I’ve come across multiple people calling out fics with topics like incest and/or rape with the following sentiment: “I don’t feel comfortable with my trauma being portrayed/treated like/romanticized like that. They’re using my trauma as something to get off to.”
Is there a way to address callouts about your fics like this without invalidating their trauma?
yes, tell them:
“I’m sorry about what happened to you. but no matter how tragic your story is, the world does not revolve around you. people — strangers — don’t have to censor themselves in order to cater to your personal comfort.
if you don’t like something or are triggered by something, and if you go out of your way to seek those things, so you can be triggered by them, then that is entirely on you. no one forces you to read what you don’t want to read.
not to mention, a lot of victims and survivors use dark fiction to help them cope and heal from their trauma. just because dark fiction does not help you heal does not mean you have the rights to invalidate how other victims and survivors heal from their own trauma.
and just because you personally are triggered by dark fiction does not mean you have the rights to force other people — whether or not they themselves were victims — to censor themselves in order to cater to your personal comfort.
that is not how freedom to create works. that is not how the world works.
again, the world does not revolve around you.
what happened to you is terrible, but it does not give you the rights to be entitled, it does not give you the rights to harass or shame other people who are just minding their own business, people whose actions do not harm anybody in real life in any way, shape or form.
it is your job and your responsibility to curate your own internet experience by blocking, muting, filtering out what you don’t want to see.
you do not have the rights or the power to control how other people create their art.”
