people have said this before but just. to reiterate. ‘representation matters’ is the antithesis of ‘fiction doesnt affect reality’. you can’t claim both.
if you agree that positive representation (for example, well written, humanized gay characters) can normalize and help gay teenagers, then you inherently have to also accept that negative representation (for example, accepted and sympathetic pedophile characters) can normalize pedophilia to people. this is the same vein of the same critical thought. you can’t claim that representation matters if you also believe that someone writing ‘non con’ adult / child porn is fine since its fictional.
Oooh, look at the false binary. There’s a happy medium that recognizes how some story-sets are privileged and have the opportunity to affect millions of people (for ex: mainstream superhero blockbusters) and others aren’t (for ex: weird fanfiction written by some rando). Media literacy is important! But uh. It’s way more complicated than this post wants to pretend.
It’s a lot easier to ignore fanfiction with themes you hate than it is to find mainstream movies with queer or PoC protags.
OP: “Mass media watched by millions and fanfics read by a couple thousand people at the most (most likely a couple hundred or even less) absolutely have the same reach and effect.”
Right.
Would you younger people like a lesson or two in refusing sexual overtures you’re not ready for, or not interested in? Or maybe guidelines on how to remove yourself from such situations? Because that would be much more practical than calling everything under the sun ‘pedophilia’ in an effort to cling to the protections of childhood way into adulthood. It’s okay to not be ready but being abusive and ignorant because of your fears is not.
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