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Censoring Fiction is not as Important as Real, Actively Racist & Queerphobic People (April 2019)

I would be the last to tell someone they have to be comfortable with everything, but I'm seeing this a bit in the anti-censorship/"proship" (as Twitter has coined) crowd, and it gives me whiplash.

I rwanted to get my thoughts out in a more constructive, maybe readable way. I mean it when I say I don't care what you do in fiction.


Content Warning: Mentions of Gore, Racism, Rape, Non-Consent, Slurs, Underage Sexuality/Lolicon/Shotacon/Toddlercon/Cub

 

Content written in fiction should not have bearing on how the morality of the author, artist, etc. is seen. No matter how distasteful what they write is. fiction_is_not_reality

puts it very well in their journal here. As distasteful as something is to you, blocking and avoiding that content should be your number one action-- not causing a fuss (this is primarily an issue in fanfiction and erotic work-- mass media can be quite different, but I still don't agree that it should be censored).


A good example is the play, All in a Row. It's disgusting, as an autistic person, to see something like that in 2019. But, I respectfully decline censoring it or having it removed. For the same reason I disagree with hiding Afflicted and Song of the South. They are gross, triggering, and did a lot of harm; but ignoring that they happened would ignore that such a part of people exists. Hiding things from people makes people curious, and censorship can easily push the spiteful towards such ideologies.

We should not be happy about these kinds of things, by any means. There's a lot in fiction that disgusts me-- racism, gore, transphobia, violent rape, the sexualization of women-- but it has a right to exist, whether I'm comfortable with it or not. If I want to say "I think this work (en mass media) is distasteful," I will.

But fandom, kink, and that sort of thing-- it doesn't have the affect mass media does. I'm content to leave the fanfic author that called a character a "trap" (though using it to refer to trans girls even in fiction does piss me off) for jack off-purposes well enough alone. Are they transphobic in real life? Maybe, but without knowing them personally, I can't make that call.

Same goes for words like futanari or hermaphrodite: when used incorrectly, or against trans people, they are disgusting terms. Violent rape scenes in fanfiction make me want to gag, and kinks centered around diapers disturb me greatly. Toddlercon disgusts me in a way I can't actually describe. "Brutal/animalistic African American man pounds white woman into the dirt like the monster he is," and other forms of raceplay, also make me deeply uncomfortable.

I don't want to interact with people who create some of this content, either, with the exception of a few friends whom I know personally, and I know don't see real people in such a way. It rubs me the wrong way. I've blocked so many people on Baraag, for example, that it's not even funny. I'm not comfortable with a lot of that, but remain passive towards it.


The second a person stands up and says "I hate fags," however, is different. Jasonafex and his fiance are good examples, having called Sonicfox a n*er faggot (and subsequently were banned from Twitter for harassment). Kothrix, a YouTuber, as well, who has actively said slurs for the sake of pissing people off. That's not okay, not should we accept it as being okay. Being vocal about people who act like this, being vocal about how politicians treat LGBTQ+ and women and POC, that is very different. Fuck every one of those people who pull this, or think it's okay to "politely disagree" with a person's sexuality or race or whatever else.

But, the difference-- this isn't fictional. That's not someone writing a fanfiction for wank material. That real, and yes, you have the right to be mad about it. I'd say you should be mad about it, but I'd be going against my personal beliefs of trying to stay mentally stable (personally, rage causes me serious issues, so I try to remain polite and passive, for the sake of my mental health).


At the end of the day, you can hate a kink, or ship, or term as much as you want. You can not associate with people that use it (I refuse to associate with anyone who says the word tr*nny, or n*er), and block every instance of it you find to curate your own experience on the net. But even distasteful fiction is allowed to exist, and I'll stand firm on that.

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