For the people who are out there âfighting the good fightâ and âtrying to make fandom a better place,â I have two important questions for you:
2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x
What do I mean by those things? Letâs start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creatorâs life, personal background, and even intentions. Iâm using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but thatâs okay, because the author is dead and Iâm interpreting his work through my own lens.
In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.
Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSNâs on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why canât I? Why canât you? Why canât the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?
Stop me if youâve heard this before: âyou can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise youâre a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!â Or maybe âyou can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if youâre [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise youâre racist/fetishizing/colonizing!â
You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. Iâve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.
Now, I could tell you that Iâm a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which Iâve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that Iâm mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that Iâm covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.
Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that theyâve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with Americaâs piss-poor services for the handicapped now?
Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that Iâm Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character thatâs Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe Iâm both. Maybe Iâm neither. Maybe Iâm really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I canât count the number of times Iâve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and Iâve been told that I look Syrian. Whatâs stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someoneâs race and ethnicity from a photo?
Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an âadultyâ adult? Can I write a character whoâs 40? 50? 60? How old am I?
All of this is to say: you canât base what someone is or is not âallowedâ to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. Youâre trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they havenât suffered. I get that. Itâs a very noble thought. But you canât require a background check for every fic that you donât like.
If you say âyou can only write about rape if youâre a rape victim,â then one of three things will happen:
Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment
Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences
People who arenât survivors will say âyeah sure this happened to meâ just to get people to shut up
Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??
So now letâs get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?
If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one thatâs now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that youâre advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people youâre trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that youâve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?
Letâs say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isnât titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?
Is your baby in the bathwater?
Now letâs take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they havenât lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?
Letâs say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesnât matter?
Is your baby in the bathwater?
Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a âsaferâ place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying âif you throw out that bathwater, youâre throwing the baby out too.â
The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.
There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you canât find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen Kingâs It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.
Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and theyâre largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to âmake itâ in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called âadultâ theme?
Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?
Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?
Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if heâs a transman? What if theyâre NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male characterâs perspective because sheâs grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadnât yet realized about themselves?
How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?
Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?
Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?
Have you killed your author?
Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?
