First off, I don’t spend a lot of time on tumblr any more, and this blog was mainly meant to be a reference blog for wuxia/xianxia genre, which has been my favorite genre for a long time. My main intention was to provide some information that might be helpful (I think MDZS becoming so popular so quickly due to the tv drama came a bit unexpected to us who have loved the novel for a long time) and not really engage much beyond that. But, the more time I spend here, the more I feel that some things need to be said.
There’s been a lot of talk about the MDZS novel dubcon/noncon elements and I definitely had no intention of engaging with that to any extent, but the mentality of this particular group of people (and I use that term generously because it’s mainly the mentality of extremely sheltered children) on tumblr is so unbelievably wild that someone needs to say something, and I guess that’s going to be me. I am going to warn people in advance, that I am going to make no attempts to be nice about this, because after some of the discussions I’ve seen recently, even if niceness was deserved, I certainly am no longer capable of it.
Now that the disclaimer is in place, let’s talk a bit about where this hatred for mxtx and her sex scenes comes from.
1. People who believe that nothing problematic should exist in fiction, because nothing problematic should exist in the world.
Sometimes, this is based on a simple inability to recognize how fiction and real world are not, in fact, the same thing, and this inability can be more commonly found among those too young to understand complex subjects (see great majority of the above children, who have already caused a great deal of damage to vulnerable communities by misusing and misrepresenting terms like pedophilia, incest, etc, etc). More often however, it is based on the inability to understand how real word and fiction are actually related, an inability that is unfortunately found among many people who should be considered adults. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of both, rooted in a belief that real world problems exist because they are normalized in fiction (but not all world problems because no one is trying to get rid of murder mysteries, just the icky problems they don’t actually wanna think about or do anything to solve, but would still like to never see again. All this while simultaneously getting to say “well, I’m against incest in fiction so that’s my contribution to the issue,” so they can then feel good about themselves).
This belief, by the way, that real world problems exist because they are normalized in fiction, has been proven as a false narrative many times, but like “Bible says all gay people are evil” or “climate change isn’t real” doctrines, it refuses to die even when faced with facts. “Fiction does not exist in a vacuum” they keep saying, as if those capable of critical thinking have not addressed this subject so many times, that you could practically walk your way across the Pacific Ocean on their responses alone. The real world problems do not exist because someone once wrote them down in a piece of fiction, and that should be abundantly clear to us all. Instead, problematic subjects exist in fiction precisely because they existed in the real world first, and we, the human beings, find writing things down to be one of the many ways we process information, problematic or otherwise.
There is also an insistence on seeing every piece of fiction as an instruction manual for “bad things,” and honestly, I don’t know what happens in these people’s heads, nor do I want to. Again, according to them, any underage fiction is an instructional manual for a possible pedophile, but tens of thousands of murder mysteries are just entertainment. If you read/write underage fiction, you must be a pedophile, but by the same logic, if you read/write bloody murder mysteries, this logic either doesn’t apply, or murder is just fine. So inevitably we go back to the fact that a lot of these issues are only raised by people who just don’t think anything they personally find “icky” should exist, and that’s rooted mostly in white privilege (and we’ll get to the white minority individuals later) and ethnocentricity (and we’ll get to that in a minute too). Basically, when I hear “people will learn that rape is okay from fiction,” I automatically think you’re either extremely immature or extremely ignorant, or both. Please take a psychology/sociology class or seven, throw in Moral Development 101 in the mix, and get back to me in like ten years, when we can both try and have an adult conversation. In the meantime, arguing against this is like arguing with climate change deniers. More likely to make me dumber than them smarter.
In short, you will never be able to get rid of problematic fiction, because you will never make the world not problematic, nor will stopping the people who choose to reflect their problematic world in writing fiction accomplish absolutely anything, except them having no way to process their reality, and you being considered an immature child (which most people who think like this already are, so no news there, let’s move on).
2. They believe things are problematic because they believe that their particular experiences are common to everyone else. If they see it as problematic, then everyone else should to see it that way too.
This should be self-explanatory, and a thousand of these discussions have been held in the past, by people more eloquent than myself, about every subject from rape fantasies and bondage (go back a few years to 50 shades), to experiences that are unique to specific minority groups, like trans individuals, refugees, rape survivors, those with disabilities, multi-national and multi-racial individuals, and so on and so forth. Even among the hundreds and hundreds of these vulnerable groups of individuals, there are hundreds of different subgroups, whose experiences are all wildly different, wildly subjective, and all completely valid to them, regardless of how they differ.
None of us have the ability to understand each and every one of those unique experiences. At best, we may be able to somewhat understand a few people who have had similar experiences, but our opinions on a variety of subjects have been shaped by the smallest differences in those experiences, and are likely to never be exactly the same.
What I’m saying is this: the little white girl from Iowa, regardless of her minority status as disabled/lesbian/bi/queer female, will never understand what drives a young/disabled/queer/multiracial/2nd gen. immigrant girl, to write 55k of rape fantasy fiction between two multiracial men, and she doesn’t have to understand it. Neither her disability nor her queerness should give her a single iota of moral high ground over the other individual, or vice versa. Her personal understanding of what is morally right or wrong in fiction does not give her the right (nor should it ever) to pass judgment on anyone else’s experiences, or their method for processing those experiences. There is no sensitive way I can say this, so I’m not even gonna try. You don’t get to be automatically right because you’re gay, disabled, or a minority of any kind. Like, I know this is uncomfortable to hear, but people around here often use their status to invalidate others and to get them not to engage in any type of discussion that would prove their opinions wrong. I’m literally watching children on tumblr going, “I don’t need to know about oppression, I’m gay,” like holy shit. The only oppression you know is your own. That’s it. Please tone down the arrogance and realize you’re not alone in the world, minority or not.
I get that if you were raped, you may never want to see rape in fiction. But in the same vein, there exist people who were raped, and want to see rape in fiction. I get that you’re gay and offended by certain type of fiction, but there are also people who are gay and prefer the same type of fiction you find offensive. This is exactly when words like “pedophile” and “incest” get thrown around a lot, for things that in no way meet the definition. Because there is no factual or valid argument that exists here, and people are browbeating other people by saying “Well, I’m gay and oppressed and I just don’t like it so it has to be wrong.” But when the dissenter is also gay and oppressed, and you have to admit that based on the status you’ve used to validate yourself, you also have to admit that their opinion is as valid as yours, then the only fallback is to point a finger and say that there must be something wrong with them. “Well, your opinion is not valid because you read underage fiction so you’re a pedophile,” and this is literally what keeps happening over and over again.
At the root of all this is a twisted, sick belief, that those who process their issues and their problematic environments in the morally pure and acceptable way are the only valid voices in every community, and that everyone else’s experiences are immediately invalidated by default. It’s a pretty fucking gross rhetoric, and it’s been going on here on tumblr for a very long time now, but it’s only gotten worse, and it’s especially prevalent among the new influx of mdzs “fans.”
3. They believe things are problematic because their culture considers them problematic, and they have no concept of the fact that theirs is not the only culture in the world.
This is particularly nasty proclivity, commonly found in Western consumers of fiction. The Western audiences like to think themselves enlightened, despite the fact that most Eastern cultures have carpets in their government buildings older than the entire Western culture, system of law, morality codes, or their Constitutions. This is mostly true of U.S. in particular because their ethnocentrism keeps self-validating itself through ignorance, poor education, and other evils of capitalism. But it’s also true of other white European consumers of fiction, who have a long history of colonialism to thank for their continuous insistence that their morality is more enlightened than everyone else’s (oh, the irony of that). But not to go too far from the subject at hand, if I had a dollar every time a white girl from United States said “Ew, this rape scene this Chinese author wrote is really gross and I find it to be offensive to my entire existence,” I could pretty much overthrow the entire capitalist system that produced this ethnocentric fucking nonsense in the first place.
In short, there are many individuals in the West, who might be minorities in their general community, but have no concept or understanding of other cultures, other minority communities, or other individuals that have life experiences drastically different from their own, so they judge everything they see from their own perspective, because it is the only perspective they have, and unfortunately, it’s a pretty narrow one. There is an important lesson to be learned here, and it’s the one I’ve already mentioned above:
Being queer, or being any kind of a minority, does not automatically save you from being ignorant, being ethnocentric, being unable to understand other people’s experiences (minority or otherwise), and it most certainly does not mean that your queer culture is the only right queer culture in the world. If you doubt my words, I highly suggest consulting some native-Chinese male queer individuals, who have also read that rape scene by that Chinese author who has upset you so much that you can’t stop crying about it (although it wasn’t written for you, and you were under no obligation to read it), and maybe ask them what they think, since their opinion is the only one even close to being relevant to this particular conversation. I guarantee that their answers will shock and amaze you, and you may even learn a thing or two along the way.
(And if you immediate answer isn’t that their opinions will all be wildly different as well because them all being native-Chinese male queer individuals still doesn’t mean they’re all the same fucking person [because hello? China has 56 ethnic groups alone] and that each and every one of them is a unique individual with a unique perspective based on their particular upbringing, social environment, sexuality, etc, etc, then you’re fucking missing the point, please go back up to the beginning and try again).
In the end, the answer to never having to see anything that upsets you is pretty simple and straight forward. If it’s bothersome, do not engage. If you don’t understand something, if it seems alien to your experience, if your very existence feels utterly repulsed by it, consider the fact that it was probably not written for you in the first place, and simply remove yourself from its presence.
Do not assume that you know why it was written, do not assume it is a personal attack against your existence, do not assume that you understand (or ever could) the culture that gave it birth, the history that formed it, or the shared experiences of those who happen to like it. Do not assume that you are the authority on problematic when it comes to anyone else’s work except your own, because you are a unique individual, your moral beliefs and expectations are your own, and no one else is required to share them. The world does not have a common morality, and if it did, it certainly wouldn’t be a common morality of a white girl on fucking tumblr who isn’t gonna take an intercultural competence class unless she’s in her fourth year of college, and even then, the exact privilege that allowed her to take that class is gonna make it pretty unlikely that she’ll understand it. It’s a tough life I know, but you’ll get over it tolerably well I’m sure.
In the simplest words possible, please try and turn a mirror towards your own propensity to think that your viewpoint is superior to all others, quit making excuses that amount to your particular minority status somehow making you immune to rampant cultural ignorance, because it’s literally been centuries of this bullshit from white colonialists countries for the rest of the world, and everyone is pretty fucking sick of it.
People are simply asking you not to be a dick to other unique individuals on the sole basis of the fact that you are incapable of processing their world, their culture, or their experiences, in the same exact way that they have, and frankly, it’s really not a lot to ask.