content warning for vague discussion on taboo kink (and an apology for having to keep it vague for the sake of politeness, but this is broadly about how my perspective has changed over time especially in the face of censorship and how I choose to take personal responsibility of what I engage with)
The vindictive stance that some folks have that "bad" porn is indicative of a personality flaw and/or harmful behavior or at the very least enabling, is a perspective I previously agreed with from ages ~18-25 because I saw the harm some folks caused and it was easy to strawman the sex pests, harassers, and abusers as the face of the things that disturbed me, and I see them falling into the same argumentative traps that I did years ago. Going whole ham on the angle of "fiction affects reality" (which is TRUE!) is very easy to lean on as the unbreakable knockout punch as to why "all of this is bad" when you believe your opposition exclusively believes it doesn't, and are all stupid, gullible, and/or maliciously complicit while ignoring the implicit slippery slope in that argument.
Fiction does affect reality, and has the potential to be used by bad people who abuse their influence over others, but the problem is, instead of getting angry only at the people directly causing tangible harm to others/animals, they're getting angry at those people and then painting them as the face of a "side", creating the false dichotomy of "harmful, ignorant abusers" and "normal, rational, just people" which is just not how this shit is. There's obviously bad people who hide behind community spaces to cause harm but this is true in all circles, and it's a really poor argumentative trap that has a cyclically reinforcing justification that requires everyone you argue with to be "the bad side". You can kind of tell, because it often comes out in a vindictive level of snark and I know all too well just how GOOD it feels to be so insanely correct in your head on that position that there's basically no backing down from it whatsoever.
This position feels so right because it fundamentally stems from pain and anger [on behalf of] people who are caused harm, and it does stand behind a few pillars of solid argumentation. For example, people need to be more diligent about not enabling or excusing abusive behavior that infringes on other people's rights, disrespects their boundaries, or ignore consent, and also it's worthwhile to be aware of the ways in which the images you make can proliferate across the internet once it's out of your control. I agree with this baseline principle, but I think it sort of gets out of control once you start using the angle of the imagination of consenting adults to explain why the entire subsection of taboo curiosity/kink is the top of the slippery slope towards true evil and it's very tiring and embarrassing to see my past self in others with that same degree of just rage.
Like man, I… am really uncomfortable with a lot of those themes too, I don't participate in it, but I think I had to come to terms with it genuinely just by being more social. There's a big difference between the mutuals and friends who are into some weirder stuff than you but keep it to themselves and their adult oriented communities that are genuinely vigilant about keeping abusers out and want nothing to do with people who have sincere interest in causing real-world tangible harm vs. secret group chats sharing real world illicit content and expressing genuine interest in actually assaulting people. To paint one as the other is to impose a thought crime onto the concept and not the actual crimes occurring. They have no clue about people's history, reasons for their interests, the amount of control they have over their interest, the level of cognizance they exercise in that interest, the therapy they participate in, the trauma they've experienced, or the upbringing they've had, so they have to construct an argument that is foolproof where none of that matters - "it's ALL equally bad regardless of any of those factors, and to say otherwise is actually enabling it to be used by malicious people! Don't you see that fiction affects reality?" I know the exact line of arguing, because I've used it. I still believe in that, to be honest, but I believe it with so much more nuance than I did growing up when I was genuinely angry and thought I was fighting the right fight instead of being sidetracked and pointing my rage at the wrong target.
The only way you can make that argument is if you believe your "opposition" is too stupid to know better, and too evil to be reasoned with. That it's just a matter of time that they will slip into or at the very least turn a blind eye to or enable that sort of behavior, but it's putting an insane onus on people who are expressing a curiosity of taboo subjects in a safe, controlled, and child-inaccessible environment to bear the burden of controlling people who will use any angle, harmless or otherwise, to hurt others. You have to believe that artists are responsible for what other people DO with their art, that art is like a gun ready to be fired to cause harm and destroy, and not a piece of human creative expression, no matter how much it grosses you out. You also have to erase a lot of nuance in the variety of perspectives that people have on it, and reduce it to the single most harmful version of it.
Art CAN cause harm, art CAN be used maliciously, art CAN be made to infringe on other people's rights against their consent, art can be created as targeted sexual harassment, or willfully distributed in malicious ways, and it's a horrible thing that it CAN occur. The responsibility is on them to not use their free will to enact that harm. It's true and it's unfortunate that any space that centers around sex is rife with abuse because it contains a subsection of people who are trying to take advantage of people's exposed vulnerability. It's the same sort of argument to be sex negative in general. To say anything explicit COULD reach the eyes of children, COULD be triggering to others, is enough of a reason to say none of it should exist, because pornography can be used to take advantage of peoples' vulnerability if coaxed in a way that manipulates and then violates them - and yet, do they not see how that's true with anything? Kids are groomed with "normal" porn too, through "normal" avenues like schools and churches, through trusted adults they have no choice to not interact with like family members, but instead the anger is centered on the material and the folks minding their own business and not the abusers, as if the material not existing would suddenly eliminate the interest and eliminate predators.
I dunno man. I've blocked people who give me bad vibes even if I never had explicit "proof" against them, and I've stopped caring about that too- If I'm icked, I don't follow, if I get a hunch they may be a threat, I try to be sure it's not just hunch spurred on by my anxious outlook. If they're not hurting people and don't seem like they have any real desire to do so, I don't care to litigate people's rationale, their capacity to cause harm, their degree of critical thought given towards their curiosities and fantasies, their trauma, etc. I'm getting older, I've got too much shit to worry about in my own life. If you're going to care about victims, do real, tangible work in the real world instead of fighting an online crusade against things that disturb you, it keeps you much happier and has infinitely more impact. Warn others of the people who are actually causing harm instead of assuming their thought crimes will manifest and literally shorten your lifespan stressing about and "keeping tabs" on sus individuals when you could just be cultivating positive connections with real human beings in your real life. I don't mean to boil it down to "touch grass and talk to real people" but that definitely helps.
The cool part about all of this is that you're still allowed to be a hater! If you're icked out, find like-minded people who are also icked out. Be like "that shit is so gross" with your squicked out friends. Talk shit all you want. Block every bitch you think is too nasty of a freak to be bothered with and never see it again. Like for all of the talk about people needing therapy to handle their sick fascinations you do, it would certainly help to seek therapy on how to cope with your own usage of the internet, because fighting these kinds of fights genuinely does poorly on your health. It's not a worthwhile use of time to look at huge groups of people and seethe over the potential evil that they enact and enable and then cherry picking cases were, big surprise, in a huge population of people, some of them are actually fucking horrible and then going "see! I was right!" It's the same kind of behavior as constantly getting angry at the news and pretending you're "informed" and ignoring the fact that it is quite literally degrading your health. Find a healthier outlet, find more measured ways to stay informed instead of inundating yourself with an imagined battle over moral purity with people you wouldn't ever want to interact with in the first place.
I'll reiterate that I do genuinely believe people need to be more introspective, critical, and careful of their interests that breach illicit fantasy, but I also have realized more and more over time that these people aren't absolute morons, that some HAVE been to therapy, and that most actually do have a measured appreciation for the responsibilities that they do bear, while also still being burdened with responsibilities they shouldn't have to bear. I don't GET it. I never will "get" it, I don't want to get it. I understand it in a vague, nebulous level on like, a monkey brained kind of way that humans have a curiosity about things they're told are taboo, and that sexual "deviance" in development is a scrambled mess of complicated shit that stems from a variety of sources including seeing it through culture, seeking it out, or being traumatically introduced. I used to also fall back on the argument that there are "simply better ways of handling that fascination; go to therapy" but this assumes that 1. these folks have never sought therapy and 2. that there aren't methods of therapy that don't explicitly involve allowing oneself to engage with a theme in a controlled environment where you are mentally in control of the scenario. Then you just handwave and say "that's bad therapy though" because you're suddenly the armchair expert.
It's also worth reiterating that obviously this exclusively pertains to fictional, non-targeted, adult-oriented fiction and roleplay, to be sure there's no conflation with real abuse material in any fashion. Further, like I said, I'm personally very disturbed by such themes myself even fictionally! I do comms for a living. I don't take work from clients who want anything on my will-not-do list, which is basically all of the ""normal, respectable person"" stuff. Still, this is coming from an adult who knows their own boundaries, knows where my line is drawn, and chooses only to engage with like-minded people. The crazy part is, I've had clients who are into weirder stuff but still - and, sorry for the sarcasm, but - get this! - respected my boundaries and commissioned me for ""NORMAL"" shit! god bless. Turns out you can have different tastes and still get along amicably as long as you mutually understand each others' boundaries and trust that each other has no ill will towards any innocent life on earth! Yippie, very cool.
Anyway, this is getting extremely longwinded, but I wanted it to be as comprehensive as I could. In the face of online censorship in this day and age, there's more important fights to be fighting than the war ON porn, it's got to be against the people who wield it as a weapon, instead of looking at it AS a weapon. You can't look in fear at kitchen utensils and fear their potential utility in violence, you have to fear those who use them for violence - and I'll step ahead of my dumb metaphor and say no, this isn't an argument to equate them to guns, and I'm not going to open the can of worms, but the metaphor applies to "kitchen utensils" because kitchen utensils are not tools of violence. Guns are tools of violence. Porn is not a metaphorical gun, it is not a tool of violence. Porn is kitchen utensils, it satiates a fascination. Just because someone can be hurt with it doesn't mean it's designed to hurt people. Some porn is! I hate the people who make stuff precisely to hurt others. That's not the vast, vast majority of it.
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