All art is political
Fiction affects reality
Censorship is a bad thing
All these beliefs are not mutually exclusive, yet a lot of people think they (mainly the last two) are. Why is that? Well it's mainly because of a lack of understanding of what the first two mean, so allow me to clarify
All art is political:
The typical smartass response to this phrase is for someone to draw a simple doodle of a cat or something and say "look at how political this is"
This is because they don't understand that this statement isn't saying that all art is making political commentary, rather politics can influence what you create on a subconscious level
What this statement means is that art imitates life. Your experiences and values will reflect in your artistic expression. In order to make a story about good vs evil, you have to first decide what is good and what is evil after all
Ex.
HP Lovecraft was so good at writing cosmic horror because he was so afraid of everything. His books depicted racial stereotypes because he was a racist person.
I've seen someone point out that one can tell an omegaverse fic was written by an American is not being able to afford healthcare is a major struggle for the characters
I've written things and realized part of the way in that it can serve as a queer allegory. Being queer affects my writing even on a subconscious level. After realizing how my writing subconsciously worked in this way, I decided to learn further into that angle and I believe my work is better for it
Write what you know is something a lot of new artists lean on, and is never something that fully leaves a writer either
Fiction affects reality:
Just as art imitates life, life imitates art
Fiction is an amplifier of ideas, a way to present them to an audience in a creative and engaging way. A child wouldn't want to sit still and listen to a grown man talk about how the colonization of America hurt the Native Americans, the land, and the wildlife, but present those ideas using a beautifully animated work of art about a wild stallion finding his way back home and now you have horse girls rewatching their favorite movie into adulthood
If fiction didn't affect reality those in power would not be seeking to control it, and minorities wouldn't be fighting so hard for representation from media giants
Mythology is a fiction with loose ties to reality, and yet it's to basis of religions that have controlled kings and governments, started wars and fed colonialism. People have died over religion and will continue to do so
Folklore has formed traditions and practices which in turn shaped cultures.
No, watching a show with a serial killer protagonist will not turn you into a serial killer, and playing violent video games will not turn you into a school shooter, but the media you consume can influence your perspective and values whether you're aware of it or not
It can make you think about and question things you hadn't before and normalize ideas that hadn't been normalized to you before, and this can be both in a good and bad way. Understanding this, is why I consider it irresponsible for someone to create something with the mindset that it can't possibly affect anyone in any possible way
I don't care about telling people what they can and can't write, I just hope that when people create art and media they do so with the understanding that the messages it sends, intentional or not, don't exist in a vacuum, and that it's also not immune to misinterpretation and bad faith interpretation.
Simultaneously, it's important to realize that ultimately, if the message you take to heart from a piece of media is negative or harmful, the media isn't entirely to blame, even if it glorified those negative things.
Your experiences, values, and education affects what ideas you walk away from a piece of media with (probably) just as much as what the media was trying to say, and can even lead to you projecting messages onto a piece of media that weren't there at all.
It's how we get people that idolize characters like Walter White, Bojack Horseman, and the Joker (from The Joker 2019). They missed the point of the story and don't understand that someone being the protagonist doesn't mean they are who you should be rooting for or that they are the good guy
There's also Andrew Tate, who has used his lack of understanding of the meaning behind the Matrix to spread his ideas and further radicalize his audience of boys and young men. It's not the movie's fault he came away with the wrong message, it's the fact that he's a right wing extremist and projected those beliefs onto the movie that is to blame, and now he's passing those messages and beliefs down to younger people who lack critical thinking skills and take his word as gospel
It's important to discuss media literacy because it is the key to allowing this statement and the next one to not be mutually exclusive.
Censorship is bad:
Approaching the position of "censorship is bad" with the perspective of "fiction doesn't affect reality so censorship is stupid and useless anyway" requires you to downplay the importance of the fight for representation and free speech. The better approach is "fiction can affect reality, which is why it's bad for it to be controlled by a select few that have the most money and power."
"The pen is mightier than the sword" is not a meaningless saying.
I'm aware we can't count on everyone to be educated and have passable media literacy, whether by choice or by inaccessibility, and that tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance. At the same time I don't think you should allow corporations or the government to determine what you are and aren't allowed to read or watch.
A fair trade-off would be something like disclaimers.
Old films that depict racist stereotypes should have an acknowledgement and condemnation of said racist stereotypes before the film (Warner bros has done this). Books like mein kampf should be republished with disclaimers about what the nazis did and why it was horrible.
These sorts of things call attention to real history, explain why certain things were/are harmful and make condemnation of it, while not overreaching into policing and censorship of media.
When it comes to security vs freedom, freedom should always be chosen first, then we can find forms of security that don't infringe on said freedom. You have to accept at some point that you can't thought police people, just make education as wildly available as possible and let people live.
Now to demonstrate how these ideas work together with a specific topic
I'll use porn as an example
All art is political: People who may not be educated on sex and sexuality and who have never had sex may not write porn very accurately (this is likely how many, not all but many, fics that depict characters doing things like having anal sex without lube and it not being painful came to exist as they do)
People who have views on sex that are harmful to others will also express and even glorify those views when they create pornographic media. It's this type of media that is often used to justify the censorship of all pornographic material
Fiction affects reality: Simultaneously, when it comes to people who are not properly educated on sex, porn will be one of their sources of information, reliable or not. Many people also use porn to get ideas for new things to try with themselves or their partner(s), and lacking access to proper education is how people get hurt imitating actions like choking, bondage, and anal without actually understanding how to perform these acts safely.
While there may be aspects of porn that are clearly fiction, lack of education can make it hard for people to differentiate fiction from reality when it comes to details like hygiene and sanitation, toys, positions, use of lube, consent, bdsm and kink, etc.
Censorship is a bad thing: Obviously the answer to these people that are being misinformed isn't to censor and ban porn, we're already seeing the effects of that right now so I shouldn't need to explain why censorship is bad. Allowing people access to proper sex ed will not only reflect in fiction, but it will be a much better way to combat the effects of misinformed or negative media than censorship.
And yes, there may still be people who make morally disgusting media despite widely available education, but censorship of porn would only stigmatize sexual activities and media and not actually do anything about the beliefs of the people making the media. It would also only feed back into the issue with lack of education.
If you can come away from this with a better understanding of what these ideas actually mean and how you can apply them to discussions, you are going more equipped to fight against censorship and less likely to get caught up in infighting and petty discourse
