Sorry if I miss anything, make any major spelling/grammar mistakes, or sound all over the place, it's very late and I don't feel like going to bed yet despite being tired.
I'm going to sound like a broken record, but that is still a nuanced topic.
I agree that some content can be harmful, blackface is always bad, but to me most of it depends on 4 things:
- How much influence the creator has.
- Who sees the creator's work.
- How that country's society sees that content.
- Who is creating the potentially harmful content.
Best example for the first one is J.K Rowling, the massively popular Harry Potter creator. While it wasn't her books that did harm, a lot of fans were hurt and saw her series differently after she showed how transphobic she is. This also seemed to jumpstart a huge transphobic thing in England, with rise in trans people experiencing more violence, and terfs pushing for anti-trans laws. They're even trying to go after Stonewall UK for their inclusion of trans people.
That is an instance of a creator being massively harmful.
What I mean for the second one is for a certain harmful issue to be perpetuated it has to be seen by the right... or wrong person. The average media consumer knows racism, rape and intolerance are bad, and a majority (Depending on the culture.) wouldn't actively execute those things, at least not intentionally. For a certain piece of problematic media to be harmful someone who is already unhinged or has really messed up thoughts has to be influenced by it. Like copycat crimes where someone or a group of people reenacted murder scene from a book or movie, they don't just decide one day to hurt someone, they were already having those thoughts and where inspired to them a reality after being influenced by a piece of fiction. This is a tiny, tiny percentage of people.
The third one is about how a country's society works, harmful stuff can be perpetuated in that country by consuming certain problematic media, or editing out even the slightest rep from preexisting stuff. Like American movies made with a Chinese audience in mind, some films are made in a way where POC and any signs of LGBT+ stuff can be edited out, or "fixed". This perpetuates racism and bigotry.
The last one speaks for itself. If the creator is making an own-voice type of story it should be fine, if it's someone not in the community making a dark story about that group then it can be harmful.
These things can be mixed together, and media presented this way can be harmful. An example of a large influence mixed with societal issues is Jaws. People didn't know anywhere near as much about sharks and they do now, so with the movie's massive popularity came a lot of sensationalized fear of sharks, and an increase in shark hunting. This was extremely harmful to the species, and Peter Benchley regrets ever writing it because of what it caused. Of course he had wrote Jaws today it wouldn't have the influence it had back then because society is more educated on sharks now.
On the other hand a woman with little to no influence making rape fetish porn to cope with her own sexual assault isn't going to perpetuate rape culture, or some smalltime kid making really dumb, gross BL romance isn't going to perpetuate intolerance. Not unless there was a huge influx of people making this type of fiction, the right people saw them, or they were massively popular. I may get crap for this but I also think even if these smalltime folks where somehow perpetuating harm, they still have every right to create that work. Calling for censorship has never been a good idea, it leads to ignorance and repeating mistakes in future generations. Just like people with gross opinions they should be allowed to exist, but they should be criticized. If you truly feel a piece of fiction is doing active harm to a community then criticize it, who cares if the creator gets butthurt, that's part of publicizing your work. If they don't get it, and you're still bothered all you can do is not engage, encourage others to not engage. If enough people disengage with their work maybe they will change, although if they're in a minority group and creating that work to help themselves then who knows.
This also means I am in fact for Rowling being allowed to be a transphobic scumbag, because trying to censor her will not make terfs go away, and may in fact make their convictions and pushback stronger. The best way to "censor" someone doing active harm is to encourage disengagement.
I don't actually know who Jenna Marbles is, was she criticized by the black community for her bad tan or did she just realize it could be seen as harmful on her own? Is she some type of social media influencer?
For the record I don't think all NSFW material is the same, I just don't agree with censorship of fiction because it doesn't help anyone. Also my comic does kind of fall in the category of potentially harmful since it's borderline torture porn of a minority character, so this conversation does somewhat affect me. As for potentially harmful stuff being on Tapas or other major sites, there are stories like that here, and on sites like Twitter. They don't break the rules (Or at least haven't yet, who knows when the banhammer will be put in adult content on Twitter, and when Tapas nukes mature stuff.), and have every right to be on these sites just like any other piece of art. The only thing I think they should have, and most of them do, is proper tagging so people don't get the wrong idea or so they don't cause emotional harm.
So again, harm can only be done under certain circumstances, a piece of fiction is not harmful if it has no influence. (A.K.A: A random webcomic or webnovel. A mass majority of people still don't know those are a thing.) Censoring fiction you find harmful does not help anyone, and may make things worse. As you said, not all NSFW material is the same, and shouldn't be treated as such. Therefore not all stuff you perceive as harmful should be treated the same, because they're not all made under the same circumstances or with a harmful mindset.
Aw man, I don't know what was up with Tumblr's censor bot, but it flagged the weirdest stuff! The the mass porn purge happened a picture of some flowers I had got censored, to this day I have no idea why the bot thought it was inappropriate.
