I see a lot of posts going around talking about the need to be critical of fanfic, and how we gotta watch out for the messages we’re sending
Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:
Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)
And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography
I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet
I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it
Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society
It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free
And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)
Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places
I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women
And I’m going to need it to stop
Fandom purity wank is absolutely about control over women and women’s sexuality. There’s nothing ambiguous about it.
Just think about the hot-button issues in the fannish community, the topics that consistently and reliably get people worked up into a lather, the themes that provoke the nastiest conflicts and inspire the most dedicated resistance movements. Think about the fights that are most likely to spill out over their cyber boundaries and start affecting people in the real world - in public harassment at cons, in doxxing and ‘outing’ to family and employers, in malicious legal allegations.
It’s about sex. It’s always about sex.
From the constant tantrums over ‘problematic’ shipping to the righteous doxxing of ‘pedophiles’ (which in current tumblr parlance means anyone who draws or writes canonically underage characters in romantic or erotic scenarios), fandom’s big efforts at moral reform always seem to revolve around restricting and controlling the sexual expression of the majority-women community. You won’t meet many people who stay up past their bedtime to scream at strangers on the internet about unethical portrayals of non-sexual violence - unless, of course, they suspect the women involved in its creation are getting off on it. You’ll struggle to find an anti blog dedicated to the insidious social ills of torture whump fic, or goopy hurt-comfort where all manner of human suffering is put on display for the viewer’s enjoyment. The purity crew dress up their agenda as a desire for collective self-improvement and raised moral standards, but they don’t seem too worried about aspects of public morality that don’t somehow tie back into sex. What they’re upset about is the same thing conservative minds have been upset about since basically the dawn of time - there are women out there in the world doing icky sex things without the permission of their communities.
And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ - they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ - they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.
The core assumption underlying all of it - an assumption that I’m sure our puritan forebears would find deeply comforting - is that women’s sexual expression is a matter of public concern, and that women are directly responsible for upholding the moral standards of their communities by restricting themselves to a narrow repertoire of publicly controlled, socially condoned sexual outlets. Anything beyond that repertoire is a grave moral breach.
To anyone who’s reading this - and there’s always a few - thinking, “this is just deflection! [X hot-button topic] is really bad and harmful!’, I’d like to encourage you to sit back for just a moment and think about why it is, exactly, that you feel the best and most important place to wage your war against moral corruption is in one of the only pockets of popular media that women unequivocally control. Of all the spaces in the world where you could be fighting for your view of a better society, you’ve chosen a place where women come together to share the fantasies that mainstream culture refuses to let them indulge. Why?
It’s bible banging bullshit in a progressive mask.
i’ve been calling it ‘wrapping paper activism’. same old box of shit, but repackaged as a wonderful new gift.
I don’t disagree with any of this, but I have questions.
The fanfiction community is overwhelmingly comprised of women*, and the push to be critical of fanfic comes from within the community, so it is reasonable to infer that the people pushing self-censorship are women.
I have seen a lot of anger from people calling for censorship, and anger is often the result of fear. It is not unheard of for the calls for censorship to be accompanied by personal accounts of sexual violence, etc., which reinforces the conclusion that this anger is driven by fear.
These women calling for censorship are very much part of our community. While I vehemently disagree with them, I want to acknowledge their place in our community, and I want to respect their anger (which I see as pain and fear). I would ask, “How can we address the fear that writing/reading fictionalized sexual violence perpetuates actual sexual violence?”
We can explain the remarkable similarities between sex-negative feminism and paternalistic control of women’s sexuality, which the posters above have done admirably well. We could offer the conclusions of academic research that show there is no evidence that suggests that sexually violent material as seen in fanfiction contributes to the occurrence of actual sexual violence, if any such research exists. We can offer research and anecdotal data that show that fictionalized sexual violence is often very effective in helping victims of sexual violence process or cope with their experiences.
Ultimately, though, I don’t see any of those strategies being effective when dealing with someone who is currently experiencing a strong anxiety/panic response to something they perceive as dangerous. If we understand the underlying motivations for censorship in such a way that instead of seeing someone controlling and puritanical we see instead a person having a strongly phobic response, then the most effective way of dealing with calls for censorship has to be found in the answer to this question: “How do we compassionately respond to someone calling for censorship without acceding to the demand or escalating the situation?”
I don’t have an answer to that question; empathy isn’t really my area.
*”women” is a term of convenience for dfab and I do not mean to exclude anyone.
@thedepthsofmyshame: It is kind of you to ask this question. But whereas I am more than willing to accept some caretaking responsibility for my friends and family, and also for people who are in uncontrollable situations (war refugees come to mind) and who therefore have a claim on care from other people in general, I’m not so sure I have any special duty toward adults (or near-adults, like many of the pro-censorship brigades on Tumblr) who have choices that include not engaging with distressing material in the first place.
I have phobias and squicks and have experienced a trauma or two in my time, like pretty much everyone. I too find certain kinds of fiction and art greatly distressing, like pretty much everyone. It’s not a creator’s responsibility to change their creative practice to accommodate that distress. If a writer or artist given the standard warnings, or Chooses Not to Warn – well, I’m a grown-ass adult who knows there’s all kinds of Stuff Out There on the Interwebz. Navigation is on me.
So in my view, the answer to your question is that such demands must simply be met with polite, stonewalling refusal. (And with less-polite refusal when the demands mutate, as they inevitably seem to these days, into harassment and bullying.)
Those calling for censorship because they’re so phobic need psychological help, but I can’t imagine that they would take that suggestion on board if it comes from the people they’re attacking.
I’m not kind, and I agree with you that people ought not expose themselves to material they find upsetting.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that they do. They put themselves in a position to see things they don’t like, and then they stridently express their distress* with panic-driven hostility** and engender divisiveness*** that turns the focus of communication away from the larger body of material containing whatever upset them in the first place.
I don’t suggest that calls for censorship be seen as fear and met with compassion because I’m nice, I suggest it because I believe it would be the most effective way to avoid large and hostile disruptions****.
* shit up the feed
** shit up the feed with their panicky moralization
*** shit up the feed with their panicky moralization creating an environment that emboldens people to attack others directly
****
shit up the feed with their panicky moralization creating an environment that emboldens people to attack others directly
and the people who actually create and share art give up and leave