Alt: "well what about actual real-life CSEM?" hey, so it's actually not censorship to ban that stuff. that is what we call "collecting evidence of a crime" and "protecting the victim's identity and dignity". that is never what we are talking about when we talk about censorship. the entirely fictional stuff where no one was hurt? THAT'S censorship to ban. THAT'S making a statement on what kind of ideas are allowed to be explored in media. if you have any further questions please refer back to the Violent Video Games discourse of 1999-2016. /Alt
OP's Commentary: Listen, I posted this a while back with no context because I wanted to make a point. But I'm now gonna write out an entire essay backing this statement up.
I say this as someone of whom there exists, out in the world, real actual CSEM that people can find. There is a difference between the images and videos of me being touched sexually as a very young child and someone writing a fictional story about someone touching a very young child. Yes, even if that story is intended to be erotic.
The first thing I want to say is that if you think "horny" isn't a valid emotion to want to evoke in an audience, I want you to examine why that is. What makes erotic art a lesser art form to you? Horny is just a sensation, like hungry, or tired, or cold. I always think about that post that says this:
"they only made this because they were horny!" and you only made a sandwich because you were hungry.
Wanting your audience to be aroused is morally neutral. I'm gonna be perfectly honest: I've written rape stories that were eroticized. I've written rape stories where you were placed in the mind of the rapist and you were meant to be horny about it, and I've written rape stories where you were placed in the mind of the victim and you were meant to be horny about it.
I've also written rape stories that were not eroticized. I've written on-screen rape where the victim is completely dissociated through the experience, struggling to even comprehend what's happening to it and respond appropriately. I've written stories that were meant to depict the horrors of what actual rape feels like and how much it can fuck you up.
Both of those are valid artistic expressions.
This is what I think is the biggest problem with shipping discourse. I don't even really call myself proship anymore; I've largely separated from this discourse and I try not to involve myself in it because I find it very stupid, which is why this blog is mostly dead now. But still, I think that proshippers and antishippers are approaching erotic art from two entirely different perspectives, which is part of why antis are so often pejoratively called "puriteens" by older fans.
Antis believe, whether consciously or not, that erotic art is not as valuable as other types of art. They believe that wanting to get your audience horny is somehow debasing yourself as an artist, which means any art that's eroticized is inherently lesser. Therefore, any art that eroticizes taboo subjects, such as the ones they most often throw out (rape, incest, and CSA), is beyond lesser; it's reprehensible.
This is also because they're entirely unable to separate their feelings of discomfort from a sense of moral righteousness, which is something that has been said many times but that I think bears repeating. It's very important to be able to separate what is right from what is comfortable, and not having that distinction is debelopmentally appropriate for a lot of teenagers, but they need to learn it. It's part of adult development.
And if they can't learn it, that's when we get harassment, smear campaigns, and people literally killing themselves because of antis.
(There's also something to be said about how many antis haven't learned basic tenets of activism like "no one deserves to die" and "it's not okay to hurt real people, even people who [I think] have hurt others" but that's a separate conversation.)
