I normally stay out of shit like this, but I want to say a thing because I’m cranky and it’s keeping me distracted from other things in my life that are making me feel awful this week:
It is perfectly okay to not like things depicted in fiction. It is okay to be disgusted by them, hurt by them, angered by them.
It is not okay to say that those things should not exist in fiction or art, or that people who enjoy them are monsters or even endorse them in real life.
I am a librarian, and one of my Hills I Will Fucking Die On is intellectual freedom. This means that people are allowed to read/etc whatever they want, for whatever reason they want. I of course do not support fascism or hate speech or child pornography (which has a very specific definition, and I do not support it in any way where children are being harmed), but books and art are things that can be ignored, and even studied academically or read by people who don’t agree with them, etc.
When I was getting my Master’s degree in library science, the woman who advised my thesis is one of the leading scholars on book banning, book challenges, and censorship. She has written books, served on boards, etc.
She told me that, no matter what political or moral or religious position a challenge is coming from, they all have one thing in common: we believe that reading is so powerful that it can change us, and we do not trust certain groups to change in the way we want. And those groups are: women, children, people of color (especially black people), and queer people.
We do not trust that these groups can handle fiction that is deemed problematic or harmful, we infantilize them and make that decision for them. We say that Fifty Shades of Grey is going to give women unrealistic idea about BDSM and they will get hurt, while we completely ignore the thousands of violent thrillers written by and for men.
We say that transgressive fiction (incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, etc etc) should not exist, that people should not create or consume it, that people who do endorse that in real life.
Societies of all types have been having this argument forever. What is and isn’t allowed to be in fiction. This is how we get obscenity trials. Book bans. Authors arrested.
Howl went through an obscenity trial. Ulysses went through an obscenity trial. Dorian Gray didn’t get published in its uncensored form until 2011. The American Library Association has Banned Books week every year where they list the top ten books that have the most challenges, and most of them have LGBT content, and others are “canon” like Slaughterhouse Five, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, etc. These books aren’t even considered transgressive fiction!
Now. When this argument is happening with regards to fan fiction and fanworks, I don’t think it has the same cultural severity as published fiction, but it does reflect the same mindset, and that’s fucking scary to me.
I encourage you to read up on book banning and transgressive fiction:
Book Banning in 21st Century America by Emily JM Knox (my former graduate adviser!!!)
A list of books on obscenity trials with info on where to get them from libraries
A list of books on the history of censorship in the United States and where to get them from libraries
A list of books on censorship of fiction and where to get them from libraries
A list of books on literature and morals and where to get them from libraries
And I encourage you to check the subject terms on these books, because there’s a whole lot more I’m not including but these are some good basics.
Do not fucking call people degenerates. That term is rooted in white supremacy like, pre-Nazi, and is used by fascists to label those who do not fit the fascist ideal of a person (white, cishet, able-bodied, etc.)
I might call myself a decadent degenerate, but I’m queer and I’m allowed and I don’t call other people that.
EDIT: Also, don’t be like “oh you can write about X but only if you make it clear it’s Bad.” Nope also bad.
Edit part two electric boogaloo: The fact that I say “don’t call people who write/read/like transgressive fiction degenerates” is not censorship. Hate speech and slurs hurt people. They are also not fiction and therefore not the subject of this post. The discussion of hate speech is another discussion entirely, but me saying “hey it’s not cool to do this” does not equal you facing literal punishment from the state for doing it.
dededos
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