Author Sarah Wilder published an article on this site last week titled, “BookTok and the Destruction of Literature,” lamenting a TikTok trend among mostly female readers who share an obsessive fascination with sexually explicit fantasy novels.

“The decline in reading in America is a troubling fact,” notes Wilder, an avid reader of classic literature, “so a social media trend that encourages people to frequent bookstores and read well into the night should be a welcome one, right?” Wrong, at least when it regards “BookTok,” which she calls “anything but a return to literacy.”

The sexual appeal of BookTok is being touted in progressive media outlets like HuffPost (“Move Over Porn – TikTok Has Us All Reading Seriously Spicy Books”), Glamour (“The Smuttiest, Spiciest Erotic Novels According to BookTok”), and BookishNerd (“20 Best Books on Spicy Booktok To Put You in a Frenzy!”).

Bookstore giant Barnes & Noble even features a table at some of its stores labeled “Spicy #BookTok.” Wilder observes that there seems to be “zero shame in the mostly female crowd who throngs this table,” adding that “[t]he problem with consuming such porn, even if literary, is so obvious that it astounds me.”

The writing quality of this pornographic genre is too poor to even qualify as literary, Wilder notes, so the trend is doubly degrading. Wilder adds that the fading popularity of classics is bad enough “for our culture and our minds,” but posting on social media about these fantasy novels is even becoming a sort of status symbol, marking the BookTok fan “as literary, as sexually explorative, as engaging and edgy.”

This seems to me an entirely reasonable concern about our degraded culture, in which producers of entertainment content, whether literary or cinematic or musical, seem to be in a race to the bottom to “push the envelope” of what society deems acceptable as entertainment. This ongoing decline in standards of public decency and morality is a significant factor in the mainstreaming of pornography, verbal obscenity, and graphic depictions of violence and horror. No one more mature than a 16-year-old should consider this a positive cultural development. This is the broader point Wilder seemed to be making in her condemnation of BookTok.

And yet I was struck by the fact that those who genuinely commented on her article were unanimously outraged by Wilder’s take. All but one of the commenters are apparently women, based on their names, and all of them blasted her for “shaming” women for enjoying pornography.

“People can’t even enjoy a book without being shamed these days,” one person commented. “Might as well just start telling women they aren’t allowed to read, have opinions or enjoy an escape from their mundane lives. God forbid a girl have a hobby.”

This is so hyperbolic it’s comical. Wilder said nothing about banning anything, much less her fellow females’ right to read, have opinions, or enjoy a hobby.

“Why can’t people read what they like without being judged?” wrote another commenter. “This whole piece makes me sad. Mind your d*** business.”

“Shaming people for reading,” echoed another. “Awesome. Let people read. They aren’t hurting you.”

Yet another female commenter, whose illiteracy unintentionally justifies Wilder’s concern, wrote:

I would personaly rather read a book with smut than read this article agin.
I think it’s crazy how women are being judged for not reading a book but then when we do we’re being judged as well.
this article is just downgrading women and our hobbies.
You are basicly saying that the only books that should be allowed are old books written by men for men. [Again, Wilder wrote nothing of the sort.]
if you don’t like those types of books don’t read them. it’s that simpel

“I cannot believe you’re shaming people, ESPECIALLY women who have long been mocked for enjoying smut while for men its [sic] viewed as normalized,” one commenter, who goes by only the initials E. C., exploded.

Not one commenter engaged with, much less refuted, the point Wilder was making. The issue at stake for them was apparently not the decline in literary quality, not the shared indulgence in sexual titillation, not the degeneration of the culture, but the “right” of women to degrade themselves as equally as men who consume pornography. To echo one of the commenters, this perspective makes me sad.

It seems that these commenters would look down on men reading explicit trash and tittering about it on social media, yet would leap to defend their own daughters for doing the same, because hey, equality or something.

“Who cares if its [sic] scandalous? If its [sic] questionable?” E. C. ranted before asking rhetorically, like other commenters, if BookTok readers are “hurting people in real life by reading these books.” E. C. concluded by telling Wilder to get her head out of her “arse” and “grow up,” by which he or she seems to suggest rudely that Wilder must simply accept that wallowing in smut is normal for men and she has no right to “shame” women for engaging in the same morally, spiritually, and socially corrosive habit.

This attitude indicates a thoughtless regurgitation of the feminist indoctrination that true equality of the sexes means women should be free to imitate the worst excesses of stereotypical male misbehavior, such as profanity and promiscuity. Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned to condemn moral failures in both sexes, rather than grudgingly accept them in one sex and defend them in the other?

These commenters have all willfully deluded themselves that reading pornography and gathering socially to encourage each other in their self-debasement isn’t hurting anyone. In fact, pornography, like all addictions – and make no mistake: it is inherently addictive – demonstrably hurts everyone. It is demeaning and dispiriting not only for the person consuming it, but also for the society in which such dehumanizing immorality is becoming increasingly normalized.

Our society has trumpeted tolerance of just about every sinful indulgence as the highest virtue for so long that we now defend every destructive choice people make. Shaming, when done in the spirit of genuine concern for the state of someone’s very soul and for the state of our society, isn’t about humiliating; it’s about helping to guide people toward the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. It’s time we see the value and virtue in calling out bad behavior – for everyone’s sake.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Flickr-Catholic Church England and Wales, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0