“I don’t want to read this because it is disgusting to me” is totally valid.
“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me” is authoritarian.
Unless it’s like… Illegal or immoral. You can read that fae kinky story for all I care but if you bring a child, an animal or a dead body into this then it’s not going to end well for you.
“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me” is authoritarian.
Necrophilia, pedophilia and zoophilia are illegal in most countries. I do not think that it is so far fetched to say that no one should read and/or write about a theme that is illegal.
And I am talking about this three subjects being the main ‘appeal’ of the book. Reading and/or writing a book about a child getting abused like in the book Lolita from Vladimir Nabokov is okay, i’m not saying otherwise, since it’s clearly meant to show that this is not something that is okay, it is to criticizing the abuser.
A book in which a human being is having intercourse with a dead body (not a vampire or a zombie, an actual dead body) and it is portrayed as “sexy” or “appealing” in another way than to criticize it should not be okay. Romancizing necrophilia is not only disgusting, but clearly immoral. Same for pedophilia and zoophilia.
I’m not saying that you are wrong in the OG post, I just wanted to put a limit to the last sentence. Yes anyone and everyone is free to read and/or write about the themes they like, but again I don’t think that it is far-fetched to say that this kind of illegal content is not valid to be written about in a positive light.
You’re missing my point entirely.
“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me” is authoritarian.
Period. No exceptions.
Also if that person really wants to go there, being queer is illegal in a lot of countries too.
It’s really fucking funny reading arguments like this when you go to law school because the first thing we learn is something called INTERPRETATION OF THE LAW. You can’t use the law that says “incest is illegal” against fictional incest because THE INCEST DIDNT HAPPEN. It has no merit in being analyzed and it only clogs up the system that receives this stuff. If you go to the police with these concerns you are literally DISTURBING THEIR WORK. They could be working towards helping actual children who exist in actual abusive situation, but no, here you come with allegations of something that DIDNT HAPPEN IRL!!
Also if you consider fictional shit one-to-one with shit happening in the real world, you open up way for bigoted laws to be implemented, like they’re already happening in certain states from the US actually.
i don’t think the law can interpret whether something is written to be appealing or unappealing. plenty of people have read lolita as an appealing romance so that’s not a slam dunk case.
Since Tumblr does not show when a post has been edited, I just wanted to clarify my part of the conversation :
And here are the last answers of the conversation I made with the author :
I hope you two and anyone who will read this have an amazing day
Well that took a turn I was not expecting.
(Personally, I do not think reading someone’s confession should be illegal. I do think it could be worth questioning whether publishing such a book is a stunt, in some cases. But I do not think it should be illegal for a criminal to write their memoir, or for some rando to want to read it.
It’s very difficult to understand, say, WHY offending molesters abuse. Finding their words for what they’re doing helps get a more accurate picture of what they think is going on. This can be very important during times of moral panic like the current one, where people are concerned about crime “going viral” without really having a good grasp on how that would work or how we’d know it’s happening.)
I’m also not convinced that we should criminalize that kind of writing/reading either for similar reasons to what you’re saying, but I can see a much more solid argument about it than fiction, so I’m not going to argue the point with someone one way or another.
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