Wattpad has decided to remove three chapters from my essay about snuff movies, claiming that it broke their guidelines.
I do not agree with this decision. As the story in question was a journalistic work that stated well documented facts in true crime stories, taking out these parts comes off as a rather strange act to censor real life events. It is especially odd that one of the deleted chapters explained actual laws, without being any more graphic than stating the regulations and possible sentences for watching off-the-shelf movies that are no more real than Star Wars.
Though my story did also feature some rather brutal scenes, that was also very much the point in an essay that asked why anyone would want to seek out these images in the first place. I wish Wattpad had contacted me to discuss this beforehand, so that I would have had a chance to rephrase or somehow alter the aggrieving parts, instead of just deleting them without any warning or even be notified of a complaint. However, since removing chapters from the middle of a story naturally destroys the whole piece, I have decided to unpublish the work from the platform, as it would otherwise be without merit and utterly unreadable.
To me, censoring a horror story for being too brutal, is the same as censoring a comedy for being too funny, which is why censorship will always be endlessly scarier than any mere words. If you can be told what to read and write, it follows that you can be told what to think and feel. This is truly dangerous, and not even in a fictional way.
