A day in the life of an activist
I won’t lie, it’s tough work.
The weight of people’s sins do make me question, at times, the integrity of humanity. The goodness of people. There are times I look up and the trek to righteousness seems endless. A light at the end of the tunnel I can never seem to reach, no matter how much I try. And I try. So hard.
But I know that the work of a true activist never ends. I know that, for a single moment I rest, there goes another sinner astray. One I must personally rend back into the light, lest they feel the cold, parching flames of Hell grace their skin, to teach them too late. And what am I if not their saviour? Their guiding light? Whom else would they rely upon, if not me?
That’s why I go back. Every day, without fail, I flex my fingers, wipe the grime off my computer screen…
And start writing a callout post.
The things that I’ve seen…make me retch. I see pixels, coloured and arranged in lines resembling a courgette, and bile rises in my throat. It may not even be that; they may just be lying horizontal, holding hands and smiling, and already the warning sirens flash within my head. And not just in images. Words describing horrible, awful things, of 18 year olds (or older but who weren’t that age in the source material because that is the point why would they taint these non-existent characters that don’t exist ever with their adult imagination) doing, more than…
I’m sorry, I got away from myself there. I usually save that for my callouts. Forgive me.
At times they—god, I might get sick—they have this time travel Ay-Yu, where…where they have one of someone’s fictional creation interact with the other someone’s fictional creation when one’s in middle school, and the other is in high school?
That isn’t the worst of it.
And sometimes (Lord save me now) these people have these non-existent lines…touch.
It’s morally wrong! Morally wrong, I tell you! It’s paedophilia! I mean yeah there are kids around the world being traumatised by acts of twisted, foul, actual paedophiles who would think of preying and damaging the lives and psyches of real children who will grow with the stains of their trauma clinging onto them indelibly, requiring the most delicate and vigilant of professional help to ensure their recovery and prevent their suffering.
But we’re talking about the real issues here.
Escapist fantasy? No one’s getting hurt? People can tell between fiction and reality? It’s a work of fiction and at the production for and consumption by and large by adults who are legally able to view porn of real people which is somehow more normalised in society than the depiction of sex in erotica or fanart?
I don’t even bother deigning a response to that BS.
Lies beget lies, and you start to wonder when it ever gets old. All the dissent, all the haters clinging on and making excuses for the true perpetrators (an apologist for a rape apologist; their kind tend to flock, don’t they?).
They even flag their content as the NSFW atrocities they are, the twisted bastards. And tag all their content, too.
Don’t they know children are on the sites where they disseminate their vile creed? Don’t they know the creator is responsible for who decides to view and engage with their work, and that even though options like blocking and safe mode exist the consumer has zero, absolutely rock-bottom responsibility in maintaining and controlling the sort of content they view?
Child abuse at its finest I tell you.
I’ve turned down job offers before. Interviews where they ask me why I don’t dedicate my activism to paedophilia, rape, and abusive relationships in the real world because of how madly, deeply I care about what I think it is in derivative works of fiction. They ask me how I have the time to dedicate myself so passionately to other people’s business in the figments of their imagination about other figments of imagination.
But you know what they say. An activist’s…
A hero’s work is never done.
