I dunno if any of y’all have heard about the book Daddy’s Little Toy by Lauren Tesolin-Mastrosa (under the pen name Tori Woods), but if you haven’t, here’s the synopsis and the pics of the cover/back —
“Daddy's Toy is a loose retelling of Cinderella, where Lucy's family are neglectful and cruel. As Lucy grows up she finds herself attracted to her father's best friend. Little does she know that Arthur feels the same way. Together, they explore a daddy and little girl relationship, falling hard and fast for each other. Daddy loves spoiling his little toy and treating her like the princess she is. Happily ever after guaranteed, with extra sparkles and unicorns.”
Basically, this Australian woman released this book, and within days, she pulled it and deleted all her socials because of the harassment she was getting. Why was she being harassed? Because the male character had known the female character since she was three, and groomed her. Keep in mind, these are fictional characters.
(There is also a rumor that, in her dedication, she wrote something along the lines of “I’ll never be able to see my children the same way”, but I haven’t been able to find any screenshots or really any proof of that.)
Then she was arrested. Again, she lives in Australia, and laws regarding fiction are notoriously strict there, so her book was deemed CSAM, and she was arrested for possessing, producing, and disseminating CSAM.
She has also been let go from her place of work. Again, all this over fiction.
I shouldn’t have to say that harassing, doxxing, and threatening to call CPS on someone for writing a book is wrong, we should all know this, but I guess we don’t. It’s wrong. You can say that the content of the book is disgusting, weird, whatever, but the sheer amount of people across all social media platforms I’ve seen not only agree with the arrest, but applaud it is both baffling and frightening.
I do not care if it’s glorifying, romanticizing, or fetishizing anything, because it’s fiction, and no one was hurt. I do not care that it was written as dark romance instead of splatterpunk/extreme horror, because you still have the duty, as a reader, to look at the back of the book or read a synopsis online and decide for yourself if it’s something you’d like to read, or if it’s something that will upset you. I don’t care how disgusting a book is, **arresting someone over any kind of fiction is bad**. It *legally* being CSAM in Australia doesn’t mean that’s a good or just law, and anyway, we shouldn’t be conflating legality with morality.
I don’t know that I’d go the full nine yards and say it’s censorship, because she decided to pull it (granted, under threats of CPS and the police being called), but now that she’s been arrested, it’s pretty damn close to being censorship.
We, as a society, NEED to come to the realization that written words or drawn pictures don’t harm anyone, because, like it or not, censorship is not a scalpel, it’s a shotgun. It’s just not pointed at you yet.
I’m also tired of seeing so many people acting like the Americans joining in on the debate are too “freedom-focused” because our laws aren’t so draconian (yet, anyway) that we don’t arrest people over fiction. Australia being too police state-y is not a good thing.
How can you, in good conscience, celebrate a woman being arrested, losing her job, losing her hobby, and potentially having to deal with CPS in the future, all over a book she wrote with original, fictional characters? Why would you ever want to target OTHER creators as well, and have them potentially face the same undeserved and unnecessary backlash, again, over fiction?
What the fuck is wrong with you so-called “normal people” that you care more about the characters and tropes these people write about, than the innocent lives you’re directly ruining, that you’d advocate for censorship, that you’d call for the death of someone?
