goth_is_not_emo: Icon has pictures of paint splatters and says, "It's an 80s baby thing." (Default)
From the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys..."

The fact that the beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out the shame of the bed-wetting [...] Some small boys were hanging about in the passage outside the door of the ante-room.

"D'you get the cane?"

"It didn't hurt," I said proudly.

Bingo [one of the teachers] had heard everything.  Instantly her voice came screaming after me:

"Come here! Come here this instant!  What was that you said?"

"I said it didn't hurt," I faltered out.

"How dare you say a thing like that?  Do you think that is a proper thing to say?  Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!"

This time Sim [the headmaster] laid on in real earnest.  He continued for a length of time that frightened and astonished me--about five minutes, it seemed--ending up by breaking the riding crop.  The bone handle went flying across the room.

"Look what you've made me do!" he said furiously, holding up the broken crop.

[...]

I knew that bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control.  The second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question.  It was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it.  Sin was not necessarily something that you did:  it might be something that happened to you.  I do not want to claim that this idea flashed into my mind as a complete novelty at this very moment, under the blows of Sim's cane: I must have had glimpses of it even before I left home, for my early childhood had not been altogether happy.  But at any rate this was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood:  that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good.  And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung.  Life was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined.  At any rate, as I sat on the edge of a chair in Sim's study, with not even the self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have had before.

goth_is_not_emo: Icon has pictures of paint splatters and says, "It's an 80s baby thing." (Default)
OK, so I'm going to explain my exact position on antis here, because I'm noticing "people who want to prevent child sexual abuse" and "people who want to be the Fandom Police" both falling under that name.  So let's be 10000% clear.  Explanation of WHY I have these views under the cut.


Read more... )

If you help to expose people who groom children for abuse, and you do your best to protect kids and teens from those predators, then I wholeheartedly support you in that endeavor.  Those people are disgusting and should be kept far away from children and from the more child-heavy social media platforms of Tumblr and Twitter.

BUT,

If you believe that depicting abuse (of whatever kind) of FICTIONAL characters in FICTION is exactly as bad as hurting real-life people who can actually suffer real-world physical and psychological damage from abuse?  Then you are part of the problem, and you are making it harder to stop the actual predators.  If this is your viewpoint, then I absolutely do not support you.

Because things that are Not Pedophilia, and often aren't even remotely related to pedophilia, are being called "pedophilia," people are being conditioned to IGNORE POSTS that start with "Hey, XYZ is a pedophile."  That is a dangerous trend, and it hurts children.  The only things you should be calling "pedophilia," instead of "depictions of pedophilia," "depictions of abuse," or "fiction that makes me feel bad," are the actual, real-life grooming or abuse of actual, real-life minors.  Don't muddy the rhetorical waters.

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March 2022

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