why would you donate to an organization that defends slavery porn (among many, many other reprehensible things)
My primary reason for donating to AO3 is the value they have added to my fandom life. They work extremely hard to create a platform that is searchable, stable, and allows me to post and read fic. I have over a million words stored on their servers. I am happy to contribute a bit of rent for those servers.
I also fundamentally disagree with you.
I believe people should have a right to create and consume reprehensible media as long as it does not cause direct harm to other people. Child porn is evil and should not be allowed because a child was involved in the creation of it and that child is harmed in that creation. Someone writing about child porn is something I find disturbing but no child was involved in the creation of that writing and it is therefore not something that causes direct harm. I don’t want to read it but it isn’t my job to stop anyone from reading it.
If reading about child porn or slavery porn or visceral torture scenes harms you then you need to take responsibility for not reading it. AO3’s tagging system does more to make that possible than anything in mainstream media and for that we should all be thankful.
I like weird ass monster porn. Someone else might find that reprehensible and disgusting which is cool but them finding it gross doesn’t change anything for me.
You can disagree but in my opinion, the extensive tagging system on AO3 is a fantastic solution to reprehensible fiction. I can filter out the stuff I find reprehensible without having to police other people’s definitions.
Similarly, I find graphic depictions of rape and the emotional fallout of rape aftermath super disturbing to read. On AO3, I have the option to explicitly avoid that by using the tagging system. But I’m currently reading a novel where the main character was raped in his teens and it doesn’t come out until nearly 2/3 through the novel. I did not have a good time with that scene. AO3’s tagging ethos would have given me the chance to skip it or brace myself for it because I would have known going in.
Should I go off on a purity wank rant against the author because I don’t like that scene or that subject matter? Nope.
It is not his responsibility to police what I read. It’s mine.
It isn’t AO3’s job to police what you read either.
It’s on us to manage what we read.
I believe in their mission. I believe hosting reprehensible stuff doesn’t make you reprehensible and creating or consuming reprehensible stuff is sometimes a necessary part of processing your issues. And even if it isn’t, it isn’t my business.
My rights end where yours begin.
You have a right to not read porn. But I still have a right to create it. You have a right to avoid nasty stuff like slavery porn. But someone else still has a right to create it or read it.
Even if you and I agree about what is or isn’t horrible, we aren’t the boss of anyone else. We aren’t the purity police. I am glad to live in a physical country with freedom of creation and thought laws and I am not comfortable existing in digital spaces that are more restrictive. I’m glad I don’t live under a regime with purity police either online or in physical space.
Are you also launching a campaign against all of Penguin Publishing for the Captive Prince books? Or Random House for the childporny elements around Claudia and Mona in Anne Rice’s books? (The Mona sex scene bothered me so much I still remember it pretty vividly. I read those books as a teen and she was younger than me and explicitly screwing her cousin in her first scene and ugggggh).
Reprehensible fiction is all over the place.
Even more to the point, there is no perfect definition of “reprehensible” and so you must set that definition yourself and police it yourself.
You have to be responsible for the media you consume.
Take care of yourself out there. It isn’t a publisher’s job to protect you, you gotta do it on your own.
snowghoul
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
titsay
germansingergirl
