There is no such thing as âa little censorshipâ
The above tagger has subjects they dislike; they need to learn to navigate around them so they donât need to interact. Thatâs why tagging is so important: allowing the work to be found or avoided as needed.
The problem with âa little censorshipâ isâŚendless. You want to control what other people are doing: how do you not see how thatâs fucked to begin with?
You want to remove the âgrossâ or the âinappropriateâ subjects, like that isnât wholly subjective. Incest bothers you? Donât read incest.
I canât typically do fics with cheating, but I am not about to go tell the folks who write it that they canât, purely to make me feel better. My eldest hates unhappy endings, they donât get to dig up sad ending fics and yell at the author. My middle kid likes a different ship than I do in pretty much all of our common media. I donât get to tell him he canât read it anymore.
Fancy, emotionally charged buzzwords donât change the fact that yeah, all of those are the same concept. You donât like it, someone else is writing it, others are reading it, and that bothers you. Thatâs on you, my dear.
You will never have the right to tell someone else they cannot read or write it purely because you dislike it.
Learn to block, learn to filter, learn to accept that the real world has people who like things you do not.
This is the donut/diet argument all over again: you canât have or dislike donuts, so you want to make sure no one else can have it either. Hard no, my friend. You have control only over yourself, and you need to remember that.
âBut those are bad things, Iâm trying to get rid of the bad things only!â No. They make you uncomfortable. There is a difference. Just as there is difference between reality and fiction. Just like what you think is bad may not, and probably will not, line up with someone else.
Fiction is not promoting rape, incest, whatever else. Kids arenât going to go out and recreate things theyâve read for shits and giggles anymore than playing grand theft auto is going to make them join the fucking mafia or whatever it is. Sims players donât suddenly rip their clothes off and drown in the pool, reading about Vash banging his brother a la Flowers in the Attic is hardly going to make someone knock on their actual brotherâs door, etc etc etc ad nauseum.
More importantly: there is no end to âa little censorshipâ. Someone else gets to decide what Iâm allowed to read and write, and the organizations with that aim have proven over and over and o v e r to be insane. Anything remotely queer is banned for being Bad or Sexualized (because these people have learned that PROTECT THE KIDS is the easiest way to rally the ignorant masses into believing that the rainbow is somehow preying on children⌠and thus need to be ControlledâŚ)
You donât want incest, you donât want no con, someone else doesnât want any form of kink, a third busybody canât stand that boys kiss boys, a fourth canât handle trans characters, another carves out the ace spectrum, yet more go after the stories exploring gender dynamics in the ABO verse.
Thatâs not even getting into politics, where it turns into now no one can post stories that explore changes in government, that are anti war, that are hopepunk and show all the ways society could be better. Or, on the opposite spectrum, things akin to the anarchistâs cookbook: how to make weaponry to forcibly make things change.
Oh, canât have books that talk about different religions, either. Canât have books that let girls know they should be treated equally, that they can do whatever they please, that theyâre more than a walking baby factory. canât have stories with magic, thatâll lead to evil thoughts. Canât have stories with explicitly consensual anything, gotta keep the population pure and filled with shame about their desires. (There is a reason so many romance novels have a bit of unsavory shenanigans: the thrill of being wanted so overwhelmingly in a world where feeling that want means you are Not a Good Girl)
Weâre living this, right now, again.
This is why knowing your history is so important.
Look at books have that been banned, burned. Iâm going to oversimplify but: Picture books (and tango makes 3) because two male penguins adopted a baby, and we canât let our kids know thatâs acceptable, never mind that I, a child of a lesbian, literally bawled my eyes out upon finding that book in my twenties. I would read it every day to my own toddlers, because look! Theyâre like Awa and Gramma! 1984, because the entire point is how burning books is Bad. Animal Farm, the new government is just as bad as the old and we the people deserve better. Gone With the Wind, for being about the American south and not only making it seem like maybe slavery is kinda meh but also hinting at a woman having a sexuality. The scandal. Harry Potter. Not because JK turned out to be transphobic trash, but because itâll turn kids into satanists, yâknow, because of all the magic. A thing that is totally real and possible to recreate. Are you there god, itâs me, Margaret. Because it talked about menstrual cycles.
As an American, seeing headlines where kids are banned from the library because of policies like this is terrifying. Kids in Florida have zero books in the classroom. They have to be screened to be considered âappropriateâ. And that means whitewashed, bland, and unchallenging of the norms the neo nazis are pushing. Canât have anything about the struggles of the non white populace, canât have anything at all about the queers, canât have anything that paints the south in a bad light.
There is a bill currently attempting to pass into law, KOSA: kids online safety act. Under the guise of âprotect the kidsâ the government here is literally attempting to sanitize and censor the entire internet, for everyone. AO3 will be on the list of places theyâre going to try and nuke. Yeah, even your cute vanilla super straight happy ever afters. All in the name of making sure imaginary little Johnny doesnât think kissing boys, wearing pink, becoming friends with the Mexican kid down the street, or opposing genocide is acceptable behavior.
Censorship is not about protecting you, me, the mythical children, or anyone at all. It never has been.
Censorship is purely about control.
Censorship is about controlling your awareness, your intelligence, your ability to realize you are living in the worst timeline, and your ability to organize and fight back. Censorship is division. Censorship is deliberate cruelty meant to cripple you and make you malleable.
After all, youâve given up your ability to explore new ideas, to think outside the box theyâve put you in. You are tamed, declawed, and too stupid to notice now. Donât worry your pretty little blonde haired and blue eyed head about it now, Julie, the government will tell you want you need to know. Oh, what happened to your neighbor? Sweetie, what neighbor? No one was ever there. Repeat after me, no one was ever there.
AO3 is protecting my ability to read and write whatever the fuck I want, while giving me the search capabilities to NOT run into shit I dislike. AO3 is giving my teens a safe place to read and explore their own sexualities and interests, to engage in uncomfortable situations in a controlled way. AO3 is giving my teens a place to practice being human.
Censorship is always the bad guy.
AO3 is a fucking godsend, a pillar of creativity and freedom of engagement, and should be revered as such.
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