banned books week: fic edition
Sep. 25th, 2019 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ebp-brain:
What do we lose when we condemn the existence of fanworks that include unhealthy, traumatic, violent, or otherwise difficult material?
I grew up celebrating the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week every year, and it has profoundly impacted my views on censorship. While progressive fan communities are generally against banning commercially published literature, sometimes well-meaning fans condemn the existence of fanworks that portray unhealthy, traumatic, or violent material in the interest of protecting people from it. I wanted draw a connection between the kind of censorship that those fans suggest and the kind applied to frequently banned works of commercial literature that we consider politically and artistically vital. What are we losing when we condemn fic that deals with difficult material?
When fanworks are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc., we should certainly critique them! That’s not in question here. What I wanted to highlight with this post is what we lose if we attempt to enact a general ban on, or refuse to ever engage with, any fanworks that portray less than perfectly “good” behaviors and experiences.
It would be impossible to talk about this without offering endless thanks totransformativeworks and their maintenance of Archive of Our Own, whose tagging system works to ensure that readers can navigate difficult material as safely as possible. <3 <3 <3
under the cut: image descriptions
Keep reading
ebp-brain:
What do we lose when we condemn the existence of fanworks that include unhealthy, traumatic, violent, or otherwise difficult material?
I grew up celebrating the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week every year, and it has profoundly impacted my views on censorship. While progressive fan communities are generally against banning commercially published literature, sometimes well-meaning fans condemn the existence of fanworks that portray unhealthy, traumatic, or violent material in the interest of protecting people from it. I wanted draw a connection between the kind of censorship that those fans suggest and the kind applied to frequently banned works of commercial literature that we consider politically and artistically vital. What are we losing when we condemn fic that deals with difficult material?
When fanworks are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc., we should certainly critique them! That’s not in question here. What I wanted to highlight with this post is what we lose if we attempt to enact a general ban on, or refuse to ever engage with, any fanworks that portray less than perfectly “good” behaviors and experiences.
It would be impossible to talk about this without offering endless thanks to
transformativeworks and their maintenance of Archive of Our Own, whose tagging system works to ensure that readers can navigate difficult material as safely as possible. <3 <3 <3under the cut: image descriptions
Keep reading
