#if you don't immediately caveat it with a 'hey we all know she's a monster right'

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia, I was talking to a friend the other day and we were debating whether it was ok or not to enjoy media made by people with different political views than your own.

She said it wasn't but I said it depends on the person but also because I think we shouldn't self-censor ourselves or judge the quality of the media by the opinions of the person/s making it. As someone who's studied media what are your takes on this? Thanks in advance ( ^_^)

Anon, this subject is way too broad for me to answer in a single post response.

It also highly depends on what the media is, and what the politics are. There's a difference between consuming something (and giving money to someone) who's just a mild asshole, and someone who is a literal rapist and has never experienced consequences for it, or someone who is literally giving money to movements that will indirectly cause the deaths of trans teenagers and is still actively doing that / not dead yet.

If you're the kind of person to give money to someone who will contribute - and has contributed - to the deaths of trans teenagers, well it's a free world and you can do that, but maybe don't expect to keep a lot of your trans friends and trans ally friends, and you yourself would not be a trans ally. You're not self-censoring, and the world isn't stopping you from doing that, but you might be someone who needs to feel more empathy for the people around you, or work on understanding why giving money to folks with monstrous politics leads to more monstrous politics.

If you don't want to live in that kind of world, you have choices you can make. But they're your choices.

It's not 'censoring' myself to choose not to participate in the works of something by someone who is doing things that could lead to a less safe world for me and fellow trans people as an example. I'm making a choice because I care about other people and because I genuinely would not enjoy the works of a person who created stuff who has said online: 'If you participate in my created works I'm going to assume you support my views (and so will everyone else).'

Making personal choices like this is not censoring, anon. (And I'm pro-censorship, lol, so even if it was, I'd still be like 'yeah contextually sometimes you have to' - censoring =/= banning). Technically censorship is something that can only be done by controlling bodies and government authorities anyway.

But we have to make choices all the time. If your friend is raped by another friend of yours, but that second friend buys you dinner all the time, do you keep seeing that second friend because like, hey free dinner! If your answer to this question is 'of course I would' - then like, well, I don't know what to say to that. We probably can't have a meaningful conversation about compassion or humanity.

Different levels of politics have different ramifications to different areas of society and different people. I'm trans, so I'm not going to support transphobic creators. It's really that simple for me. I don't want my fellow trans people to keep getting hurt by anti-trans rhetoric, and I'm pretty tired of it myself, so I avoid it, and I avoid the people who support folks who literally enable it to keep happening. It's an active issue with active and current repercussions. We're not talking in this instance about the politics of a dead author who can't hurt anyone anymore, or someone in prison, or someone who is so old they have disappeared offline into the ether.

If, on the other hand, I find out someone's a Republican but in all other ways they're mostly just living their life and not trying to actively harm people by funneling all of their personal money into things that will like...cause suicides due to promoting say, transphobia, then yeah, I might still engage with their stuff or support their stuff.

Likewise, if I watch or give money to a movie made by Weinstein, I will often think of all the other crew members and actors who had nothing to do with that behaviour who still deserve residuals or royalties.

Some cases are complicated, but some aren't. Some really are 'this person has said they will give their money to causes and governments that want to hurt us and eradicate us' and supporting that is the action of a transphobic person, even if that person doesn't feel transphobic. If the actions cause more hate towards trans people, it's a transphobic action, and it's kind of that simple.' And trust me, you can be trans and still be transphobic. We see internalised phobias all the time, everywhere.

Yes, I'm talking about JKR here, because I find this kind of question is usually about some obviously monstrous living person who is still doing monstrous things in a very ongoing way, vs. just a regular 'hey I found out this writer is pro-fracking and I hate fracking what do I do' or 'hey this author writes a ship I don't like should I hate them.'

(Look this might not be about JKR but it's certainly the first thing that's going to come to most trans people's minds and I'm trans, anon).