On Sexual Expression in Fandom: An Open Letter to the KOTLC Fandom
Dear KOTLC fandom,
Around a year ago, I was accused of supporting pedophilia and child pornography. And for what? For saying that I thought teenagers should be able to write explicit content and explore their sexuality without being judged. I remember vividly the anger that I felt that day, how my hands shook, and the tears that fell down my face as I tried my hardest not to curse the accuser out.
But most importantly I remember feeling fear. Because I knew I wasn’t even getting the worst of it.
The original post was a “callout” of Nattie, @theunmappedstar. Or at least that’s what they said. The post inspired multiple people to send suicide bait to Nattie, misgender them, and call them a pedophile. All this over a teenager writing about characters their own age.
What made it worse was the fact that so many of my mutuals, people who I thought I respected, sided with this person. This just greatened my fear of speaking out.
So I didn’t say everything I wanted to. And I still regret that.
But as I’ve been talking to my friends (the Idiots Supporting Idiots Squad) I’ve realized that this is a common experience in the fandom. Because of the rampant purity culture, a lot of this fandom has been shamed into staying silent about both this situation and about reading or writing smut in general. Luckily, through our conversations with each other, we’ve found healing. And a lot of us have found a way to put aside the fear that we had surrounding smut and speak out about the toxicity in the fandom.
So, in this letter, I will attempt to convince you that writing and reading smut is not a thing to be shamed.
The first thing I’d like to ask is this: Why is teenagers writing smut about people their same age, and sometimes people older than them, inherently problematic? Well, people, including the original poster, will argue that “smut is 18+ content that minors shouldn’t be posting or consuming.”
But why not? Why should the only people who are allowed to explore their sexuality be adults? And here’s the thing: adults are definitely not the only ones having sexual experiences. Teenagers regularly have sex. Acting as if this is doesn’t happen, doesn’t make it go away. States where teenagers are taught “abstinence-only” sex ed are consistently the same ones that teen pregnancy is the highest.
It’s also important to note that the people who say teens shouldn’t be writing smut, say nothing about teenage boys watching porn. Despite the fact that the same arguments could be made about that.
Fandom is a largely teenage girl-heavy space. When the same stigma surrounding smut isn’t placed on porn, it feels like these people just want to police teenage girl’s sexuality and falls victim to sexism and double standards. The answer to this isn’t to prohibit teenagers from watching porn, it’s to reduce the stigma around teenagers exploring their sexuality through fandom.
And fandom is a good place to do this. Writing about sex and actually having it, are two things with vastly different levels of risk.
If someone writes something in a fic that they realize isn’t their thing, the consequences are a few deleted paragraphs and maybe feeling uncomfortable for the rest of the afternoon. But if the same thing is instead done with a partner, the stakes are a lot higher. Maybe they talk it out or maybe they’re left with lasting trauma.
In addition, fandom is also a very queer place. Sex, while not important to everyone, is definitely important for many queer people. And smut can be a great way to explore their identities.
So when teenagers write sexually explicit content of fictional characters, it harms no one and actually does an amount of good. And let’s be clear, these are fictional characters. They do not exist and do not have feelings, so writing smut of them is not the same as child porn. Because the characters did not actually have these experiences. Real children are not the ones doing the things in these fics.
And, I think it’s important to note that the OP did participate in the harassment. They went out of their way to harass Nattie in a discord server that I’m a mod for, saying to their face that they were a child porn writer. And they never disavowed anyone calling Nattie a pedophile.
We can’t keep shaming teenagers for completely normal things that hurt no one. And we especially cannot be the type of fandom that normalizes harassing people and sending them suicide bait for it.
To quote me from a year ago: “This is how we lose great people. Not losing them in the fandom, but losing them forever.”
Respectfully yours,
Kai (my-swan-song). With the support of: Drew (@make-kotlc-gayer), Sil (@silveny-dreams), LC (@catboyruy), Akki (@i-love-side-characters), Creative (@creativemastermind) and others who wish to stay anonymous.
everyone mentioned by name has given me explicit permission to mention them.
