I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand the context of your my/your kink argument, esp. the examples you are using. While I do obviously agree that writing about something is not the same as condoning it, is that where the statement ends? I mean, if someone were to write exclusively about rape/pedophilia/sexual abuse and portray it in a positive light, I wouldn’t merely regard it as a kink (afaik kink implies practice, implies consent) and morally I would condemn it. Could you elaborate?

madamehardy:

I have (at least) five answers.

1.  The vast majority of the moral meaning lies in both the consumer’s and creator’s contexts.  Martha writes a fic in which two sixteen-year-olds explore one another’s bodies.  Pedophilia?  Which country are you living in? What about the characters? What’s the time period and context?  José writes a fic in which one character sexually abuses another but they both come to a better place.  Endorsement of abuse?  Darkfic?  Hurt/comfort?  Akane writes a senpai/kohai fic that mirrors material in the original manga.  Is writing drawn from  a culpable (see point 3) source automatically culpable itself? In specific, there’s an ancient tradition of rape-as-seduction fiction, and an enormous body of documentation showing that it’s a common female fantasy. Rape-as-seduction is rape culture, sure, but we’re embedded in it: see my point in the original post about ids. You cannot responsibly make a moral judgment unless you consider all of these, as well as the context of your own reaction.

2. Consider the creator’s point of view.  You don’t know what the creator was thinking, and you don’t have the right to ask.  The creator may be working through a painful experience and getting catharsis through fiction.  The creator may be trying to convey as subtext that a particular situation is wrong and bad.  (With or without success.) The creator may be fantasizing a situation without any intention of putting it into practice – see the very relevant quotations in my post.  And, of course, the creator may be deliberately getting off on something that the vast majority of people in the creator’s culture consider morally wrong. (To whom is the creator accountable? Transformative media is created and consumed worldwide now.)  You can’t know which of these is going on.  Intent is not 100% of an immoral act, but when it comes to writing fiction, it’s a very, very high percentage.

3.  Consider the consumer’s point of view.   All of the possibilities in 2 apply, plus “I’m reading/viewing this to avoid doing it in real life.”

4.  Consider the likely consequences of consuming the transformative work.   There is no evidence that a person not already disposed to commit rape/incest/pedophilia/abuse is likely to be moved by fiction to commit those acts.  There just isn’t.   The evidence that people who are so disposed are more likely to commit those acts after viewing supportive media is, at best, mixed; there’s a lot of “post hoc versus propter hoc” going on there.  

5. Finally we come to “What are you going to do with your moral condemnation”?  You have carefully considered 1, 2, 3, and 4, and have determined that “applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.”  ( Roth v. United States, and you bet your booty I’m being ironic.)   Are you going to draw a conclusion and move on?  Are you going to speak privately to your friends about why the fic offended you?  Or are you going to drop the wrath of Tumblr on the head of the offending creator?   

If your answer is “unleash the hounds of Hell”, I think you’re the one who’s morally wrong.  Period.   Your moral act also has a context, and part of the context is  the expected result.  You are not going to change what the writer thinks about morality.   You are going to create a mob of haters, most of whom are not going to present a reasoned argument based on evidence, but instead are going to tell the creator, and the world, that the creator is a terrible person. Not that the creator makes terrible works, but that they are a terrible person, and there is an ENORMOUS difference.  The experience of the last (at least) fifteen years demonstrates that hate mobs are emotionally satisfying to the haters, are not a force for any moral good, and routinely drive their victims out of fandom and even off the internet.

tl;dr:  It all depends.   I lived through the fallout of 1970s feminist consciousness-raising groups, and I don’t need to watch the hi-def remake.  I am sick beyond words of callout culture.