i'd like to point out first, my del.icio.us tags include amtdi and non-con

You know, I thought I talked myself down off this one, because frankly, Twilight is not great literature and mounting a defense takes up valuable time reading non-con amtdi porn.

But you know, I just feel that inspired, plus I ran out of Dean/Castiel reading and my son still has Twilight in his locker. Go figure.

I have to know something; did I miss the memo that I'm supposed to be ashamed of being twelve? My apologies; see, when I was twelve? I never really considered to form my actions to meet an arbitrary standard that would come into existence twenty years later on my reading habits, because that? Would have totally pulled the Gor novels right out of my hot little hands.

As in, please to be putting down your AMTDI non-con for a second while ranting on how Twilight is ruining young girls. I will totally be there when fandom as a whole stops finding aliens made them do it rape as a fun and lighthearted fanfic pasttime. I mean, I will be there, but I'll still be writing it. Hell, throw in eroticized slave-fic with idealized sexual slavery and falling in love with your enslaver controlling boyfriend who stalks you...wait.

Writer responsibility comes up a lot with this, which I suppose is fair when one is writing cross-alien-species sexual hijinks and one is struggling to portray those sensitivity, or the reality of slave trafficking in the modern world, or hell, magical healing cock after rape and lets toss in mpreg for kicks, because there's a genre that's incredibly sensitive and socially conscious. I have zero interest in writer responsibility, to be honest, except for one key points--did they tell a story? That's it; that's where it starts and stops, with some codicils of audience. Twilight was readable to a huge group of people.

Maybe the mystery is the plotline? Because I agree; I cannot imagine why anyone would enjoy a fantasy novel about two people obsessively in love with each other and would do anything to be together.

You may pile your under the bed romance novels over to the left, please; lets do this right. Let's blackball the entire romance novel industry already. I want petitions against VC Andrews, Johanna Lindsay, Judith McNaught, Catherine Coulter, Virginia Henley (Okay, I could stand to lose her), and anything set in Viking England with a wee Saxon lass.

Seriously. I get hating them for being bad, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder; shaming young girls for something they've found to love is edging right into the reason I'm trying to stop myself from ever using the term "Like a twelve year old girl" again in any slash fic I write. Which will probably be something I'll have to pick up on beta because comparisons to teenage girls as insults to men is surprisingly common.

Please lay off the girls. And remind me again how Seeds of Yesterday ended. For the life of me, I couldn't find it with my other VC Andrews work.

Comments

[seperis.livejournal.com]

When I see boys put down, though, it's in things that are considered strengths; recklessness and stubbornness and other "strength" words. With girls, the put downs are in what are considered weaknesses. It's like living in stereotypes. *sighs*

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

I hear guys put down for being violent slackers who like to sit around shooting things in video games or shoot things with airsoft guns. And I think, analagous to girls with Twilight, for the huge majority of guys, they know the difference between shooting someone on a video screen and in real life. They're not going to turn into psycho killers because they play Halo in my basement for 24 hours straight fueled on Mountain Dew and Doritos. Erm. Not that I have ever had a child of my own who does that! *g*

I think that the concept that girls don't know what is good for them *may* be ultimately more destructive -- I understand your point there. I will ponder this. There is the underlying concept that boys have agency, girls don't.

(I will "admit" to one parental "putting my foot down." I drew the line at Grand Theft Auto. I just. It isn't the violence per se, it's the sexualized violence and the racism and sexism, etc. I know they play it, and play it elsewhere, and I know they're wonderful kids and it doesn't affect what they actually think or how they behave, but I just do not want my money or my house used for it. I even realize that it's probably inconsistent, that there are probably far worse things that they've seen, etc. But I simply...excercise my parental right on that one. I simply don't care if it's rational. I'm not buying it or letting them buy it with my knowledge.

On books? Anything they want to read. We might talk about it, depending on what it is, but a smart librarian once told me that kids just kind of skip over parts that are too intense for them. Books? Anything they want to read... Again, if my daughter was voraciously reading Twilight, I *might* have a conversation about it. Then again, I might not, because one truth as a parent is, it's what you DO, not what you SAY that matters most. If I model, and my husband models, what we believe to be the right values and concepts for girls and boys, that's the piece that matters most.)

ETA: I'm editing this, because I have to say, I *do* worry about the girls I see who don't have models in their lives of healthy real-world female agency. There are a lot of girls out there without any effective models for this, period. I have to just hope that most of them will figure it out on their own. Unfortunately, where I work there are a lot of these girls. Many of them end up with lives that are pretty messed up. Of course, it's not this book's fault, lol. But, it does feed the mindset they already have.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I will "admit" to one parental "putting my foot down." I drew the line at Grand Theft Auto. I just. It isn't the violence per se, it's the sexualized violence and the racism and sexism, etc. I know they play it, and play it elsewhere, and I know they're wonderful kids and it doesn't affect what they actually think or how they behave, but I just do not want my money or my house used for it.

Oh, I know that feeling. I told Child if he wants to watch the Friday the Thirteenths and etc, fine, but I cannot deal with them in the house. If he susses out someone who allows it (probably my sister), then I'm all for it. Just not here. I can't deal with them at all.

I'm editing this, because I have to say, I *do* worry about the girls I see who don't have models in their lives of healthy real-world female agency. There are a lot of girls out there without any effective models for this, period. I have to just hope that most of them will figure it out on their own. Unfortunately, where I work there are a lot of these girls. Many of them end up with lives that are pretty messed up. Of course, it's not this book's fault, lol. But, it does feed the mindset they already have.

*nods* I don't disagree, but I'll be honest from limited expereince working as a caseworker with welfare; my clients weren't influenced by their reading. They were influenced by their parents and their families. So the idea that the book could be that influential boggles me; with the girls I worked with, their reading choice wasn't on the top ten of reasons. Not even in the top fifty.

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I have also limited my kids' viewing in other ways along the years: this was my "teenage example" since we were discussing teenagers. There are some things that imo an 8 year old shouldn't see, for example, and in fact, I am pretty constantly horrified at the young kids I see taken to certain movies, etc. Visual stuff is different than the written word -- much more intrusive and impactful and hard. Reading, I can definitely imagine a situation where I wouldn't let a kid read a certain book, but it would have to be extreme and they wouldn't be teenagers. By the time they're teenagers, the horse is rather out of the barn.:)

Yes, I actually agree. We could *wish* that a book could influence these kids over and above the environment they've grown up with. Maybe, possibly, a few girls will be affected by it at exactly the wrong time and have their actual lives affected. But for the huge, huge majority, it's what happens in real life that matters.