The way fandoms romanticize, sexualize, and fetishize rape, pedophilia and incest is scary and infuriating.
They’re all “oh ship what you want uwuwu draw what you want uwu write what you want uwu”. people are drawing child porn? they’re all, “that’s artistic creativity uwu” (illegal in the US btw even in in fiction depictions of fictional characters and you can go here for recent criminal cases about it)
People who’ve been victims of these things and don’t like how it’s romanticized and fetishized? They’re told “You’re stupid beyond words, you can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction, stop telling me I can’t jerk off to child rape fics uwu”
And it’s fucking infuriating. Guess who reads fiction? Guess who looks at art? Real people. Guess who feels validated by the rabid fetishizing of rape/pedophilia/incest? Guess who feels demeaned by it?
How come we can agree that rape jokes are bad - which demean the victim and validate any listening abusers - but some people think that things that actively romanticize and fetishize these things are A-okay?
How can we agree that 50 Shades and Twilight are harmful to readers, especially youth (and yes, youth will often read things that are explicit, surprise) because they romanticize domestic abuse, but somehow some people think fiction that romanticizes pedophilia, rape, incest, etc, are A-okay?
And by the way, this isn’t about simply including those topics. Like what happened in Tokyo Ghoul recently, in which the attack was treated as obviously horrifying, traumatic, and harmful, was not done for shock value, was not sexualized in the slightest, and the narrative made it obvious that the acts were condemnable and evil. No abuser could leave the chapter feeling validated (it was, I feel, very much an attack on abusers and the damage they do). That’s how it should be done if these topics are brought up in fiction/art.
When these topics are treated as right and romantic and done for the sexual pleasure, that’s wrong. The authors of 50 Shades and Twilight would probably say, “oh…domestic abuse is wrong…yeah” but there they are anyway, romanticizing domestic abuse and treating it as okay, and the readers are learning from it even though they know it’s fiction, because the people in their circle approves of the work. What’s the difference?
Pedophilia is not a fetish. Rape is not a fetish. Incest is not a fetish. They’re crimes, and romanticizing, sexualizing, and fetishizing them is harmful and wrong and there are cases in which drawn or fictional works have been used by abusers to show to their victims, particularly children, to justify and encourage their abuse, as well as to validate themselves, and invalidate their victims.
And this attack culture, of attacking victims, is wrong. There’s a post with thousands of notes calling victims “stupid beyond words” for “not being able to tell the difference between fiction and reality uwu”. Just like Twilight/50 Shades is harmful, just like rape jokes are harmful, romanticizing, sexualizing, and fetishizing pedophilia/incest/rape is harmful and so is the culture that comes with it.