A Space Queer

Don’t Like, Don’t Read started as a disclaimer warning on slash fics, back when slash fics were way less accepted than they are now and some people would freak out upon reading them. The idea was simple: if you don’t like the ship I’m writing about, don’t read my story and then get mad at me for it.

Obviously it’s expanded since then, but it’s also become an easy blugeon against people talking about racism or other such issues in fic/fandom, because it’s a treasured remnant of Old Fandom, even if most people don’t remember its origins.

I am a huge fan of the general concept of Don’t Like, Don’t Read. Readers are under no obligation to finish a story. I have opened many a story and either closed it immediately because it had some writing or formatting issue or gotten halfway through and gone, eh, not my thing, and stopped. There are ships I don’t want to read about, so I don’t.

More broadly, it encompasses a really important point in fandom: authors produce all of their work for free, and so they are under no obligation to cater to the desires of their readers by using a certain style, writing a certain ship, or changing their plot. I have talked about that ridiculous comment I got recently, and to them I would say: Don’t Like? Don’t Read. But leave me out of it.

None of this makes writers immune to criticism. Don’t Like, Don’t Read isn’t a magic barrier you get to put around yourself or a cross you can use to ward off unwanted spirits. If you are racist or sexist or homophobic or otherwise bigoted (even if it’s not intentional), people absolutely have a right to call you out on it, the same way they do if you had published an essay or a book or a post on Tumblr. If you are putting something out into the world that hurts people, people should and will call you on it.

Fandom isn’t some magical utopia where everyone is progressive and perfect and nobody can ever be harmed by what someone writes. It’s not some ideal set of queer women unproblematically writing subversive fiction, untouched by all of the biases of the world. It’s a bunch of random people making things, and it can be just as good and just as bad as things being made outside of the magical etherial bubble of FandomTM.