I feel like I’m going nuts, how can anyone look at “Australian author got arrested for completely fictional book” and then celebrate??? How can this be seen as a win????? I don’t care what was in the book, I genuinely don’t. It could have been the grossest thing in the world and I still wouldn’t care, because this is a DANGEROUS PRECEDENT PERIOD.
Really, it happens over and over that censorship always becomes the weapon of the oppressor. It’s a story repeated a million times, the gross book no one likes is the canary, because if it’s allowed to exist then it’s safe to write what you want, for instance about your own history of exploitation, or about queer people, or how to identify signs of sexual abuse. If the book no one likes, that is again completely fictional, can exist without the author getting arrested then that means queer and other writers who push against the status quo are ALSO protected.
Like I’m sorry, even if the book is gross, arresting someone the author is still a sign of facism, and a really dangerous precedent. I don’t want to have to be on here arguing for the weird ddlg book’s right to exist, I also think it’s gross, I would have preferred for it not to have been Streisand effected into the stratosphere, but the author being arrested and her life ruined isn’t a big win for saving children, it’s making it easier to do the same things to books that challenge status quo or try to educate people.
The idea someone can just call the police over a a shitty fully fictional dark romance book and have it be taken to a level of charging someone with disseminating csa and risk her losing her kids disgusts me as an activist and archivist. That is not something people should be allowed to do. Never, never never never.
The censorship of Australian creators over fully fictional art, also just censorship in general from what I’ve seen/heard, should be seen as a violation, not a celebration
