was on board with you guys til i read from you that pedophilia shipping is okay and "fictional child porn" (loli and shota) are apparently okay too. as someone who was groomed and sexually abused by someone who saw me as a loli, exposed me to loli/shota, and countless other things i can barely describe? that's really disgusting of you guys to think. its just child porn. shipping pedophilia is glorifying pedophilia. get a grip you guys.
This is, presumably, in response to this answer that I gave yesterday: http://eeveelutionsforequality.tumblr.com/post/184205417727/i-know-ive-seen-you-guys-post-about-how-shipping
Literally anything can be used to groom people - sweets, gifts, anything. I was groomed by being given drugs and alcohol until I was dependent on those people for those things, and thus had to give them what they wanted in exchange⊠and Iâm still in favour of the legalisation of drugs and alcohol, because people have the right to choose to use those things responsibly, regardless of the fact that assholes also use them for nefarious reasons. I was groomed by people saying that I was âmature for my ageâ. I was groomed with some stuff from the show Skins⊠Iâm not rallying to ban that show, heck I still like that show. Lyrics from songs, them being a friend of a friend, them being a safe place to go to escape other abuse, some fuckinâ gross internet drama about an underage girl, stories about their exs, them getting close to my parents, debates about age of consent laws, calling it âprostitutionâ, and so on - people can and did manage to twist a whole host of seemingly benign shit into blackmail, manipulation, threats, coercion, or a way to convince you that itâs normal or that nobody will care or that itâs your fault⊠because thatâs what abusers do, they twist everything.
The first few years of being abused as a kid I didnât even need to be groomed, I was a literal tiny toddler with literally no knowledge of anything besides âIâm hungry and scared and in pain and I canât breathe.â My entire childhood was abuse, with brief interludes of finding some toys in my therapistâs office and immediately making them have sex, of drawing pictures of myself drowning, of suddenly crying when friends wanted me to play certain games and having no idea why that game scared me so much aside from a vague memory of a curved sofa and that game on pause. One time my father beat me with a kettle, and it took a while for me to not get anxious at the sound of a kettle boiling. My father took me out into the woods and tried to shoot me in the head, and Iâm still pro-gun.
What Iâm saying is that youâve made this about your abuse, youâve associated those things with your abuse because they were things that your abuser used, and thatâs pretty normal - weâve all done that. Whatâs not normal or okay is extrapolating that to say that, because people can use something for malicious purposes, the thing itself is inherently malicious or inherently will be used for those purposes - because thatâs incorrect.
Abusers can use anything to abuse, but those things can also be used for completely innocent reasons or even good reasons - the fact that you or I were groomed or abused using something is not proof of that thing being inherently bad, itâs not reason to ban that thing⊠itâs not reason to ban drugs, alcohol, Skins, kettles, guns, dodgy lyrics, safe places to go, friendship, talking to parents, internet drama, or games, and itâs not reason to ban storytelling or art either.
I stand by my stance that anything is okay in fiction, because nobody is harmed in the creation of that fiction, and that we shouldnât ban words or drawings - we should prosecute people who do wrong, who abuse, not people who have just written a story or drawn a picture. Nobody is harmed in the making of that thing. Harm may come in the form of somebody not heeding the warnings and getting distressed reading it, or in the form of an asshole trying to use it to coerce somebody - both of those cases are not the fault of the author nor the story, they are the fault of other people being assholes. That abuser wouldâve just used something else if the fic wasnât there, and if we just keep banning the next thing that they use and the next and the next, then Iâm gonna need a license to buy a Twix by the end of the year - all in the name of blaming each random object instead of the person doing wrong. The abuser is the problem here, the abuser is the one causing harm, but no harm was done in the creation of the story or in the reading of it by a responsible viewer.
The same governments and systems and charities that rally against loli and fiction screw over victims of abuse all the time - Iâve seen it first-hand, Iâve seen it happen to friends, and Iâve seen it in newspapers and investigations - and banning this shit is nothing but virtue signaling to hide the fact that they canât do their damn jobs when it comes to actual people. Criminalising things that donât inherently cause harm themselves, but instead can only harm when utilised by malicious people, but then completely brushing under the rug some horrific things that malicious people have done⊠thatâs a depressing state of affairs.
I think that itâs disgusting to want to put obscenity laws and thought crimes into place, AND I think that itâs disgusting to use something to abuse somebody⊠and itâs disgusting to blame that inanimate object for the abuse instead of the perpetrator.
Iâm also sick to death of emotive asks that leverage abuse against you instead of any actual argument, then accuse you of basically being pro-child abuse despite you outright saying that youâre against it⊠which leads to this awkward situation where I have to stoop to your level and divulge some of my own experiences of abuse just to prove that Iâm not âtalking over survivorsâ or pro-abuse, because straight up saying âabuse is wrongâ isnât enough to prove that I actually hold that stance apparently.
Being a victim doesnât make you right and it isnât an argument, and you can draw incorrect conclusions from that experience. We all make associations as a result of trauma - thatâs kind of a key feature of how triggers and flashbacks and panic attacks work - but we should be able to recognise that just because we interpret something as bad or associated with our abuse, that doesnât mean that the thing is inherently bad or inherently tied to abuse in general.
Child porn harms children - like, it literally requires abusing children to make it. To call loli and shota by the same label, just because you find loli and shota âdisgustingâ, is to dismiss all of that, to really belittle and devalue the weight of those two words. Child porn and child sexual exploitation materials are so horrific because somebody is abusing a child, an actual real child is being harmed right there. A drawing on a piece of paper of an anime character, a bunch of lines, is not on the same level as that, itâs not even remotely in the same league of fucked up, and it should never be put on the same level as that - thatâs the most disgusting thing about your ask.
Itâs no more âglorifying pedophiliaâ to write a story than 1984 is glorifying communism, or Alice in Wonderland is glorifying drug use, or A Street Cat Named Bob is glorifying poverty, or Sherlock Holmes is glorifying murder.
People can write and draw whatever the hell they want, and if you sacrifice that principle just because something is uncomfortable for you, then I just canât agree with you. Thereâs a lot of shit that makes me uncomfortable, but even if I donât agree with what somebody has to say, Iâll defend to the death their right to say it⊠and that goes for art too, because itâs important to maintain the freedom to speak and to create.
Feel free to unfollow me if youâre uncomfortable, I canât force you to listen to opposing viewpoints or reconsider your position.
