Over ten years ago, I posted an article called ‘In Defence of Rape’. An obviously baiting title referencing similar articles by Chesterton, Mencken, Orwell, Swift, and more modern pieces in outlets like The Onion or The Grauniad. What this actually was was more akin to Gaiman’s ‘Why Defend Icky Speech?‘ (it used to be OK to reference Gaiman, and his point there is solid).

In other words, it was my impassioned defence of free expression and the freedom of creative people to explore ideas that are ‘icky’, dangerous, unsettling and horrifying.

This was originally in reference to a media fuss around a trailer for the 2013 Lara Croft reboot (I was writing in 2012), which implied a sexual assault/rape outcome to a failed quicktime event, though no such thing was ever actually confirmed, let alone shown.

I wildly overestimated people’s cultural literacy and their willingness to read and comprehend beyond a title.

I wildly underestimated how fucking unhinged some people are, and my publication of this article began a 13 year (so far) campaign of harassment and sabotage against me that still goes on, but has declined to a slow rumble and whispering campaign, with occasional flare-ups.

Of COURSE I was against censorship, having grown up under the sway of moral panics about comics (Action!), ‘Video Nasties’, The Satanic Panic, the Obscene Publications Act, the Vampire Panic and Section 28. This time however it was conservative voices ostensibly on the ‘left’ that were demanding everything be censored and controlled, rather than big ‘c’ Conservative voices as had been (the polarities are shifting again more recently).

Little wonder, then, that I participated in Gamergate a couple of years later, which despite ongoing denials and protestations by the pseudo-left prudes, genuinely was – in its origin – a campaign for consumer advocacy, against censorship, and against corruption in games media. They’ll still argue against this today, despite there no longer being any need to lie about it.

Eventually I tired of people constantly referencing the article, and took it down, storing the original in a document that people could download if they were curious, and putting it behind a post – like this one – explaining in rather more simple terms what the point was, for the wilfully illiterate.

You can access the original article here:

To remove any ambiguity whatsoever, the point of the article was simply this: 

No topic should be off limits. Nothing should be exempt from being story fodder. Whether rape, murder, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, racism or any other nasty thing anyone can think of. Artists must be free to explore without being censored, controlled or limited. The mere existence of something nasty in a story, game or piece of art is not sufficient reason for the art – or the artist – to be pilloried. Nor should we only allow people we consider (subjectively) skilled or politically acceptable to tackle difficult subjects. TL;DR – Censorship is bad, offence, upset or discomfort isn’t a good enough reason to prevent something being made.

If you still object to that, stated as plainly and simply as that, we’re going to have a problem.