There are many things that I find baffling about this drive to cancel NSFW creators. So many things.

1) The insistence that we shouldn't be sexual about celebrities. That's literally one of the oldest tropes in the book - someone rich, powerful, and attractive is such a common

fantasy trope. They're unobtainable. For 99% of people, they will never meet them in person - the closest you'll come is the edge of a stage, and usually 100 feet back at least - and even if you do meet them at a fanmeet, it's a 30 second meeting.

For all that we say we 'know' these celebrities, we don't truly know them - they're strangers to us, mouldable and we can put onto them any personality, need, fantasy, or emotion that we care to project, as an exercise in imagination and fantasy.

This is where that line is drawn - making fic, art, and content is not declaring "this is reality." I mean, if you draw Yoongi with cat ears, is that really suggesting you think he's a cat boy and he's just in hiding? No. You're making up a story.

Same with kink and fetish and NSFW content. You aren't claiming it's real, you aren't claiming it's reality. You're just using shorthand for [character a] and [character b] and using it to express your chosen fantasy or plot or explore a particular niche.

These are people who are good fantasy material *because we don't know them*. Because they are inaccessible and live 9000 miles away; they don't know us. It allows freedom and diversity. The argument of "you wouldn't do it to a friend!" is moot because *they are not our friends*.

People have fantasies all the time. Fantasies are healthy and a normal part of sexual development. Kissing your boyband posters was a huge part of the 90s + early 2000 tropes about women and girls - it's practically short hand. SNL literally did a sketch about this *exact* thing.

2) So then they clutch their pearls and go "but what if idols find out?"

Honey, they know. They don't make it in their industry which is *specifically* designed to cultivate a paraosocial bond between [idol] and [fan] without realising that some of that bond? Is sexual/romantic.

For God's sake, a large proportion of content for many groups is specifically aimed at cultivating that 'boyfriend/girlfriend' atmosphere, and they make content *to that end.* The logical conclusion of that is that they are also aware it goes beyond PG-13.

They aren't blind. They aren't dumb. They know it's the internet. They know it's out there. You ever googled yourself? So have they. And they get the same results you do.

They are also grown adults who can read the room and know what happens if they take the safe search off.

I don't think that means we should tweet it at them or send it to them and we should keep it off of things like *company owed platforms* but it also means out here, in the public shared space of the internet, we're all fair game.

3) But then they go, "It's weird because you're an adult/you're old!"

I'm sorry, I didn't know the point where turning 25 means handing in your card that lets you do anything fun and means you can only do taxes, go to work, and live a miserable, sexless existence without fandom.

Also, fun fact. Most of the people making these complaints are minors. As minors, you don't get an opinion on this because you shouldn't be viewing that content anyway. If you found it, *click away.* It's not for you.

4) Then we drift into kink shaming/"it's weird!"

So what? This isn't a publishing house, there is no universal standard of what's acceptable and what isn't. Learn the difference between something you don't like and something that's actually offensive.

If you don't like something, nobody made you read it. If you don't like a piece of art, nobody made you look at it. If you don't like a plot or a tweet, nobody's making you follow it.

Making it about you is selfish. You have options to avoid the content you don't like. Use it.

5) Then we drift into the realms of "but what happens if minors see it!"

Then they should click away. Provided enough barriers are put up - in the bio, in the name, tags, warnings, and *reading the description*, then the onus is on them to decide if it's something for them.

Minors are old enough to be on the internet. If they click an account that says "NSFW content, [kink/fetish], Minors do not interact!" and then they interact... what happens afterwards was both expected and their actions deliberate.

6) And finally, there's a weird undercurrent of misogyny here.

Fandom culture is *overwhelmingly* women and female identifying people. It has been from the beginning.

All this backlash against them is people choosing to silence women and minority groups (such as people who are trans/LGBTQIA+/PoC) from exploring their sexuality, fetish, kink, and fantasy in a way that is almost exclusively grassroots.

These are all people who are frozen out of mainstream pornography - which typically features white women, of particular sizes and body types, being used by men (who are often but not always white.)

Race is fetishized and turned into a selling point, and 'non-straight sex' is

usually very cliche, and usually is filed under straight sex anyway. Trans people are marginalized into sex workers, 'sluts', and exploration of fetish is often extreme and subjugating.

Many people choose to not engage with that kind of pornography or sexual work because

it comes from an industry with an extremely poor reputation for protecting workers, presents limited and very specific ideals of fetishes, and lacks any kind of warmth, intimacy, and character development to allow viewers to be emotionally involved.

Fandom and fan creative work is a notable exception to this - while still overwhelmingly done by white/cis authors, there is a large section of creators who are PoC, disabled, LGBTQIA, who use real experiences and voices to make their content feel genuine and real.

Characters are emotionally fleshed out and content is curated to meet specific niche needs within the community, *for free*. People feel represented and acknowledged by this, and especially people who are marginalized or unrepresented in media.

Shutting down NSFW creation is shutting down those voices. It's saying "it's not proper!" and trying to deplatfrom those who deviate from the norm. It often cuts off key sources of funding, fun, and sanity for those who need it now, more than ever.

It's a moral exercise - "I don't like it, so I want it gone!" - when nobody appointed these people with a hate on as the people who get to decide. They're the ones who screenshot and link it to accounts with minor followers, exposing them to pornography and content that's

explicit because they believe it's 'wrong'. They're the ones who run people off the platform, to the point of anxiety, panic attacks, and self harm because they feel their need to not see it/protect an idol is worth harming another for.

These are the people who heard members say "Don't bully, don't do harm to people, be kind to others," and decide, "Yes, I will send anonymous hate/KYS messages to another user because I'm *protecting* those idols."

If something triggers you or is upsetting to you emotionally/brings up bad memories, then it's okay to *refuse to engage with it*. It's okay to have a boundary and to say "this kink/fetish/type of relationship is not acceptable to me."

You're even allowed to say, "morally, I can't get behind this, and I don't want to even know it exists!" But that's where your ability to control everything ends.

It's up to you to curate your experience and to use the tools you have. It's okay to ask people to tag things.

To add extra tags. To be more explicit in their content warnings. To block people (without warning, even!) and to mute words that make you unhappy/mad/sad/make you panic. That's a healthy boundary for you to draw and no NSFW creator *wants* people to be hurt by their work.

What isn't okay to say "this content upsets me! It must be [extremely abusive/illegal/morally abhorrent] and people who produce it are gross/upsetting/vile and deserve to be hated, bullied, and hurt because of *my* personal discomfort."

I find it worrisome that people will flat out go "No, I will bully person who does [x]" when their justification is "I have done zero research into this, I just feel it must be morally wrong so I don't like it so I will actually bully someone over it."