i didnt realise ao3 was started in response to lj deleting account relating to p//edophi|ia and they explicitly support the posting of such works yikes
it wasnât, like, ~~~we luv pedophilia, it was way more complicated than that!
although itâs true AO3 does allow all fannish content provided itâs properly warned for, thereâs a long history there – of spaces being used by fans until the host decided whatever we were doing was too weird and distasteful and either kicking us off, banning certain content, or changing the nature of the site until it was no longer viable as a host.
youâre referring to the LJ Strikethrough of 2007, which, being an ancient crone, I lived through, and since I was hanging out in the last vestiges of SGA and in bandom, I saw some of the fallout. this was before LJ was sold to the Russians (which is a whole ânother story), when it was still owned by Six Apart; in an effort to clean up LJâs act, Six Apart decided to delete all accounts using tags like underage, incest, rape, etc.
this was supposed to get rid of actual child porn on the site, and I hope it did, but it also targeted fan communities. this was a problem for a couple reasons; for one thing, not every story tagged with these words is in favor of them; for another, these things happen to real people and these personal posts were also potentially in danger of being attacked; for the last one, look, I ainât into this kind of fic but people write about what people write about, and if itâs fictional and not explicitly banned in the TOS (correct me if Iâm wrong; I donât think written content about this stuff was banned?) then itâs not cool for a content host to just start deleting communities without warning.
but thatâs what happened! these deletions were also primarily targeting slash communities, which smacked of some serious homophobia since things were deleted that had nothing to do with any of this kind of content.
eventually someone found out it was this super conservative religious group whoâd sent a list of journal names to Six Apart, and who if I remember correctly targeted slash fic on purpose, even after it became clear that the fic was, well, totally fictional. after a while, Six Apart admitted theyâd made a mistake and started to reinstate journals, but all of fandom was pretty shaken up.
THEN Boldthrough happened, which was essentially the same debacle several months later, at which point fandom began its long slow migration from LJ to GJ, IJ, and eventually AO3, Twitter, and tumblr.
AO3 was opened in 2008 in response to several incidents, of which Strikethrough was a really intense one. remember, also, that back in 2008 the stigma surrounding fandom was significantly greater and more shameful than it is today, so finding hosts willing to archive fic was difficult unless someone had the dough to pay for server space – often not an option. this was also back when fanfic.netâs HTML restrictions were so great that users couldnât use any special characters or bold or italicize anything, and it didnât allow R-rated content, so it was clearly not ideal. in addition, although cease & desist letters were much less common than they were in the early 2000s and before, DMCA takedowns were still a phantom on the horizon.
LONG STORY SHORT, even though pedophilia is reprehensible and I personally cannot stomach fanfic that involves that kind of content, AO3 was founded specially as a safe space for fandom communities that could not find homes elsewhere. it requires warnings precisely for that reason, and if you find a story that is not properly warned, you can alert the admins and get the story labeled appropriately.
IDK, maybe itâs just because I am, again, ancient, but I was in and around fandom before homosexuality was legal in all 50 states. so were most of the people who started AO3. for most of my formative life, being gay was associated with pedophilia, and so was writing about gay characters. just – itâs a lot more complicated than you might expect, and thereâs a reason many older fans who have been involved in several generations of fandom were so grateful to have AO3 as an option.
I donât read, for example, Hydra Trash Party fics. They squick me, and I generally feel they are pretty gross. But writing noncon body-horror is not the same as saying âyeah, I totally want to go out and rape and torture people for years while brainwashing them!â or even âyeah, I wouldnât do it myself, but it would be totally okay if someone did!â Nobody is hurt by it, and nobody is going to be hurt by it. So should I have the right to go, that is gross, you donât get to write or read that? No.
In the same way, writing about underage teens getting it onâsometimes with each other, sometimes with adults, sometimes consensually, sometimes notâis not the same as child pornography, nor does reading a fic about Hermione and Snape getting it on while she was his student mean someone thinks that would be a good and/or healthy thing in real life.
Fiction affects reality, but fiction is not reality. And writing about something does not mean you want to do it in real life, or believe that anyone should.
Letâs take a closer look at that âAo3 supports pedophilia!â shall we?
1) The only fics I have ever come across that had actual pedophilia (i.e. someone having sex with a child), it was clearly and explicitly abuse. It was not meant to titillate or arouse. It was meant to horrify. It was seldom explicit.
2) Thereâs a lot more incest, but it is usually portrayed either as explicitly mutually consensual (i.e. Sam/Dean) or as abusive.
3) Iâve been in fandom for a decade and a half. When people start getting upset at âomg pedophilia, think of the children!â the fics they are usually objecting to arenât actually pedophilia. Usually, it is teenagers having sex, especially queer sex. And people donât like that, and use pedophilia as an excuse to shame people for writing/reading sex they donât like.
Letâs look closer at Strikethrough, shall we? I hope that, if there were any communities of actual pedophiles on LJ, they got taken down, too. But here are some of the communities that got taken down that were not in any way supporting pedophilia and/or rape and/or incest that got taken down:
1) at least one support community for survivors of sexual abuse.
2) a literary book discussion group that was reading Lolita.
3) lots of slash fanfic communities, for things like Draco/Harry fic set in their fourth year (when both boys would have been 15).
Basically, this very conservative âfamily valuesâ group hated porn, and they hated queer stuff even more, and used âbut think of the children, itâs pedophilia!â to pressure LJ to get rid of huge swathes of things they didnât like. And one time taking down the worst of it wasnât good enough for them. No, this was step one on a moral crusade. If you acceded to their demands, all that did was whet their appetite, and soon they would be back with a new list of demands. This is why the 2007 strikethrough was not an isolated event, but rather one of a series of events, nor was LJ the only website thus targeted. It starts with anything that can get labelled âpedophiliaâ or âincestâ because thatâs low-hanging fruit. But they use that to go after anything relating to queer teen sexuality. Then anything with teen sexuality. Then once the community is already divided and diminished, they go after anything with non-con. Then whatever is next on their list. It doesnât stop until theyâve won the point and nothing but suitably âfamily-friendlyâ fics that match their purity test are allowed.
Which is why AO3 has no morality content in their terms of service. You canât break copyright beyond fair use (and AO3 has an expansive view of âfair useâ and a team of lawyers on call). You canât use AO3 for commercial advertising. And you canât post ACTUAL child pornography, i.e. the things that are legally prohibited, i.e. actual photographs or videos of actual children (not teens) in sexually explicit positionsâyou know, the stuff that actually hurts kids. Other than that? Itâs fair game. You can post anything you want, and the archive will not judge. There is no handle for the Moral Majority Family-Friendly Thought Police to latch onto, no cracks they can exploit to divide and conquer.
Weâve been down that road. It doesnât lead anywhere good.
Reblogging this for the excellent explanation of what exactly the moral crusaders did last time. They had an explicit agenda of anti-queerness, and they specifically targeted slash and femslash communities in particular, such that many ship communities became (or started as) deliberately members-only. You had to apply, and your personal blog had to look like a real person and a fan. You were vetted, a la 1990s private servers.
During this period, Dreamwidth was also targeted by attacking its payment processor. They had to get a new one. These âWarriorsâ (literally called themselves that!) were totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom they didnât like.
If youâre carrying out harassment of people right now because theyâre posting works with sexual elements you donât agree with? (And itâs always sex, never non-sexual violence, how strangeâŠ.) If youâre doing that, youâre also totally on board with destroying fandom as a side effect of destroying the parts of fandom you donât like. Because your tactics are fandom-destroying, and so is your agenda.
reblogging because this is important: strikethru and boldthru and all the various âpurgesâ that fandom went thru about 10 years ago: this had to do with OUTSIDERS deciding that fandom in general and fanfiction in specific were evil and needed to be destroyed; unless we were writing and shipping good vanilla M/F married people. These were outsiders, going after fictional writing about fictional characters.
AO3 and OTW are HUGE, because now we have an organization, with very smart women and a lot of lawyers, that have our back. Fannish history is important, people! It has not always been this way.
This is so, so important: thereâs that other post about AO3 and fanfiction floating around, about our history. People decry violent video games but no one is trying to force companies out of business. But people can and do attack fanfiction: an activity primarily written by women for women, about fictional characters. And often about sex. We have to constantly defend ourselves, protect ourselves, support each other against charges like âpaeodophiliaâ.
^^^rebageling again for excellent commentary
Throwing this in because I was also present: This was during the American Governmentâs attempts to pass censorship laws on the internet. As MOST of those domains had their serves in America, they were beholden to those censorship laws. A great deal of fanfiction.net was removed because they happened to lose a goddamn courtcase. Iâve been on the site since 2002. They may not have âofficiallyâ allowed NC-17 rated content (what it used to be listed as in the filters), it never did a damn thing to remove it. Ever. They had it listed as a rating option during âNew Storyâ uploading after all. It was i nthe search filters. After they lost the courtcase however, they legally had to start doing things about the mature content reports they got. The admins and mods were not actively looking for fic to remove, they were just responding to reports they had already received.Â
tl;dr – I know tumblr is all about black and white âyouâre either all right or all wrongâ thinking, but itâs important to understand what actually happened before going âew ao3 was made to give pedophiles a safe place to postâ because that is 110% not what happened.
This is why so, so many of the comparatively older fannish folks on tumblr like me are so vehemently against stuff like the anti movement and âall ships are valid UNLESSâ. It smacks of censorship and content policing – and weâve been there. We got our shit deleted and our accounts banned because someone else thought what we were reading or writing or talking about needed to just⊠not exist. No warning. Literally overnight. We just woke up and stuff was gone.
And yeah, the group was legit called Warriors for Innocence (or maybe of). I knew several people that were members of survivor/support groups that lost their groups – and their main support network – when Strikethrough happened (ten years ago holy shit).
You antis need to listen when us older fans tell you that the censorship youâre advocating for, when put into practice, is NOT a positive thing; itâs an extremely scary thing!
I can guarantee that you would be very, very upset if another event like LJ Strikethrough were to happen today because *you* are just as vulnerable as the rest of us! If you support the rights of marginalized groups of people, if youâre a slash or fem slash shipper, if you support gender identities that arenât defined by biological sex, if you care about representation, if you support women, if you have any kind of kink, if you care about fandom in any capacity beyond its eradication, YOU DO NOT ACTUALLY WANT THE SORT OF CENSORSHIP YOUâRE ADVOCATING!!
Fiction affects reality, but fiction is not reality.
Louder for the folks in the back.