I see it a lot in my students that the ONLY mode they can engage with literature on is one in which they either say it's good because it's "relatable" or it's bad because they "can't relate to it" as well, and I feel like this is a symptom of the same problem. An unwillingness to engage with fiction outside of its ability to be a mirror to your specific worldview and set of morals. But art doesn't exist to give you moral purity badges--it's a mode of expression that produces conversations between artists and readers. And to engage in those converesations on an adult level you need to learn to process the discomfort of flawed human realities productively.
Only ever engaging with things you can easily relate to also sounds like a great way to wind up kinda stunted and REALLY bigoted.
I had a friend who taught a creative writing class in the US as a professor at a college and one of the girls he was teaching reported him to HR for being a bigot misogynist because he taught them things like this and he resigned.
from the tags:
and that's bad why exactly?
like i'm sorry but if your worry is "does someone experience sexual pleasure from this" and not "does this actively harm someone" then you are exactly what this post is about: a puritan who is more concerned about their own personal feelings of discomfort and disgust rather than actual objective harmfulness (especially since you go on to say in your tags that cannibalism being illegal is "stupid" in your opinion)
reblogging again bc these tags are so so important
