because they will have no reference point for things like this.
- Lots of works that contain Thing Bad do actually paint it as a bad thing, or even if they don’t, tagging that type of content as #abuse, #pedophilia, #thing bad, etc. can actually HELP some people realize that behavior they are experiencing in real life is WRONG and harmful, and can lead them to getting the help they need.
- It is not the responsibility of writers posting their work in adult spaces to moderate their content, make it safe for kids, or to make sure the readers know that the Bad Thing is Bad Actually. It is the responsibility of teens and adults to moderate their own online experiences, and the responsibility of children’s guardians to ensure that their child is only engaging in spaces that are moderated for children. And AO3 and tumblr are adult spaces. If something is appropriately tagged, and you know it will trigger you, then you should avoid it. If you are not mature enough to know that, you should not be unsupervised on the internet, which is not and will NEVER be a universally safe space
- It doesn’t matter what restrictions you try to put on online spaces, it won’t stop content that contains upsetting things from being made. Did you see that trailer for FX’s new show “A Teacher,” a show that’s literally about a young teacher and a high school senior having an affair? Not a fanfic, not a self published book, a Hulu exclusive TV show. You can argue all day about what should and should not be allowed to be portrayed in fiction, but ultimately, stuff that you find horrible is going to get made. (I don’t know how “A Teacher” is going to handle the morals of the situation, because frankly, as a teacher myself, I find that type of relationship being explored in anyway horrifying and I plan to stay far away from that show. BUT that doesn’t mean I have the right to demand it be taken down from Hulu.)
- What happened to you, while horrible, is the fault of your abuser, not of the fiction that they used to justify their actions towards you. If none of that fiction was posted anywhere they still would have found other ways to groom and abuse you because thats what abusers do. They justify their behavior any way they can. It is not the victim’s fault, it is not the fiction’s fault, it is the abuser’s fault and no one else’s.
- Here’s the thing about online and/or publishing censorship. It gets very dangerous very quickly. You may say “Oh, I just want to censor what is obviously morally wrong,” but there is no such thing as "obviously morally wrong," because life is just more complicated than that. Again, the internet is not a universally safe space, and trying to turn it into one will eventually turn it into a space where NO ONE can exist freely, because if you think that the powers-that-be will stop at "only the OBVIOUS stuff" you are painfully misinformed, not just of hypothetical situations, but of actual fandom history.
- Many people who write content that contains things like abuse, incest, pedophilia, etc. are survivors themselves using that content to cope. Experiences with abuse are not universal, and what may be triggering for one person may be cathartic for another. But asking writers/readers to divulge that incredibly personal information to “justify” themselves in their ship or their content is invasive and harmful.
- The fact that i do have many young followers is why i feel it’s important to talk about the fact that there is content out there that may gross out or even harm you, but the mature responsible thing to do about it is block, blacklist, and avoid, not start crying for censorship and removal.
I’m going to end this by saying that if everything I’ve just said makes you fume with rage or lose respect for me as a person, then that’s your prerogative. You can unfollow and/or block, no hard feelings. You do what you gotta do to cultivate your own online experience. But you don’t get to come into my inbox and try and suggest to me that I’m harming children by saying that we shouldn’t have censorship. I’m gonna link @altruistic-skittles‘s recent post about remrom shipping, because it’s way more eloquent than this and is a good read, but at the end of the day, I’m anti-censorship, all those bullet points are the reasons why, and if you disagree then do what you gotta do about it.
(and just a disclaimer, cuz apparently it needs to be said, being anit-censorship in fiction does NOT mean I support incest in real life, pedophilia in real life, abuse in real life, ANY shit like that, I want to be very fucking clear. Those are real problems that hurt real people in the REAL world, and they are very serious. But telling someone online that they’re not allowed to ship “xyz” isn’t going to help those people, and is only going to end up causing more harm)
That being said, this is the last ask I’m gonna answer about this, certainly with this amount of depth. I have other things I’d like to do with my Saturday.
