To be perfectly honest, I don’t think anyone under the age of 18 should be running an anti-pedo or anti-kink blog yet the vast majority of [blank]-against-pedos/ships/[insert kink] are people under the age of 18.
Because not only does it really just put them in direct contact with people who post that type of content, many of them are not emotionally or mentally mature enough to fromulate their own opinions on the topic.
we deserve to be outspoken against people who fetishize and oppress us. if we know we are targeted we know something is wrong without adults having to speak over/for us. how dare you think we should be denied voices in the issues that revolve around us?
…. That is not oppression.
and because teenagers should not be putting themselves in contact with pedophiles on a regular basis.
Teenagers should also not be telling ADULTS what they are and are not allowed to do, consensually, with other ADULTS
I’m all for young people being educated about predators and issues affecting minors (I grew up in the era of “stranger danger” after-school PSAs so sometimes I forget that’s not default anymore), but the entire point of keeping pedos/MAPs/other nasties off of shared spaces is that minors are not supposed to be dealing with them. It’s the responsibility of adults to police other adults. If you’re underage you should be enjoying your life, going out with friends, whatever, not spending your childhood hyperfixating on sexual predators and putting yourselves in danger. If for some reason you feel like you have to do this because the adults in your life don’t seem to be doing their jobs….find different adults. We’re out here. We’ll sucker-punch some pedophiles for you, trust me.
Like, if you’re a minor and you happen upon somebody doing something real shady and you think they’re going to hurt someone, please do report it….to the police, to the administration of whatever website you’re on, to an adult, but do not try to handle it yourself. That’s how people get hurt.
All that said, let me take a moment to address anti-kink blogs specifically. These piss me off, and the fact that they’re often run by minors pisses me off more. Here’s the thing: you’re not even supposed to know that content exists. Like, I know that’s not the reality, okay? I googled my first titty at like 13. But legally, you are not supposed to view sexual content. Why are you kids looking at this? Most of the time, adult-oriented material is clearly marked. Sometimes people are asshats and leave it untagged, but why are you seeing it, noticing that it’s not acceptable for you to see and continuing to look at it anyway? Especially when it apparently grosses you out so much! Close the tab!! If you think something is breaking the law or the TOS of whatever site it is on, report it and move on. It is not your job to deal with it when you’re too young to even legally look at it. Leave safe search on and stop fishing.
And no, minors should not be telling adults how to interact with other consenting adults. Again, you are not even supposed to be viewing this content, and you do not have the maturity or experience necessary to understand the nuances of kinks, which most of the time only exist in a consensual private setting and do not affect the world beyond it.
In summary:
DO: – Report illegal activity to the authorities. – Report untagged NSFW content – Report maliciously mistagged content – Block/report blogs that ignore your “do not interact”s if they are forcing you to view inappropriate content.
DON’T: – Take it upon yourselves to police websites – Interact with known predators – Purposefully go looking for sexual content you are not of age to view – Purposefully go looking for other content that disturbs you
I feel the need to specify MAPs aren’t synonymous with child predators, and most MAPs aren’t “nasties”, but non-offending and non-contact people who do not interact with minors as a rule, but – other than that – I agree with most of what has been said above: as a minor, report and block inappropriate blogs, but do not interact. You should never seek out dangerous materials. It’s also dangerous to interact with people that seek to do you harm.
So I’ve been sitting on this one for a couple days, because I just didn’t have the mental energy to answer it, but here it goes.
No, I don’t think I’ll ever be finishing ‘Would That Make You Happy?’.
Because, when it boils down to it, it doesn’t make me happy anymore.
I never should have started ACT Three, but because I had good ideas for it, I didn’t want to let them ‘go to waste’. The end of ACT Two is great and that should have been the end of their story. But part of me hadn’t been ready to let them go. I had these new OCs to introduce and plans for them and overwhelmed myself with plot threads and complications and the project just got too daunting.
Not to mention the burnout.
Not to mention all the other stresses I was dealing with outside of writing with personal relationships and failing to put more distance between myself and the community that had gathered around my work.
To be frank, I have hurt over and over again because of this fic, the connections that were made because of it, and the fact that I didn’t know how to better protect myself because I never expected how big the story got.
This isn’t to say that there wasn’t a lot of good too. For all the bad there was a wellspring of good, from many of you, but for my own sanity I needed to stop writing, withdraw, and move on to other things.
These past two years have had many hard lessons in what real friendship actually looks like, and I am grateful for those lessons, and where they led me. Because I wouldn’t have these incredible people in my life without them.
non-suspicious 