Actually, trauma survivor here,Ā these people are in fact still furthering the normalization of the trauma they are working through, while also actively hurting other survivors!
If you feel the need to write it to process it, I understand that completely. In fact Iāve DONE that as a part of processing my own trauma in the past! However, you do not get to publish it into public spheres, including online, where all it will do is hurt other people. Likewise, this form of trauma processing is not, in fact, helping you!
These people include other survivors who may have been trying to avoid it and were unable to, people who are being groomed for abuse, people who are already being abused, and do not recognize that abuse for what it is, and the person writing it (assuming they ARE in fact a trauma survivor, because the vast majority of the people shipping siblings, minor/adult relations, and other abuses, are not in fact survivors of this. They just get their jollies off to it!).
Likewise, this is not, in fact, a coping mechanism, and it is not fine. This is retraumatization and self harm in many cases, being written off as ācopingā. When you publish that, particularly the people who are writing it as āromanceā, you hurt other survivors. In fact itās predominantly survivors calling this shit out.
When you have a dozen people telling you āif you need to process it through these means, you cannot publish it because this is normalizing it and hurting all of us and people who will be hurt by itā, then you need to recognize that what you are doing is hurting someone and then saying āIāM JUST COPING!!!ā which makes you an abusive piece of shit.
Now, consider the fact that you essentially just said āpedophilia is bad BUT FICTION IS OKAY!! FICTIONAL PEDOPHILIA IS ALWAYS FINE AND EFFECTIVE FOR HELPING PEOPLE SO YOU CANāT CALL ANYONE OUT ON IT EVER!! YOUāRE POLICING COPING!!!ā
Like, no. Most of those people writing hebdophilia, abuse, incest, and pedophilia fics on AO3 in some fandoms are NOT coping with a goddamned thing and pretending they are and saying ābuuuuut fictional pedophilia/hebdophilia/abuse should never be policed!!ā is only going to create MORE victims. (like, I am in one of these fandoms. The people shipping the 25year old with the 14-17 year olds are not ācopingā, they are fetishizing. Their argument is not āItās my coping mechanismā itās ābut itās just fiction!!ā).
And yes, coping SHOULD be policed. If you are hurting others, normalizing abuse, and retraumatizing/hurting yourself, itās a bad way to cope, and isnāt coping but self harm, and you need to let it go and find something healthier. You should be helped through this process, definitely, but you should also be working on it, particularly if your ācopingā is being read by actual pedophiles, attracting them to your work.
Yes, changing how you cope can be hard, but it is hardly impossible, and acting like people using these things to cope should be allowed to without ever being challenged in that is actively preventing their recovery too. It was when I gave up self harming and found better ways to deal with stress (baking, video games, a long bath, a bad movie, a favourite comedy show) that I began to heal and recover.
I was hardly perfect, it was hard work, but if you actually care about survivors you should consider listening to us when we say that what youāre talking about still hurts us, doesnāt help us work through our trauma, and is not being primarily produced for or by us and therefore continues the normalization of the abuses we faced while failing to display healthy relationships and thus draws in more future victims who do not know the difference between āhealthyā and āabusiveā due to the excessive normalization both in fanfiction and in published fiction and other media, and society at large encouraging hebdophilia already especially.
Also listen to us when we say we are tired of our abuse being fetishized for the consumption of others, particularly by people who are writing/drawing it and have never been in that situation themselves, and they and their readers ignoring us saying these things. As these people are often also fetishizing mlm and wlw relationships weāre especially tired that they are portraying us as hebdophiles and pedophiles when weāre already accused of this by the outside world too.
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