now @lightignis

The truth the Bible DOESN’T want you to know

Dude with all due respect ao3 was literally created because other fanfiction sites kept deleting and censoring stories with rape, noncon/dubcon, incest, etc porn as well as LGBT ship fics. The site does have a required ratings and warnings systems and tags so that you can exclude works that have themes or content within them that you don’t want to see.

The above tagger has subjects they dislike; they need to learn to navigate around them so they don’t need to interact. That’s why tagging is so important: allowing the work to be found or avoided as needed.

The problem with ‘a little censorship’ is…endless. You want to control what other people are doing: how do you not see how that’s fucked to begin with?

You want to remove the ‘gross’ or the ‘inappropriate’ subjects, like that isn’t wholly subjective. Incest bothers you? Don’t read incest.

I can’t typically do fics with cheating, but I am not about to go tell the folks who write it that they can’t, purely to make me feel better. My eldest hates unhappy endings, they don’t 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 don’t get to tell him he can’t read it anymore.

Fancy, emotionally charged buzzwords don’t change the fact that yeah, all of those are the same concept. You don’t like it, someone else is writing it, others are reading it, and that bothers you. That’s 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 can’t 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.

‘But those are bad things, I’m trying to get rid of the bad things only!’ 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 aren’t going to go out and recreate things they’ve 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 don’t 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 brother’s door, etc etc etc ad nauseum.

More importantly: there is no end to ‘a little censorship’. Someone else gets to decide what I’m 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 Controlled…)

You don’t want incest, you don’t want no con, someone else doesn’t want any form of kink, a third busybody can’t stand that boys kiss boys, a fourth can’t handle trans characters, another carves out the ace spectrum, yet more go after the stories exploring gender dynamics in the ABO verse.

That’s 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 anarchist’s cookbook: how to make weaponry to forcibly make things change.

Oh, can’t have books that talk about different religions, either. Can’t have books that let girls know they should be treated equally, that they can do whatever they please, that they’re more than a walking baby factory. can’t have stories with magic, that’ll lead to evil thoughts. Can’t 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)

We’re living this, right now, again.

This is why knowing your history is so important.

Look at books have that been banned, burned. I’m going to oversimplify but: Picture books (and tango makes 3) because two male penguins adopted a baby, and we can’t let our kids know that’s 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! They’re 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 it’ll turn kids into satanists, y’know, because of all the magic. A thing that is totally real and possible to recreate. Are you there god, it’s 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 ‘appropriate’. And that means whitewashed, bland, and unchallenging of the norms the neo nazis are pushing. Can’t have anything about the struggles of the non white populace, can’t have anything at all about the queers, can’t 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 ‘protect the kids’ the government here is literally attempting to sanitize and censor the entire internet, for everyone. AO3 will be on the list of places they’re 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 doesn’t 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, you’ve given up your ability to explore new ideas, to think outside the box they’ve put you in. You are tamed, declawed, and too stupid to notice now. Don’t 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.

see, you're proving what i said in the post. i am 100% a man, a boy, a male, a masc aligned person, whatever. i am also 100% a woman and fem aligned person. i shouldn't be allowed into a community of women? i AM a woman. i AM a fem aligned person. why are nonbinary people who are neither accepted, but not nonbinary people who are both? lesbians are attracted to women. i am a woman. would i not be allowed in lesbian communities because i'm not JUST a woman? what if i was dating a lesbian? would their lesbian attraction to me not be valid, even though i'm a woman? would i not be allowed to interact with the lesbian community, even though i'm a woman?

i would like to ask you what harm this actually does. if i, a man, were hypothetically a lesbian. in this scenario, i find myself happy and surrounded by other wlw people; i feel like i've found a community that truly understands my love for women, which was my entire reasoning for joining the lesbian community. but i'm a man. what does that do? some people feel uncomfortable. some people block me (which is good - curate your online experience). would my participation be telling people that they aren't lesbians and invalidating their identity? would my participation lead to lesbians getting harassed or assaulted in their day to day life? would that be discriminating against lesbians by treating them unfairly or being prejudiced against them? would that be somehow forcing lesbians to date people they aren't attracted to? why is it lesbophobic to be a lesbian?

i noticed you said that the entire point of having a "safe space" is to get away from men. so many people in the queer community see men as inherently unsafe, violent, aggressive, etc. this is gender essentialism - radfem rhetoric. men are the enemy, and out to get you, just because they're a man. not based on their behavior, or the choices they make, just being a man (which they cannot control) makes them the enemy. simply the act of being a man makes them unsafe to be allowed in "women's spaces", even if they themselves are a woman. but even if they aren't women, manhood is not inherently evil. but this doesnt just apply to the whole "men can't be lesbians" discourse. why are we separating "spaces" based on gender to begin with? transgender people have been hurt by this for a long time. why are we trying to force nonbinary people to conform to what we think nonbinary people SHOULD look like? the queer community tries to separate gender into three neat little boxes: masc, fem, and neither. you've said it yourself, people who are neither are welcome in lesbian spaces, or whatever other gendered spaces. but people who are both AREN'T. that's what my original post was about. being nonbinary isn't just a Third Gender. some people are genuinely just agender, but there are so many other ways to be nonbinary. this idea of "fem aligned people" vs "masc aligned people", with masc aligned people being the enemy and unsafe and not allowed in the girls only club- uh i mean fem aligned people club- just sounds like gender roles and gender essentialism with a "progressive" label on top of it. you are excluding people like me by saying that only people who fit neatly into your ideas of what a woman or nonbinary person look like are welcome. you haven't actually learned to accept people who have identities that are "strange" to you, you just redefined what normal identities are. you internalized that agender/neutral/"neither" nonbinary people are normal, but not other types of nonbinary people who CAN'T be sorted into those gender roles. you reject people if they don't fit your idea of what they SHOULD be like, regardless of their actions. that's prejudice and discrimination.