Blanketed censorship is dangerous.
I’ve been wanting to discuss this for a long, long time, because I’ve seen a lot of troubling attitudes, extreme statements, and I’ve been worried about the impact on the feelings of safety and emotional well-being for a lot of my friends, who find themselves worried more and more about what they think and what they write. Censorship is dangerous. Not just to our fundamental rights as free-thinking human beings, not just because we’re making ourselves into some form of self-vigilant thought police—–but because it poses an actual danger to other members of society.
There’s lots out there that makes us uncomfortable.
Horrible things happen to people, people do weird and uncomfortable shit, and some of us experience triggers and extreme discomfort as a result of bad things that have happened to us or bad experiences we’ve had with certain content. But this doesn’t mean we get to block it all out from everyone forever and pretend it doesn’t happen. That’s not to say I don’t want trigger warnings: it’s fair to ask people to tag things for your own well-being and emotional safety! But telling everyone to stop writing something entirely—think carefully about what you’re saying there, buddy. Doing such a thing does more harm than good.
Do you know what happens when we try to erase the very existence of things like sexual and physical abuse, rape, violence, sexual interest and attraction, substance use and abuse, and bigotry? People, especially young people with fewer world experiences, develop gaps in their knowledge and understanding of what constitutes good things in society and bad things in the world around them. Just because a writer writes about horrible things happening to people doesn’t mean the writer wants horrible things to happen to people. Some writers do, sure. But most don’t. There’s a reason why high school literature assignments often include uncomfortable subjects like sexuality, abuse, violence, rape, murder, racism, and substance abuse: exposing teenagers to content that reflects real problems in the real world helps them better identify problems around them and recognize what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like.
When you do find writing that is glorifying, fetishizing, or romanticizing something that shouldn’t be handled in such a way, you should know it and can tell the difference by how the writer handles it.
Good writers are not afraid to approach controversial or dangerous subject areas that reflect the world as it is. For instance: Teenagers are interested in people sexually and romantically, and that’s generally okay and positive and healthy for teenagers: adult writers also write about this all the time. The Tenth Circle, a Clockwork Orange, Watchmen, the Lovely Bones, the World According to Garp, the Kite Runner, just to name a very limited few, include well-written examples of both good and bad romantic/sexual relationships and young people/minors. They also include heavy subjects like rape, sexual assault, and murder. And all of these books are potential high school reading assignments. I personally read all of those titles at least once by age 19, many of which were part of assigned class readings.
Teenagers also need the information to know what it looks like when it is a good and healthy thing (re: such as a non-manipulative and mutually respectful relationship with a similar-aged peer) and when it is a bad and not healthy thing (re: an abusive relationship where an adult takes advantage of a teenager finding the adult attractive. teenager being attracted to adult? normal. adult taking advantage of that and exerting an imbalanced power dynamic? bad. not normal.)
Consider the context the writer gives the story. Is the writer condemning or condoning horrifying things, when they happen? Are they presenting the world for what it is? Are they detailing not to romanticize, but to explain experiences? Are they trying to show that even people we think we hate for doing horrible things are still inherently human? Consider what is true about society that we often don’t like hearing.
You surely know the difference between someone tryin’ta smut out a canonly 10 year old character to a canonly adult character (which is something pokerp has grappled with for years) and someone presenting a character who is exposed to awful things and goes through normal human experiences that exist in our society, like violence, sexuality, substance use, and so on (which I more and more often see pokerp trying to blanket-censor, probably to overcorrect for the sins of the past).
One of these two is doing it as fetishization and one is trying to present a fictionalized version of reality. One of these is causing harm by romanticizing something unacceptable, one is showing us what people go through in life.
Complete. Censorship. Does. Damage.
It leaves us deaf, dumb, and blind to the mistakes we make as a society and the problems we’re prone to, and how to tell the difference between what’s normal and healthy and what’s abnormal and unsafe. It prevents us from being able to explore things that may push past the line of everyday fluffy romance and emotional angst. Rpcomms can do so much more, y’all. We’re writers too. We can’t just leave it to the published authors to write and explore topics you don’t see on your Saturday morning cartoons.
If you see someone selling a call to blanket-censor and never write a certain subject, no matter how controversial it may feel: think twice about what we’re hiding from ourselves and one another. Think carefully about what the implications are and who might be writing something beneficial that would be harmed and ostracized.
Tagging if something may be triggering? Yes. Please do. Censoring others completely, even in cases where there’s clear ic =/= ooc? Hoe, don’t do it. My god.
hoo! I made this post five years ago, and it cracked me up to hear its still going around, especially considering that the culture on the internet has seemed to shift even further towards users on progressively-minded spaces like tumblr policing and trying to censor everything people write, to the point at which people send threats and hate to people who write things controversial that they just don't like. it pissed me off then that some people in tumblr indie rp treated rpers with teenage characters like mine like our characters weren't allowed to have romantic interests, and its only gotten worse since.
I had some good points in here back then, but now more than ever, I want to emphasize that fiction is fiction. whether it's commercial fiction or fan-made fiction, fiction is fiction.
fiction is meant to be a safe space for us to explore anything, even controversy, even taboo, even violence --- where no real person is harmed, because it is fiction. this isn't a blanket call for you to embrace and engage with people writing subjects you don't want to write or read about, but it is a call for you chill the hell out and leave someone alone if they do.
and for those who want to write things that others want to censor --- as I said in my original post --- the most ethical and considerate thing to do is tag things with warnings if they're something you know is likely triggering, and always ask an rp partner about their comfort zones. but even then, it's not reasonable as a reader to expect a writer to know each and every trigger someone has -- and weaponized censorship or harassment campaigns are not the way to respond to a writer not knowing what you don't like.
like it? read it. don't? scroll past or unfollow. it's not rocket science.
