I think it's perfectly possible and acceptable to be interested in something, or write about something, without approving of it - otherwise, researching the NSDAP's rise to power would have made me a Nazi, or crashing a certain ship on the epetais Moredon and Rustazh would have made you approve of murder, or that coming up with several *very* dodgy family trees would have made us incest supporters. Not to mention that in this particular case, some of the journals originally suspended were incest/rape survivors' accounts.
Your political convictions are opinions -- they don't hurt another person. My stories are fiction - they don't hurt a living soul either, and they carry enough warnings to make sure that anybody who might be upset/hurt by the content can *not* read. I'm not sure where the difference is, apart from that politics run a slightly greater risk of becoming dangerous.
I don't see a reason or benefit from exploring this particular kind of darker sexulality. Which is a perfectly valid point, and exactly what warnings are for - to alert people to things that may be offensive or painful or plain uncomfortable, so they can avoid them.
What's unacceptable in my opinion is to argue that things that offend/bother/hurt me should not be written. Are you really saying that everything that has ever done harm to people cannot been written about? Which would kill about 95% of literature from Oedipus (incest) to Harry Potter (murder and torture) to the bible (all of the above and worse)? I'm totally with you on abuse being about power, not sex, of course, but not on making everything that we fight in real life a taboo topic for writing. I don't think it's possible, and definitely not desirable.
Call me paranoid, but I think that the step from that sort of argument to saying 'books that don't agree with my religious/political/moral convictions should not be outlawed', or 'information about sex ed or family planning should not be allowed' is pretty small. That's why I'm reacting so vehemently to censorship even in cases that seem 'reasonable' to mainstream opinion - as someone put it, free speech isn't there to protect the right to write about kittens, which nobody would object to anyway; it's there to protect the uncomfortable stuff that's *not* sitting well with mainstream opinion. Unless it's to incite political or religious hatred, where I'd draw the line. But fiction and creativity?
no subject
Your political convictions are opinions -- they don't hurt another person.
My stories are fiction - they don't hurt a living soul either, and they carry enough warnings to make sure that anybody who might be upset/hurt by the content can *not* read. I'm not sure where the difference is, apart from that politics run a slightly greater risk of becoming dangerous.
I don't see a reason or benefit from exploring this particular kind of darker sexulality.
Which is a perfectly valid point, and exactly what warnings are for - to alert people to things that may be offensive or painful or plain uncomfortable, so they can avoid them.
What's unacceptable in my opinion is to argue that things that offend/bother/hurt me should not be written. Are you really saying that everything that has ever done harm to people cannot been written about? Which would kill about 95% of literature from Oedipus (incest) to Harry Potter (murder and torture) to the bible (all of the above and worse)? I'm totally with you on abuse being about power, not sex, of course, but not on making everything that we fight in real life a taboo topic for writing. I don't think it's possible, and definitely not desirable.
Call me paranoid, but I think that the step from that sort of argument to saying 'books that don't agree with my religious/political/moral convictions should not be outlawed', or 'information about sex ed or family planning should not be allowed' is pretty small. That's why I'm reacting so vehemently to censorship even in cases that seem 'reasonable' to mainstream opinion - as someone put it, free speech isn't there to protect the right to write about kittens, which nobody would object to anyway; it's there to protect the uncomfortable stuff that's *not* sitting well with mainstream opinion. Unless it's to incite political or religious hatred, where I'd draw the line. But fiction and creativity?