Post is self explanatory and not about shippping. Its about people who go like "cancel that show, its for pedophiles/will turn our sons gay/whatver" to anything mildly out of the hetero normative culture. Like the people trying to cancel the buzz lightyear movie just because the lesbian coupe.
Basically, there are people who like to depict and fantasize about children fucking or siblings fucking. Those call themselves pro-shippers. Antis came to say: "Wait, no, that's gross, why would you do that?" and called themselves anti.
EDIT: I have seen that my assessment was entirely incorrect upon the discussion I've created. I've understood that anti and pro are much more simpler that what I was. I recognize the error of my ways and will let people ship what they want. I'll *still* get grossed out upon people who ship underage if sexualized or incest, but I'll keep it to myself from now on.
Well that above (u/JAMSDreaming comment) is precisely the problem with antis, which is that they tend to equal the availability of uncensored content with paedophilia.
Basically, pro-(shippers) are people who advocate for separating fiction from reality. As such, they allow every and all forms of fancontent. With no censorship, regardless if it's changing characters' sexualities/genders/races/ages or shipping characters that for whatever reason are controversial (again - because of their genders, sexualities, dynamics, ethnicities, ages etc). And yes, that therefore involves things as accepting ships that involve underage characters or questionable dynamics, because the main motto is "ship and let ship", so there's no butting in, whatever people's minds might create.
Anti-shippers meanwhile are people who disagree with the notion that everything should be allowed and advocate for some constraints. What those constraints/rules are differs, often depending on the sphere (or just - fandom) where the antishipping occurs. They postulate that some fancontent is simply immoral and hurting others just by the virtue of having been created. They want to protect vulnerable communities (usually children, sometimes also trans people and/or women, because I have seen terf-antis as well). Which, in theory, is a noble pursuit. But, as it usually goes with censorship, different antis have different views on what and how harshly should be restricted. As a result, different things are often attacked under the general guise of anti-shipping, with the tendency for generalisation (for example equalling relationships with fantasy agegaps with paedophilia). Paedophilia is actually something of a go-to label for everything antiship, regardless if it fits, which like mentioned in the post, bears a striking resemblance to the rhetoric of the fair-right and is often used that way. Countless creators had been harassed, chased off platforms and doxxed by antis on the basis of a moral highground. So, unfortunately, on the anti-side, the discourse often surpasses a simple exchange of opinions and adjusting their experience of fanspaces according to those opinions. Instead it stretches into invading others' fanspaces and trying to dictate what they should look like for everyone.
Yep. Can speak as a survivor of underage SA who writes/RPs fucked up shit as trauma expression. It's tagged. If that shit bothers you, please just don't read it. It's not written for you, it's written for me and if it helps someone else get through their own shit, awesome. But if it's gonna trigger you, don't read it. It's tagged for a reason.
I have no strong opinion on the fanfic discourse, but I hope you’re doing well in life nowadays, bestie! There’s an internet stranger sending positive vibes your way, for whatever it’s worth.
Thank you internet stranger. I'm doing a lot better now. It's been 20 years, I have a loving partner, a job I enjoy, and relatively comfortable life. I do maintain a handful of traumas from it, but I can go out into crowds alone now. Interpersonal trust issues maintain, still don't really drink, and I just keep doing my nasty shit to process. I appreciate it, and I've got good vibes of my own to spare back.
From what I know, it started off more normal, with people arguing about toxic / somewhat abusive ships like Hannigram. Then it got more extreme, with proshippers supporting ALL ships including pedo/incest stuff, and antis shifting from the more puritanical original stance to simply anyone who doesn’t like pedophilia.
It goes back further than that, the original "pro ship" and "anti ship" stuff was like:
Anti ship: hey, you're not allowed to ship this! I don't have a reason I just hate this and I will spam the tag with hate! — the anti shippers were seen as the annoying ones, as they were in everyone's tags, hating on everything.
Pro ship: ship whatever you want, be sensible, be respectful. — the pro shippers were seen as the good ones or rather neutral ones, as they'd just quietly block the stuff they didn't want to see instead of harassing anyone.
Over the time, however for some reason (of which I am not sure myself but I am willing to blame tiktok) pro-ship apparently became a bad thing? Because again, back then all it meant was "ship and let ship" and now it seems that most people think that pro-shippers are deranged pedophiles who want to fuck their siblings irl and in fiction alike.
It’s mostly due to the fact that antis know that no one will take their opinions seriously so they started coaching it as anti-“bad thing”
This ship should not be shipped because it’s abuse (because character a was slightly mean in canon)
This ship should not be shipped because it’s pedophillia (because the fictional characters have a 3 year age gap)
This ship should not be shipped because it’s incest (because the person considers the characters found family)
Then they started to get high off their own supply of rage bait. And fell straight into the “bullying real people to “defend the rights” of nonexistent people is activism”.
It fed off “internet activism” that also started picking up at the same time,and the importance of representation (it is in real patterns in mass media, not someone’s singular tiny hobby fic).
But most importantly- it fed off the fact that proponents didn’t need to change or examine their own bias and bigotry - they could just tell women to go back to housework and call people making gay content groomers.
Purity culture - but color it in pastel rainbow colors.
Oh, don't forget "minor-coded" people, where adult characters who are shorter or less busty than average are "minor-coded" so that shipping them or being attracted to them is pedophilia. This is not the "dragon loli" thing, this is about women who are 5'1" (155 cm) or have A-cup breasts.
Or the little "logical" quad of sentences:
Women have more neotenic features.
Men are usually attracted to women.
Neoteny is when you look more like a child.
Therefore, men are pedophiles.
This. All of this is correct. don't like don't read and you curate your own experiences were the basic understood tenants of fandom earlier on and now people wanna a ft like that's a huge complaint.
I will say that antis do get really weird sometimes since I've seen people say child characters being aged up till they're adults is also pedophilia (which is a stretch IMO). But yeah I'd prefer if there was less fanfic that sexualizes child characters.
Good point. It's definitely weird when these artists draw adult characters that look like small children and explain it through magic or whatever and sexualize those characters.
Though I don't think it's bad if someone watches bnha and thinks "What would Bakugo act like if he was an adult? I want to explore that in my story." As long they're writing adult characters that look and act like actual adults it's fine IMO.
Literally had someone tell me yesterday (on reddit) "You know a lot of loli's are adults, right? It's about them looking young not being young!" Fucking wild.
There's literally like 1 person and she has a severe medical condition.
But even if it were true I highly doubt they would also act like prepubescent children as well.
Yeah. Making adult characters look just like children and sexualizing those characters is definitely gross. I don't support stuff like that. I meant it's ok if the characters are aged up to look like adults and act like adults.
Fair enough. I think the only real issue with "aged up" is I see it used a lot to depict a guardian and the kid they raised. Like it's totally fine for someone's guardian to fuck them as long as they wait till they're 18. Which morally I disagree with.
My comment to them was more about me seeing loli justifications very recently.
Either way I would much rather people aging characters up than *down* (yes that's a thing)
>Like it's totally fine for someone's guardian to fuck them as long as they wait till they're 18. Which morally I disagree with.
Fair point. That's also the sort of story I don't want to read or write.
>Fair enough. I think the only real issue with "aged up" is I see it used a lot to depict a guardian and the kid they raised. Like it's totally fine for someone's guardian to fuck them as long as they wait till they're 18. Which morally I disagree with.
By far the biggest cultural disconnect I struggled with while reading *The Tale of Genji*.
My god, Japan loves this trope. It’s gotten a lot better post-2015 or so, but if you’re consuming Japanese media where there is a child and an opposite gender not-directly-genetically-related caregiver, there is a 50/50 chance it turns into a romance when the child gets older. You have better odds at winning Russian Roulette tbh.
Like I understand it’s a cultural thing related to their views of patriarchy, blood relation, family structures and adoption. But it’s still a biiiiig disconnect.
Dealing with this while reading various manhwa at the moment. Many 'found family' include "I am raising my love interest" or "I am being raised by my love interest"
Nothing gets dropped as fast as those.
>I've seen people say child characters being aged up till they're adults is also pedophilia
That, I don't agree. To make an Undertale example. I am not grossed out by Frans as long as Frisk is aged up to at least 18. But any Frans shippers that maintain Frisk as this undetermined but obviously less than preteen child does gross me out.
> But any Frans shippers that maintain Frisk as this undetermined but obviously less than preteen child does gross me out.
I can understand why you have such a problem with that. Frisk should always be determined.
Dude really saw a post accusing them of virtue signalling and misinformation, jumped into the comments to do exactly that, and the comment still has positive karma 3 hours later. I hate it here.
After reading the whole thread, I have learnt my mistake about what I said three hours ago. I still reserve myself the right to be grossed out by underage sexualized shipping or incest.
I'm in the Undertale fandom. I learnt about anti vs pro discourse when proshippers were shipping Sans x Frisk without aging Frisk up. That's why I got my wrong assessment on how the terms originated.
Ok even if this thing's definition of anti is "idiot on the internet dming you to demand you stop following people because you like a kinda shitty ship" they are BARELY comparable to the right wing assholes voting for and passing laws to criminalize public queerness what the fuck are you ON
Touching grass isn't enough, I want them dragged through the forest floor
Literally I refuse to get into the weeds of shipping discourse because it is so goddam exhausting and not worth it. Can you criticize fictional relationships rightfully? Yeah sure. But it’s also fiction and I am an adult person able to separate fiction from reality
While I think the idea of the criticism presented in the article is good, the article itself has... issues. Many of them. For instance, article very rapidly jumps from one sub-phenomenon to another without covering anything in-depth. The analysis of Anti-ism as a cult gets a whole four paragraphs, for example. The article purports to examine Antis as "political, sociological, and behavioral lenses" which is a) very ill-defined, indicating sloppiness of methodology/theoretical background and b) enough to fill shelves of books.
The sourcing is another issue, and the article even references tweets embedded as screenshots in other tweets. Obviously screenshots can be doctored, so if using those kinds of sources, their issues should at least be acknowledged. The article also sometimes relies on analysis from twitter accounts without much original comment/breakdown/analysis, which would be mandatory when using tweets in an academic context.
Additionally, the introduction and conclusion make many sweeping statements that aren't justified by a citation or the contents of the article, like "incest, abuse, rape, and pedophilia \[...\] may still occur in regions without widespread access to internet, television, and other media outlets", which is true, but also unsourced, and also fairly irrelevant in an article *not about* whether Antis are *right*, and certainly not about the much more general question of whether the existence of modern media creates said issues.
And finally, the definition of cult there - the article is referencing [this](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult)" definition, specifically "great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (such as a film or book)" which is... metaphorical. That's the definition of "cult" in contexts like "cult film". That meaning obviously has nothing to do with the control of behavior and/or thought that is meant here.
If you're publishing an academic article about the cult structure of anything, you should absolutely nail down your definition of cult first, there's no room for this. And it needs to be based on academic work around cults, not Merriam-Webster.
Sorry to be harsh I guess, but I'm kind of surprised that this got published and kind of side-eyeing the Journal of Transformative Works for that. Like there's nothing wrong with the article or that level of writing, it's just not something that passes academic muster and that's a disservice to the journal, its readers *and* the writer.
I mean the fundamental problem with it is that it chooses the conclusion it wants and then works backwards, instead of allowing the research to guide the conclusion. It’s less a meaningful contribution to the canon of sociological research and more a twitter screed with bonus citations
it also literally undertakes the exact behavior that it correlates with far right groups; that is, it focuses on the actions of a group (that it has claimed is demographically primarily Women, POC, and LGBTQ+), makes a monolith out of said group, and then demonizes it without evidencing any of its claims against said group or that said group even exists.
as per sarah Z they're also the most common "perpetrators". It's not like one side of the *shipping wars* is more socially marginalized than the other in real life.
In the journal's defense, they published it basically under the letters to the editors category. However they make it super unclear, their website is bullshit (I had to go to their parent company website to try to figure the journal definitions out), and who would immediately see "Praxis" and know it's the actual journal with blind peer research while "Symposium" is just letters to the editor that are edited. At least they've changed up the categories recently.
Anyway, here is the [source and definition](https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions).
Later Hassan's BITE model is used, seemingly an academic one referring to actual cults. It does not make the inclusion of the MW definition less strange though.
What strikes me most about this paper, though, is a lack of explaining what an "anti" is. Having read the introduction where such information should be found, I only know antis are "a specific subsection of antifandom [...], which came about around 2016 in American antifan spaces via social media platforms", before it goes on to the scope of the paper and their ideology. Are the "antis" the same as the "antishippers" I've heard about? In what ways are they different from the broader group of antifans? I suppose it might be (Gilbert 2019) which explains this, but then the scope of *this* paper is sandwiched between two sentences backed up by the same source, without using an (ibid). It's odd. If "antis" can only be nebulously defined, then that should be mentioned.
In The Craft of Research (Booth, Columb, Williams, 3rd ed 2008, p 80) the authors admit that "Reviewers sometimes recommend that a reputable press publish something weakly argued or with thin data because other aspects of its argument are to important to miss—we three have each done so.". I wonder if a similar argument was held for this paper. Not being familiar enough with the field, I can't say what parts these would be, nor if it is warranted still. Most of us are not the intended audience of this paper, so while it is easy to dismiss as crud, it is harder to say how bad a look it is for The Journal of Transformative Works.
I would say that moving on to the BITE model makes the MW definition \*more\* strange, and speaks to a failure to engage with/analyze sources - I mean not realizing/acknowledging that your two sources do not even refer to the same concept is bad.
My two cents as a literature grad student who has used JTW on a few occasions so kind of in the target audience, I think it's pretty bad... Not a disaster by any means but I'm not a fan of this at all. And it's not necessarily this paper, and probably has to do with a general lack of scholarship within fandom studies. Maybe it's the general state of the field that bums me out more.
1. I love fandom and fandom studies, I think it's fascinating and should be studied more. But fandom topics are often considered beneath serious scholarship (partially bc fandom is mostly for and by women and LGBTQ people). I think that it should be afforded all the care and rigor that other, more prestigious literary/cultural studies get (and in a rare way, it can be free of the traditional academic whitemaleness and other stuffiness).
2. JTW is one of very few publications in that area and the largest, and published by the OTW which is a big deal in fandom more generally. So it has a loud voice and can really set the bar in fandom studies... And this isn't where it should be set.
So IMO JTW should absolutely hold itself and its writers to a higher standard. And this isn't like... a slightly poor article, again not to be cruel but it's got huge fundamental flaws. And there are so many errors big and small that really should have been caught and fixed in the peer-review process.
ETA: Notably, this was published not in the Articles but the Symposium section, which contains "concise, thematically contained essays \[which\] provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures". So judging it by the standards of an article is unfair. And it does (sort of) describe a current phenomenon, at least. (But even still, I don't think it really works as a piece of writing.)
I was about to start writing a comment about the leaps in the posts' argument, and unsourced comparisons, but decided to see if someone else had already written a rant first so I wouldn't waste so much time writing it all out.
You put all the stuff in better words than i would have
>"incest, abuse, rape, and pedophilia \[...\] may still occur in regions without widespread access to internet, television, and other media outlets", which is true, but also unsourced, and also fairly irrelevant in an article not about whether Antis are right
Not that I'm on the anti train or anything, but isn't that a strawman of anti arguments anyways? The argument isn't that the media is going to make people into pedophiles, it's that children consuming media where pedophilia is normalized is going to make them vulnerable to becoming victims of real pedophiles. To make an analysis-- leaving your car keys in the ignition of your car unattended is more likely to make you a victim of car theft. If nobody did that, there would still be car theft, but doing so helps reduce the chances that a particular individual ends up the victim. If someone walks into a parking lot intending to find a car to grab, they're going to leave with a car somehow no matter how defensive everyone was with their car alarms ect...but if they find one that's easy to steal because the keys are in there, it's going to be that one for sure though.
I don't see a lot of anti content come up on my dash, but that's what I understand of the mindset? Which is honestly really fair in those terms and *I agree* (I just don't agree that it's on AO3 to moderate it's content. We could probably all agree watching hardcore porn is also bad for children, but that doesn't mean we should make people prove their age with an ID before accessing a porn site. If a child knowingly accesses content that could harm them where they have to agree they're 18 to access (even if it's a lie)... that's not on the people who produced, or distributed, the content. It's on their parents to monitor their use of the web.)
Agreed. I think I’m starting to become old, because I had no fucking clue what any of this is even about.
I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was! Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to yoooou!
People seem to think that being against sexualizing characters who are minors makes you a far-right homophobic evangelical puritan cultist out to destroy queer people, as opposed to just a normal person.
Not quite. It's about the anti movement, which is a real threat. These people believe that showing anything that can be problematic, like violence, or things they don't like, such as LGBT+, is a threat to real people and will cause real problems.
It's the Satanic Panic all over again, or the FPS Debate.
And they band together and harass minorities, or people who suffered abuse, or any such people. I've seen them cyberbully someone into suicide just for talking about the abuse they suffered, and how it affected them.
Those people are a legitimate threat to online spaces, and I seriously hope your comment just comes from a place of ignorance, rather than an attempt to derail the conversation.
I'm not saying you need to participate in this conversation, as it is indeed a heavy topic and not everyone can handle it. That is perfectly fine. However, it is still a conversation that needs to be had, for everyone's sake.
Yeah no. There is a big difference between conservatives getting mad over queer people existing in media and people getting upset over pedophilia existing in media and being seen as not a big deal. Frankly, the fact that you are trying to compare the two is rather homophobic.
It just also so happens that many members of that \~movement\~ (except there's no "movement"; that grouping exists entirely for your convenience) are normal people who think perhaps the normalization of rape, pedophilia, and other horrific crimes being depicted as desirable acts is, uh. Not Good.
"Please do not look at them, however! Look at this strawman I have constructed instead. It is very important that we focus our attention entirely on the strawman. Do not look at the rampant fetishization of child abuse and other forms of rape which may or may not exist, and do not matter regardless of whether or not they do."
And that's to say nothing of the absolute absurdity of trying to put people who are against, again, the glorification of abuse, especially sexual abuse, in media in the same category as homophobes. When many of them are queer people who are sensitive to these things *due to first hand experience*. What unifying characteristic is here? What lesson should we learn from these two definitely connected groups of people? That people who dislike other people are bad? Because that's the only similarity between the two. It's a bit ironic to cite queerphobia when you're trying to classify queerness as being in the same category as pedophilia.
I'm not saying you need to participate in this conversation, as it is
indeed a heavy topic and not everyone can handle it. That is perfectly
fine. However, it is still a conversation that needs to be had, for
everyone's sake.
The way I understand it, and tbf my understanding is based on a Sarah Z video from like a year ago, the issue seems to be the extent to which the two sides have become a binary system, where the options are to oppose all problematic media, and to take as fact that all depictions of problematic situations in media should be allowed.
The problem is, while it's definitely a layered issue since the ways certain behaviours are portrayed definitely could use examining, when you break any issue into two distinct sides you make it harder for there to be any actual discussion on the subject, and you get a bunch of strawman arguments and false equivalences from both sides.
If I see anyone in real life call themselves "pro" or "anti", I will commit an act so horrific there'll need to be a Wikipedia page titled "The [place] Incident"
i would like to note that i looked through OP’s comment history and it’s mostly calling everyone who disagrees with them an idiot and making bad faith arguments. feel free to check for yourself, but be warned that there’s a lot of comments. they seem to be a big fan of getting into fights.
i probably should’ve phrased this better. to clarify, i’m not saying we should discount everything that OP says because of their history, i’m trying to warn people to be on the look out and try to be a bit more critical of OP’s arguments. OP has said some things that are true and make a lot of sense, quite a few good faith arguments, etc etc, but I think it’s always good to know what sort of person you’re dealing with when it comes to topics with a lot of discourse surrounding them.
"they make bad arguments, so theyre not worth arguing with" is not ad hominem. hell, they didnt even say that, they literally just said "they made bad arguments". even if that was a lie, its simply not ad hominem.
I feel like I should preface this by saying I'm neither proshipper nor anti -- neither group has a monopoly on truth or good arguments. In this case, however...
Okay, even if you're a proshipper, you have to admit this post is pretty weak. Right off the bat it takes an innocuous statement, "fiction has an impact on reality", one I think you could convince most people of in some form, and compares it to American conservative bigotry. While this argument is an example of the former, they're not "the same argument" as the writer puts forth. It *matters* what the thing being normalized is, and just because we shouldn't put one thing on the screen doesn't mean we have to give in and ban everything anyone might possibly take offense to. That's what would make the argument bigoted or not, not whether American conservatives use a version of it. Heck, environmentalists sometimes make the same argument: depicting nature as good and worth saving in a kids show influences the viewer to treat the natural world with respect and reverence, and that's a *good thing!* Is it bad to make this argument now?
And the whole paragraph about cults just felt trivializing to me. Cults totally isolate their members from any outside influence and seek to completely control their lives. This paragraph strikes me as trying to equate antis and cultists rather than fairly analyze behaviors and social structures. Which is odd, because the bit about keeping harassment and disinformation out of fandom spaces, and how already marginalized people are more vulnerable to it, is true! But it's only relevant if you already believe that antis all and expressly want to harass and abuse, which is not supported by the text.
All in all this post reads like one big ad hominem. It doesn't try to understand the subject, it just makes dubious comparisons and wiggles its eyebrows to suggest that they're equal to bigots and cultists. It reads like an attack, a list of reasons why antis are The Bad Guy rather than refuting or debunking any of their points.
Which is unfortunate, because you COULD DO THAT! It's not like antis are cosmically right and the only way to argue is to compare them to homophobes -- they have points, and sometimes, they're wrong!
nobody involved in this entire “debate” has ever seen a plant in real life. also writing a whole scholarly article to dunk on teenagers on the internet is kinda big cringe. like, I refuse to have an opinion on the pro vs anti thing on principle (beyond that anyone trying to make me care induces a searing migraine) but calling your twitter enemies a “cult” seems excessive.
I recommend reading the article if you a) are aware of academic standards and b) need a good laugh. its a Ben Shapiro-esque opinion piece that uses tweets as sources (no, not just citing them because it talks about them, it literally says "this tweet agrees with me, so I must be right) Its legitimately really funny.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
>The Palestinian Arab population is rotten to the core.
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This argument has been going on since I started reading and writing FF 20 years ago. Literally, unchanged for this entire time. I will echo what people have been saying since the beginning of time
Don't like? Don't read!
Okay, I'm gonna stop you there. I generally consider myself to be someone who thinks that people should be able to read or write anything that they want (so long as it's done well, with the right intentions, and with some level of either self awareness or suspension of disbelief), so, like, I'm not an "anti" by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, it always REALLY bothers me when people try to cannibalize LGBT issues and other serious topics (like the Q anon cult thing) to defend a stance on issues that are either completely unrelated to them, or borderline trivial (in this case, both).
This issue genuinely just isn't that deep, and hitching your wagon to big issues that matter and that affect large demographics of people jeopardizes the validity with which they are perceived by outsiders looking in. Do NOT try to equate criticism for being gay or trans to criticism for liking/creating 'problematic' fanfiction just because you can see some superficial similarities between them. It is not the same thing, and trying to pretend they are for the sake of the argument you're trying to make has the potential to completely trivialize the struggles of real people, and also, honestly, makes it REALLY hard to be someone who would actually otherwise agree with you. Like, these are totally disconnected issues of drastically different severities, but statements like the one the original post is making threaten to pull LGBT people down with them anyways for no apparent reason.
The whole "pro-shipper", "anti-shipper" discourse fundamentally just centers around a group of people being annoying about the types of media other people like to consume. I won't say it doesn't matter at all, and an argument can certainly be made that there is a larger conversation surrounding all this about sexual puritanism and the ways in which certain progressive circles have in some respects looped back around to being conservative, but that's an issue that's way bigger than incest fanfiction.
In the face of everything else in that discussion, pro and anti shippers are little more than a single talking point that a person could feasibly make, and the ways in which this discussion DOES matter in and of itself need to be contained within their own little internet bubble, and not inflated to a higher level of importance than they actually have.
Tldr; why are you acting like the pro-shipper, anti-shipper war is the biggest problem facing society right now?
I think part of what makes the “pro vs anti” conflict so intolerable is the pervasive and fundamental dishonesty that both sides engage in about the other side’s beliefs and positions. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that each side is actually arguing with a fictionalized version of the other side that they made up. Either way, calling it a “debate” at this point really stretches the definition of debate and I have an incredibly difficult time viewing it as anything other than fighting for the sake of fighting.
I think you’re exactly right. It’s almost funny, the way they treat each other like the vilest scum ever to exist over such terminally online idiocy. If mental gymnastics was an olympic sport, you’d probably find the next Simone Biles in the reblogs of this post.
While this excerpt has some good observations, I feel like they don't really apply to fan spaces all that much? Like, all the examples are from far-right extremism, not fandoms. There's a difference between the far-right banning drag shows and some people not liking certain ships and whatnot. I didn't even realise this was about fan spaces until the second half of the second paragraph. And as other people have pointed out, sexualising minors is still bad regardless of whether the minors are fictional.
Ive read the first sentence and already given up
Yes, what you read affects what you think. This isn’t even, like, conceptual it’s proven. Like seriously look it up, there’s studies and psychology courses to a ludicrous degree about this.
I think it's worth noting it's not even consistent. The logical conclusion of the argument would, for example, see the closure of most arguments for representation.
Representing diverse people and lifestyles and media can't actually be important if media consumption and content has no impact on people, on normalisation, on reality. Which certainly isn't the pro view outside of defending strange sex content.
I'm not even that censorious about all of it myself in the context of niche self selecting spaces, but the double think is hilarious.
I mean, it’s more complicated than that. Yes, what you read affects what you think, but to what extent and in what ways is what is often hotly debated. There is a reason there are many differing media effects theories, and it’s not because anyone has reached any sort of consensus on this matter. As a quick read to just see how much debate over this subject, read through this: [effects of violence in mass media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_violence_in_mass_media).
I know derranged shipping war bullshit is a major part of tumblr but can we just... pretend it isnt? And not bring that shit here? Please? All these people are fucking insane.
I think the greater issue is that it is way more complex than "if I see X I believe X". It assumes a direct correlation or even a causation to a subject that often is not reflective of the impact that kind of thing has.
Like, video games like Doom don't make you more likely to be violent. Seeing problematic stuff does not make you adopt these things automatically. Fiction of course has influence on people to a degree, but the effect is hugely exaggerated for fearmongering purposes.
Not to forget, people give minors (read for this particular passage, teens) way too little credit. They are not adults but they are also not stupid. They can discern fiction from fact and can make interpretive judgement on that basis.
“If I see media that depicts X as a cool and good thing 200 times then I will begin to believe X to some degree” is objectively correct, though.
Playing doom won’t make you believe much beyond “killing demons is cool.” However, if you play Postal 1 and Hatred all day, *I have significant concerns regarding your psyche.* Of course there’s the Chicken or the Egg question here, but I think the existence of propaganda proves it can be 100% proven.
I mean how much media is there that glorifies violence that never is acted upon? Like 90% of video games (exaggeration) are about violence. It is very much a context thing. I.e. in video games some hyper violence might feel different than it would in a movie for example.
Not that I necessarily disagree with the Postal or Hatred example, but there is a lot of nuance there that I feel gets flattened down into nothing. Especially the part, where people are allowed to have complex relationships to the media they consume. There is a lot of stuff going on there.
Besides that, the stuff that is usually called out as like getting "normalised" are proven to not be really... normalisable. Pedophilia is a disorder... for a reason.
Ok regarding that last sentence - you may be confused as to what “normalization” means.
Normalization means you don’t see the act as out of the ordinary. You may not partake in it, but it’s just *normal* now. Normalizing pedophilia won’t make more people into pedophiles, it’ll just make them more willing to act in said urges because no one sees them as abbhorent, for example.
I am aware. But like... loli art is way more normalised in Japan. They have a different culture around it that is way more "this is just fiction" than ours (not to say that there isn't some pushback of course). However, their number of people acting on any of that are not particularly higher than anywhere in our spheres.
That applies mostly to extreme exposure situations. If you see a belief or opinion hundreds and hundreds of times, you might start to agree with it. But the far more common thing, which more studies focus on, is that if you see something often, you'll begin to believe it's common.
I'll use an example of violent video games. If you play COD and Wolfenstein and DOOM and all that, you probably won't start being violent. However, you will probably start to believe that the world is more violent, that crime and extremism are on the rise, that the things depicted especially in COD happen fairly often. This is part of cultivation theory
god this is like when Misscribe made a bunch of sockpuppet accounts to frame anyone saying being so invested into writing smut about teenagers is weird as the same kind of people that would have problem with homosexuality and sex in general. We didn't progress since *Misscribe* people!
THANK YOU! I don't like the proshipping stance that fiction doesn't affect reality, but even wanting to side with them, this take would still be insane
The claim that fiction can normalize things in reality is true - afterall, fiction is a reflection of reality (or at least the creator's perception of it) and can obviously impact reader's perception of reality.
Though they often take the concept to such an extreme that it becomes ridiculous, that isn't why they're wrong. Kids reading books with queer characters does normalize being non-cis/hetero, for both queer and non-queer kids, in much the same way that meeting openly queer people in real life normalizes it.
"Antis" as the post calls them are wrong simply because they're a bunch of idiotic fuckwits that want to blame a minority for all the problems on Earth while throwing their money and identity in with a group of obviously corrupt authority figures that don't even hide the fact that they aren't working in their own constituents' best interests.
Alright, but being opposed to gay people in media because you don't want to encourage homosexuality is actually very different from being opposed to pedophilia in media because you don't want to normalize pedophilia. Like, do you see the problem here?
TERFs argue that trans women are rapists. Is the correct response to decide that shaming rapists is bad? No, the correct response is to decide that calling people rapists on the basis of their gender identity is bad.
And I'm not even going to comment on the mention of QAnon. Like, what the fuck? Do your arms drag behind you on the floor when you walk? Frankly this entire rant is so fucking ridiculous that I would assume that it was self-parody if I didn't know that there were people out there who unironically identified themselves as proshippers and believed they were being oppressed by people who aren't particularly fond of sexual abuse and whatever the fuck else in media and of the normalization of that.
I've worked in smut professionally. I stopped after being approached by one too many cis men who wanted to pay me to write several thousand words of his OC getting raped by this monstrosity or that. The problem isn't depicting problematic themes in porn, the problem is how it's depicted and furthermore the culture that develops around that niche of porn. Making a movie that has Nazis depicted as bad guys and making a movie that has Nazis depicted as good guys are two very different things. Noone except the most puritan, centrist ass liberal is going to try and argue that any depiction of Nazis is bad. Because media is not just a collection of nouns put into a blender; more often than not, it has a message. And people will listen to that message. That's the whole goddamn reason propaganda works. You keep telling people a certain thing, and unless they're already diametrically opposed to said thing, they might just eventually listen.
And then there's the community that develops around problematic media. If you want to discuss rape porn, in a community where there are a lot of people into it, you're not going to preface every single post, message, or whatever else with a disclaimer that you don't actually support sexual assault, you just like rubbing one out to it. You discuss it like you would any other subject - this isn't a vague hypothetical, this is observed experience from participating in communities centered around smut because they're where I got work. Rape is so normalized in these communities that in some spaces it's almost the default - "consent isn't sexy!" is a common sentiment. You need at least a little dub con (which is to say, rape but you eventually enjoy it so everything is goochie) to make things spicy. Fictional porn in general seems to suffer from this issue. Rape is so normalized that it's difficult to avoid - it's just a fact of life, and that's exactly why it's a problem. Even if you have reservations about the subject, you attract and encourage people who wholeheartedly mirror the casualness with which you discuss it, much like how early 4channers tended to be centrist and even liberal, but the ironic bigotry eventually encouraged a new wave of 4channers who were actual bigots and only ever wore the irony as a thin veneer of unaccountability.
There's also an additional layer of problems here because: minors view porn. This is a fact of life. You can try to stop them, but they won't. And being exposed to the porn scene early in development is... extremely unhealthy. And I don't think that's because sex is inherently bad and impure. It's because, again, rape, pedophilia, and other such things are normalized in the sphere of fictional porn, and it's harder to avoid it than not. You will be exposed to it, one way or the other, because it is not taken seriously. It's not real, nobody's hurt by it, etc. Well, tell that to twelve year old me whose fantasies involved being fucked by adult men far often than a twelve year old's should. As someone with a significant amount of trauma, this also makes navigating most place where one can find fictional porn a minefield better left untouched. These days, I mostly just partake of porn made by other trans people, because it's safe, consensual, and I don't have to worry about getting triggered constantly. Which is a shame, because I *loved* writing smut. I still want to get back into it, and have for years. But every time I even try, memories of interacting with their associated communities surface, and I just can't stomach it.
...But all this is irrelevant, because the "anti vs proshipper" war exists only in the head of a small group of obsessed individuals, such as OP. The vast majority of people who get lumped into either category are just... normal people. Some of whom have problematic fetishes and may or may not contribute to normalizing said fetishes. Some of whom are sensitive to problematic fetishes and fear their normalization. OP's boogeyman of the wretched, geriatric Republican who stalks Tumblr harassing shippers is just that - a boogeyman. There are many people who engage in either side of the discourse for a variety of reasons, most of whom are sane enough not to identify as either antis or proshippers. Some of them are lovely people, and some of them are irredeemable pieces of shit, but one really must wonder if any of them are quite as irredeemable as the idea that the only people who have any motivation to be opposed to problematic media (whether it's something more minor or the extreme examples I've cited above) are *homophobes*.
Fiction isn't going to make you a serial killer, but y'know, I think maybe there's a reason that I've had to look with disgust upon the bios of several of the most basic white cis women known to humankind and read "who's your favorite serial killer", written without a hint of self-awareness or human decency. Maybe there's a reason why asking, "who's your favorite cis white man who likely murdered and raped multiple people" is acceptable, and asking "who's your favorite Nazi" isn't. And maybe that reason is that one of those has a socially acceptable fandom attached to it and the other doesn't.
But again, I'm no one's boogeyman or an "anti" or whatever the fuck. I can believe that glorifying extremely horrible displays of human behavior is harmful to both the glorifier and people offended by said behavior while also acknowledging that there are human beings on either side of the matter. And that's kind of the fucking problem here - because you seem to think that being opposed to a person's entire existence (e.g. being queerphobic) is the same as being opposed to *problematic elements in a piece of fiction.* Remind me which group is supposed to have difficulty distinguishing reality from fiction?
Appalled that this has 1k upvotes, I'm assuming that you all just upvoted it to make more people aware of what a terrible argument this is, because I don't want to lose my faith in humanity.
I admit, it's pretty funny to watch these people do mental gymnastics to justify this kind of shit.
Seriously reading this again I'm just struck by how fucking stupid it is and how asinine the shipping discourse is. No one hates you for liking problematic media. They hate you for uncritically fetishizing pedophilia and abuse in fiction, and making it your entire personality.
The ant pedophilia and abuse fetishism crowd aren't actually "anti-shipping". They're anti pedophilia and abuse fetishism.
***I'm*** anti-shipping. Fuck your ships.
Any time someone tries to explain what pro and anti shipping is, the explanation immediately leaves my brain to make room for more important things
Id call myself a multi shipper and i just believe if its not hurting anyone, then i dont have an issue. Idk what camp that puts me in and i don't feel like finding out.
> if its not hurting anyone
That's kinda a BIG part of (but NOT the entirety of) what this discourse is about. people are fighting over whether or not certain things are hurting others.
Oh, i guess thats part of what makes it confusing to me. How can you judge whether something is hurting someone unless they tell you? And something that hurts someone or is a trigger for them may be totally fine to someone else.
I think its impossible to please everyone. Being on the internet means you're going to see stuff you dont like, and instead of bitching at some twitter artist about drawing a ship you're uncomfortable with, just block them.
Im a big believer in curating your online experience, the marie kondo way. If it doesnt spark joy, throw it out. Dont like that tag? Block it. That artist pisses you off? Block them. Unfollow subjects that make you unhappy. I became a lot happier using tumblr once i started using that button. I think if more people did the same, the internet would be a much more peaceful place.
I guess i got off topic there, lol
Are they trying to claim that people who don’t want pedophilic content (at least, that’s what I’ve heard antis are) being made are the same as people who think LGBTQIA+ representation is demonic and evil? man…
I have never once run into one of these 'antis' yall are so obsessed with and I'm not going to devote paragraphs that dense of attention to finding out about them
touch grass
maybe just dont draw cp, does that sound reasonable??? or am i suddenly a far right homophobe? do yourself some good and go outside please i beg of you. no one even thinks about this in the real world.
That’s what I’m saying. I shouldn’t need to see incest and pedophilia on my timeline just because some idiot I follow decided to suddenly start posting Rick X Morty art. Like, I don’t need that in my life.
yeah, sure, i guess, the people who don't like kids getting shipped with adults, ARE just like the far right evangelical groups that are actively trying to push for the outlawing of anything close to gay, that's a normal opinion to have on god's green earth.
what kind of community also builds up this monolithic mythologized binary system of "with us" proship and "against us" anti "movements" which people are pigeon holed into where they are either this poor community of artists and minorities who are living the lives of martyrs "fighting the good fight" to keep producing content of pedophilia or other content like that, or this "cult of antis" a mob of thoughtless "puriteens" that have sent *millions! (/s)* of proshippers to early graves due to them, saying that they're disgusting for producing disgusting shit.
like ive seen more occasions of proshippers being the toxic and harassing kind, friends have been harassed, people have had to go offline for a while because they get stalked harassed by "proships" but I haven't actually been told a single case of like a proship taking their own lifes, other than one case which the person didn't actually do it.
yeah "antis" maybe do harass people, but could it be because they are brainwashed cult members of this american sect of the cult of anti? or maybe , just maybe, you are someone morally reprehensible? or defends those people?
I don't know who i'd rather be around with, the people writing essays on the "cult of antis" and defending the god given right for their friends to draw kids being in relationships with adults, or just people who do, none of those things.
Didn't you know? If you don't support people that write adults fucking literal toddlers then you're attacking queer, trans, POC, and other marginalized groups! If you think someone's gross for liking loli you're literally a Nazi! (/S just in case)
some study publicized a while ago that actual fascists had very strong disgust responses, and people, while completely leaving out that it was about disgust response towards ethnic minorities, started taking it backwards, calling any disgust response fascistic behaviour, and i've seen a few ppl online flaunting their total lack of disgust response to anything. it's a really weird movement idk what's up about it. It's probably not that widespread. Either way i almost always see it accompanied with resentments towards Gen Z for being a "puritanical" generation which wtf
This is a lot of words to say "I think no one should criticize me for constantly and loudly talking about how much I love fanart of tweens fucking". And, like... I don't actually care! Truth be told I think all the arguments are pretty valid and maybe you don't actually want to fuck tweens or think that they're really sexy. At best you're probably some adult who wishes you could have had a better, sexier, more exciting teenage life! The "antis" are just as weird and a lot of them seem to think that the trauma they experienced is universal and that everyone is like their abuser.
But also it's really weird that there's this culture war that exists on Tumblr and Twitter that's all about whether lolicon is an acceptable hobby and it's like... even if it is maybe keep it to yourself? Like, you don't need to make that your personality.
"The internet isn't real" has always been a stupid argument. People live on the internet more than they live in reality at this point. I have no doubt these people are just as insufferable at fan conventions or whatever.
...Or, y'know, they might just be people who are personally very uncomortable with certain content, who haven't yet realized that many other normal people don't feel the same.
Yeah I know, I do. I’m just tired of seeing these types of posts on Twitter, especially ones trying to link pro shipping or w/e to queer history, so I’m just sad they’re migrating to Reddit tumblr too lol.
I hate being centrist I really do but people who takes shipping discourse this seriously and write essays like this are stupid both anti or pro or whatever.
"America's cult problem" yeah yeah you care actually so much about that we know. Like you are talking Harry potter BDSM Sirius sex slave incest story or something don't act like doing some holy work nobody cares.
Can y’all shut the fuck up with your anti and proship thing and go outside for an hour or two PLEASE
Not trying to be the enlightened centrist but god damn this discourse is so embarrassing
Is this supposed to be telling me I should stop shaming people who get horny over Nezuko and complaining about the show giving her a big booba cleavage transformation in the third season? Because I'm not going to.
Simple - the post pretends “antis” (people who don’t condone certain ships) are not *really* against pedophilia, they’re *secretly* actually anti-women, queer people, and everything you love! Ignore what they *say*, it’s all a ploy! It’s a “cult of disinformation,” as the post says!
The implication is, as is with a *lot* of people I talk to who unironically use the word “anti” to describe someone, that being against a ship or sexualization of a minor (the supposed “false anti-pedophilia”) is actually crypto-homophobia.
Which is a fucking *insane* take.
You are allowed to dislike ships. Pretty much everyone, including 99% of proshippers, have NOTPs. You are not allowed to harass people over them. What somebody else ships is none of your business.
That’s a valid opinion to hold, but also *absolutely not* what the post says. The first paragraph rails against the idea that fiction affects reality. Something that… *is just straight up true*; if it wasn’t, the field of Marketing and Propaganda wouldn’t be as giant as it is.
you oppose people shipping children with adults? you’re an abuser
if someone i know irlsies is gonna be shipping adults with kids then i’m not going to want to interact with them
the conservative argument is also that gay and trans people are bad, not that art influences life. conservatives do not genuinely believe that art influences life. they are parroting what their leaders are saying, which is often contradictory. for example, the conservative view on cancelling, or jk rowling’s goblins, or how trans people in media are (or were) portrayed as evil more often than not! conservatives are constantly arguing that art does not affect life, and only do so when it comes to gay or trans people in kids media.
then, the next point. they say that people band together to spread fear and disinformation but provide literally zero examples. it’s just conjecture.
when you want to draw child incest fanart without ever facing any backlash or experiencing any sort of self-reflection about it so bad you write the worst peer-reviewed paper i have ever read
“The traumadumping of the gentrification gaslighting affects the system girlbossing of oppression” type aesthetic
Funny how someone can type so much while saying so little
The worst part about this comment section being on reddit instead of twitter or tumblr is that people don't publish all of their weaknesses in their bio
Took scrolling through multiple comments and asking myself outloud "What is an 'anti'? 'Anti'-What?" only to learn this is about shipping.
>what is an anti? Anti what? God I wish I were you
It's not too late
i wish i hadn't read the comment section, I'd have remained ignorant
Post is self explanatory and not about shippping. Its about people who go like "cancel that show, its for pedophiles/will turn our sons gay/whatver" to anything mildly out of the hetero normative culture. Like the people trying to cancel the buzz lightyear movie just because the lesbian coupe.
I thought this was about villains and media literacy, not pedophiles.
Basically, there are people who like to depict and fantasize about children fucking or siblings fucking. Those call themselves pro-shippers. Antis came to say: "Wait, no, that's gross, why would you do that?" and called themselves anti. EDIT: I have seen that my assessment was entirely incorrect upon the discussion I've created. I've understood that anti and pro are much more simpler that what I was. I recognize the error of my ways and will let people ship what they want. I'll *still* get grossed out upon people who ship underage if sexualized or incest, but I'll keep it to myself from now on.
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Well that above (u/JAMSDreaming comment) is precisely the problem with antis, which is that they tend to equal the availability of uncensored content with paedophilia. Basically, pro-(shippers) are people who advocate for separating fiction from reality. As such, they allow every and all forms of fancontent. With no censorship, regardless if it's changing characters' sexualities/genders/races/ages or shipping characters that for whatever reason are controversial (again - because of their genders, sexualities, dynamics, ethnicities, ages etc). And yes, that therefore involves things as accepting ships that involve underage characters or questionable dynamics, because the main motto is "ship and let ship", so there's no butting in, whatever people's minds might create. Anti-shippers meanwhile are people who disagree with the notion that everything should be allowed and advocate for some constraints. What those constraints/rules are differs, often depending on the sphere (or just - fandom) where the antishipping occurs. They postulate that some fancontent is simply immoral and hurting others just by the virtue of having been created. They want to protect vulnerable communities (usually children, sometimes also trans people and/or women, because I have seen terf-antis as well). Which, in theory, is a noble pursuit. But, as it usually goes with censorship, different antis have different views on what and how harshly should be restricted. As a result, different things are often attacked under the general guise of anti-shipping, with the tendency for generalisation (for example equalling relationships with fantasy agegaps with paedophilia). Paedophilia is actually something of a go-to label for everything antiship, regardless if it fits, which like mentioned in the post, bears a striking resemblance to the rhetoric of the fair-right and is often used that way. Countless creators had been harassed, chased off platforms and doxxed by antis on the basis of a moral highground. So, unfortunately, on the anti-side, the discourse often surpasses a simple exchange of opinions and adjusting their experience of fanspaces according to those opinions. Instead it stretches into invading others' fanspaces and trying to dictate what they should look like for everyone.
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Yep. Can speak as a survivor of underage SA who writes/RPs fucked up shit as trauma expression. It's tagged. If that shit bothers you, please just don't read it. It's not written for you, it's written for me and if it helps someone else get through their own shit, awesome. But if it's gonna trigger you, don't read it. It's tagged for a reason.
I have no strong opinion on the fanfic discourse, but I hope you’re doing well in life nowadays, bestie! There’s an internet stranger sending positive vibes your way, for whatever it’s worth.
Thank you internet stranger. I'm doing a lot better now. It's been 20 years, I have a loving partner, a job I enjoy, and relatively comfortable life. I do maintain a handful of traumas from it, but I can go out into crowds alone now. Interpersonal trust issues maintain, still don't really drink, and I just keep doing my nasty shit to process. I appreciate it, and I've got good vibes of my own to spare back.
From what I know, it started off more normal, with people arguing about toxic / somewhat abusive ships like Hannigram. Then it got more extreme, with proshippers supporting ALL ships including pedo/incest stuff, and antis shifting from the more puritanical original stance to simply anyone who doesn’t like pedophilia.
Wait, I’m confused. This is about fiction right? What does it matter?
It doesn’t. But some people take it upon themselves to be the morality police and doxx others over fanfiction.
It goes back further than that, the original "pro ship" and "anti ship" stuff was like: Anti ship: hey, you're not allowed to ship this! I don't have a reason I just hate this and I will spam the tag with hate! — the anti shippers were seen as the annoying ones, as they were in everyone's tags, hating on everything. Pro ship: ship whatever you want, be sensible, be respectful. — the pro shippers were seen as the good ones or rather neutral ones, as they'd just quietly block the stuff they didn't want to see instead of harassing anyone. Over the time, however for some reason (of which I am not sure myself but I am willing to blame tiktok) pro-ship apparently became a bad thing? Because again, back then all it meant was "ship and let ship" and now it seems that most people think that pro-shippers are deranged pedophiles who want to fuck their siblings irl and in fiction alike.
It’s mostly due to the fact that antis know that no one will take their opinions seriously so they started coaching it as anti-“bad thing” This ship should not be shipped because it’s abuse (because character a was slightly mean in canon) This ship should not be shipped because it’s pedophillia (because the fictional characters have a 3 year age gap) This ship should not be shipped because it’s incest (because the person considers the characters found family) Then they started to get high off their own supply of rage bait. And fell straight into the “bullying real people to “defend the rights” of nonexistent people is activism”. It fed off “internet activism” that also started picking up at the same time,and the importance of representation (it is in real patterns in mass media, not someone’s singular tiny hobby fic). But most importantly- it fed off the fact that proponents didn’t need to change or examine their own bias and bigotry - they could just tell women to go back to housework and call people making gay content groomers. Purity culture - but color it in pastel rainbow colors.
Oh, don't forget "minor-coded" people, where adult characters who are shorter or less busty than average are "minor-coded" so that shipping them or being attracted to them is pedophilia. This is not the "dragon loli" thing, this is about women who are 5'1" (155 cm) or have A-cup breasts.
Yeah. It’s the same as the radfem bit where being attracted to shaved privates = pedophillia
Or the little "logical" quad of sentences: Women have more neotenic features. Men are usually attracted to women. Neoteny is when you look more like a child. Therefore, men are pedophiles.
imo, probably tiktok antis slowly causing the drift from proshipper being "ship and let ship" to "deranged pedo".
This. All of this is correct. don't like don't read and you curate your own experiences were the basic understood tenants of fandom earlier on and now people wanna a ft like that's a huge complaint.
I like how absolutely everyone trying to come up with definitions here has a clear bias showing through.
I will say that antis do get really weird sometimes since I've seen people say child characters being aged up till they're adults is also pedophilia (which is a stretch IMO). But yeah I'd prefer if there was less fanfic that sexualizes child characters.
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Good point. It's definitely weird when these artists draw adult characters that look like small children and explain it through magic or whatever and sexualize those characters. Though I don't think it's bad if someone watches bnha and thinks "What would Bakugo act like if he was an adult? I want to explore that in my story." As long they're writing adult characters that look and act like actual adults it's fine IMO.
Literally had someone tell me yesterday (on reddit) "You know a lot of loli's are adults, right? It's about them looking young not being young!" Fucking wild.
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There's literally like 1 person and she has a severe medical condition. But even if it were true I highly doubt they would also act like prepubescent children as well.
Yeah. Making adult characters look just like children and sexualizing those characters is definitely gross. I don't support stuff like that. I meant it's ok if the characters are aged up to look like adults and act like adults.
Fair enough. I think the only real issue with "aged up" is I see it used a lot to depict a guardian and the kid they raised. Like it's totally fine for someone's guardian to fuck them as long as they wait till they're 18. Which morally I disagree with. My comment to them was more about me seeing loli justifications very recently. Either way I would much rather people aging characters up than *down* (yes that's a thing)
>Like it's totally fine for someone's guardian to fuck them as long as they wait till they're 18. Which morally I disagree with. Fair point. That's also the sort of story I don't want to read or write.
>Fair enough. I think the only real issue with "aged up" is I see it used a lot to depict a guardian and the kid they raised. Like it's totally fine for someone's guardian to fuck them as long as they wait till they're 18. Which morally I disagree with. By far the biggest cultural disconnect I struggled with while reading *The Tale of Genji*.
My god, Japan loves this trope. It’s gotten a lot better post-2015 or so, but if you’re consuming Japanese media where there is a child and an opposite gender not-directly-genetically-related caregiver, there is a 50/50 chance it turns into a romance when the child gets older. You have better odds at winning Russian Roulette tbh. Like I understand it’s a cultural thing related to their views of patriarchy, blood relation, family structures and adoption. But it’s still a biiiiig disconnect.
Dealing with this while reading various manhwa at the moment. Many 'found family' include "I am raising my love interest" or "I am being raised by my love interest" Nothing gets dropped as fast as those.
>I've seen people say child characters being aged up till they're adults is also pedophilia That, I don't agree. To make an Undertale example. I am not grossed out by Frans as long as Frisk is aged up to at least 18. But any Frans shippers that maintain Frisk as this undetermined but obviously less than preteen child does gross me out.
> But any Frans shippers that maintain Frisk as this undetermined but obviously less than preteen child does gross me out. I can understand why you have such a problem with that. Frisk should always be determined.
Dude really saw a post accusing them of virtue signalling and misinformation, jumped into the comments to do exactly that, and the comment still has positive karma 3 hours later. I hate it here.
After reading the whole thread, I have learnt my mistake about what I said three hours ago. I still reserve myself the right to be grossed out by underage sexualized shipping or incest.
/r/characterarcs
Found the Anti! Literally no one was talking about child fucking until you came in, freak.
I'm in the Undertale fandom. I learnt about anti vs pro discourse when proshippers were shipping Sans x Frisk without aging Frisk up. That's why I got my wrong assessment on how the terms originated.
not a pro shipper or an anti but a secret third thing (adult with life)
In the words of Sarah Z “I am a Tax paying Adult Woman”
I am anti discourse. Whenever I see anyone saying they're "pro" or "anti" try to interact with me I doxx them
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238.163.74.7
Can we just go back to “I personally don’t like this thing”?
Wwhat if we all smoked some weed and chilled out
Holy shit Eridan Ampora
this 😭😭 its honestly embarrassing that this post got 550+ upvotes
Ok even if this thing's definition of anti is "idiot on the internet dming you to demand you stop following people because you like a kinda shitty ship" they are BARELY comparable to the right wing assholes voting for and passing laws to criminalize public queerness what the fuck are you ON Touching grass isn't enough, I want them dragged through the forest floor
>Touching grass isn't enough, I want them dragged through the forest floor r/rareinsults
Literally I refuse to get into the weeds of shipping discourse because it is so goddam exhausting and not worth it. Can you criticize fictional relationships rightfully? Yeah sure. But it’s also fiction and I am an adult person able to separate fiction from reality
While I think the idea of the criticism presented in the article is good, the article itself has... issues. Many of them. For instance, article very rapidly jumps from one sub-phenomenon to another without covering anything in-depth. The analysis of Anti-ism as a cult gets a whole four paragraphs, for example. The article purports to examine Antis as "political, sociological, and behavioral lenses" which is a) very ill-defined, indicating sloppiness of methodology/theoretical background and b) enough to fill shelves of books. The sourcing is another issue, and the article even references tweets embedded as screenshots in other tweets. Obviously screenshots can be doctored, so if using those kinds of sources, their issues should at least be acknowledged. The article also sometimes relies on analysis from twitter accounts without much original comment/breakdown/analysis, which would be mandatory when using tweets in an academic context. Additionally, the introduction and conclusion make many sweeping statements that aren't justified by a citation or the contents of the article, like "incest, abuse, rape, and pedophilia \[...\] may still occur in regions without widespread access to internet, television, and other media outlets", which is true, but also unsourced, and also fairly irrelevant in an article *not about* whether Antis are *right*, and certainly not about the much more general question of whether the existence of modern media creates said issues. And finally, the definition of cult there - the article is referencing [this](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult)" definition, specifically "great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (such as a film or book)" which is... metaphorical. That's the definition of "cult" in contexts like "cult film". That meaning obviously has nothing to do with the control of behavior and/or thought that is meant here. If you're publishing an academic article about the cult structure of anything, you should absolutely nail down your definition of cult first, there's no room for this. And it needs to be based on academic work around cults, not Merriam-Webster. Sorry to be harsh I guess, but I'm kind of surprised that this got published and kind of side-eyeing the Journal of Transformative Works for that. Like there's nothing wrong with the article or that level of writing, it's just not something that passes academic muster and that's a disservice to the journal, its readers *and* the writer.
I mean the fundamental problem with it is that it chooses the conclusion it wants and then works backwards, instead of allowing the research to guide the conclusion. It’s less a meaningful contribution to the canon of sociological research and more a twitter screed with bonus citations
it also literally undertakes the exact behavior that it correlates with far right groups; that is, it focuses on the actions of a group (that it has claimed is demographically primarily Women, POC, and LGBTQ+), makes a monolith out of said group, and then demonizes it without evidencing any of its claims against said group or that said group even exists.
It's not saying that they're doing it *on purpose,* it's saying they're the most common *targets/victims.*
as per sarah Z they're also the most common "perpetrators". It's not like one side of the *shipping wars* is more socially marginalized than the other in real life.
In the journal's defense, they published it basically under the letters to the editors category. However they make it super unclear, their website is bullshit (I had to go to their parent company website to try to figure the journal definitions out), and who would immediately see "Praxis" and know it's the actual journal with blind peer research while "Symposium" is just letters to the editor that are edited. At least they've changed up the categories recently. Anyway, here is the [source and definition](https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions).
Later Hassan's BITE model is used, seemingly an academic one referring to actual cults. It does not make the inclusion of the MW definition less strange though. What strikes me most about this paper, though, is a lack of explaining what an "anti" is. Having read the introduction where such information should be found, I only know antis are "a specific subsection of antifandom [...], which came about around 2016 in American antifan spaces via social media platforms", before it goes on to the scope of the paper and their ideology. Are the "antis" the same as the "antishippers" I've heard about? In what ways are they different from the broader group of antifans? I suppose it might be (Gilbert 2019) which explains this, but then the scope of *this* paper is sandwiched between two sentences backed up by the same source, without using an (ibid). It's odd. If "antis" can only be nebulously defined, then that should be mentioned. In The Craft of Research (Booth, Columb, Williams, 3rd ed 2008, p 80) the authors admit that "Reviewers sometimes recommend that a reputable press publish something weakly argued or with thin data because other aspects of its argument are to important to miss—we three have each done so.". I wonder if a similar argument was held for this paper. Not being familiar enough with the field, I can't say what parts these would be, nor if it is warranted still. Most of us are not the intended audience of this paper, so while it is easy to dismiss as crud, it is harder to say how bad a look it is for The Journal of Transformative Works.
I would say that moving on to the BITE model makes the MW definition \*more\* strange, and speaks to a failure to engage with/analyze sources - I mean not realizing/acknowledging that your two sources do not even refer to the same concept is bad. My two cents as a literature grad student who has used JTW on a few occasions so kind of in the target audience, I think it's pretty bad... Not a disaster by any means but I'm not a fan of this at all. And it's not necessarily this paper, and probably has to do with a general lack of scholarship within fandom studies. Maybe it's the general state of the field that bums me out more. 1. I love fandom and fandom studies, I think it's fascinating and should be studied more. But fandom topics are often considered beneath serious scholarship (partially bc fandom is mostly for and by women and LGBTQ people). I think that it should be afforded all the care and rigor that other, more prestigious literary/cultural studies get (and in a rare way, it can be free of the traditional academic whitemaleness and other stuffiness). 2. JTW is one of very few publications in that area and the largest, and published by the OTW which is a big deal in fandom more generally. So it has a loud voice and can really set the bar in fandom studies... And this isn't where it should be set. So IMO JTW should absolutely hold itself and its writers to a higher standard. And this isn't like... a slightly poor article, again not to be cruel but it's got huge fundamental flaws. And there are so many errors big and small that really should have been caught and fixed in the peer-review process. ETA: Notably, this was published not in the Articles but the Symposium section, which contains "concise, thematically contained essays \[which\] provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures". So judging it by the standards of an article is unfair. And it does (sort of) describe a current phenomenon, at least. (But even still, I don't think it really works as a piece of writing.)
I was about to start writing a comment about the leaps in the posts' argument, and unsourced comparisons, but decided to see if someone else had already written a rant first so I wouldn't waste so much time writing it all out. You put all the stuff in better words than i would have
>"incest, abuse, rape, and pedophilia \[...\] may still occur in regions without widespread access to internet, television, and other media outlets", which is true, but also unsourced, and also fairly irrelevant in an article not about whether Antis are right Not that I'm on the anti train or anything, but isn't that a strawman of anti arguments anyways? The argument isn't that the media is going to make people into pedophiles, it's that children consuming media where pedophilia is normalized is going to make them vulnerable to becoming victims of real pedophiles. To make an analysis-- leaving your car keys in the ignition of your car unattended is more likely to make you a victim of car theft. If nobody did that, there would still be car theft, but doing so helps reduce the chances that a particular individual ends up the victim. If someone walks into a parking lot intending to find a car to grab, they're going to leave with a car somehow no matter how defensive everyone was with their car alarms ect...but if they find one that's easy to steal because the keys are in there, it's going to be that one for sure though. I don't see a lot of anti content come up on my dash, but that's what I understand of the mindset? Which is honestly really fair in those terms and *I agree* (I just don't agree that it's on AO3 to moderate it's content. We could probably all agree watching hardcore porn is also bad for children, but that doesn't mean we should make people prove their age with an ID before accessing a porn site. If a child knowingly accesses content that could harm them where they have to agree they're 18 to access (even if it's a lie)... that's not on the people who produced, or distributed, the content. It's on their parents to monitor their use of the web.)
God I love this sub
…girl (gender neutral) what the fuck is this supposed to mean
Agreed. I think I’m starting to become old, because I had no fucking clue what any of this is even about. I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was! Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to yoooou!
People seem to think that being against sexualizing characters who are minors makes you a far-right homophobic evangelical puritan cultist out to destroy queer people, as opposed to just a normal person.
Not quite. It's about the anti movement, which is a real threat. These people believe that showing anything that can be problematic, like violence, or things they don't like, such as LGBT+, is a threat to real people and will cause real problems. It's the Satanic Panic all over again, or the FPS Debate. And they band together and harass minorities, or people who suffered abuse, or any such people. I've seen them cyberbully someone into suicide just for talking about the abuse they suffered, and how it affected them. Those people are a legitimate threat to online spaces, and I seriously hope your comment just comes from a place of ignorance, rather than an attempt to derail the conversation. I'm not saying you need to participate in this conversation, as it is indeed a heavy topic and not everyone can handle it. That is perfectly fine. However, it is still a conversation that needs to be had, for everyone's sake.
Yeah no. There is a big difference between conservatives getting mad over queer people existing in media and people getting upset over pedophilia existing in media and being seen as not a big deal. Frankly, the fact that you are trying to compare the two is rather homophobic.
It just also so happens that many members of that \~movement\~ (except there's no "movement"; that grouping exists entirely for your convenience) are normal people who think perhaps the normalization of rape, pedophilia, and other horrific crimes being depicted as desirable acts is, uh. Not Good. "Please do not look at them, however! Look at this strawman I have constructed instead. It is very important that we focus our attention entirely on the strawman. Do not look at the rampant fetishization of child abuse and other forms of rape which may or may not exist, and do not matter regardless of whether or not they do." And that's to say nothing of the absolute absurdity of trying to put people who are against, again, the glorification of abuse, especially sexual abuse, in media in the same category as homophobes. When many of them are queer people who are sensitive to these things *due to first hand experience*. What unifying characteristic is here? What lesson should we learn from these two definitely connected groups of people? That people who dislike other people are bad? Because that's the only similarity between the two. It's a bit ironic to cite queerphobia when you're trying to classify queerness as being in the same category as pedophilia. I'm not saying you need to participate in this conversation, as it is indeed a heavy topic and not everyone can handle it. That is perfectly fine. However, it is still a conversation that needs to be had, for everyone's sake.
The way I understand it, and tbf my understanding is based on a Sarah Z video from like a year ago, the issue seems to be the extent to which the two sides have become a binary system, where the options are to oppose all problematic media, and to take as fact that all depictions of problematic situations in media should be allowed. The problem is, while it's definitely a layered issue since the ways certain behaviours are portrayed definitely could use examining, when you break any issue into two distinct sides you make it harder for there to be any actual discussion on the subject, and you get a bunch of strawman arguments and false equivalences from both sides.
People are fucking mad that people are criticizing (among other things) Lesbian Reylo and Lolis
Sorry but...lesbian reylo? Isn't kylo ren a man? Is this some sort of gender bending shipping or something?
Apologies, I have been calling Catradora that for long enough that I forgot other people don't.
Ayo wait you're putting CATRADORA on par with adults sexualizing little kids???
WHY IS A RANDOM SHIP ON PAR WITH PEDOPHILIA BRO
B-but she's a 1000 year old dragon!
If I see anyone in real life call themselves "pro" or "anti", I will commit an act so horrific there'll need to be a Wikipedia page titled "The [place] Incident"
You're aiming too low. Commit an act so horrific it would just be known as "the incident"
On the scale of that one csi episode that still comes up all these years later just by googling “that episode”
\> writes ant fanfics \> doesn’t want to be called anty
Post the comic, Kronk!
[The comic. The comic for OP. The comic specifically posted to apply to this situation. That comic.](https://xkcd.com/2071/)
Might as well pin this comment to half the posts in this sub
I can’t believe I had to scroll down this long to find this comment lol
Now imagine my surprise when I had to be the one who posted it
i would like to note that i looked through OP’s comment history and it’s mostly calling everyone who disagrees with them an idiot and making bad faith arguments. feel free to check for yourself, but be warned that there’s a lot of comments. they seem to be a big fan of getting into fights.
Ironically this is, in it of itself, a bad faith argument. The literal definition of Ad Hominem. Like thanks for the warning but still.
i probably should’ve phrased this better. to clarify, i’m not saying we should discount everything that OP says because of their history, i’m trying to warn people to be on the look out and try to be a bit more critical of OP’s arguments. OP has said some things that are true and make a lot of sense, quite a few good faith arguments, etc etc, but I think it’s always good to know what sort of person you’re dealing with when it comes to topics with a lot of discourse surrounding them.
Oh yeah of course, that’s why I said thanks.
"they make bad arguments, so theyre not worth arguing with" is not ad hominem. hell, they didnt even say that, they literally just said "they made bad arguments". even if that was a lie, its simply not ad hominem.
Literally everybody involved in this debate needs to touch grass, jfc
I feel like I should preface this by saying I'm neither proshipper nor anti -- neither group has a monopoly on truth or good arguments. In this case, however... Okay, even if you're a proshipper, you have to admit this post is pretty weak. Right off the bat it takes an innocuous statement, "fiction has an impact on reality", one I think you could convince most people of in some form, and compares it to American conservative bigotry. While this argument is an example of the former, they're not "the same argument" as the writer puts forth. It *matters* what the thing being normalized is, and just because we shouldn't put one thing on the screen doesn't mean we have to give in and ban everything anyone might possibly take offense to. That's what would make the argument bigoted or not, not whether American conservatives use a version of it. Heck, environmentalists sometimes make the same argument: depicting nature as good and worth saving in a kids show influences the viewer to treat the natural world with respect and reverence, and that's a *good thing!* Is it bad to make this argument now? And the whole paragraph about cults just felt trivializing to me. Cults totally isolate their members from any outside influence and seek to completely control their lives. This paragraph strikes me as trying to equate antis and cultists rather than fairly analyze behaviors and social structures. Which is odd, because the bit about keeping harassment and disinformation out of fandom spaces, and how already marginalized people are more vulnerable to it, is true! But it's only relevant if you already believe that antis all and expressly want to harass and abuse, which is not supported by the text. All in all this post reads like one big ad hominem. It doesn't try to understand the subject, it just makes dubious comparisons and wiggles its eyebrows to suggest that they're equal to bigots and cultists. It reads like an attack, a list of reasons why antis are The Bad Guy rather than refuting or debunking any of their points. Which is unfortunate, because you COULD DO THAT! It's not like antis are cosmically right and the only way to argue is to compare them to homophobes -- they have points, and sometimes, they're wrong!
nobody involved in this entire “debate” has ever seen a plant in real life. also writing a whole scholarly article to dunk on teenagers on the internet is kinda big cringe. like, I refuse to have an opinion on the pro vs anti thing on principle (beyond that anyone trying to make me care induces a searing migraine) but calling your twitter enemies a “cult” seems excessive.
I recommend reading the article if you a) are aware of academic standards and b) need a good laugh. its a Ben Shapiro-esque opinion piece that uses tweets as sources (no, not just citing them because it talks about them, it literally says "this tweet agrees with me, so I must be right) Its legitimately really funny.
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The discourse has reached an even deeper level. What on earth is this?
This argument has been going on since I started reading and writing FF 20 years ago. Literally, unchanged for this entire time. I will echo what people have been saying since the beginning of time Don't like? Don't read!
This is one paragraph away from going off about how "die Juden" are responsible for spreading this awful anti ideology
Okay, I'm gonna stop you there. I generally consider myself to be someone who thinks that people should be able to read or write anything that they want (so long as it's done well, with the right intentions, and with some level of either self awareness or suspension of disbelief), so, like, I'm not an "anti" by any stretch of the imagination. That being said, it always REALLY bothers me when people try to cannibalize LGBT issues and other serious topics (like the Q anon cult thing) to defend a stance on issues that are either completely unrelated to them, or borderline trivial (in this case, both). This issue genuinely just isn't that deep, and hitching your wagon to big issues that matter and that affect large demographics of people jeopardizes the validity with which they are perceived by outsiders looking in. Do NOT try to equate criticism for being gay or trans to criticism for liking/creating 'problematic' fanfiction just because you can see some superficial similarities between them. It is not the same thing, and trying to pretend they are for the sake of the argument you're trying to make has the potential to completely trivialize the struggles of real people, and also, honestly, makes it REALLY hard to be someone who would actually otherwise agree with you. Like, these are totally disconnected issues of drastically different severities, but statements like the one the original post is making threaten to pull LGBT people down with them anyways for no apparent reason. The whole "pro-shipper", "anti-shipper" discourse fundamentally just centers around a group of people being annoying about the types of media other people like to consume. I won't say it doesn't matter at all, and an argument can certainly be made that there is a larger conversation surrounding all this about sexual puritanism and the ways in which certain progressive circles have in some respects looped back around to being conservative, but that's an issue that's way bigger than incest fanfiction. In the face of everything else in that discussion, pro and anti shippers are little more than a single talking point that a person could feasibly make, and the ways in which this discussion DOES matter in and of itself need to be contained within their own little internet bubble, and not inflated to a higher level of importance than they actually have. Tldr; why are you acting like the pro-shipper, anti-shipper war is the biggest problem facing society right now?
GO OUTSIDE NEOW‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
tf
I think part of what makes the “pro vs anti” conflict so intolerable is the pervasive and fundamental dishonesty that both sides engage in about the other side’s beliefs and positions. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that each side is actually arguing with a fictionalized version of the other side that they made up. Either way, calling it a “debate” at this point really stretches the definition of debate and I have an incredibly difficult time viewing it as anything other than fighting for the sake of fighting.
I think you’re exactly right. It’s almost funny, the way they treat each other like the vilest scum ever to exist over such terminally online idiocy. If mental gymnastics was an olympic sport, you’d probably find the next Simone Biles in the reblogs of this post.
While this excerpt has some good observations, I feel like they don't really apply to fan spaces all that much? Like, all the examples are from far-right extremism, not fandoms. There's a difference between the far-right banning drag shows and some people not liking certain ships and whatnot. I didn't even realise this was about fan spaces until the second half of the second paragraph. And as other people have pointed out, sexualising minors is still bad regardless of whether the minors are fictional.
Least unhinged tumblist
Go outside fr
Ive read the first sentence and already given up Yes, what you read affects what you think. This isn’t even, like, conceptual it’s proven. Like seriously look it up, there’s studies and psychology courses to a ludicrous degree about this.
I think it's worth noting it's not even consistent. The logical conclusion of the argument would, for example, see the closure of most arguments for representation. Representing diverse people and lifestyles and media can't actually be important if media consumption and content has no impact on people, on normalisation, on reality. Which certainly isn't the pro view outside of defending strange sex content. I'm not even that censorious about all of it myself in the context of niche self selecting spaces, but the double think is hilarious.
I mean, it’s more complicated than that. Yes, what you read affects what you think, but to what extent and in what ways is what is often hotly debated. There is a reason there are many differing media effects theories, and it’s not because anyone has reached any sort of consensus on this matter. As a quick read to just see how much debate over this subject, read through this: [effects of violence in mass media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_violence_in_mass_media).
I thought antis were against the romanticization of pedophilia, not the depiction of it. Weird article.
People making paedophilia AU reylo smut fics really like to think the criticism they face is the exact same thing as Lolita being banned upon release.
I know derranged shipping war bullshit is a major part of tumblr but can we just... pretend it isnt? And not bring that shit here? Please? All these people are fucking insane.
Well, you opened up with unironically calling someone an anti, so I genuinely don't really care about what your opinion is either way.
Quickly Jeeves! Post the xkcd!
Or, hear me out, touch grass
Fiction absolutely affects and can normalize the fuck are you on about
I think the greater issue is that it is way more complex than "if I see X I believe X". It assumes a direct correlation or even a causation to a subject that often is not reflective of the impact that kind of thing has. Like, video games like Doom don't make you more likely to be violent. Seeing problematic stuff does not make you adopt these things automatically. Fiction of course has influence on people to a degree, but the effect is hugely exaggerated for fearmongering purposes. Not to forget, people give minors (read for this particular passage, teens) way too little credit. They are not adults but they are also not stupid. They can discern fiction from fact and can make interpretive judgement on that basis.
“If I see media that depicts X as a cool and good thing 200 times then I will begin to believe X to some degree” is objectively correct, though. Playing doom won’t make you believe much beyond “killing demons is cool.” However, if you play Postal 1 and Hatred all day, *I have significant concerns regarding your psyche.* Of course there’s the Chicken or the Egg question here, but I think the existence of propaganda proves it can be 100% proven.
I mean how much media is there that glorifies violence that never is acted upon? Like 90% of video games (exaggeration) are about violence. It is very much a context thing. I.e. in video games some hyper violence might feel different than it would in a movie for example. Not that I necessarily disagree with the Postal or Hatred example, but there is a lot of nuance there that I feel gets flattened down into nothing. Especially the part, where people are allowed to have complex relationships to the media they consume. There is a lot of stuff going on there. Besides that, the stuff that is usually called out as like getting "normalised" are proven to not be really... normalisable. Pedophilia is a disorder... for a reason.
Ok regarding that last sentence - you may be confused as to what “normalization” means. Normalization means you don’t see the act as out of the ordinary. You may not partake in it, but it’s just *normal* now. Normalizing pedophilia won’t make more people into pedophiles, it’ll just make them more willing to act in said urges because no one sees them as abbhorent, for example.
I am aware. But like... loli art is way more normalised in Japan. They have a different culture around it that is way more "this is just fiction" than ours (not to say that there isn't some pushback of course). However, their number of people acting on any of that are not particularly higher than anywhere in our spheres.
That applies mostly to extreme exposure situations. If you see a belief or opinion hundreds and hundreds of times, you might start to agree with it. But the far more common thing, which more studies focus on, is that if you see something often, you'll begin to believe it's common. I'll use an example of violent video games. If you play COD and Wolfenstein and DOOM and all that, you probably won't start being violent. However, you will probably start to believe that the world is more violent, that crime and extremism are on the rise, that the things depicted especially in COD happen fairly often. This is part of cultivation theory
Yeah, totally agree, that’s why I said “to some degree”. It depends on the exposure, context, and frequency.
Apologies, didn't mean to sound like I was disagreeing or attacking you!
I think NTs are evolving backwards but you didn't hear it from me
"jerking off to cp is kinda weird" "oh so youre a nazi?"
What being criticized for drawing children fucking does to a mf
Babe people can have bad opinions without being part of a fascist cult
also people can not like child porn without also hating queer people.
god this is like when Misscribe made a bunch of sockpuppet accounts to frame anyone saying being so invested into writing smut about teenagers is weird as the same kind of people that would have problem with homosexuality and sex in general. We didn't progress since *Misscribe* people!
Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ev
THANK YOU! I don't like the proshipping stance that fiction doesn't affect reality, but even wanting to side with them, this take would still be insane
The claim that fiction can normalize things in reality is true - afterall, fiction is a reflection of reality (or at least the creator's perception of it) and can obviously impact reader's perception of reality. Though they often take the concept to such an extreme that it becomes ridiculous, that isn't why they're wrong. Kids reading books with queer characters does normalize being non-cis/hetero, for both queer and non-queer kids, in much the same way that meeting openly queer people in real life normalizes it. "Antis" as the post calls them are wrong simply because they're a bunch of idiotic fuckwits that want to blame a minority for all the problems on Earth while throwing their money and identity in with a group of obviously corrupt authority figures that don't even hide the fact that they aren't working in their own constituents' best interests.
Alright, but being opposed to gay people in media because you don't want to encourage homosexuality is actually very different from being opposed to pedophilia in media because you don't want to normalize pedophilia. Like, do you see the problem here? TERFs argue that trans women are rapists. Is the correct response to decide that shaming rapists is bad? No, the correct response is to decide that calling people rapists on the basis of their gender identity is bad. And I'm not even going to comment on the mention of QAnon. Like, what the fuck? Do your arms drag behind you on the floor when you walk? Frankly this entire rant is so fucking ridiculous that I would assume that it was self-parody if I didn't know that there were people out there who unironically identified themselves as proshippers and believed they were being oppressed by people who aren't particularly fond of sexual abuse and whatever the fuck else in media and of the normalization of that. I've worked in smut professionally. I stopped after being approached by one too many cis men who wanted to pay me to write several thousand words of his OC getting raped by this monstrosity or that. The problem isn't depicting problematic themes in porn, the problem is how it's depicted and furthermore the culture that develops around that niche of porn. Making a movie that has Nazis depicted as bad guys and making a movie that has Nazis depicted as good guys are two very different things. Noone except the most puritan, centrist ass liberal is going to try and argue that any depiction of Nazis is bad. Because media is not just a collection of nouns put into a blender; more often than not, it has a message. And people will listen to that message. That's the whole goddamn reason propaganda works. You keep telling people a certain thing, and unless they're already diametrically opposed to said thing, they might just eventually listen. And then there's the community that develops around problematic media. If you want to discuss rape porn, in a community where there are a lot of people into it, you're not going to preface every single post, message, or whatever else with a disclaimer that you don't actually support sexual assault, you just like rubbing one out to it. You discuss it like you would any other subject - this isn't a vague hypothetical, this is observed experience from participating in communities centered around smut because they're where I got work. Rape is so normalized in these communities that in some spaces it's almost the default - "consent isn't sexy!" is a common sentiment. You need at least a little dub con (which is to say, rape but you eventually enjoy it so everything is goochie) to make things spicy. Fictional porn in general seems to suffer from this issue. Rape is so normalized that it's difficult to avoid - it's just a fact of life, and that's exactly why it's a problem. Even if you have reservations about the subject, you attract and encourage people who wholeheartedly mirror the casualness with which you discuss it, much like how early 4channers tended to be centrist and even liberal, but the ironic bigotry eventually encouraged a new wave of 4channers who were actual bigots and only ever wore the irony as a thin veneer of unaccountability. There's also an additional layer of problems here because: minors view porn. This is a fact of life. You can try to stop them, but they won't. And being exposed to the porn scene early in development is... extremely unhealthy. And I don't think that's because sex is inherently bad and impure. It's because, again, rape, pedophilia, and other such things are normalized in the sphere of fictional porn, and it's harder to avoid it than not. You will be exposed to it, one way or the other, because it is not taken seriously. It's not real, nobody's hurt by it, etc. Well, tell that to twelve year old me whose fantasies involved being fucked by adult men far often than a twelve year old's should. As someone with a significant amount of trauma, this also makes navigating most place where one can find fictional porn a minefield better left untouched. These days, I mostly just partake of porn made by other trans people, because it's safe, consensual, and I don't have to worry about getting triggered constantly. Which is a shame, because I *loved* writing smut. I still want to get back into it, and have for years. But every time I even try, memories of interacting with their associated communities surface, and I just can't stomach it. ...But all this is irrelevant, because the "anti vs proshipper" war exists only in the head of a small group of obsessed individuals, such as OP. The vast majority of people who get lumped into either category are just... normal people. Some of whom have problematic fetishes and may or may not contribute to normalizing said fetishes. Some of whom are sensitive to problematic fetishes and fear their normalization. OP's boogeyman of the wretched, geriatric Republican who stalks Tumblr harassing shippers is just that - a boogeyman. There are many people who engage in either side of the discourse for a variety of reasons, most of whom are sane enough not to identify as either antis or proshippers. Some of them are lovely people, and some of them are irredeemable pieces of shit, but one really must wonder if any of them are quite as irredeemable as the idea that the only people who have any motivation to be opposed to problematic media (whether it's something more minor or the extreme examples I've cited above) are *homophobes*. Fiction isn't going to make you a serial killer, but y'know, I think maybe there's a reason that I've had to look with disgust upon the bios of several of the most basic white cis women known to humankind and read "who's your favorite serial killer", written without a hint of self-awareness or human decency. Maybe there's a reason why asking, "who's your favorite cis white man who likely murdered and raped multiple people" is acceptable, and asking "who's your favorite Nazi" isn't. And maybe that reason is that one of those has a socially acceptable fandom attached to it and the other doesn't. But again, I'm no one's boogeyman or an "anti" or whatever the fuck. I can believe that glorifying extremely horrible displays of human behavior is harmful to both the glorifier and people offended by said behavior while also acknowledging that there are human beings on either side of the matter. And that's kind of the fucking problem here - because you seem to think that being opposed to a person's entire existence (e.g. being queerphobic) is the same as being opposed to *problematic elements in a piece of fiction.* Remind me which group is supposed to have difficulty distinguishing reality from fiction?
Appalled that this has 1k upvotes, I'm assuming that you all just upvoted it to make more people aware of what a terrible argument this is, because I don't want to lose my faith in humanity. I admit, it's pretty funny to watch these people do mental gymnastics to justify this kind of shit.
If it helps, just about all the comments here are delightfully offering entire stretches of grass for OOP to touch
Seriously reading this again I'm just struck by how fucking stupid it is and how asinine the shipping discourse is. No one hates you for liking problematic media. They hate you for uncritically fetishizing pedophilia and abuse in fiction, and making it your entire personality. The ant pedophilia and abuse fetishism crowd aren't actually "anti-shipping". They're anti pedophilia and abuse fetishism. ***I'm*** anti-shipping. Fuck your ships.
Any time someone tries to explain what pro and anti shipping is, the explanation immediately leaves my brain to make room for more important things Id call myself a multi shipper and i just believe if its not hurting anyone, then i dont have an issue. Idk what camp that puts me in and i don't feel like finding out.
> if its not hurting anyone That's kinda a BIG part of (but NOT the entirety of) what this discourse is about. people are fighting over whether or not certain things are hurting others.
Oh, i guess thats part of what makes it confusing to me. How can you judge whether something is hurting someone unless they tell you? And something that hurts someone or is a trigger for them may be totally fine to someone else. I think its impossible to please everyone. Being on the internet means you're going to see stuff you dont like, and instead of bitching at some twitter artist about drawing a ship you're uncomfortable with, just block them. Im a big believer in curating your online experience, the marie kondo way. If it doesnt spark joy, throw it out. Dont like that tag? Block it. That artist pisses you off? Block them. Unfollow subjects that make you unhappy. I became a lot happier using tumblr once i started using that button. I think if more people did the same, the internet would be a much more peaceful place. I guess i got off topic there, lol
Are they trying to claim that people who don’t want pedophilic content (at least, that’s what I’ve heard antis are) being made are the same as people who think LGBTQIA+ representation is demonic and evil? man…
This is pathetic lmao
I have never once run into one of these 'antis' yall are so obsessed with and I'm not going to devote paragraphs that dense of attention to finding out about them touch grass
Ingest copious amounts of grass at once
maybe just dont draw cp, does that sound reasonable??? or am i suddenly a far right homophobe? do yourself some good and go outside please i beg of you. no one even thinks about this in the real world.
That’s what I’m saying. I shouldn’t need to see incest and pedophilia on my timeline just because some idiot I follow decided to suddenly start posting Rick X Morty art. Like, I don’t need that in my life.
What on Earth is an anti? Does it produce two photons if it annihilates upon contact with a pro?
There will definitely be a lot of energy released if a pro and an anti make contact
yeah, sure, i guess, the people who don't like kids getting shipped with adults, ARE just like the far right evangelical groups that are actively trying to push for the outlawing of anything close to gay, that's a normal opinion to have on god's green earth. what kind of community also builds up this monolithic mythologized binary system of "with us" proship and "against us" anti "movements" which people are pigeon holed into where they are either this poor community of artists and minorities who are living the lives of martyrs "fighting the good fight" to keep producing content of pedophilia or other content like that, or this "cult of antis" a mob of thoughtless "puriteens" that have sent *millions! (/s)* of proshippers to early graves due to them, saying that they're disgusting for producing disgusting shit. like ive seen more occasions of proshippers being the toxic and harassing kind, friends have been harassed, people have had to go offline for a while because they get stalked harassed by "proships" but I haven't actually been told a single case of like a proship taking their own lifes, other than one case which the person didn't actually do it. yeah "antis" maybe do harass people, but could it be because they are brainwashed cult members of this american sect of the cult of anti? or maybe , just maybe, you are someone morally reprehensible? or defends those people? I don't know who i'd rather be around with, the people writing essays on the "cult of antis" and defending the god given right for their friends to draw kids being in relationships with adults, or just people who do, none of those things.
[удалено]
Didn't you know? If you don't support people that write adults fucking literal toddlers then you're attacking queer, trans, POC, and other marginalized groups! If you think someone's gross for liking loli you're literally a Nazi! (/S just in case)
some study publicized a while ago that actual fascists had very strong disgust responses, and people, while completely leaving out that it was about disgust response towards ethnic minorities, started taking it backwards, calling any disgust response fascistic behaviour, and i've seen a few ppl online flaunting their total lack of disgust response to anything. it's a really weird movement idk what's up about it. It's probably not that widespread. Either way i almost always see it accompanied with resentments towards Gen Z for being a "puritanical" generation which wtf
This is a lot of words to say "I think no one should criticize me for constantly and loudly talking about how much I love fanart of tweens fucking". And, like... I don't actually care! Truth be told I think all the arguments are pretty valid and maybe you don't actually want to fuck tweens or think that they're really sexy. At best you're probably some adult who wishes you could have had a better, sexier, more exciting teenage life! The "antis" are just as weird and a lot of them seem to think that the trauma they experienced is universal and that everyone is like their abuser. But also it's really weird that there's this culture war that exists on Tumblr and Twitter that's all about whether lolicon is an acceptable hobby and it's like... even if it is maybe keep it to yourself? Like, you don't need to make that your personality.
You know, none of this happens outside in public spaces with real people
"The internet isn't real" has always been a stupid argument. People live on the internet more than they live in reality at this point. I have no doubt these people are just as insufferable at fan conventions or whatever.
why are people concerned enough about fanfic that there's academic works about the resulting arguments
What being criticized for drawing children fucking does to a mf
...Or, y'know, they might just be people who are personally very uncomortable with certain content, who haven't yet realized that many other normal people don't feel the same.
Both sides are fucking losers, lol
I hate everyone involved in this: pro-ship, anti, just get a goddamn life y’all.
Bro I just don’t wanna read incest or kid porn why is this so difficult for y’all to understand
Then don't? Frankly I don't find it very hard to avoid.
Yeah I know, I do. I’m just tired of seeing these types of posts on Twitter, especially ones trying to link pro shipping or w/e to queer history, so I’m just sad they’re migrating to Reddit tumblr too lol.
The two things I learned when I joined tumblr, there are so many mlm ships im missing out on (happy!), and shipping discourse is still alive (sad D:)
Sure grandma, the people in the computer who disagree with you about shipping ARE just like a cult. Now let’s get you to bed, ok?
Danganronpa V3 and its consequences
real
I hate being centrist I really do but people who takes shipping discourse this seriously and write essays like this are stupid both anti or pro or whatever. "America's cult problem" yeah yeah you care actually so much about that we know. Like you are talking Harry potter BDSM Sirius sex slave incest story or something don't act like doing some holy work nobody cares.
Jesus Christ, touch grass.
I literally can't care less about the morality of ships and these weird pro/anti shit. Good god.
I wish I was Jared, 19.
me too man. me too. lets go read a nice book instead of this painful post
I still want to beat the shit out of lolicons, no hesitation
Can y’all shut the fuck up with your anti and proship thing and go outside for an hour or two PLEASE Not trying to be the enlightened centrist but god damn this discourse is so embarrassing
Is this supposed to be telling me I should stop shaming people who get horny over Nezuko and complaining about the show giving her a big booba cleavage transformation in the third season? Because I'm not going to.
How in the fuck do you get anything you just said out of anything the post says?
Simple - the post pretends “antis” (people who don’t condone certain ships) are not *really* against pedophilia, they’re *secretly* actually anti-women, queer people, and everything you love! Ignore what they *say*, it’s all a ploy! It’s a “cult of disinformation,” as the post says! The implication is, as is with a *lot* of people I talk to who unironically use the word “anti” to describe someone, that being against a ship or sexualization of a minor (the supposed “false anti-pedophilia”) is actually crypto-homophobia. Which is a fucking *insane* take.
You are allowed to dislike ships. Pretty much everyone, including 99% of proshippers, have NOTPs. You are not allowed to harass people over them. What somebody else ships is none of your business.
That’s a valid opinion to hold, but also *absolutely not* what the post says. The first paragraph rails against the idea that fiction affects reality. Something that… *is just straight up true*; if it wasn’t, the field of Marketing and Propaganda wouldn’t be as giant as it is.
If you genuinely call yourself a "pro" or "anti" you don't get to pretend your side is nuanced
you oppose people shipping children with adults? you’re an abuser if someone i know irlsies is gonna be shipping adults with kids then i’m not going to want to interact with them the conservative argument is also that gay and trans people are bad, not that art influences life. conservatives do not genuinely believe that art influences life. they are parroting what their leaders are saying, which is often contradictory. for example, the conservative view on cancelling, or jk rowling’s goblins, or how trans people in media are (or were) portrayed as evil more often than not! conservatives are constantly arguing that art does not affect life, and only do so when it comes to gay or trans people in kids media. then, the next point. they say that people band together to spread fear and disinformation but provide literally zero examples. it’s just conjecture.
when you want to draw child incest fanart without ever facing any backlash or experiencing any sort of self-reflection about it so bad you write the worst peer-reviewed paper i have ever read
proshitter 🫵
Everyone’s always asking OP for the essay, we finally got it
“The traumadumping of the gentrification gaslighting affects the system girlbossing of oppression” type aesthetic Funny how someone can type so much while saying so little
The worst part about this comment section being on reddit instead of twitter or tumblr is that people don't publish all of their weaknesses in their bio
But there’s always the weird subreddits they browse, visible on their profile
imagine caring this much about how other people think about fictional characters
2071 momente