#silent bystanders are contributors to hate

[forthetaintedsorrow-whump]

Absolutely sad to hear this is happening yet again.  If any of you think this is the first time such despicable behavior (censoring and bullying others) is happening in the whump community, IT IS NOT. 

This kind of shit behavior has been happening in this 'community' ever since I joined.  Someone I knew completely disappeared because of it.  Maybe they're dead.  I have no idea, and I'm not going to censor the idea that they may have committed suicide over this kind of bullying.  There were other things going on in their life, but bullying from the whump 'community' is absolutely a contributing factor to their disappearance.

We get sad and upset when a well-known member disappears.

We absolutely need to have the same kind of community-wide response and outrage when this behavior happens.

We need to drum people out who do this.  They are NOT part of the community.  Haters are NOT members of fandom.  People who censor are NOT welcome.  This goes for every fandom in existence.  It's not whump exclusive.

That is not to say that we need to spout bullshit hate on others.  But we absolutely need to exclude from participation and interaction those who do censor and hate.

If you see it, CALL. IT. OUT.  Label these people!!  Do NOT be silent about it for God's sake!  For YOUR sake.  Tell them their behavior is unacceptable!

Why is this happening?  BECAUSE YOU STOOD SILENT WHEN IT DID.  BECAUSE I STOOD SILENT.

And for the sake of the individual who disappeared, I'll never be silent about it again.

So I'm certainly putting a target on my back for this but:

An artist/writer in the whump community has recently been harassed off the platform after his blogs have been repeatedly (and falsely) mass reported and banned. Over and over, he tried to follow the terms of service as best he could and made certain to properly tag and label all his content. And over and over, he would get bombarded with hateful anons and false reports.

So, full disclosure: I support him, and I support his right to make whatever content he wants and post whatever abides by the ToS. I support his right to post links to other websites where he can post stuff tumblr doesn't allow.

I don't care that you (the general you) think some of the themes and scenarios he writes are disgusting. I don't care if they would be illegal in real life. Frankly, there's plenty of illegal and immoral activities in pretty much every fictional story ever. That's how fiction works.

Some people write about "questionable" subjects to process their own personal experience with them. Some people find it arousing. Some people just enjoy reading about it without having any kind of complicated feelings. All of those things are fine, actually, and it's pretty fuckin weird to attack people about it.

It's fiction. It's make-believe. It's your job as a viewer/reader to decide what you personally can and cannot handle, not the job of creators to limit what they make. Should it always be tagged appropriately? Absolutely, that's part of allowing your audience to make an informed choice. Do I always use the "mature" label on here for my content? No, I don't. That's not the standard in the whump community, and it makes your blog a target for tumblr to ban outright without cause. But I do hide everything questionable below a read-more link and add appropriate tags for filtering. That's a balance you have to find in a censorship-heavy environment like the modern internet, and we don't always make the right choices.

I think that my friend (who I won't tag or mention by name) did the best he could to find that balance. If that makes me a target, so be it. I'll keep posting my "disgusting" content, and you can block me if it suits you.