I am late to this commentary, but I keep seeing it cycling around in fanfic and writing communities regarding the concept of "problematic fiction", and I keep hitting the same thoughts over and over again. Sorry if this is long, but I have to get the thoughts out of my head.
Themes like abuse, SA, murder, stalking, torture, and such, are problematic. And that's not to say they shouldn't be written. They are themes that have real world impact on readers. Which is why you should always tag your work appropriately.
But, on top of writing for yourself, there's the consideration of who your audience is. Not everyone is going to read for the same escapism, the same catharsis of chaos that horror genres offer. (And yes, I consider a story with heavy focus on abuse, SA, stalking, torture, or murder themes as "horror", this is not a moral judgement, only a simple classification).
Fiction is often a place to explore things that are not safely explored in reality. A chance to turn a lens on a society or community, a problem, or a trend, and examine it. It is also a place to go to escape reality.
Some people seek out or write horror because they like the fright, some because they like the chance to see a world that is more jacked up than the real world (an increasingly high bar for some populations lately). Some people seek out horror because it is absurd, otherworldly, or pure, unbridled insanity.
The call I see most often is to not call these themes problematic, as if fiction is immune from moral judgement. It isn't. It never has been. There is a reason there are people out there calling for books to be banned, there's a reason "Catcher in the Rye" was one of the most banned books. Since the invention of writing for pleasure, no writing has never been above moral judgement. Not even the many sacred texts from religions the world over.
But that's not the point I want to make. I do not condone banning books because they have troubling themes. I don't condone freezing out writers who focus on horror themes.
The point I make here is that horror stories can have, (and have had) real world impact on real world people. To the extreme cases: Stephen King pulled a book after someone used the themes and rhetoric of his fiction in a shooting. Other very fictional stories have inspired very real, very terrible events. And to the milder cases: triggering a trauma survivor because you left off a tag. (Please note, "triggering" is a gross oversimplification that fails to convey the real impact).
So you have to be aware of your audience, how you help them find you, and be aware of who you might be inspiring. If you didn't tag SA and someone reads the story and is hurt by this, you do have to shoulder some of the fault.
How can your audience find your work, and how can others safely avoid your work with this content, if you do not flag it appropriately?
I write fiction and fantasy. I bring in themes that can be problematic, but I do so for a purpose. It is part of the narrative, not the point of the narrative. I seek to inspire people to be themselves, to heal, to know they are not alone in their pain, in their healing journey. I write, in part, to heal myself, to allow myself to process my own struggles. But if someone read one of my stories and thought the scene involving torture or murder was inspiration, I would be horrified. If someone read my work, and came away with the mere notion that I condoned racism, sexism, fascism, etc, I'd be tripping over myself to make clear that was not the intent behind my words.
When it comes to knowing your audience, and your intended audience, it is important to also be aware of when or if you need to clarify messaging (even if you didn't think there was a message). Did you write it for escapism, because you cannot express that level of rage in reality without consequences? Did you write it because it was so absurd as to be nearly Lovecraftian in it's construction? Did you write it because you wanted to highlight the wrongs being done in a certain area? Or did you write it just because you could?
There's nothing wrong here, no moral judgement in the content you create. This is meant as caution, not chastisement.
Writing horror doesn't mean you are a monster. Writing about Nazis doesn't make you a Nazi. Enjoying murder stories doesn't make you a murderer in waiting. I love true crime documentaries (I'm listening to one right now), but I'd never intentionally hurt another human being.
However, if I wrote something that a bunch of fascists loved? I'd rip that content down and apologize to anyone who thought I condoned fascism. Because I owe it to my intended audience to curate my content, too. To make sure that, if I want to be a safe space for people, I curate my space for them.
As a writer, my greatest ambition is to write something my reader returns to again, and again. Something they can enjoy a little differently every time they read it. Can that be done in horror? Absolutely. There can be catharsis in these themes. There can be healing in found there. But it is up to the writer to make sure they safely steer away readers who know they don't want to be faced with that content.
On a final note regarding tags, and this is a peeve of mine in general: Stop inventing new tags for the same problematic themes. You cannot demand that people filter out tags if they don't want to see the tagged content, and then find new ways to tag it. Manipulating tags like that just makes it feel like an arms race, or a battle just to keep up.
