acemindbreaker:

freedom-of-fanfic:

shipping-isnt-morality:

ladyoftheteaandblood:

shipping-isnt-morality:

I’ve debated for a while about sharing this, but I think it’s important, and, to be fair, plenty of antis have shared the stories of their abuse.

So:

I support people creating romantic content similar to my abuse, even though that content contributed to my abuse.

Let me explain. I was very, very into Twilight when I was around 14. A couple years later a girl called me her lamb, and used the romanticization of jealousy and danger from that novel to excuse things like cutting me, stealing my phone, and demanding my passwords. Among other things. This continued until the end of high school, and it ripped apart every significant relationship in my life without anyone really realizing what was happening.

It’s definitely true that I didn’t recognize jealousy as abuse instead of romance. It’s true that I didn’t recognize “I love you” and “you can’t love anyone but me” as contradictions, and a part of that mentality came from the media I consumed. And she sure as fuck sent me fic – even forced me to write fic – which echoed those values. On a very base level, it is easy to blame my abuse on that fiction, on the unhealthy ideas of romance it gave me. For several years after getting out, I did blame romance like Twilight. I got angry when people I loved enjoyed it, and I thought I was protecting them by demanding that they stop.

But I was wrong.

Let me go out another level.

First of all, I grew up in a deeply homophobic town. There were exactly no adults in my life that I could have even told that I was in a relationship with a girl, let alone that I thought something was wrong. Abuse thrives in silence.

Second of all, I’d been homeschooled most of my life, which meant I had zero education on healthy relationships. I had no context outside of romance novels and fan fiction, which no adults knew I was reading. My view of romance was shaped by media because there were no other sources even trying to compete.

Third of all – and maybe this is most important – writing that fanfic, while in that situation, gave me a voice to things that I couldn’t even admit I was feeling. I wrote fic where a human loved a vampire, but they were scared, they were so scared, it felt like having a gun to their head all the time. They were so scared even as they loved the vampire, and they wanted them, and they wanted to help, and they wanted to be better. (She didn’t like that fic.) It took years before I would call what I experienced abuse, or seek out resources for victims. But fiction gave me a voice right then, when I needed one most.

Media didn’t get me abused. A society which failed utterly at telling me what a healthy relationship looked like got me abused. Parents and teachers and authority figures who were wildly homophobic got me abused. Fiction contributed, but if it wasn’t Twilight, it would have been something else – hell, apparently she repeated the same pattern after me with 50 Shades, and then with Captain America (somehow). Because above all, my abuser got me abused. She used fiction as a tool, but it could have been anything. If I hadn’t read Twilight, it would have been Johnlock, or Drarry, or Russia/America. All those things had more than enough content which portrayed danger and jealousy as sexy.

Do I still read Twilight? Fuck no, it’s a huge trigger. But I’ve stopped blaming it for what happened, because it was never Twilight’s job to teach me about romance. Nor was it fandom’s job to tell me, “if someone actually terrifies you, that’s dangerous, even if it’s sexy. If you love someone but they’re hurting you, you need help, not to try to fix them.” What hurt me most wasn’t fiction; it was the silence from every other quarter.

Media isn’t education on healthy relationships. It can’t be, and it never will be. “Fan fiction made me think that this was ok” means that there were no voices in our lives that we trusted more than fanfiction telling us that it wasn’t okay.

There will always be media that abusers can twist to make it look like what they’re doing is romantic and okay. Always. The abuse is still their fault, and the inability to counter harmful messages is the silence of society’s fault.

I’ll leave you with this: after I got out, I continued reading fic that featured jealousy and possessiveness as something hot. Because I did think it was hot; I now just knew firsthand that it was a kink to only be indulged in controlled situations. Firsthand experience is the harshest teacher, but it does work.

I just tag my own fic that features jealousy and possessiveness as “#abusive behavior.” Because if there is another girl like me out there, being sent these fics by her abuser, stuck in a situation she doesn’t understand – well, if it wasn’t my fic, it’d be someone else’s. The kink’s going to keep on existing. But maybe she’ll see the tag and figure something out.

Fiction is a tool, and taking one tool away won’t stop an abuser, because fiction isn’t causing abuse. If it wasn’t fiction, it’d be something else.

Stop blaming fiction for the actions of a cruel person, and the silence of the people who should have been protecting you.

It hurts to lay the blame at the feet of those you love, but if we deny the problems we will never fix them.

Be safe. Be kind.

I understand that it’s not the fault of a fiction that others get abused BUT I can’t be the only person who feels that aiming a fiction at young girls/boys who are at a very susceptible age, marketing it as hot romance, as a beautiful romance, as exciting. Then doing the same with the films is totally unacceptable.

If we give our young people very bad veiws of what a healthy romance is in fiction and then fail to educate them via home or school what chance do they have.

My daughter read Twilight and 50 shares of grey (at 15), and because I have been talking to her and answering her questions (and there were lots) since she could talk. She could see them for what they were.( She gave me a lecture on why they were bad) Many males and females do not have this at home or at school, so how are they supposed to sort it out in their heads.

Personally, and I know it isn’t fashionable to have these thoughts, I think fiction does have a responsibility not it aim stuff like this at kids and to NSFW tag ect to let people know it’s not for under 18. Iam as I said old fashioned.

Hi! So, first of all: I totally agree that adult content should be tagged NSFW. I think that, overall, a clear distinction between content for adults and minors is a good thing in media and something that helps with a lot of issues.

I also agree, to a degree, that media marketed specifically at people under at a fairly young age needs to be held to more stringent standards than media marketed to people who are older. Based on the ratings systems that most countries have adopted, this is a pretty universal position.

However!

I wanted to use this as a bit of a launching off point, because

If we give our young people very bad veiws of what a healthy romance is in fiction and then fail to educate them via home or school what chance do they have

is a very good point. I stand by the idea that censoring media does relatively little, but does that mean we just abandon kids who don’t have the support in their home or school to learn about these things? Well, no. I don’t think it’s anybody else’s responsibility, per se, but I think a lot of us can relate to that situation and want to help, so I wanted to talk a little about some things that I do that I think can be actually helpful to kids in this position.

• Get politically involved to support better sex education. A lot of these decision are made at a local level – some as small as at the school-board level – which means any participation has a big impact. Even if you’re a student – especially if you’re a student – this is something you can do right now. Here’s a real basic breakdown of how to do some district-level activism. While this doesn’t instantly help kids in the situation, comprehensive and accurate sex and relationship education in schools is the only long-term solution to this problem.
• Support resources aiming to help kids that aren’t getting this information elsewhere. Planned Parenthood’s a common one; Scarleteen and Sex Etc. are two other sites specifically directed at teens that are lgbtq+ friendly and aimed at education.  If you know of an organization that’s working to educate teens about these things, support them.
• Write meta. At the fandom & community level, I think that meta is one of the things that is the most underrated in this discussion. Meta is part of what helped me realize that what was depicted in Twilight – and therefore what had happened to me – was abuse. If you see abuse, or other problematic things, in fandom, I think putting together a well-structured argument for why you think that is one of the best tools available for education. (In the current fandom climate it might be necessary to put a disclaimer of “This isn’t meant as a condemnation of people who enjoy this media, but just a discussion of it” might be necessary. I don’t think that takes away from its power at all.)
• Pay attention to how work is getting tagged. If you’re a consumer of “problematic” content, keep a close eye on the tagging being used in your community. Lots of people get sloppy after a while, if they’re posting a lot and used to only interacting within the community (myself included). Gentle reminders of “hey, this really should be tagged with [X]” from within the community are going to be way, way, way more effective than attacks from outside the community.

There’s a lot that can be done to help teens that aren’t getting the kind of education they need and deserve while at home; I just don’t really agree that restriction the kind of fictional content allowed to exist on public sites that allow adult content on the basis of “but what if young people get the wrong idea?” is an effective method of combatting this problem.

this post is such a good post.

one thing I’d add: 

recognize and talk about fiction in the context of the society it’s from. for instance, Twilight and 50 SoG both romanticize abusive relationships. However, they didn’t spring out of a vacuum. They were written, marketed, and praised as great romance stories because in America – the country where both stories were written – abusive relationships are treated as romantic in real life, and the possessive, overbearing, controlling behavior is proof of a man’s love, not warning signs of an abuser.

as visible, slightly removed depictions of what women/afab people are often told to want irl by all signs around them, Twilight and 50SoG were easy vehicles to abuse for abusers in fandom spaces. but they can also be a great vehicle for showing how disturbing and abusive these relationships actually are in reality. recognizing how stories like this are part of a whole can help young fandom members more clearly see how the real world pushes dangerous ideas, and how to avoid being hurt by them.

I feel like basically all of my concerns about Twilight and 50SoG would be solved if they’d been published with some sort of tag or disclaimer saying that the relationships depicted in those stories are abusive, and in the case of 50SoG that real BDSM is not like this.

If we could normalize AO3 style tagging as a thing that mainstream books have in the foreword or something, that’d be awesome. Although to be fair, I’m pretty sure Stephanie Meyer wouldn’t be willing to tag Twilight, and I’m guessing the same is true for whoever wrote 50SoG (I can’t remember the author’s name). But if editors went ‘hey, we won’t publish this unless it’s appropriately tagged’, that would be awesome.