a post has been going around for a while wherein an anti-[ship] blog declares that fiction IS reality. Mostly I see it being mocked, but it’s actually the truth:
for people who conflate fiction and reality, fictional depictions of csa, rape, and abuse are, in fact, just as horrible as committing csa, rape, or abuse on real people in real life.
these are the people who say, ‘how can you support csa, rape, and abuse?’ when discussing fanworks about these things. They are the ones who want to protect fictional beings from being abused by real creators. For them, reality and fiction are exactly the same.
this is factually incorrect for a few reasons:
1) csa, rape, abuse, and other crimes of this kind are considered particularly horrible because they take a human’s power over their own person away from them. doing something to someone else’s body or mind without their consent is the grossest violation of human rights. (Murder also falls into this category.) conversely, to commit csa, rape, or abuse requires a victim to take power from. fictional depictions of these crimes do not take power from anyone because:
2) fictional characters, which are not real, cannot be hurt by being depicted in brutal situations that would hurt real people in the same situation. therefore the act of depicting them is actually harmless: there are no victims when the subjects are fictional.
3) when properly warned for, sharing a depiction of an abusive relationship on the internet is a consensual experience. the shared piece of fiction cannot force anyone to view it. the warnings act like a discussion of consent: by clicking past them, a viewer agrees to the terms. the back button acts like a safe word; the viewer can, at any time, decide to no longer participate.
If you cannot tell the difference between a fictional character being victimized and a real person being victimized, it is possible that fandom may not be a safe space for you in general.
i think the issue is when it’s being written and it’s being romanticized or its. being written as a fetish or kink. or when it isn’t being tagged. because real CSA and rape and incest survivors like me don’t appreciate reading something and suddenly wow that sure is a kid being abused, or somebody being sexually assaulted, or wow that’s a rape scene written as if its supposed to be sexy! yikes!! sure does take me back to the Bad Old Days!!
‘if you can’t tell the difference between a fictional character being victimized and a real person being victimized’ idk i mean im gonna guess its more that victims and survivors just don’t appreciate seeing shit like this in fandom 1. without a warning or 2. sexualized/romanticized/etc. or 3. if it’s written extremely graphically, because there’s really not much reason to do that imo???
like. i see you’re noting that things should be tagged properly and yes, they should. i personally will tolerate this kidna stuff if it’s tagged to hell and back, but that doesn’t mean at all that i, as a survivor of severe, incestuous CSA and of rape, like seeing it at all.
i guess basically there’s a HUGE difference between ppl shipping incest and CSA and writing graphic rape scenes for fetishes, and people writing bad things happening to characters to see them recover and see how they react to this kind of stress.
There is zero excuse for ever not tagging or warning for any fic that will have potentially sensitive or triggering material, because people who don’t want to see it should never be able to accidentally stumble into viewing such things unexpectedly. And I understand how upsetting you may find this material and don’t want to dismiss the horrors you’ve been through. You have every reason to be bothered by these fics. (and hey, there’s experiences I’ve been through that make me not want to see certain types of fic, too.)
But both you and I have to acknowledge two things:
–this fic might be harmful to us, but it may be helpful to somebody else for equally valid reasons
–a properly warned-for fic containing rape, incest, abuse, etc, no matter what context the dark content is presented in, cannot harm anybody without their consent.I have some questions for you: how can you tell when someone is writing for ‘fetish or kink’ as opposed to, say, writing for the catharsis of it? Or just really bad at writing despite trying to be sensitive? How can you be sure that someone who is ‘romanticizing’ a rape scene isn’t someone who was a victim themselves and is now turning a noncon experience into a positive, titillating experience to help them deal with their lack of power during their own attack? How can you differentiate between the person who is going into graphic detail because they delight in the pain of it and the person going into graphic detail because they need to exorcise a hellish experience of their own? There’s no way to know unless you can look inside the author’s head. And there’s no way to know if any of their readers are reading for titillation of their own or to deal with their own mental hell. Isn’t it cruel to take away works that might help a person on the off chance that somebody else will read it for reasons that disgust you?
supposing that the writer only wrote for their own pleasure and their readers are all reading for pleasure only: how does that harm you or me? The stories aren’t about the experiences of real victims; they are fictional. They aren’t reliving somebody’s real trauma for their own enjoyment. There is no victim. It is silly to assume that people who read fictional darkfic for pleasure would get the same pleasure out of the contents happening to a real person; we don’t interact with fiction the way we interact with reality, or fiction would be much less imaginative in general.
And let us consider a moment such a tagged, warned-for fic. Suppose the entirety of the contents make hideous sexual abuse sound desirable and fun. Aren’t the tags making it clear that the contents are not actually desirable or fun? Isn’t the warning enough to make it clear that the fic’s portrayal is, in a way, a lie, and that the author – and all who click through the warnings – understand that the abuse in the story is actually dangerous and harmful?
And realistically speaking, are a few poorly-written or titillating darkfics going to successfully normalize or romanticize csa and abuse, despite how society condemns these things as bad (even if we struggle to deal with fixing it)? Despite how many people in fandom are themselves victims or know victims, and how much material is constantly bringing awareness of these harmful things to the forefront?
It may bother you to know such fics exist, but other people need them to exist – for any number of reasons under the sun. And even people who don’t need them to exist are allowed to enjoy them, as long as they understand that what they enjoy in fiction is terrible when it happens in real life.
Don’t take my word for it – here’s a blog full of survivors talking about how darkfic and shipping helps them. Here’s a survivor talking about how regulating fictional content doesn’t make them feels safe. and here’s a victim in my own blog saying how works that people think are fetishistic in particular helps them cope.
Basically: fandom has to allow for people who have a different feeling towards fics that disgust some fans, and let them have the things they need or enjoy.
PLS READ THIS
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