Rocks fall. Everyone dies.

Miniatures

This blog understands that bi people are not gay people pretending to be something else.

This blog understands that bi people can be in a heterosexual relationship and still be bi.

This blog understands that bi people can be in a homosexual relationship and still be bi.

This blog understands that bi people can have preferences about who they date and lean more towards a certain gender and still be bi.

This blog does not support biphobia.

And I’m just like…. Have people not noticed all the virulent anti-AO3 hate on tumblr propagated by the anti shipping community? Antis have a problem with AO3 raising money because they hate the fact that AO3 won’t allow them to censor content they don’t like and doesn’t tolerate bullying. That’s who is putting out these posts like, “how can this nasty site raise so much money?” Read between the lines.

And for all the people who are just like, “If they don’t want AO3 to to raise money why don’t they just not donate?”

Because antis are incapable of saying “this isn’t for me so I won’t support it but I don’t care if other people support it. They have to actively discourage other people from supporting the thing. At the same time, they also won’t stop using AO3 because 1) they’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites who want readership and that’s where the readers are and 2) they’re too lazy to put together their own archive using AO3′s open source code because that would require doing coding and buying servers and doing all the moderating they want, which is hard, and they just want to engage in empty virtue signalling, which is easy

Anyway, my point is, people need to be aware that these people are out there and they hate AO3 and they want it to go away even though they’re actively using the platform. They’ve even said they want AO3 to fail so something “better” (re, something they control) can take its place. Some of them are blatant about it, calling AO3 a cesspit of pedophilia, and some of them are subtle about it, saying more innocuous things like ‘Does AO3 really need 130K a year?” “Shouldn’t you give your money to individual needy people doing gofundmes for stuff that’s more more important?”

But all of these people have the same end goal, which is the destruction of the archive, and the way they’re going about it right now is to try to discourage people from donating.

I am not a lawyer, but I am familiar with the US definition of Child Pornography. I’ve posted an explanation of the law below:

Images of child pornography are not protected under First Amendment rights, and are illegal contraband under federal law. Section 2256 of Title 18, United States Code, defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (someone under 18 years of age).  Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor.  Undeveloped film, undeveloped videotape, and electronically stored data that can be converted into a visual image of child pornography are also deemed illegal visual depictions under federal law.

source

Note that everything in the definition is about visual depictions. Written depictions of childhood sexual abuse do not constitute child pornography. Stories depicting CSA are generally considered protected as free speech, unless they are judged to be obscene, and it’s really hard to prove obscenity. So basically all the stories on AO3, including those graphic stories depicting the rape of infants and young children that some people have screenshotted (and by the way if you’re going to be posting that kind of content you really ought to put it under a cut), are legal. Stop saying “AO3 hosts child pornography.” They don’t.

We should also ask why child pornography is illegal (and why stories depicting CSA are not). The reason that it’s illegal to create or consume CP is because it requires the abuse of real children to create. It’s illegal not because “it’s gross” or because “pedophiles could get off on it,” but because you have to harm children to create it. By contrast, fictional stories, which do not require children to be harmed in order to create it, are legal, even if they are “gross” and even if pedophiles might be getting off to them.

Of course, just because they’re protected free speech doesn’t mean AO3 is obligated to host such stories. They could decide to ban whatever content they want. But I think that the choice AO3 has made to draw the line at permitting all content as long as it’s not illegal and isn’t directly harassing other users is the right one, and I’ll try to explain why.

There are lots of reasons to depict CSA or rape in a story, not all of which are about “glorifying” it. These crimes are real things that happen and cause trauma, and people want to explore those themes, and a lot of the people who want to write or read about those themes are survivors who are working through said trauma.

Most reasonable people understand this and say that fics about CSA and rape recovery should be allowed, it’s those other “gross’ fics that they want to ban. The problem is that there’s really no way to make a policy that allows one and bans the other. Are there pedophiles who are posting non-fannish, extremely violent content to AO3 because the platform allows it? Yes, clearly. And I don’t like it at all. But there are also survivors who are writing about their trauma, and it’s not possible to make an enforceable policy that permits one but not the other.

I myself am a CSA survivor who writes fic about CSA and rape to process trauma. So a big Fuck You to the people who have accused me of being a pedophile. And don’t even come at me with this myth that victims of CSA are more likely to be child molesters themselves. Studies have shown this holds true only for a minority of male victims, and that it does not hold true for female victims.

source 

The majority of fan creators posting work to AO3 are female or afab. The idea that authors on AO3 who are writing underage or noncon fics are all pedophiles is absurd and offensive. Unlike the person who posted the “receipts,” I actually read the screenshotted fics, at least the ones with an identifiable author name and title. One of those authors also writes 1D fic. My guess, based on the demographics of 1D fans, that this person is more likely to be a young, female CSA survivor than an adult, male child molester (of course there are young female abusers, of course there are older male victims, I’m saying what is statistically more likely). If I’m right, that would mean that even among a group of stories which were cherry picked to show the most extreme content you can find on AO3, there might very well be a fic written by a CSA survivor among them. I’m not willing to silence that survivor. Or any survivor.

But the thing that bothers me most is that the people who are condemning the extreme content based on AO3 are mostly doing so based on the tags. The presence of those tags means that the authors are warning readers about the content. What people seem to want is for AO3 to moderate fics and take down content with extreme tags. If AO3 were to implement such a policy, not only would fics about rape trauma and recovery written by survivors which might also have similar tags get caught in the dragnet, but there would be authors who would stop tagging their fic appropriately in order to fly under the radar. Trust me when I say that is not an outcome anyone wants.

So, I think AO3 has made the right choice, in that they allow authors to post extreme content, but that they encourage a culture where tagging and warning is the expected norm. If that content upsets you, don’t go looking for it. And you really have to look for it. These fics represent a tiny minority of what’s on the archive, and about the only way to find it is to search for it using specific tags. So again, if you are upset by that content, don’t go looking for it. And if you are a CSA survivor and you are triggered by such content, please please don’t go looking for it. That’s a form of self-harm and you should discuss it with a therapist.

I’m 43, I’ve seen this play out over many platforms, including offline, real-world ones, such as the (nongovernmental) censorship of content on TV (recut movies, episodes networks refused to air) or in magazines (stickered, brown-bagged, put behind the counter, or sent back/destroyed), and the (governmental) censorship of printed or video hard copy pornographic and non-pornographic content in my state including the police intimidation and harassment of people who rented a movie called The Tin Drum (an Academy Award and Palm d'Or winning German art film considered Gunter Grass’s seminal work, featuring a lot of shocking and controversial imagery) the confiscation of the videocassette from stores and homes, and the threatening of at least one ACLU member with prosecution.

These people either don’t understand or don’t care that their behavior is on the exact same continuum that has made same-sex romance content in children’s media so rare, even in the last few years where huge strides have been made.

When I was a teen, a popular prime time show called Murphy Brown featured the businesswoman main character choosing to have a child as a single mother, and people absolutely shit their pants, including craven asshole VP Dan Quayle, who said it “[mocked] the importance of fathers”, and a White House spokesman declared its “glorification of the life of an unwed mother” to be unacceptable. The fucking US Government was bloating its drawers over a TV sitcom.

It may seem extreme to compare antis’ behsvior to something this extreme and ludicrous, but it isn’t. There is a continuum, and eliminating certain forms of expression by pressuring or even destroying venues and creators is on it. It’s fiction. Not hate speech or bigotry, not potentially harmful misinformation, not things that do very real damage, but fiction.

To see the beginnings of the same kind of logic applied to all fannish content that might be distasteful is infuriating. It always starts with the children, and it spreads. Often, first, to queer content. It doesn’t go anywhere good. It does not help victims, prevent abuse, or create a safer moral climate. It just replicates repressive dynamics that have already been tired for decades.

I genuinely believe that many antis are motivated by concern, or by their own terrible experiences. They were victimized, they know someone who was, or they simply feel acute empathy for victims. They don’t understand why anyone would want to engage with content like that, or why anyone would want to excuse it, unless they were terrible people (or perhaps victims of abuse who write about abuse, who can be forgiven, which is itself a disgusting commentary on how abuse victims are viewed as broken in some way). I genuinely believe that “I was not helped or saved or defended, I was harmed, nobody helped me, nobody cared, and I REFUSE to be that nobody, I DO care, and I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did, I am therefore outraged about this content” is a thought process here, and it’s one I understand. The urge to keep people from being hurt SHOULD be strong.

Hell, I even agree. TAG THAT SHIT. Tag that shit so unsuspecting people don’t trip over it.

The existence of this fan-made content is not hatmful. Nor is the fact that some people voluntarily read it. The problem is that some people who aee it will be upset.

But Ao3 has a very functional and sophisticated content filtering system to prevent that. And it also has warnings. A person will KNOW before they go in that there will be potentially upsetting content.

If they persist despite the tools provided to them and find content that they don’t like, that is on them.

They can always not use the site.

I know I am going over old ground. I know this has been said. But this gets to me. Not because I read or want to read this kind of content, I definitely do not, but because I don’t trust groups that push like this to have my best interests at heart and I know from observing countless examples that they or people emboldened by them WILL come for me if they are allowed to set the standard. I’m not having that.

Ao3 is what it is. I don’t care whether someone hates it. I care that they want to destroy it just because it exists, when they could build their own thing and do way more good thst way. And honestly I wish they would.