eazzy–pink:

I wish some of these older fans talking about like pedophilia in fanfics and fanworks would be a bit more nuanced in their approach rather than just parrot the same mindsets they held back when there weren’t enough people talking about harmful shit circulating among fans.

Nobody is saying that no book that talks about harmful shit should exist. Nobody is saying not to write about that. But what concerns people is how the depiction of certain shit in fanworks is being glorified and, in many cases, being used to justify people who would do others harm in online circles revolving around the same content.

We can’t physically stop people who do harm and intend harm from invading fan spaces, but if we had the power to curate that, then why wouldn’t we exercise that power?

Like at some point, as a fucking adult, you have to recognize that there is a responsibility that we owe to ourselves and the people interacting with us in this space to ensure that we are being mindful of the sort of content we make and what we are saying about it.

The idea that we should always view fiction as separate from reality and that people upset about how certain fan centered websites are on the wave of some kind of puritanical conservativist rhetoric (btw thanks for comparing other people of marginalized identities to the same ideology that has literally killed a lot of them in droves; love that) are just reacting to things they personally don’t like is so irresponsible.

I literally sat here and watched csa victims talking openly about people using content to find victims and to justify the things that they were doing to them. It is widely known to anyone with like a fundamental idea of criminological research that pedophiles seeking to groom victims will show them content that normalizes that sort of behavior, that convinces their victims that the abuse they are enduring is actually just normal shit, that they! Seek! Victims! In circles that give them easy access to said victims!

This is like, basic stuff that most normal people understand yet somehow! Whenever someone wants to talk about how we as a society should start having serious conversations about how fiction does affect reality and how we should be more responsible about the content we produce, you get those folks that want to act like it’s a bad thing that we ask these questions. And I don’t get that.