#censorship is always bad

[grisen06]

[justapanpirate]

Whenever I have seen a fic that has something like pedophelia in it it’s explicitly clear that it’s a bad thing. The fic goes into how traumatising it is, how wrong it is, how the adult is at fault. I don’t know what kind of fics other people have found but I’ve never stumbled upon one that tries to portray it as something that is in any way okay. If your mind immediately goes “this fic has pedophelia, that means anyone who reads it jerks off to it” I’m concerned about what the fuck is going on in your head. Do you jerk off to it? Does a fic with incest make you suddenly want to fuck your sibling? No? So why do you assume it happens to everyone else? Why do you assume that you are somehow too smart to get manipulated, but others are not? Does it make you uncomfortable? Did you ever think about how that might’ve been the point?

You also don’t seem to realise that the argument that “you can’t write about xyz because it’s normalising it” also applies to things like biographies, where people tell their story, usually in a “I went through all this shit and survived, you can too” sort of way. Should they not be allowed to? And don’t use the “you can only write about it if it happened to you” bs, how do you know someone went through something and aren’t just lying? Should there be a requirement that people have to tell the world about their trauma to prove they can write about it? A trauma-license if you will? A guideline for “the correct way to write about sexual trauma”? Who will decide on what the right or wrong way is?

If you want to censor writing about pedophelia, rape, incest etc it’s not gonna stop with fanfics. It’s not gonna just apply to what you find disgusting or morally wrong, what you think is the wrong way of writing it. Censoring that would mean censoring it no matter in what context, because people won’t be able to agree on where to draw the line. If you don’t think that will have people find loopholes to silence survivors you are incredibly naive and no better than the people who tell survivors they shouldn’t talk about it because it makes things awkward and other people uncomfortable.

And if you purposefully and repeatedly seek out fics/art that makes you uncomfortable, gives you anxiety, in any way affects you negatively, you are actively self harming. Any therapist would tell you that step one is to do what you can to avoid those triggers; use the block button freely, mute every trigger you can think of. This goes for everything, not just what I’ve mentioned. The rest of the world doesn’t care about your triggers, it’s up to you to do what you can to keep yourself safe. You are the main character in your story, not mine.

Lastly: why are any of you using ao3, that was created specifically by proshippers for proshippers if you find it so vile? No, “because that’s where the most fics are” isn’t an excuse. That just means that your entertainment is more important than this morality you spout. And why do you guys, who claim to care so much about victims, never share any resources for said victims? Why do you never talk about the bible, a book that is actively used to hurt people? Why do your arguments never extend to murder, cannibalism or just about any kind of violence other than sexual? Do you genuinely think you know more about how the human mind works than people who have studied it for years? Does it ever occur to you that maybe the world isn’t either black or white but actually full of gray tones, because how we think is pretty damn complex?

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If you or someone you know needs help:

[mccoyquialisms]

am I the only one who feels like the crowd that’s always crying “ooo this piece of media addresses [this heavy topic] without a character explicitly calling it out as bad so therefore it’s ENDORSING it and bad media!” is the same crowd who wouldn’t shut up about “the curtains are just blue 🤪”? Like sorry you slept through English class and are incapable of recognizing subtext or unreliable narration while the rest of us learned how to read

[xxplastic-cubexx]

sequel to this ramble cause the way james talks bout the reduced cherik scenes throughout the xmen films in this video is making me want to kill people. 'we'll always have paris darling' what if we all blew up.

[unrealisticlea]

I know buddie is canon because in my homophobic country they change almost all their dialogues and they like to play this game called “how many times can we fit the word FRIEND in a conversation before it gets weird”.

“he’s hanging out with his Buck-> he’s hanging out with his FRIEND Buck”

“you said it, brotha” -> “you said it, FRIEND”

“when you sued the department did you stop to think what it would do to us”-> “did you stop to think what it would do to other people?” (Like who????)

Eddie and Buck both call Chris “buddy” but when Eddie says it they translate it to “sweetie” and when Buck says it they translate it to “FRIEND/Christopher”. When Oliver says him “Chris”, no he didn’t. He said “Christopher”, are you deaf. (they really really don’t want you to see any kind of parental relationship between Buck and Chris. Here gay couples can’t adopt children. I’m connecting the dots)

“There’s no one in the one I trust with my son more than you”-> “I’m giving you my son because there’s no one in the world I trust more than you” (yeah, okay, this turned out gayer)

I can’t wait to see what they’re gonna do with “go get them, cowboy”. my guess is it’s just gonna be “good luck, FRIEND!”

[fiendishartist2]

watching a youtube video ranking "analogue horror" and the comments are all correcting the guy on info he got wrong about petscop lol

[shoechoe]

reading the invader zim comics you can tell they absolutely love the fact that they're allowed to have blood now

[contagious-watermelon]

if I see another person censor lesbian I'm actually losing it. what is "le$bian." "le$bean." "le$bi@n." when can it be over

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

also like thinking about the fates drama and shit reminded me of somethign which is that. localisations changing things isn’t necessarily censorship even if it’s made less objectionable bc like, censorship is not just a term for things changing or becoming less objectionable it’s censorship if it’s being suppressed. like, yeah, the blood stuff in mortal kombat was censorship bc the devs were outright unable to add blood and get published bc nintendo were on a big moral purity image campaign in the early days. but if it was done by the devs porting it bc they personally didn’t like blood that’d be a wild choice but it’s like. not censorship. same with localisation things being changed around is normal and doesn’t indicate censorship unless it was specifically done to suppress transgressive parts bc they would not be allowed. censorship isn’t just things changed and I don’t like it it’s when speech is actively suppressed.

[dayundying]

I woke up, realized theres "Tumblr premium" so I look it up on Tumblr to see what people are saying. . .

People are mostly upset that they didn't know they had post and like limits, which is a stupid reason to be upset.

[robertsbarbie]

:/

[toytulini]

you know that joke thats like cw: this game contains scenes?

tfw you have an oc that is just. he just Is a content warning at this point

[aeide-thea]

thinking abt (1) that post abt how most censorship is preemptive self-censorship¹ (2) bras²

⸻ ¹ wow, tumblr search actually worked for once??? ² i do understand and respect that for many people bras serve an actual structural function wrt support/comfort! however, for many other people (hi!) they do not, at least in everyday non-sports contexts, and that's the set of concerns i'm speaking to here.

[obscenicon]

sorry to my many proship (and by extension antiship) followers ig but i think shipcourse is very very silly. lets all just have fun and stop giving a shit okay?

[ratcandy]

i am always so hesitant to like or reblog posts about censorship because it's always a question of "did the OP write this because they actually believe in the nuance of the subject or did they write it because they really want to write/draw cp"

like especially on this site I can never tell. There'll be a totally normal post about letting authors write about whatever subjects they want so long as it's handled respectively, or clarifying that "just because you don't enjoy/are discomforted by a topic doesn't mean other people cannot write about it," which is something i totally agree with! Man i'm a horror and tragedy liker of course I believe in letting people write about horrible (yet often very real) subjects in a blunt and honest light.

but then there's a 50/50 chance that what's really going on there is that the op wants to pass off their "proship" nonsense as totally valid and normal, and . Well see That is where I do Not Agree. fundamental difference in portraying a dark subject as what it is (dark and horrible) and portraying it for romantic/erotic/glamorization purposes .

i can just hardly ever trust people on this site in particular to be Normal in that regard and it is so sad. I want to agree with ur anti-censorship post babygirl I swear I Just Cannot Trust that you don't mean it in That Way and I'm not even going to Indirectly promote that

[valentyn-the-mad]

Shielding people from ideas will never serve them or protect them as well as preparing them to examine the ideas they encounter and determine what to do with them.

Never seeing a knife or understanding how it works will not help someone handle one safely if they end up with one. It is far far far harder to prevent ever encountering something objectionable than to learn how to deal with it responsibly.

If someone is not allowed to talk about knives but forced to juggle them anyway, there's no safe way to express that experience, nowhere to get safety tips, no one to say there are other things to juggle.

This is an obvious metaphor but apparently it's necessary because there is a distinct difference between media portrayals of literally anything and the real deal. A picture is not a mountain.

Imagination does inform reality, reality does inform imagination, but there is a marked difference between holding a thought and doing an action. The real action that impacts real people is what matters, not playing pretend. The real person made a choice - they were not forced into it by being exposed to an idea. But maybe if we stopped trying to cut off unpleasant ideas they would have had more ways to examine the concept first and then responsibly discard it. Or not, which is still on the person and their choices and not the idea they could have been exposed to in a million different ways. Censorship doesn't actually work to protect anyone. Give people the tools to examine ideas for themselves instead.