It'S jUsT FiCtIoN
I felt it necessary to begin this post not with an introductory paragraph, but an image. I wanted readers to grasp just what kind of rope is being tied around their necks, and the tree they're being metaphorically strung up on. This post will discuss the amount of double-speak that comes from pro-shippers, with an emphasis on their claims to be supportive of free speech and examples where they are not for it.
(For the uninitated, 'shippers' are people in fandom who pair one or more characters together, regardless of chemistry, age, respect or love. For those in the know, ignore this snippet.)
I will be highlighting some of the most active Tumblr pro-shipping blogs, who in turn are active on Twitter. I will also be examining the whole 'fiction is not reality' excuse, how it is a non-argument and how it undermines the entirety of human knowledge and literary experience.
First, I was wholly unaware of the entire pro/anti shipping wars until recently. Beforehand, I approached fic and published stories on a piece-by-piece basis, analyzing its contents and character interactions before leaving a review. Back in the day, I was considered a 'flamer', one of the many people on Fanfiction.net who underwent aggressive review campaigns in an attempt to weed out bad stories and bad fan attitude. A common response I got was: 'It's just fanfic. It doesn't affect you. These characters are not real.'
Second, I noticed in every blog and on their respective Twitters these people followed a certain demographic: they were overwhelmingly liberal white women (identifying as non-binary with the vast array of pronouns) occasionally an ethnic minority, and all of them subscribed to transgender rights at the expense of women's rights (i.e 'Yes, women can have penises, biological sex isn't real, women have an unnatural and unnecessary fear of transwomen in their spaces, etc). For example, a user I'll be covering in-depth later in this post is shipping-isn't-morality. This specific post addresses the following:
Under the auspice of 'normalization', it should absolutely be mentioned that among fan culture and pop culture, representations of, say, gay couples and interracial couples can and will change public perception of them. The TV show 'Glee' featured gay characters, and the original 'Star Trek' featured actors of different races who occupied prominent positions in a time when segregation was still strong in America. George Takei was a gay man and Roddenberry did not disavow him. Uhura was a prominent, strong, successful black character and Star Trek featured the first interracial kiss scene on public television.
To suggest fiction cannot have any effect on public perception, moral codes, and imagination is dishonest at worst, and deceptive at best. Fandom has a massive public imprint, especially with franchises like Star Wars being the most successful selling franchise of all time. Marvel comics defied the censorship codes of their era, highlighting topics such as the Vietnam war, illegal scientific experimentation, minority characters being just as strong, interesting, and wise as white ones, and female characters becoming sex symbols and massive inspirations for women. Tumblr users should also consider they don't really believe anything they say if they look at their arguments beyond face value: they frequently claim fictional movies, TV shows, and the characters in them helped them with their sexual awakening and/or sexual identity and/or gender identity. Do as I say, not as I do.
The child/adult pairing issue will be highlighted, with one of the most interesting and vocal proponents of this trope being the user zendiscourse. Hosted on another pro-shipping blog, this was said:
Second, these users are against gate-keeping and censorship, but let's go back to shipping-isn't-morality for a minute. In a moment of stunning self-awareness, shipping wrote:
To go back to zendiscourse, more snippets of wisdom are offered. Here's one.
Drawing self-harm can influence suicide, as well, because you are showing those things as something to be desired. This is not hara-kiri (seppuku, if you want to be specific), where ritual suicide is done to avoid dishonor. It is true cultures have ritual suicides and may have paintings, glyphs, and even instructions on how to do it - but those are done not to glorify it per se, but to show how the person who did it committed an act of dishonor and must repent lest they inspire others to commit similar acts and bring ruin and shame upon themselves and their families. Showing a young girl opening her veins to show her pain is not the same as showing a kamikaze attack on US carriers during the Pacific War or a fundamentalist Muslim marching into a crowded market with a bomb strapped to their chest. One is the glorification of a girl suffering from mental illness and how she used it as a 'gotcha' tactic. Pictures on the Internet of girls opening their veins or belts around their necks may well encourage others to do the same.
Drawing rape or abuse depends on context. Greek sculptures will feature women being kidnapped, or 'raped', and it features prominently in mythology. In all cases, it was done to show how sexual violence can ruin innocent victims and how such acts dishonored the gods. Sexual violence features prominently in Greek and Roman lore, showing the downside of sex and seduction (Zeus being the biggest violator). If the medium is done to show the act for what it is - abhorrent, people can and will learn from it. If the medium is done to show the act as nothing harmful, then it teaches a different message.
'Fetishization', after all, is to irrationally obsess over something or sexualize it. In the context zendiscourse is using, fetishization is valid, as authors writing these tropes do not use the violent or sexually violent aspects of it. Instead of saying, 'Yes, I wrote it, but I wrote it to show how it can affect victims and what it does to people', they are saying, 'I should have the right to write it as no big deal, and it's your fault if you have an issue. It's just fiction.'
'It's just fiction' undermines the whole use of rape and abuse as a literary trope. It occurs all the time in media and published works. People may remember how Sansa Stark was raped in Game of Thrones Season 5 by Ramsay Snow. Rape was a common occurrence in GoT lore, but it was never portrayed as something which should happen in civilized, virtuous societies. Does writing rape make George R.R Martin a rapist? Of course not - but in all the instances he wrote it, he showed it as a horrible, demeaning experience. Rapists were sent to the Wall, killed by vigilante groups, or killed by their victims who sought their revenge.
To ficcers, approaching the subject of rape or non-consent is twofold:
1. Is the rape itself treated as a sexual crime? How does the character react to it? Does it change the mood of the story?
2. If it is not, why, then, was it used as a trope?
The 'it's just fiction' crowd assumes their readership are idiots and will take the subject lying down - no pun intended.
Zendiscourse continues:
Later on in this paragraph, Zen mentions how 'only paedophiles will find an excuse for this.' If the author is not condemning underage sex and showing how, as a literary trope, it negatively affects people in the real world, why are they writing it?
The author may not be at fault for what a paedophile does - but it cannot be denied they are giving them content to read. More so because fiction as a medium can influence public opinion. Some of the best examples - if you truly want to consider them fictional - is the Bible, the Koran and the Talmud. All of them inspired public opinion and determined moral structures for thousands of years. If you want to go back further, pagan mythology controlled public life down to the T.
Shipping children with adults, even fictional, and portraying it as normal and healthy, sets a precedent. Zen asks why we don't treat violence the same way, and the answer is simple: if you normalize the Holocaust, or any other genocide, you are seen as a monster; one cannot imagine reading a book where the author, speaking through the character, honestly thinks the Holocaust or the Native American genocide was no big deal. Crime fiction never portrays criminals as the heroes. War novels never glorify the mutilation and PTSD of soldiers. Yet shippers who write paedophilia and rape believe they are exempt from criticism, hence the 'Look at the other guy, he does it too!' argument.
Zen does not end there.
It is a 'Do as I say, not as I do' argument.
This post, however, takes the cake for Russian Roulette:
If CSA survivors are writing such pairings, and get mighty offended when someone wonders why they wrote it, one of the excuses given is: this is my coping mechanism. You cannot judge me.
Similarly, I cannot judge a morbidly obese person for having also suffered CSA, even though their poor choices as a result of their trauma is killing them. I cannot criticize a meth addict or a prostitute for what they do, even when they might have suffered CSA, nor can I criticize any bad behaviour an adult does based on what happened in their youth based on this logic. It removes agency and responsibility.
CSA survivors writing paedophilic ships and, yes, normalizing them by not showing how such age gaps affect people, says a lot more about them then it does the reader. It's a revenge fantasy. One must ask why someone who underwent such a traumatic experience is writing said experience in a light-hearted way; to reiterate my point, of all coping mechanisms to choose from, why are you taking the position of the one who did it to you and arguing, with your words, that what happened wasn't wrong? Yet these questions cannot be asked as you are 'blaming the victim'.
Let's ask this, then: if a Native American saw the slaughtering of his people by white men, and wrote about what happened, is he showing it in a positive way? No. What would happen if he internalized that genocide, and said what happened to his people was 'just the way things are'? He'd be called a traitor; he'd be accused of normalization what happened to him and celebrating the destruction of his people.
And abuse? Well, Zen only cares about that when it matters:
Zen also asks what is wrong with incest, before she/it/they gets a response from someone who goes from, 'It's a cultural thing' to 'it's taboo' to 'it's to avoid inbreeding'. Perhaps they would be aware of a thing called inbreeding depression? It's not even cultural, it's biological. Inbred royal families suffered from pedigree collapse. Even if they don't 'have kids', they are decreasing their genetic fitness. We are programmed not to excessively inbreed or outbreed.
Not to mention all these 'consenting adults' people happily turn around and make fun of Alabama for being so inbred. It's akin to asking 'what's wrong about racism?' 'what's wrong about genocide'? and 'what's not about eating your own waste?'
And if it's all just fiction...why, then, the focus on drawing underage characters engaging in sex?
Sex is the ultimate adult signifier. Yes, teens have sex. We also have a problem with teen pregnancy, and it is shown teen mothers not at their full potential have kids with lower IQs and are generally mentally unprepared to have them. Ask a teenage boy if he's ready to man-up and care for a newborn baby. With no money, no job, and no house, and is looking at a future filled with college debt and mortgage loans, I'd say no.
The whole point of sex education was to teach teens to be mindful of what they were doing. It was done to limit and control teen pregnancy and prevent strains on the system. Do you think these elements of reality make it to fiction? No.
Adults having sex is a different field, as they are mature enough to know what they want and can understand sexual cues. This is reflected in smut fiction. A child - and let's be honest here, kid characters have the characteristics of kids, they're not blocks of wood - would not be able to understand these cues. Why even bother to imagine them having sex, especially when you're not making them 18+?
The Bible said never look back at degeneracy, for you will turn into a pillar of salt.
How about this example:
Nah, man.
From a larger post:
If fiction reflects reality, one would assume depictions of rape, abuse and paedophilia would be shown as the horrible, degrading things that they are rather than as fetishistic representations of the author's coping mechanisms.
Fiction can absolutely control and influence people's lives. To suggest otherwise is to undermine the entire human creative spirit and why people write, sculpt, and create music. An example of just how wrong this statement is is the use of propaganda during war and political campaigns: the claims made, the drawings made, may be entirely fictional, but the purpose is to convince people to do the message's bidding. Buy war bonds? Join the Japanese Imperial Army? Support the Boer concentration camps after the Anglo-Boer wars? They're all there, and these fictional representations absolutely affected how people thought about others, truth notwithstanding.
Yes, things exist because we make them. But why are you, an adult, willingly writing an underage pairing, if not to show how reality affects fiction in how underage partnerships affect the child more than the adult?
The true slippery slope is 'It's just fiction, it cannot affect anyone, therefore I am immune from criticism' excuse. Just because your fictional representation of children is not real, you are still depicting paedophilia. Likewise, a fictional representation of slavery and racism still depicts how racism and slavery affects people. 'The Book of Negroes' was fiction, as was 'Schindler's List' (yes, it is fiction), but it depicted both the experiences of black people and Jews under oppressive times. To declare both as 'it's just fiction, it cannot affect anyone' is, again, to entirely dismiss the medium and the message. It comes back to this lingering question: if fiction is fiction and has no effect on reality, why are adults writing and drawing representations of children engaging in sex, if not to draw and write them engaging in sex for their own benefit?
Have some more context.
I have yet to read an adequate response. Perhaps Zen could inform me more about the struggles with weight and how the media made her/they/it overweight and not poor eating habits?
They're just fictional characters, Zen. Oh, wait - you mean to tell me fictional representations of fat people are wrong, but everything you wrote previously is fine because it's just fiction?
Such a web to weave.
I'm going to take a detour in the next few paragraphs, so bear with me. The relevance here is how pro-shippers regard 'fiction isn't reality' and reality in general. It helps to understand how an author thinks to know why they write the things they write, for nothing happens in a vacuum and it will influence the messages they will tell their readers. The trend I mentioned earlier will be made manifest.
Antis-delete-your-blog is a future forensic psychologist who will work in the criminal justice system, handling the criminals who robbed your neighbour, ran over your dog, or molested your niece. This 'grey ace pan bigender' individual complains about people losing their rationality and how gate-keeping is bad...while still crying over the 2016 U.S. election and demanding that 'TERFs', 'Neo-Nazis' and people who in general disagree with them should be thrown out. See here, here, and here.
Mouse desires statistics and discourse. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but if I said something to the effect of 'illegal immigration is bad, and normalizing mass movements of people doesn't do anything any good, even in fiction', how would Mouse react? She/it/they would immediately accuse me of being a racist, because certain tropes in fiction are not allowed - provided they are the ones approving it. An added bonus is Mouse insists fiction isn't reality...while using fictional terms for her gender and demanding reality bend to accept it. How about that for rationality and discourse?
How about racism? Fine to go after shippers as pro-shippers when it's convenient. It appears racism takes precedence over paedophilia and rape - and if that doesn't work, accuse your opponents of being white supremacists or members of the Alt-Right. You will notice how quick pro-shippers will enter the mindset of the antis they frequently accuse of being irrational, anti-sex, and anti-creativity when they advocate blocking people who disagree with them, going as far as removing friends if they so much as support one of Donald Trump's policies.
An example of this 'It is not a witchhunt if we say it isn't' dumpster fire was the Reylo fandom from Star Wars - the pairing between Rey and Kylo Ren - which managed to go so far as to harass J.J. Abrams and get John Boyega to not-so-politely tell them to fuck off. Mouse had this to say:
What was that about gate-keeping? Pro-shippers, in the name of anti-censorship and free speech, will automatically assume shippers going after directors or actors must be infiltrators. Anything that goes wrong, any sort of criticism leveled at them is listed as 'anti-shipping', and they will promptly tell the critic to 'shut the fuck up' backed with 'it's just fiction.' For people who insist 'it's just fiction', they are adamant on defending a fictional relationship and accusing anyone who disagrees or even dislikes the final Star Wars movie of being an Alt-Right misogynist, as the Medium article argued with pomp (and dismissal that yes, Rey was a poorly written female character and a Mary Sue and how it is not misogynistic to point this out). How curious, then, how quick the 'it's just fiction' argument is thrown out when it comes to female representation and representation of minority characters. I will revisit this case, as well as the paedophilia/normalization/fiction-is-reality argument in a moment. (For more information, visit Mouse's blog here.)
Let us return to the 'fiction isn't reality' argument from our little detour. Two blogs focus more on the scientific/moral aspect of shipping. I will first consider the 'normalization' blog. Of note:
The implication here is that disgust is purely a moral response, when it is a biological one. Contempt is also a biological imperative. If the OP is admitting that yes, even fiction is capable of desensitization, they have invalidated their entire argument. Opponents are promptly accused of being anti-sex and Puritan Christians, when no one here is really anti-sex, but is merely arguing that when you write sex they should be consenting adults and if it's sexual violence, it should be treated seriously.
Being a Puritan Christian would mean you would never want to hear what the other side has to say. Pro-shippers have blacklists, block lists, and take screenshots of people whom they trash behind their backs. They do not allow their critics a chance to respond, because pro-shippers have declared they are fundamentally irrational and are unworthy of their time.
An argument emerges from this post about problematic fiction and how no one is obligated to read it if they dislike it.
This is a classic representation of the 'crybully'. This user tells the person responding to her that they in turn bully and demand all realms of fiction cater to their needs, while being the sort of person who would never read 'The Camp of the Saints' or watch 'The Birth of a Nation', or read Bret Easton Ellis. This user also says you can relate to, and discover, your sexuality through a fictional character, so their 'fiction is not endorsement' argument is shot right on the spot. If it is just fiction, why are you attached to that character's sexuality, and why does it form the basis of your identity?
You see, when you begin to analyze their claims with a fine-toothed comb, you realize they don't actually believe anything they say. They simply don't want you to notice.
We go back to, 'you antis hurt children and real victims of abuse more than you help them.' Oh? I haven't seen any of these pro-shippers actually advocate or prove how adults having sex with children is bad. Just that it isn't bad when fictionally represented - and excusing positive portrayals of it. What solutions do they ask? Deterrents, because you can convince a paedophile with your fanfics how he'll never rape again, and happily pay for his room and board off the dime of taxpayers for the rest of his life. I have also seen a person ask 'What's really wrong with incest?' while making fun of those same inbred white people and how whites really are the scum of the earth.
From this same blog, fictional representations of underage relationships are fine, but don't get caught using racial slurs:
There's that double-speak again. You cannot truly be for anti-censorship laws, be for pro-porn or pro-shipping if you will throw out people you personally consider to be a bigot. If mass bans don't help your side, what makes you think burning the books of bigots will help your case? Let's consider a few things. Would these pro-shippers, in the name of 'everything goes, fiction is not reality' support people like:
- Charles Murray, who wrote 'The Bell Curve'?
- Jared Taylor?
- Michelle Malkin?
- Ann Coulter?
- Heather Mac Donald?
- Vox Day AKA Theodore Beale?
- Chuck Dixon?
- Ibn Warraq?
- Raymond Ibhrahim?
- The Imam of Peace?
- Julie Bindel?
- The author of 'My Body is Me'?
- Dr. Emma Hilton?
- Stephanie Davies-Arai?
- the late Magdelen Berns?
- Miranda Yardley, Debbie Hayton, Blaire White, and Sophia Narwitz, all of whom are transwomen who acknowledge they are biological males yet wish to live as women?
- James Schupe?
- Walt Heyer?
- Robert Oscar-Lopez?
- Colin Flaherty?
- David Cole?
- Bret Easton Ellis, a gay man tired of political correctness?
- Thomas Sowell, a black man who is an accomplished scholar in his own right?
- Tommy Sotomayor?
The answer is no. All of these people come from different areas of the political spectrum, yet write and make content which challenges the views of pro-shippers. All of them would be condemned and thrown out as 'bigots'.
Now, consider this screenshot of published books shippers say the antis would call 'problematic'. The OP says if there is racism or homophobia or a general issue with a fic, a reader should have the right to critique it on that basis. But that isn't what these pro-shippers are aiming for. Later in the post, a user had this to say:
Shipping then adds:
Does shipping really stand by this comment? That dark fic which condemns these abusive elements shouldn't be attacked? No, not really. We're going to go back to that adage:
No, writing rape doesn't mean you want to rape someone. Yet a fictional character dying of cancer shows how cancer can affect families; it's not window-dressing. And it's definitely window-dressing when you write rape and consider it no big deal before tossing out this non-argument.
It continues:
'Push' is a story based on a young black girl who was raped and impregnated by her father, abused by her mother, and deals with illiteracy and poverty. The author never wrote those tropes to glorify them, but to offer a glimpse into black girls who endure these obstacles. What pro-shippers don't realize is that in their attempt to glamourize their own 'problematic' issues, the works they reference never show the things they glorify as normal.
As an added bonus, shipping has this to say on underage teens receiving porn:
Before I finish up with shipping, have this little tidbit into her/it/they's life. (View their blog history here.
However, I will address the pro-shipper stance which inevitably emerges.
The second aspect, 'we are minorities and we use fic to cope with our oppression' is another excuse against criticism. If I cannot criticize a CSA survivor who glorifies CSA in her/her stories, how can I criticize an oppressed Person of Colour because they are 'living their truth' through fiction?
Third, by admitting you are the products of all things wrong with society, every fic you make, every fanart you draw, of 'problematic' content shows how you are not defying what is wrong with society, but enabling it. The metaphor of funhouse mirrors to society is apt: all of your creations look right back at you, and all it takes is a stone to reveal the truth.
Not a single gay adult man in that audience stood up and said it was wrong. Not a single one of these pro-shippers who are in favour of gay rights ever denounced Desmond, Drag Queen Story time, or Lactatia, a nine-year-old boy who regularly does pole-dancing in front of adults as a drag queen kid.
Despite this disclaimer, let's harken back to the 'It's just fiction'.
But even if someone is personally affected by the glamourous portrayal of child sex in fiction, these pro-shippers responded with 'get over it'. Now, that stance is being retracted. They sincerely hope you will not notice.
To normal people, limiting anyone's ability to make opinions, produce bothersome content, or access was called censorship. Pro-shippers sincerely believe that since they are the ones opposing so-called gate-keepers, they are free to limit the views of those they disagree with. This is an academically childish position to take, but unfortunately, it is becoming more the norm in a culture based on 'safe spaces'.
Now, let's return to free-to-fic's thesis.
If you can't recruit people to your own side based on arguments alone, what does that tell you? Who are the crybullies here?
(As an afterthought, if, say, the Chinese and Indian fandom were to get in on it, they would absolutely crush all fandoms in terms of their numbers alone.)
How about misogyny?
Patriarchy is bad. But radfems are wrong for thinking women have no free will and choice in the content they consume, BUT the way women dress is wrong, because women have harsher standards, AND patriarchy affects 'people of all genders' AND strips people of their free will.
I wonder if free-to-fic has ever wondered that by blaming the patriarchy or blaming it for all the ills of society invalidates their argument? Did they even bother to read what they wrote and notice 'Hey, I dun goofed?' If radfems are wrong for saying patriarchy influences every aspect of women's lives, why are you turning around still arguing for it?
Anything rattling in that head of yours?
Back to racism.
Your position 'all ships are valid' goes right back to the argument you insist is the bane of your existence: it's just fiction. Even if the ship is based on abuse or features a minor, it is 'purity culture' to condemn it...despite making the argument that you are reacting to those things in the media. Tell me: how are you reacting to those issues by glorifying it? It seems you aren't really responding to those troublesome moral codes but normalizing it in your own way.
The kicker has to be this:
As I've personally noticed, all of these pro-shippers are white (antis-delete-your-blogs is of an unknown ethnic minority), very pro-trans, and anti-bigotry. What this 'bigotry' means in the words of people who decry antis making safe spaces is: "I am against banning, but if you are a racist, a suspected white supremacist, a feminist who doesn't think men are women, or if you're a person who supports just one of Trump's policies, I want you gone." On Twitter, pro-shippers will ask others to block and remove one of their own...even if they are a Trump supporter.
To go back to the 'reality is fiction' and how fiction affects culture, compare free-to-fics arguments with those of the other users presented: media can absolutely affect people's thoughts and social mores, but fanficcers do not have any moving power as they are a minority in fandom and in media. But we know fandom has a massive impact on pop culture: people buy merchandise, slogans are used in media and on t-shirts, and it inspires people to name asteroids and dead animals after their favourite books and characters.
It is true, though, that the absolute purchasing power of fanficcers is up for debate. Fanficcers write their works for free and build up an audience under the auspice of transformative works. They build a audience and even have sway over the circles they command. And, like it or not, fans with purchasing power can influence how a medium goes. It should be noted that while AO3 is great for hosting all manner of content, it relies on a gift economy and the fans writing fic for their respective fandoms are engaging in those 'capitalist structures' they despise. It should also be noted AO3 proclaims to be for free speech...until you criticize an author. Then you get a report and your comments are removed.
Free-to-fic argued that criticism is fine, provided you know what you're dealing with. I agree with this notion. And as an adult who is capable of rationality and possesses analytical skills, I will approach fics and fandom in general with a critical eye. If a ship or a story is problematic, and the author retained its problematic status, I will say so. If the author 'ages up' a minor character for a romantic pairing, I have no problem with that, no more than I have a problem with the lolis of Touhou being drawn with breasts, hips and thighs to engage in sexual scenarios. If you are writing adult content, for adults, the expectation is that the agents involved are adults.
The argument that fiction, including fanfiction, is a reaction to things wrong with the media and the messages it promotes doesn't lend much credence to the 'ship whatever, regardless of age' people I've mentioned here. If you are reacting to, say, sexualization of teens and minors, what message are you selling in your fic? Take an example from another 'fiction is not reality' blog, on the Alpha/Beta/Omega trope. This trope, based on a sexual caste system, is a soft touch on sexual slavery. Omegas cannot marry people of their own free will, and Alphas cannot be penetrated or 'topped'. Alphas cannot go with alphas, and males undergo estrus and hormones like normal human women.
But wait! Isn't fiction fiction? It's not real, so why go through all the trouble to promote something that doesn't exist?
Because they don't believe the garbage coming out of their mouths. What pro-shippers don't want you to do is notice. They don't want you to have the same analytical skills they claim to have. The minute you use these skills to point out what massive hypocrites they are will earn you the 'anti' title. Going back to the 'reactionary media' point, one has to ask: why, then, the excuse for rape and underage fics? They don't even accept those among them who condemn it - they argue all ships are valid, even if they are underage. But if these fics, these tropes, these messages, are all reacting to the culture...how, exactly, are you showing yourselves to be better than the mainstream media you condemn?
You aren't condemning racism; you fear and cannibalize each other the minute one is suspected of it. You are for freedom in fiction, yet when someone touches on race, homophobia, or gender identity in a light you don't like, you will dismiss and dog pile that person. You promote free speech, yet turn around and say you have no obligation to listen to your opponents, while condemning safe spaces.
If you are reacting to child molestation and the reality of rape in your fiction, why do you get angry when someone says you are window-dressing it? Why are you arguing for the sexualization of underage characters, even when you sympathize with these characters, even when you say these characters awaken your sexual identity, by saying you are reacting to the culture? This isn't a reaction at all; instead, you are internalizing the thing you say cannot exist by way of it being fiction.
The argument 'I am reacting to something, therefore I cannot be at fault, as I didn't start it' means you are playing the victim. Writing underage ships and creating underage content doesn't make your excuse of, 'well I'm just reacting to the media' any valid. If you were truly reacting to the media's promotion of sexualization of teens, women, girls, and racism, you'd be right at the forefront with your work sending a clear message: 'We do not want this. We can be better.'
The message you're sending instead is, 'Well everyone else does it. It's just fiction. Who does it affect? No one.'
Nothing happens in a vacuum. You can't react to racism with more racism. You can't react to sexism with more sexism. You can't react to rape and paedophilia with your own variants of rape and paedophilia, more so if you are treating it as a glamourous thing. Reality affects fiction, and if you are all reactionaries, you show your hand when you write and draw your works. People are not stupid. Outsiders will clearly see what you are doing. You're not creating content for adults; you aren't creating content or exploring taboo subjects to make people think. You're normalizing elements of the behaviour you condemn in the media.
No fan truly believes normalization can't occur through fiction. It can. Star Trek brought blacks and Asians to the forefront. 'Rambo' highlighted the treatment of Vietnam war veterans. 'Jaws' encouraged the killing of great whites, even though the film was based on bull sharks. 'I Spit on Your Grave' showed that women didn't have to be victims of rape. 'Lolita' was written through the eyes of a paedophile (or hebephile, whatever). 'The Camp of the Saints' was about a massive invasion of non-whites to white countries. All of them had taboo themes. We, as adults and consumers, absorb these messages and interpret them as we will.
Likewise, adults and those with common sense can see your underage pairing fic, see that you aren't condemning it but glorifying it, and wonder what sort of person does that. If you're 'reacting to the media'; if it's 'just fiction', then I and others will assume you think your readers are idiots. What you write is out there for the public to see. Your medium is the message. What you say, the stories you craft and the art you put out there, is done to influence opinion.
These people are not your friends. They are not for free speech. They are still crying over the 2016 election. They refuse to allow criticism of their works. Why? Because they don't want to face their own massive hypocrisy. They don't want to see how they fetishize the taboo topics they want a discussion of. And finally, they don't want to see that the true authoritarians are them.
Fanfic is like the mirrors of a funhouse: everything you write is a reflection of you, and all it takes is a stone to smash the glass house you built. You're not sending positive messages if you are reflecting all the horrible things about the world; instead, you show yourself to be a swamp monster.
I would also like to add as a final note the comparison between paedophilia/rape in fiction versus 'satanic' music and 'violent' video games: video games have a story and have a message. 'Manhunt' was hugely controversial, but the story within it wasn't just a glorification of violence but a world where people pay to see criminals butcher each other for money. It was to show how media and violence, over time, could desensitize and reprogram people (an ironic thing, as pro-shippers deny this). It was to show inhumanity on public display. Marilyn Manson's music is considered Satanic, yet his music contains messages about Hollywood hedonism, selfishness, and the obsession over material things. The video game 'Metal Gear Solid V' had the character Paz being raped, and the player can hear it over a tape. It was not glorified. Later, the character Quiet is almost raped by a Russian soldier. She frees herself and kills him.
Fanfics writing underage and rape porn don't have a similar post to stand on, more so since they can't stop using 'it's just fiction' to hide the fact they're just awful writers who are incapable of handling serious issues.
Lastly, pro-shippers were throwing around this organization. I would like to tell them that if they think paedophile vigilantes are wrong, they are welcome to interview the inmates in prison who beat child molesters to death. They are also welcome to interview the parents and jury members who had to listen to what happened to that child. The queer artists who wrote such pairings should also consider the amount of CSA which occurs in LGBT circles, and how taboo that is. Nothing like reacting to media and reality by inadvertently continuing to create the content you condemn. But no one ever asked, let alone assume, pro-shippers had self-awareness anyways. Why should we hold them to any other standard?
Just remember: stop noticing things. They really don't like it when you do.
(I would also like them to actually read the studies they write, and stop assuming stigma is what makes paraphilias work. You can't keep everyone in comfort, especially since people have to pay for their mistakes.)
(Addendum: this will likely be a series, with the next piece being on 'rape fantasy', and the nature of criticism.)
(For the uninitated, 'shippers' are people in fandom who pair one or more characters together, regardless of chemistry, age, respect or love. For those in the know, ignore this snippet.)
I will be highlighting some of the most active Tumblr pro-shipping blogs, who in turn are active on Twitter. I will also be examining the whole 'fiction is not reality' excuse, how it is a non-argument and how it undermines the entirety of human knowledge and literary experience.
First, I was wholly unaware of the entire pro/anti shipping wars until recently. Beforehand, I approached fic and published stories on a piece-by-piece basis, analyzing its contents and character interactions before leaving a review. Back in the day, I was considered a 'flamer', one of the many people on Fanfiction.net who underwent aggressive review campaigns in an attempt to weed out bad stories and bad fan attitude. A common response I got was: 'It's just fanfic. It doesn't affect you. These characters are not real.'
Second, I noticed in every blog and on their respective Twitters these people followed a certain demographic: they were overwhelmingly liberal white women (identifying as non-binary with the vast array of pronouns) occasionally an ethnic minority, and all of them subscribed to transgender rights at the expense of women's rights (i.e 'Yes, women can have penises, biological sex isn't real, women have an unnatural and unnecessary fear of transwomen in their spaces, etc). For example, a user I'll be covering in-depth later in this post is shipping-isn't-morality. This specific post addresses the following:
If you’re a shipperAnd you ship pedophilic/incestuous ships, or you enjoy abusive dynamics, or some other thing that’s getting you hate,
And you recognize the parts that are problematic, tag appropriately, and try to keep your audience in mindThen you’re fine.
You’re not contributing to “normalization.” You’re not endorsing the behaviors you consume content for. You’re not responsible for the well-being of people who deliberately expose themselves to content that’s harmful to them. You are not obligated to create content that’s harmful to nobody ever, because that’s straight-up not possible. You do not hate victims. You are allowed to enjoy whatever fiction you enjoy, and it doesn’t reflect on you morally.
I hope you’re having a good day.The implication of this is that so long as an author adds appropriate tags, it is the reader's fault if they find the content to be troublesome. Two things must be addressed. The first is that this user suggests that you are allowed to enjoy anything you like, because real people are not involved. The second is the 'fiction is not endorsement'.
Under the auspice of 'normalization', it should absolutely be mentioned that among fan culture and pop culture, representations of, say, gay couples and interracial couples can and will change public perception of them. The TV show 'Glee' featured gay characters, and the original 'Star Trek' featured actors of different races who occupied prominent positions in a time when segregation was still strong in America. George Takei was a gay man and Roddenberry did not disavow him. Uhura was a prominent, strong, successful black character and Star Trek featured the first interracial kiss scene on public television.
To suggest fiction cannot have any effect on public perception, moral codes, and imagination is dishonest at worst, and deceptive at best. Fandom has a massive public imprint, especially with franchises like Star Wars being the most successful selling franchise of all time. Marvel comics defied the censorship codes of their era, highlighting topics such as the Vietnam war, illegal scientific experimentation, minority characters being just as strong, interesting, and wise as white ones, and female characters becoming sex symbols and massive inspirations for women. Tumblr users should also consider they don't really believe anything they say if they look at their arguments beyond face value: they frequently claim fictional movies, TV shows, and the characters in them helped them with their sexual awakening and/or sexual identity and/or gender identity. Do as I say, not as I do.
The child/adult pairing issue will be highlighted, with one of the most interesting and vocal proponents of this trope being the user zendiscourse. Hosted on another pro-shipping blog, this was said:
being anti doesn’t mean being against incest/abuse/pedophilia. it means being against fictional depictions of said content. it means being against fictional depictions of age gaps, problematic content, ageing up characters - anything that’s not a 100% on the Pure and Wholesome side
meanwhile, being anti-anti doesn’t mean pro incest/abuse/pedophilia. it means being pro fictional depictions of them, as in it’s okay to depict those kind of relationships, no matter how they’re portrayed, as long as you tag them properly and is aware that, yes, they’re problematic in real life and not something to support
basically, if you claim you’re an anti, you’re basically saying fiction should be gate-keeped and moderated extensively, and everything even bordering on problematic should not just be thrown away, but shamed and torn apart, and anyone who dares do something as banal as exploring a taboo subject in the safe environment of fiction should dieOne must wonder why people who insist on the 'it's just fiction' argument are focusing on the sexuality of fictional characters, including ones who are visibly underage. The user states it is 'okay' to portray those relationships. Why? Because it's fictional, they say. This non-argument renders any dissent useless, but it shows a few things: one, pro-shippers can and will focus on the sexuality on underage characters and write them in sexual situations, despite holding a different view in real life.
Second, these users are against gate-keeping and censorship, but let's go back to shipping-isn't-morality for a minute. In a moment of stunning self-awareness, shipping wrote:
Out of sheer curiosity:I’m working on an ABO fic. And my two beta readers are trans so I’m like not worried that I’m gonna do anything AWFUL as they will absolutely tell me if I do, butWhat ARE the tropes in ABO that get it so often accused of transphobia? Like.... the tropes I associate w it (heatfic, hormones, hurt/comfort, mild furry undertones) do noooot have much to do with..... trans people? This is a thing I’ve never understoodAll of these pro-shippers who accuse antis of gatekeeping insist that 'cis' people cannot write transgender ones. Shipping is dreadfully afraid of the accusation of transphobia, so shipping has to use transgender betas. Whatever happened to 'it's just fiction'? Why must you use the real-world input of transgender people...if not to represent some aspect of their lives, if 'it's just fiction'?
To go back to zendiscourse, more snippets of wisdom are offered. Here's one.
writing stuff with abuse or rape is not fetishing it.Technically, writing about suicide or portraying it as an easy way to escape your life is fetishizing it. There are plenty of books which talk about the phenomenon of suicide, and why otherwise normal people do it when they showed no signs of distress. A great example of how the last line is patently false is '13 Reasons Why'. Hannah Baker was raped in a hot tub - and was not the only victim - and was brutalized by many of her classmates. Her suicide scene, which was cut in later versions, had her slicing open her veins in the bathtub. As drastic as the scene was, the reason Hannah did it was not out of genuine shame, defeat or hopelessness, but blackmail. It was her way of getting back at the people who tormented her, and because of that, the show was criticized for portraying suicide as a blackmail card rather than an affliction which takes the lives of loved ones after a long and bitter mental struggle.
drawing something with abuse or rape is not fetishing it.
writing/drawing about self harm, or mental health, or queer content is not fetishing it.
Drawing self-harm can influence suicide, as well, because you are showing those things as something to be desired. This is not hara-kiri (seppuku, if you want to be specific), where ritual suicide is done to avoid dishonor. It is true cultures have ritual suicides and may have paintings, glyphs, and even instructions on how to do it - but those are done not to glorify it per se, but to show how the person who did it committed an act of dishonor and must repent lest they inspire others to commit similar acts and bring ruin and shame upon themselves and their families. Showing a young girl opening her veins to show her pain is not the same as showing a kamikaze attack on US carriers during the Pacific War or a fundamentalist Muslim marching into a crowded market with a bomb strapped to their chest. One is the glorification of a girl suffering from mental illness and how she used it as a 'gotcha' tactic. Pictures on the Internet of girls opening their veins or belts around their necks may well encourage others to do the same.
Drawing rape or abuse depends on context. Greek sculptures will feature women being kidnapped, or 'raped', and it features prominently in mythology. In all cases, it was done to show how sexual violence can ruin innocent victims and how such acts dishonored the gods. Sexual violence features prominently in Greek and Roman lore, showing the downside of sex and seduction (Zeus being the biggest violator). If the medium is done to show the act for what it is - abhorrent, people can and will learn from it. If the medium is done to show the act as nothing harmful, then it teaches a different message.
'Fetishization', after all, is to irrationally obsess over something or sexualize it. In the context zendiscourse is using, fetishization is valid, as authors writing these tropes do not use the violent or sexually violent aspects of it. Instead of saying, 'Yes, I wrote it, but I wrote it to show how it can affect victims and what it does to people', they are saying, 'I should have the right to write it as no big deal, and it's your fault if you have an issue. It's just fiction.'
'It's just fiction' undermines the whole use of rape and abuse as a literary trope. It occurs all the time in media and published works. People may remember how Sansa Stark was raped in Game of Thrones Season 5 by Ramsay Snow. Rape was a common occurrence in GoT lore, but it was never portrayed as something which should happen in civilized, virtuous societies. Does writing rape make George R.R Martin a rapist? Of course not - but in all the instances he wrote it, he showed it as a horrible, demeaning experience. Rapists were sent to the Wall, killed by vigilante groups, or killed by their victims who sought their revenge.
To ficcers, approaching the subject of rape or non-consent is twofold:
1. Is the rape itself treated as a sexual crime? How does the character react to it? Does it change the mood of the story?
2. If it is not, why, then, was it used as a trope?
The 'it's just fiction' crowd assumes their readership are idiots and will take the subject lying down - no pun intended.
Zendiscourse continues:
if you read a fanfic about a kid and an adult fucking and you come out of it think that that’s okay to do in the Real Damn World, then like
you’re the one with the problem here
why does the fanfic about pedophilia exist in the first place?
OPABINIAWILLRETURN
One now has to wonder: why, of all coping mechanisms, is writing a child having sex with an adult preferable to anything else? Though you can use the 'I was abused, you cannot criticize what I write' argument, to people like me, all we're going to see is a suffering person who never got over what happened to them and is using their 'cathartic' release to convince others that what happened to them was fine. It's less to do with catharsis and freedom than projection.ZENDISCOURSEthere’s so many reasons for this, like. for coping, for catharsis, because dark stuff appeals to the authorlike you aren’t having this problem with murder- why’s that? there exist fiction out there where murder is, arguably, portrayed as a good thing, and yet you’re not flipping your lid over that
why? it’s the exact same, so all i can assume is that you simply want an excuse to bully people online
if you can’t seperate fiction from reality, then don’t read dark stuff. learn to curate your own online experience, and let people have their fun. literally no one is being hurt by the story itself- it’s the actual pedophiles who’ll use any excuse they have groom someone. and if you legit think the author is at fault for what a pedophile does, then you really gotta evaluate your fucking choices dude
Later on in this paragraph, Zen mentions how 'only paedophiles will find an excuse for this.' If the author is not condemning underage sex and showing how, as a literary trope, it negatively affects people in the real world, why are they writing it?
The author may not be at fault for what a paedophile does - but it cannot be denied they are giving them content to read. More so because fiction as a medium can influence public opinion. Some of the best examples - if you truly want to consider them fictional - is the Bible, the Koran and the Talmud. All of them inspired public opinion and determined moral structures for thousands of years. If you want to go back further, pagan mythology controlled public life down to the T.
Shipping children with adults, even fictional, and portraying it as normal and healthy, sets a precedent. Zen asks why we don't treat violence the same way, and the answer is simple: if you normalize the Holocaust, or any other genocide, you are seen as a monster; one cannot imagine reading a book where the author, speaking through the character, honestly thinks the Holocaust or the Native American genocide was no big deal. Crime fiction never portrays criminals as the heroes. War novels never glorify the mutilation and PTSD of soldiers. Yet shippers who write paedophilia and rape believe they are exempt from criticism, hence the 'Look at the other guy, he does it too!' argument.
Zen does not end there.
i know smut is something shipping often leads to, but i think it’s mostly a secondary goal? like, yes, almost all shipping leads there, but it’s not the main goal. just a side-effect
also, tbh, when i look at an actor playing a character, i don’t see the actor. i see a character. not a person. not the actor. a character
which seems to be the problem antis have. they see people, instead of made up constructs that are malleable and fun to play with
i guess i never really outright answered you, as much as dismantling your question. but, well. it’s not really something i think is happening at all? and if it is- if adults legit looked at characters portrayed by children, and immediately went “oh they should fuck this adult” then yeah, that’d be cause for concern. but that’s not the case; as i said, the smut is mostly a side effect, when the person is already invested in the characterNote how Zen mentions how much she/they/it/zhem/zir is invested in the character, even though, by she/they/it/zhem/zir's logic, it's all just fictional. It is perfectly fine for shippers to become invested in characters and have them engage in different scenarios, sexual or otherwise, but not for people to criticize the way they handled said scenario or how the characters are out-of-character. To them, only they have the right to point out 'problematic' tropes such as transphobia or homophobia in the media or fiction, but it is not right for someone else to call out their effective window-dressing treatment of rape, paedophilia, and abuse.
It is a 'Do as I say, not as I do' argument.
This post, however, takes the cake for Russian Roulette:
it’s annoying and frustrating, having a child speak to you about adult issues. this is not for them. this is not their playground to visit
it’s a hard line to draw, because it’s so often muddled- i don’t particularly care for smut, so i rarely really think about that part of it, but considering the conversation that started this directly involved the word cp, it was in mind
if we were talking about the real life sexualization of minors, they would be welcome to weigh in. and hell, i’d agree with them- it’s a problem, it’s gross, it needs to stop
but this isn’t about actual people. this is about fictional characters, lines on a page, and considering that, somehow, it always come back to sexual stuff with antis, i am not comfortable with a kid weighing in on it
(even though kids do write smut, which i’m not comfortable with either, because there’s a reason adults are so adamant on the 18+ rule)Consider this: Zen is not comfortable with kids in fandom reading adult topics. She/they/it is, however, fine with adults writing underage ships. Why? Well, maybe because a few CSA survivors write it:
antis are actually hurting more than helping. their main goal is to stop “pedophilia,” when they’re actually starting to normalize the word.
for instance, i came across an actual pedophile callout post, and i hesitated to block and report the said pedophile. i hesitated because i didn’t know if it was a callout post directed at a real pedophile, or simply a callout post directed at someone who ships something that the op of the callout post didn’t like.
i’ve come across many csa survivors who have said that they don’t like antis comparing their abuse to a ship. i’ve come across many csa survivors who ship these so-called pedophillic ships, and antis have actually had the audacity to say that those csa survivor’s abuse was false.
it’s disgusting.Zen is concerned with the normalization of the word, but she/it/they/ doesn't care for the normalization of it as a trope, because 'LOL it's not real get over it!'.
If CSA survivors are writing such pairings, and get mighty offended when someone wonders why they wrote it, one of the excuses given is: this is my coping mechanism. You cannot judge me.
Similarly, I cannot judge a morbidly obese person for having also suffered CSA, even though their poor choices as a result of their trauma is killing them. I cannot criticize a meth addict or a prostitute for what they do, even when they might have suffered CSA, nor can I criticize any bad behaviour an adult does based on what happened in their youth based on this logic. It removes agency and responsibility.
CSA survivors writing paedophilic ships and, yes, normalizing them by not showing how such age gaps affect people, says a lot more about them then it does the reader. It's a revenge fantasy. One must ask why someone who underwent such a traumatic experience is writing said experience in a light-hearted way; to reiterate my point, of all coping mechanisms to choose from, why are you taking the position of the one who did it to you and arguing, with your words, that what happened wasn't wrong? Yet these questions cannot be asked as you are 'blaming the victim'.
Let's ask this, then: if a Native American saw the slaughtering of his people by white men, and wrote about what happened, is he showing it in a positive way? No. What would happen if he internalized that genocide, and said what happened to his people was 'just the way things are'? He'd be called a traitor; he'd be accused of normalization what happened to him and celebrating the destruction of his people.
And abuse? Well, Zen only cares about that when it matters:
antis are, honestly, some of the worst kind of people, because they’re 100% convinced they aren’t doing anything wrong
they hide behind the fact that, in real life, these topics would be bad and disgusting- they ignore the fact that fiction rarely has anything to do with real life, because they want to hurt others
and it’s kind of terrifying, how widespread antis are now. like, antis are everywhere, and honestly, it’s toxic as hell. it’s damaging to kids, it’s damaging to people who aren’t brainwashed- and let me be clear, that’s part of this. the brainwashing
because it is brainwashing. they’re holding up this obviously agreed on topic, and convincing everyone that it has the same weight when it’s done in fiction, when it rather fucking obviously doesn’tBut I thought it was all just fiction. Why make it all about you? And brainwashing, my dear, happens when you deny what 'normalization' means, and how fiction absolutely plays a part in it. Imagine having this dearth of self-awareness: you accuse others of ruining your fandom, of brainwashing others, and then turn around and argue your right to write underage ships and think no one will react?
Zen also asks what is wrong with incest, before she/it/they gets a response from someone who goes from, 'It's a cultural thing' to 'it's taboo' to 'it's to avoid inbreeding'. Perhaps they would be aware of a thing called inbreeding depression? It's not even cultural, it's biological. Inbred royal families suffered from pedigree collapse. Even if they don't 'have kids', they are decreasing their genetic fitness. We are programmed not to excessively inbreed or outbreed.
Not to mention all these 'consenting adults' people happily turn around and make fun of Alabama for being so inbred. It's akin to asking 'what's wrong about racism?' 'what's wrong about genocide'? and 'what's not about eating your own waste?'
And if it's all just fiction...why, then, the focus on drawing underage characters engaging in sex?
like, antis are more or less anti sex. you can’t make smut of any characters unless they’re adults (and their definition of what’s an adult change, and they don’t like it if you age up characters- like, what??) and even then you gotta do it Just As The Bible Said
antis are, more or less, those real bad, pearl-clutching, Christians. anything not exactly as they want it is Bad and Wrong and oh no, you’re going to hell nowSmut, in case Zen isn't aware, is pornography. It is agreed upon even by PornHub that you must be 18+ to view their content, and how actors and actresses must be over the age of 18 to be performers. If you are drawing child porn, well. Who's anti-sex? You aren't pro-sex if you're for the sexualization of kids, and don't think you're fooling anyone here.
Sex is the ultimate adult signifier. Yes, teens have sex. We also have a problem with teen pregnancy, and it is shown teen mothers not at their full potential have kids with lower IQs and are generally mentally unprepared to have them. Ask a teenage boy if he's ready to man-up and care for a newborn baby. With no money, no job, and no house, and is looking at a future filled with college debt and mortgage loans, I'd say no.
The whole point of sex education was to teach teens to be mindful of what they were doing. It was done to limit and control teen pregnancy and prevent strains on the system. Do you think these elements of reality make it to fiction? No.
Adults having sex is a different field, as they are mature enough to know what they want and can understand sexual cues. This is reflected in smut fiction. A child - and let's be honest here, kid characters have the characteristics of kids, they're not blocks of wood - would not be able to understand these cues. Why even bother to imagine them having sex, especially when you're not making them 18+?
The Bible said never look back at degeneracy, for you will turn into a pillar of salt.
How about this example:
Fiction is like a sand castle. It’s not a real castle. It’s just a pile of sand, just like fiction is just a pile of words. Smash it all you like.
Also note: Maybe someone worked really hard on their sand castle, and is standing by admiring it proudly. Now, if someone went by and smashed it at that moment, I WOULD be pissed. Because that’s a dick thing to do to the PERSON. Note, I still don’t care about the CASTLE, I care about PEOPLE.
YES, you can hurt people with fiction. And that’s wrong. Because hurting people is wrong. Don’t do that. But the mere fact that the fiction EXISTS? That doesn’t hurt ANYBODY. Don’t get pissed at those who enjoy smashing sandcastles, as long as they don’t do it in a way that hurts irl people.To which another pro-shipping blog, antis-delete-your-blogs, responded:
Consuming something in fiction is not even slightly the same as supporting it. How the hell can you support something in fiction? Fiction isn’t real. What are you supporting? People writing words? Oh no, tragic.But, I'll save the best for last. Here are some more. In this one, Zen fully admits Lolita is written from the point of view of a paedophile, YET 'it's just fiction'. Of course this fictional character tries to justify sex with an underage fictional girl. Do you think Zen had a moment where 'Oh, maybe I'm full of shit for once, and yeah, even though this guy is fictional it really is about an older man wanting sex with a little girl?' came through?
Nah, man.
From a larger post:
the problem is that if you ban one thing, suddenly everything else is being banned too. you can’t say “this is okay, but this isn’t” because that’s just not how it works. either everything is okay, or nothing is
and that’s a slippery, slippery slope. the difference between your stance (that it’s sexualizing children) and mine, is that one of them is entirely fictional, and the other isn’t. which comes back to the fiction affects reality thing again
it’s been brought up before that fiction is a reflection of reality. that it’s not fiction who affects reality, but reality that affects fiction- and that’s true. things exist because we make them
fiction can’t control people. it can’t make them something they weren’t already. children being sexualized is a problem, but it’s almost entirely on the media here, not on fiction
...fiction is for exploring taboo subjects. i have never, ever, seen anyone think ‘well it’s okay in fiction so it’s okay in the real world!’ because that’s not how people thinkand if they do, then they really shouldn’t be engaging with fiction to begin withI wish to reiterate that for all of Zen's talk of banning and how taboo subjects should be explored in fiction, she/it/they fully desires and advocates for removal and deplatforming of suspected 'racists,' 'bigots', 'Nazis', and TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
If fiction reflects reality, one would assume depictions of rape, abuse and paedophilia would be shown as the horrible, degrading things that they are rather than as fetishistic representations of the author's coping mechanisms.
Fiction can absolutely control and influence people's lives. To suggest otherwise is to undermine the entire human creative spirit and why people write, sculpt, and create music. An example of just how wrong this statement is is the use of propaganda during war and political campaigns: the claims made, the drawings made, may be entirely fictional, but the purpose is to convince people to do the message's bidding. Buy war bonds? Join the Japanese Imperial Army? Support the Boer concentration camps after the Anglo-Boer wars? They're all there, and these fictional representations absolutely affected how people thought about others, truth notwithstanding.
Yes, things exist because we make them. But why are you, an adult, willingly writing an underage pairing, if not to show how reality affects fiction in how underage partnerships affect the child more than the adult?
The true slippery slope is 'It's just fiction, it cannot affect anyone, therefore I am immune from criticism' excuse. Just because your fictional representation of children is not real, you are still depicting paedophilia. Likewise, a fictional representation of slavery and racism still depicts how racism and slavery affects people. 'The Book of Negroes' was fiction, as was 'Schindler's List' (yes, it is fiction), but it depicted both the experiences of black people and Jews under oppressive times. To declare both as 'it's just fiction, it cannot affect anyone' is, again, to entirely dismiss the medium and the message. It comes back to this lingering question: if fiction is fiction and has no effect on reality, why are adults writing and drawing representations of children engaging in sex, if not to draw and write them engaging in sex for their own benefit?
Have some more context.
it’s not tho! like, shipping minor/adult characters isn’t pedophilia. unless the shipper themselves are attracted to kids, it’s not pedophilia
like, my beef here isn’t even the whole minor/adult discourse. my problem is that antis accusing shippers - people they don’t even know - of being pedophiles is weakening the meaning of the word
the word pedophile should be solely exclusive for actual pedophiles. as in people who are sexually attracted to real kids
like, in the ship the adult would be a pedophile, yes, but antis accusing shippers of being pedophiles without any proof (beside that they ship something problematic, which isn’t actually proof) is damaging the intensity of the word. same way that after a while swears stop losing their punch
(...) i’m not saying some shippers aren’t also pedophiles, but! there is a lot of reasons for shipping kid/adult ships that isn’t fueled by sexual fantasy. like coping, or being a minor themself, or just because they like the interactions.
(...) look, while fanfiction and fandom stuff is bigger than it used to be, it’s nowhere near the level of being able to normalize stuff! if this was at mass media, i’d agree - but it’s not. plus, a lot of kid/adult stuff does cover the pedophilia subject (a lot of “it’s wrong” stuff tends to be part of why some people enjoy kid/adult, or just problematic stuff in general) which underlines the fact that it’s wrong. plus, kids shouldn’t be reading 18+ stuff anywayThere is the admission here that this fictional representation does involve the elder character being a paedophile and sexualizing the younger child they are being paired with, but Zen backtracks with saying that people 'might like' the interactions and how it muddies the fight against actual paedophiles. Going back to the 'reality affects fiction' argument, reality dictates that paedophilia is wrong, objectively and physically, so to see it represented in fiction should follow that line of reasoning. To write it positively, to argue that the kid isn't being harmed because 'age is just a number' and 'lol, it's just fiction' is to dismiss criticism and set up a wall against the fact that yes, you are presenting underage pairings in a positive light. Yes, it's fictional, but why is an adult writing such pairings as normal, instead of a threat?
I have yet to read an adequate response. Perhaps Zen could inform me more about the struggles with weight and how the media made her/they/it overweight and not poor eating habits?
They're just fictional characters, Zen. Oh, wait - you mean to tell me fictional representations of fat people are wrong, but everything you wrote previously is fine because it's just fiction?
Such a web to weave.
I'm going to take a detour in the next few paragraphs, so bear with me. The relevance here is how pro-shippers regard 'fiction isn't reality' and reality in general. It helps to understand how an author thinks to know why they write the things they write, for nothing happens in a vacuum and it will influence the messages they will tell their readers. The trend I mentioned earlier will be made manifest.
Antis-delete-your-blog is a future forensic psychologist who will work in the criminal justice system, handling the criminals who robbed your neighbour, ran over your dog, or molested your niece. This 'grey ace pan bigender' individual complains about people losing their rationality and how gate-keeping is bad...while still crying over the 2016 U.S. election and demanding that 'TERFs', 'Neo-Nazis' and people who in general disagree with them should be thrown out. See here, here, and here.
Mouse desires statistics and discourse. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but if I said something to the effect of 'illegal immigration is bad, and normalizing mass movements of people doesn't do anything any good, even in fiction', how would Mouse react? She/it/they would immediately accuse me of being a racist, because certain tropes in fiction are not allowed - provided they are the ones approving it. An added bonus is Mouse insists fiction isn't reality...while using fictional terms for her gender and demanding reality bend to accept it. How about that for rationality and discourse?
How about racism? Fine to go after shippers as pro-shippers when it's convenient. It appears racism takes precedence over paedophilia and rape - and if that doesn't work, accuse your opponents of being white supremacists or members of the Alt-Right. You will notice how quick pro-shippers will enter the mindset of the antis they frequently accuse of being irrational, anti-sex, and anti-creativity when they advocate blocking people who disagree with them, going as far as removing friends if they so much as support one of Donald Trump's policies.
An example of this 'It is not a witchhunt if we say it isn't' dumpster fire was the Reylo fandom from Star Wars - the pairing between Rey and Kylo Ren - which managed to go so far as to harass J.J. Abrams and get John Boyega to not-so-politely tell them to fuck off. Mouse had this to say:
Anyway, let’s just say I’m incandescent with rage at the fact that the top response on that article of the hate Reylo shippers received is completely excusing and ignoring all of that abuse because “Reylo was started by racists” or whatever horseshit they think somehow excuses rape and death threats, suicide baiting, and racial slurs aplenty on their own side. They really do salivate over the chance to excuse their own abusive behaviour.I don't know about you, Mouse, but Reylos earned their reputation on their actions alone. They went after Boyega, who said the pairing was garbage, and the director. Does Mouse remember this, or is she/it/they so focused on the 'anti rhetoric' this was forgotten? Scratch that. It wasn't the fault of Reylos at all, but antis infiltrating the fandom and making Reylos look bad. It was also an alt-right conspiracy.
What was that about gate-keeping? Pro-shippers, in the name of anti-censorship and free speech, will automatically assume shippers going after directors or actors must be infiltrators. Anything that goes wrong, any sort of criticism leveled at them is listed as 'anti-shipping', and they will promptly tell the critic to 'shut the fuck up' backed with 'it's just fiction.' For people who insist 'it's just fiction', they are adamant on defending a fictional relationship and accusing anyone who disagrees or even dislikes the final Star Wars movie of being an Alt-Right misogynist, as the Medium article argued with pomp (and dismissal that yes, Rey was a poorly written female character and a Mary Sue and how it is not misogynistic to point this out). How curious, then, how quick the 'it's just fiction' argument is thrown out when it comes to female representation and representation of minority characters. I will revisit this case, as well as the paedophilia/normalization/fiction-is-reality argument in a moment. (For more information, visit Mouse's blog here.)
Let us return to the 'fiction isn't reality' argument from our little detour. Two blogs focus more on the scientific/moral aspect of shipping. I will first consider the 'normalization' blog. Of note:
Another realization: “disgust as morality” leads directly to “mere exposure leads to moral decay”
As you are exposed to something frequently, you become acclimatized to it. It stops eliciting disgust. This happens with everything from gore to porn.
There has been research after research showing that fictional depictions don’t lower empathy for real victims or decrease the perceived severity of the crime, but it does lower disgust reactions at fictional depictions of it.
To antis, this lack of disgust is the normalization they are fighting against, because disgust is how you know something is wrong. If you no longer feel disgust, your morality is compromised.
That’s what I mean when I say antis resemble Puritan Christian morality. Christianity has so many conflicting instructions regarding morality, and many areas where it’s flat-out vague. And yet they know exactly what is good and natural, and what is horrifying and sinful.
How? It’s disgusting.
Antis are impossible to argue with, because the logical arguments are made post hoc to defend what they already know: this disgusts me because it is wrong. The disgust is the true basis of their argument, and no reasoned argument will touch it.There is the admission that repeated exposure to something, even pornography - which is simulated sex - can desensitize viewers. What this 'something' is can be fictional representations or real-world representations; after all, reality influences fiction. There is also the admission that written representations of these crimes lowers disgust reactions, so people are less likely to see them as 'wrong' but 'normal.'
The implication here is that disgust is purely a moral response, when it is a biological one. Contempt is also a biological imperative. If the OP is admitting that yes, even fiction is capable of desensitization, they have invalidated their entire argument. Opponents are promptly accused of being anti-sex and Puritan Christians, when no one here is really anti-sex, but is merely arguing that when you write sex they should be consenting adults and if it's sexual violence, it should be treated seriously.
Being a Puritan Christian would mean you would never want to hear what the other side has to say. Pro-shippers have blacklists, block lists, and take screenshots of people whom they trash behind their backs. They do not allow their critics a chance to respond, because pro-shippers have declared they are fundamentally irrational and are unworthy of their time.
An argument emerges from this post about problematic fiction and how no one is obligated to read it if they dislike it.
Secondly, where did I say that fiction doesn’t affect reality? Gimme a quote, bitch. No, fiction can have an affect on reality.
Hence Hamilton influencing USD. Hence protests over the original Sherlock Holmes serials. Hence certain countries with different politics banning books and movies with ideas they disagreed with. Hence discovering your sexuality through relating to an LGBTQIA+ character. Hence exposure therapy.
However, shipping is not activisim. Shipping is not endorsement. Fanfiction and fiction period is not real life.
(...) Would you say that you’re a liar and a bully who wants every corner of the world of fiction to cater to your individual standards? How about you say you don’t care about the death of creativity due to verbal abuse & mistreatment of fans you don’t agree with? Or that you don’t have a valid argument anyways because no one made it mandatory for you to consume online content that bothers you? How about you say you’re invading segments of fandom you’re not a fan of in the interest of making sure no one else is being a fan differently than you? How about you admit you use pathos-heavy attacks, buzzwords, insults, in the absence of original arguments?
Again. If a work of fiction created by a fan bothers you, make your goddamn own works of fiction. Find your goddamn own space. It’s the internet. It’s the fandom. It has a place for everyone. The most you can ask for is informative tagging. Not tagging catering to your opinions, just informative tagging. (i.e. a ship name, not whatever problem you associate with the ship.)
(...) A hysterical irony there, “we get it”. You have such an extreme, specific perspective.
It’s clear that antis :
- don’t understand fiction & fandom
- don’t have anything productive to add to this discourse
- don’t get that their lies & abuse affects minors and adults more dangerously than fanfic ever will
- don’t understand what “take responsibility for your online experience” means
Suicide baiting, even with your word choice, is a prime example of point three.Before I analyze these statements, let's see if the user isn't a hypocrite. Well would you look at that. A person who is deeply concerned about buzzwords, insults, censorship, and taking responsibility for their online experience has a problem with straight white men not liking a fictional movie. Obviously, the 'it's just fiction' matters the most to people still upset over the 2016 election, patriarchy, and female representation in fictional mediums.
This is a classic representation of the 'crybully'. This user tells the person responding to her that they in turn bully and demand all realms of fiction cater to their needs, while being the sort of person who would never read 'The Camp of the Saints' or watch 'The Birth of a Nation', or read Bret Easton Ellis. This user also says you can relate to, and discover, your sexuality through a fictional character, so their 'fiction is not endorsement' argument is shot right on the spot. If it is just fiction, why are you attached to that character's sexuality, and why does it form the basis of your identity?
You see, when you begin to analyze their claims with a fine-toothed comb, you realize they don't actually believe anything they say. They simply don't want you to notice.
We go back to, 'you antis hurt children and real victims of abuse more than you help them.' Oh? I haven't seen any of these pro-shippers actually advocate or prove how adults having sex with children is bad. Just that it isn't bad when fictionally represented - and excusing positive portrayals of it. What solutions do they ask? Deterrents, because you can convince a paedophile with your fanfics how he'll never rape again, and happily pay for his room and board off the dime of taxpayers for the rest of his life. I have also seen a person ask 'What's really wrong with incest?' while making fun of those same inbred white people and how whites really are the scum of the earth.
From this same blog, fictional representations of underage relationships are fine, but don't get caught using racial slurs:
We put broad rules in place that judge more on intention than specific content, and inevitably misjudge some intentions and censor - often transgressive, marginalized - art that we didn’t intend when we wrote the rules. (See how recent bans on sexual content of rape are hitting SA-survivor creators particularly hard, or how much porn created by gay people involved sexualized slurs and homophobic violence. Human brains are weird and complicated, fear & anger often get incorporated into porn.)
Given that no system is perfect, there is always going to be some content removed that shouldn’t be, and some content allowed to remain that shouldn’t be. We can not control whether our system will fail, but we can decide the direction it tends to fail. We’ve gotta decide whether we’re going to err on the side of allowing some bigots to subvert our rules, or err on the side of potentially censoring marginalized creators along with the bigots.Bans on sexualized content of rape - excused because a victim wrote it - is bad. But if you're a 'bigot', caught using racialized slurs even in a fictional story, well it's time for you to be banned. See how quick these pro-shippers will turn around on their promises to allow any content, even though it's fiction? I thought fiction didn't affect reality. Why is sexual violence allowed, but not fictional representations of racism? I thought teaching people how racism affects people through varying mediums was a good thing, and promotes understanding between the races?
There's that double-speak again. You cannot truly be for anti-censorship laws, be for pro-porn or pro-shipping if you will throw out people you personally consider to be a bigot. If mass bans don't help your side, what makes you think burning the books of bigots will help your case? Let's consider a few things. Would these pro-shippers, in the name of 'everything goes, fiction is not reality' support people like:
- Charles Murray, who wrote 'The Bell Curve'?
- Jared Taylor?
- Michelle Malkin?
- Ann Coulter?
- Heather Mac Donald?
- Vox Day AKA Theodore Beale?
- Chuck Dixon?
- Ibn Warraq?
- Raymond Ibhrahim?
- The Imam of Peace?
- Julie Bindel?
- The author of 'My Body is Me'?
- Dr. Emma Hilton?
- Stephanie Davies-Arai?
- the late Magdelen Berns?
- Miranda Yardley, Debbie Hayton, Blaire White, and Sophia Narwitz, all of whom are transwomen who acknowledge they are biological males yet wish to live as women?
- James Schupe?
- Walt Heyer?
- Robert Oscar-Lopez?
- Colin Flaherty?
- David Cole?
- Bret Easton Ellis, a gay man tired of political correctness?
- Thomas Sowell, a black man who is an accomplished scholar in his own right?
- Tommy Sotomayor?
The answer is no. All of these people come from different areas of the political spectrum, yet write and make content which challenges the views of pro-shippers. All of them would be condemned and thrown out as 'bigots'.
Now, consider this screenshot of published books shippers say the antis would call 'problematic'. The OP says if there is racism or homophobia or a general issue with a fic, a reader should have the right to critique it on that basis. But that isn't what these pro-shippers are aiming for. Later in the post, a user had this to say:
I think this is mischaracterizing the anti’s discussions in this ongoing debate. The texts with sexual violence explicitly condemn rape and incest within the narrative and the characters’ reactions. Fun Home doesn’t demonize Bechdel’s dad, and Bechdel unpacks how the underage sex occurred as an outcome of the environment they lived in, but she doesn’t say it was okay either, and she explicitly remarks on her dad’s fear that older men would prey on her brother as a small child. Two Boys Kissing is underage in that teen boys are dating other teen boys, and their sexual stuff isn’t really explicit. The soliciting sex from older men is very clearly a form of self harm by a suicidal boy. He’s terrified of his parents finding out he’s queer, so he pursues secret online relationships to feel loved and to never worry about bringing someone home to his parents. The Color Purple and Perks are trauma narratives. The rape and molestation are horrific events to the narrators, so much that Charlie goes into a catatonic state when he fully remembers what happened.
(...) Anti’s are concerned with fics that portray rape as titillating, violence as romantic, and then cover it up by saying “we’re just exploring dark themes.” Nobody cares about the dark themes, they care about the impact of the narrative on readers’ ideologies when it’s made erotic, and they care about how it’s using real people’s images in these sexualized materials without the actors’ consent. The constant straw-manning of these arguments into “they just don’t like dark stories” makes me concerned that the free fic side of this argument doesn’t actually have legitimate claims to stand on, because they refuse to engage with the legitimate concerns people raise.A very valid criticism. Did this go over well with others? Not at all.
Antis don’t want the texts they object to accessible ANYWHERE, by ANYONE. Because Evelina is problematic, I should not be able to read it. At all.
So long as the “anti” position is “these works are evil and should never be produced or published at all”, we can’t have a more nuanced discussion. There’s even been a chilling effect on the one-frequent discussions of, “Is x trope a little problematic?” or “So what’s all that with our sexual appetites being really squicky?” because even good-faith conversations get taken out of context and used as an argument for censorship.You didn't want a nuanced discussion, because anyone who did you called a bigot and blocked. If you wanted nuance, why did you use the 'it's just fiction, let me write kids having sex' argument?
Out of all the anti posts- which is to say, the pro-censorship posts- I’ve seen going past my dashboard, not a SINGLE ONE stated that they thought depicting (or referencing) rape or CSA in a fiction work was okay by them as long as it was clear the author was condemning it.Ah, but you see, this directly conflicts with the arguments presented earlier: no one ever made mention of authors condemning said acts, but writing underage/abusive ships as something to be desired. If the author wholly condemns these acts, and their fic is meant to show how these acts and traits affect people around them, I'm all for it - because you're showing it as wrong. If people have an issue with it, it's on them. But, as mentioned before, these people wouldn't even read Mein Kampf to understand why Hitler became the way he did, or 'The Protocols of the Elder of Zion' to understand why pogroms happened. You'd be an anti-Semitic bigot.
What nearly all of them DID say was that they thought anyone writing or defending the existence of such works was in favor of the acts they depicted. Full stop.
Shipping then adds:
I have engaged with that point on multiple occasions, but frankly, at this point? If you’re an anti who says antis are fine with fanworks that deal with dark topics in critical ways, I don’t believe you. Like, your whole thing is condemning entire ships, even though loads of really popular fic for “problematic” ships actually deals very sensitively with the subject matter! I have had really interesting discussions with pro-shippers about one of the top-kudos’d Starker fanfics on AO3, which includes incredible nuanced scenes of subtle manipulation, of Peter having breakdowns from getting in over his head. A plot that does a truly incredible job of making the relationship appealing enough to resonate but pulling no punches on how traumatic and manipulative it is for an adult to date a high schooler. Like, I’d argue this fanfic did a better job with that than many novels, and it ended bitter, with both of them worse off. This fic has thousands of bookmarks and is very popular among MCU starker shippers.
And an anti jumped into that conversation to inform us that we were all pedophiles, because we read a fic tagged Starker. Like…. you can’t be critical of the depiction if you can’t read it.There's an actual example of where a fic shows how an adult takes advantage of a younger lover. I don't have an issue; ironically it shows me how the author is unaware how common that is in actual gay relationships (and this trope features prominently in gay novels and poetry). Shipping says she/it/they don't believe anyone who is an 'anti' and wants to have a discussion, because the assumption made is that they can't understand what is being written. Shipping then adds as an afternote 'you can't be critical if you can't read it.' What happens when it is read, and then critiqued? Well you might get your comment removed, maybe you'll get reported, and the author will screenshot your review and send it to all of her/their/zhey/zhim friends to say how much of an anti you are.
Does shipping really stand by this comment? That dark fic which condemns these abusive elements shouldn't be attacked? No, not really. We're going to go back to that adage:
When pro-shippers say “fiction is not reality,” we’re not saying, “representation in fiction doesn’t matter/doesn’t affect people.”
What we’re saying is: “Someone who writes a murder mystery isn’t actually killing people when they put pen to paper. People who play shooter games do not wish to shoot people in real life. Someone who writes about rape does not want to be raped, nor do they wish to rape someone else.”One of these things is not like the other. As evidenced above, rape as a trope used in published novels is shown how horrible and demeaning the act is - even against a fictional character. To assume the reader is not going to sympathize or understand what the character is going through means you, as a fellow ficcer, don't understand how writing works in general. You're not writing a diary entry, you're writing a story which you are using as a medium to express your message.
No, writing rape doesn't mean you want to rape someone. Yet a fictional character dying of cancer shows how cancer can affect families; it's not window-dressing. And it's definitely window-dressing when you write rape and consider it no big deal before tossing out this non-argument.
It continues:
No real children were killed in the making of The Midwich Cuckoos/Village of the Damned. It was all fake; John Wyndham wrote about an adult killing his students, and it didn’t magically turn John Wyndham into a mass child-killer. When Sapphire wrote Push, she didn’t actually abuse any children – nor does her writing about abuse mean that she condones abuse in real life or wishes to be abused. It’s fake. It’s not real.
And similarly, no real children were harmed in the making of that (checks notes for latest controversy) BakuDeku fic you hate. If you have bullying-related trauma and you see a BakuDeku fic and decide to click on it, and then you have a negative reaction, that fiction is not harming you. Your unresolved trauma is harming you. Your decision to read something when you know it triggers you is harming you. Your bully’s past actions are harming you. All of those things – your trauma, your real-life bully, your actions – are real, and have the ability to harm you.
Fiction is not real.
Capisce?And as it's been established, fiction is a reflection of reality. If a CSA survivor is writing their abuse via an underage character going with an adult, who knows they are having sex/grooming a child, it shows me, a layman, that their unresolved trauma is peeking through. They will insist I am wrong for making conclusions, but you can tell the mental state of someone through their writing; this tactic was, after all, done to discover why Jack the Ripper killed his victims.
'Push' is a story based on a young black girl who was raped and impregnated by her father, abused by her mother, and deals with illiteracy and poverty. The author never wrote those tropes to glorify them, but to offer a glimpse into black girls who endure these obstacles. What pro-shippers don't realize is that in their attempt to glamourize their own 'problematic' issues, the works they reference never show the things they glorify as normal.
As an added bonus, shipping has this to say on underage teens receiving porn:
Like…. is having consensual sex w a 16 y/o really worse than sending requested porn to a 16 y/o? I mean…. context matters, but maybe not. And yet I understand and generally agree with the risks that those laws and standards are trying to mitigate, and I support upholding those social norms even if there’s not any exploitation or abuse immediately apparent in a specific situation. In my own view: age of consent has more to do with bodily autonomy, whereas obscene content laws have more to do with minimizing the risk of exploitation. They’re a convoluted mess for sure because maturing is messy and nobody does it at the same rate, but I see what they’re going for and generally respect it.Hmm...what was that about purity culture? And yes, sending porn to a 16-year-old, especially if you're an adult, is called sexting. Age of consent laws were introduced in the first place to protect girls from sexual exploitation, because at one point child prostitutes were common. Be thankful that issue is largely eradicated from civilized society, barring the exception of human trafficking.
Before I finish up with shipping, have this little tidbit into her/it/they's life. (View their blog history here.
But that…. hasn’t happened. More and more years into adulthood and a desk job and a mortgage, and I’m a touch better at controlling my emotions when I want to and I’ve paid good money to have some therapists help me feel less debilitating depression, but the enthusiasm? Is intact. More than that, it’s intact in a lot of adults I know. The bright, shining joy of a season finale that truly surprises you? Of your ship getting a cute moment onscreen? Of finding an amazing longfic with your favorite trope? It doesn’t go away, and it doesn’t dim, and it doesn’t get boring.Alright, now it's time to get to even more scientific/moralistic posturing. This is the largest, most-essay like post, so I will dedicate more space to it. This user is the most telling because they/it contradict every previous poster. Let's begin:
I don’t think I’ve ever argued that fiction has no bearing on reality. in fact, I can’t think of any instances of seeing an ‘anti-anti’ or ‘pro-shipper’ discourse blog argue that fiction and reality have no relationship whatsoever. I’d disagree with anyone who asserted that, because it’s plainly evident that’s untrue.
- fiction does not have a 1:1 affect on reality. meaning: humans don’t just blindly accept what popular fiction (such as mainstream media) tells them as truth, or assume that what happens in fiction is 100% safe to imitate irl. our cultural and individual absorption of the messages in a work of fiction are complicated and colored by our life experience, existing culture cues, and more. (x)(x)
This is precisely my stance. The medium is the message: you are never operating in a vacuum and no writer will ever tell you they really write for themselves. They write to send a message; to create a story society will consume. Whether it's real-world society or the Internet, people make things to be enjoyed, analyzed, and dissected. The success of you as a writer is to withstand the storm of criticism and improve, making a world anyone can enjoy.
- reality affects fiction affects reality. meaning: works of fiction are often inspired by real life. if a work of fiction is popular enough/viewed widely enough (such as mainstream media), its messages are assimilated and filtered and absorbed into culture, affecting people in real life. reality and fiction are connected by a complicated ecosystem of ideas, culture, assumptions, lifestyles, upbringing, etc., and fiction is rarely the sole originator of a bad or dangerous idea. (more likely it’s highlighting - on purpose or on accident - a cultural assumption that went mostly hidden before.)* (x)(x)
However, I will address the pro-shipper stance which inevitably emerges.
let’s take a moment to remember that anti-shippers who assert that fiction is harming people irl are generally using that argument against transformative fanworks, not big-scale MCU-level productions or bestselling book series.
transformative fandom is, on the scale of things, a very small place with a strong culture of tagging/warning for potentially squicky/triggering/kinky/etc content and populated primarily by marginalized people who are not likely to be tomorrow’s movers and shakers when pitted against rich (white, straight) cis men. for that reason, our ‘problematic’ works are more likely to be products of societal issues, not the cause of those societal issues. (we tend to take pop culture/the works that we’re fans of and use our creations like funhouse mirrors to problematic society - not necessarily better, but often different.)Consider this stance and contrast it to the one given above: fiction can affect reality, as it is subsumed into public consciousness and evokes reaction. Humans are not blank slates. However, fanfic and fan culture is exempt because it exists for a small grouping of people who cannot affect real world politics of views. Note the 'We are pitted against rich, white straight men' (someone inform them of the Forbes 500), despite you being a part of the machine by buying, consuming, and producing content. I see this hypocrisy in women's erotica/slash fanfiction, where the authors say they are better than established pornographers despite contributing to the massive billion-dollar porn industry.
The second aspect, 'we are minorities and we use fic to cope with our oppression' is another excuse against criticism. If I cannot criticize a CSA survivor who glorifies CSA in her/her stories, how can I criticize an oppressed Person of Colour because they are 'living their truth' through fiction?
Third, by admitting you are the products of all things wrong with society, every fic you make, every fanart you draw, of 'problematic' content shows how you are not defying what is wrong with society, but enabling it. The metaphor of funhouse mirrors to society is apt: all of your creations look right back at you, and all it takes is a stone to reveal the truth.
to be honest: I don’t think comparing a mainstream media depiction of casual bigotry to a mainstream media depiction of a sexual relationship between a(n implied innocent kid) 15yo and a(n implied predator) 30yo is very valuable.
Why? because we already socially condemn sexual relationships that have even a whiff of pedophilia/taking advantage of the sexually innocent. (that’s why people who take sexual advantage of underage people try to paint those underage people as sexually aware - because (disgustingly) it’s the lack of innocence that makes a victim of a sex crime ‘fair game’.) and if a person is tagged as sexually harming kids/anyone too young to be ready to consent? they’re scum.** we have no mercy.Do we? Consider the case of Desmond is Amazing. He's a young child paraded around as a drag queen. He is seen next to Michael Alig, who murdered another gay man in the 1990's. He is seen mimicking snorting ketamine. Most children don't even know what marijuana is, let alone ketamine. He was also seen in an adult gay nightclub, stripping, and accepting money from grown men.
Not a single gay adult man in that audience stood up and said it was wrong. Not a single one of these pro-shippers who are in favour of gay rights ever denounced Desmond, Drag Queen Story time, or Lactatia, a nine-year-old boy who regularly does pole-dancing in front of adults as a drag queen kid.
Despite this disclaimer, let's harken back to the 'It's just fiction'.
bigotry that goes unchallenged is a lot more widely ingrained. people with race privilege don’t notice racism. cis men don’t notice sexism. etc. it has to be super blatant for them to go ‘oh, that’s bigotry.’
a mainstream media 30yo/15yo depiction that’s remotely realistic? that 30yo character will be tagged as a creep. we’ll all hate the 30yo together, probably.
a mainstream media depiction of bigotry that’s remotely realistic? will fly under the radar of viewers who aren’t personally affected by it, and hurt those who are.What defines 'mainstream media'? New stories? TV shows? The content we consume? Because if so, even things like advertisements are fictional, but are there to sell you a product. Why, then, is it fine for pro-shippers to get hot and bothered over fictional depictions of life? Because it's perfectly fine for them to call it out. Not you. If you aren't part of the group they want to be oppressed, you cannot call out bad depictions of something. You have to be 'personally affected.'
But even if someone is personally affected by the glamourous portrayal of child sex in fiction, these pro-shippers responded with 'get over it'. Now, that stance is being retracted. They sincerely hope you will not notice.
let’s stop comparing fictional depictions of sexual/romantic relationships and how ‘healthy’ they are irl to racism/sexism/queerphobia in fictional works - especially fanworks. They’re not the same thing. (and I’m tired of people using racism/bigotry as a subexample to prove why we need to be so careful with our sexy fanfic being ‘sexually healthy’, ugh.)
tl;dr: remember that fiction - perhaps especially fanfiction - and indeed, all of fandom, doesn’t spring into existence in a vacuum. we all are cooking in this cultural pot, and we need to examine fiction and reality with that in mind.
*so if a work of fiction strikes you as carrying a dangerous or immoral message, it’s worth asking yourself which came first: a cultural message (you may not have ever noticed) or fiction about the message?
**there’s a reason antis try to get everyone they hate labeled as a pedophile.When asked on Twitter about the inherent contradictions in her/it/they's posts, the response was all over the place.
No: im saying, 'I am for free speech, but nobody is obligated to listen to anybody else’s free speech.'— free to fic (call me foff) (@freetofic) February 28, 2020
I’m saying ‘the limit of free speech is where it promotes dehumanization, intolerance, and violence against others.’
I’m saying—
it’s healthy to consider other points of view, and you need to do that to develop nuanced opinions. But if you feel like somebody is trying to shove opinions or content down your throat in a way that bothers you, you have every right to limit their access to you as an audience.’— free to fic (call me foff) (@freetofic) February 28, 2020
To normal people, limiting anyone's ability to make opinions, produce bothersome content, or access was called censorship. Pro-shippers sincerely believe that since they are the ones opposing so-called gate-keepers, they are free to limit the views of those they disagree with. This is an academically childish position to take, but unfortunately, it is becoming more the norm in a culture based on 'safe spaces'.
Now, let's return to free-to-fic's thesis.
The basic foundation on which all anti-shipping arguments rest is ‘fiction affects reality [in a direct, easy-to-predict way]’. This simplistic take on the complicated relationship of influence between mainstream media & cultural values leads militant fandom policers to believe and argue that if they can control the fictional content audiences consume, they can control the thoughts and behavior of said audiences. Get rid of ‘bad’ fiction that glorifies ‘bad’ things, and the audience will stop thinking ‘bad’ things are good, which means they will stop doing ‘bad’ things and letting other people do ‘bad’ things. (who knew a social utopia was so easy to achieve?)The classic 'Am I, or am I not?' 'Will he or won't he?' and so on and so forth. If we take this simplistic take - that fandom police regulating content is bad because it may glorify 'bad' things', let's compare it to free-to-fic's take on racism in fiction and fanfiction.
- it leads back to the oppression of the marginalized by silencing anything that falls outside standards set by the mainstream (hint: it’s not us LGBT/queer people that will come out on top in a censored space, and censoring stories that feature dark shit often silences and shames victims of rl dark shit by telling them their experiences are too disgusting to even be spoken of.)
- opposition effect tends to kick in. if something is censored, a certain kind of person will seek it out simply because it’s censored. And then because it’s censored, they will approach it without any more education about it than ‘this is so awful we can’t talk about it’ - which means they will be defenseless when they encounter the content itself.
And on racism:
tl;dr for under the cut: neither pro-shippers nor anti-shippers as whole (primarily-white) communities are very good at defending, advocating for, or centering the interests of fans of color.
first of all, let me point out that fans of color speaking out about racism in fandom shipping trends have been called ‘antis’ for it, even if they don’t accuse ppl who ship a specific ship of being racists b/c of what they ship. I’ve seen this push fans of color towards favoring anti-shippers (who cheerfully weaponize their fandom meta against fellow fans). this probably doesn’t help matters.I confess these pie charts are very useful, because it shows the pro-shippers, for all their want to represent 'people of colour' and fight racism, are overwhelmingly part of that privileged whiteness they so hate. Now imagine 'people of colour' pointing out something wrong about a ship or an element of fandom, and being driven to the 'antis' because the pro-shippers didn't want to hear what they had to say.
If you can't recruit people to your own side based on arguments alone, what does that tell you? Who are the crybullies here?
(As an afterthought, if, say, the Chinese and Indian fandom were to get in on it, they would absolutely crush all fandoms in terms of their numbers alone.)
How about misogyny?
and hey: our society is patriarchal. and hey: that totally does influence how women are socialized and how women think about themselves and others in negative ways. but this statement once again takes it too far: it posits that women functionally have no free will and are more or less mind-controlled by the influence of patriarchy into all their likes and dislikes.
(...)And no: radfems do not respect that some people they see as women enjoy things that they find reprehensible or disgusting. instead, they see that perceived woman’s enjoyment of what they hate as traitorous to the cause of womanhood. These traitors - who are also victims - must be rescued from their own desires, even if that means screaming at them daily about how terrible they are and how they’re hurting and betraying their fellow women and how they’re harming themselves. (because screaming at (perceived) women about how terrible they are isn’t at all a carbon copy of the behavior of misogynists towards women.)
(...)It’s true that patriarchy influences the lives of people of all genders, and that much of that influence isn’t for the better. it’s true that it particularly harms anybody who isn’t a cis man (and even cis men, if they don’t perform masculinity to satisfaction). but arguing that patriarchy robs people, particularly (perceived) women, of all their free will is a step towards trying to control the actions of those (perceived women) for their own good - and that’s gateway radical feminism in a nutshell.
I wonder if free-to-fic has ever wondered that by blaming the patriarchy or blaming it for all the ills of society invalidates their argument? Did they even bother to read what they wrote and notice 'Hey, I dun goofed?' If radfems are wrong for saying patriarchy influences every aspect of women's lives, why are you turning around still arguing for it?
Anything rattling in that head of yours?
Back to racism.
something has changed in the last 5-10 years about how many people relate to what we see. I can’t entirely figure out what it is, but I suspect it has to do with how social media works now. It’s like more and more people can’t entirely tolerate even the awareness that worldviews different from their own exist and are valid; the slightest glimpse of them is revolting.Ah, the lack of self awareness. It burns!
In my opinion, the sad irony is that fanworks only have the potential to cause direct harm by causing people to believe their contents are models for safe sex/relationships/etc because of the expectation that fandom is a space for education.
fanworks have been around for ages, but currently they are:
- in a post 9/11 social environment where the unknown/unfamiliar is feared, critical thinking is discouraged, safety is prioritized over freedom, and censorship is treated as protection,
- furthermore, content that is not only inappropriate for their age/maturity, but also on topics that they will never/have never received a proper, thorough education on
- (because schools have their hands tied by religiously-motivated regulations and guardians have abdicated responsibility for sex ed and lack acceptance for non-straight/non-cis identities);
- targeted marketing has encouraged and exacerbated existing stratification by income, age, gender, and sexual orientation; and
- increasing social awareness is constantly creating tension between social tradition and social advancement, putting incredible stress on anyone who represents ‘advancement’.
What was that about 'fiction isn't reality'?
between terrible education, a reactionary and conservative background radiation to English-speaking internet culture thanks to the US being a mess, and the fact most people are blind to social constructs that have formed their whole worldview, fanworks are getting a really bad rap.
altogether: fanworks are treated as being on par with mass media, social expectations, and culture norms in terms of the harm they can cause, even though they have comparatively little visibility and are usually created by marginalized people with little relative influence. They are reactions to mass media, social expectations, and culture norms rather than the cause of them.Then it is confirmed: your fanfic is more political than artistic, and is a reaction to you personally believing something is wrong. Do you remember what I said about a lack of self awareness?
anti-shippers take it as a given fact that fiction must be morally wholesome and ships must be healthy. breezing right past the questions of ‘do ships have to be healthy to be valid?’ and ‘do fanworks have to be moral to be allowed to exist?’, fandom antis jump straight to ‘this ship/this fanwork is csa/incestuous/abusive’ regardless of whether or not these things are true.
ship defenders and anti-censorship blogs end up focusing on pointing out the ship is not csa or the fanwork does not feature abuse, not necessarily conscious that by doing so they quietly cede ground: ‘but if it was unhealthy/immoral,’ they quietly imply, ‘it would of course be indefensible.’
(...) losing that ground - losing the position that all ships are valid and all fanworks are allowed to exist, moral value and purity aside - has naturally led shippers to adopt the language of antis when fighting back against antis or complaining about their NOTPs.
(...) they are infinitely malleable in the imagination and all interpretations of their relationship are valid. shipping it doesn’t prove anything about the shipper’s feelings about age gaps in rl couples or anything else.Free-to-fic assumes her/their readers have a short attention span. The previous posts highlighted how reality affects fiction, and how it definitely can have an impact on the audience. Shippers and authors must be aware of the content they are writing, and include appropriate tags. Now we see a ret-con: antis are wrong for pointing out issues within a work - underage ships being one - and rests on the 'it's just fiction, they don't support it in real life' excuse. Remember the 'you must challenge bigotry in whatever form you find it in, and tell the author what's wrong' post free-to-fic wrote? I do. She/they apparently doesn't.
Your position 'all ships are valid' goes right back to the argument you insist is the bane of your existence: it's just fiction. Even if the ship is based on abuse or features a minor, it is 'purity culture' to condemn it...despite making the argument that you are reacting to those things in the media. Tell me: how are you reacting to those issues by glorifying it? It seems you aren't really responding to those troublesome moral codes but normalizing it in your own way.
The kicker has to be this:
at heart, I think most fandom policers are afraid: afraid of being ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. afraid of exposure to new ideas. afraid of facing the trauma of past experiences, and afraid of being hurt by new experiences. afraid to tolerate the worldviews of others; afraid to admit that more than one healthy way of reacting to the horrible things in this world exists. and fandom/fanworks are full of these things, because they come from such a diverse group of people.
the existence of anything outside their control means they could, at any moment, encounter something that makes them afraid - and being reminded that they are afraid makes them angry. but anger is a ‘bad’ emotion - unless it’s righteous anger, or justified anger. so: everything that makes them angry is a dangerous influence that must be destroyed. justification established. now it is their duty to make the world a space that’s ‘safe’ for them.Now compare it to this:
1) there’s a difference between saying ‘kylux fans are racist’ and ‘the popularity of kylux is an example of a pattern of systemic racist tendencies that often manifest in fandom as promotion of a background (cis) white dude character into a dark horse fave’.
I’ve said the latter. I have not said the former.
2) the only time I can remember even making this comment re: kylux was specifically using it as an example of how you can’t apply comments about a fandom as a whole to individuals in that fandom.
tl;dr: any single ship a person enjoys does not prove that individual is or isn’t racist.
3) ‘WHINING’(??????) about racism is ‘cringe’ and I sound like a ‘snowflake’ because I recognize racism is a thing that affects fandomgoers? who are you hanging out with, my anonybruh? b/c that’s sounding an awful lot like anti-sjw/dudebro/exclu bs.
What was that about safe spaces? What was that about racism? What was that about being free to ship whoever and whatever you wanted? Well it looks like the pro-shippers just can't decide on what they want. If they truly wanted to be anti-authoritarian, they'd toss this 'racism' card right out the window, because this race card has been rejected. If you wish to discuss race relations and construct it in a way all races can relate, go ahead. If you wish to promote the 'White People Bad', and 'Black People Innocent', ironically, you aren't doing much for black people - and coming from the people who say antis aren't doing much for children says a lot.
and pro-shipping circles sometimes attract white supremacists who advocate for ‘free speech’ (where ‘free speech’ means ‘freedom to spread violent and deadly ideals without limit or criticism’). when pro-shipping circles aren’t vocally anti-racism and anti-intolerance, these ‘free speech’ advocates can feel quite at home in our spaces, and that’s not fair to pro-shippers of color.If you are someone unequivocally dedicated to free speech, I should not be seeing such fan cannibalism in the name of who is the most virtuous white person. Going off the pie graphs and what I've read about AO3 user stats, fanficcers are overwhelmingly white women of the liberal sort. Others are 'non binary' and a few are transgender (or belong to the multitude of genders whose existence is unlimited as the colour spectrum). There are Asian-centric fanfic archives, but as said before, if the Asian/Indian community jumped into fanfic en-masse, there would no longer be a 'white problem' in fanfic as by numbers alone they would rule. In any case, it is amusing to see how pro-shippers will leave behind their free speech proclamations provided a problematic issue enters the fray.
As I've personally noticed, all of these pro-shippers are white (antis-delete-your-blogs is of an unknown ethnic minority), very pro-trans, and anti-bigotry. What this 'bigotry' means in the words of people who decry antis making safe spaces is: "I am against banning, but if you are a racist, a suspected white supremacist, a feminist who doesn't think men are women, or if you're a person who supports just one of Trump's policies, I want you gone." On Twitter, pro-shippers will ask others to block and remove one of their own...even if they are a Trump supporter.
To go back to the 'reality is fiction' and how fiction affects culture, compare free-to-fics arguments with those of the other users presented: media can absolutely affect people's thoughts and social mores, but fanficcers do not have any moving power as they are a minority in fandom and in media. But we know fandom has a massive impact on pop culture: people buy merchandise, slogans are used in media and on t-shirts, and it inspires people to name asteroids and dead animals after their favourite books and characters.
It is true, though, that the absolute purchasing power of fanficcers is up for debate. Fanficcers write their works for free and build up an audience under the auspice of transformative works. They build a audience and even have sway over the circles they command. And, like it or not, fans with purchasing power can influence how a medium goes. It should be noted that while AO3 is great for hosting all manner of content, it relies on a gift economy and the fans writing fic for their respective fandoms are engaging in those 'capitalist structures' they despise. It should also be noted AO3 proclaims to be for free speech...until you criticize an author. Then you get a report and your comments are removed.
Free-to-fic argued that criticism is fine, provided you know what you're dealing with. I agree with this notion. And as an adult who is capable of rationality and possesses analytical skills, I will approach fics and fandom in general with a critical eye. If a ship or a story is problematic, and the author retained its problematic status, I will say so. If the author 'ages up' a minor character for a romantic pairing, I have no problem with that, no more than I have a problem with the lolis of Touhou being drawn with breasts, hips and thighs to engage in sexual scenarios. If you are writing adult content, for adults, the expectation is that the agents involved are adults.
The argument that fiction, including fanfiction, is a reaction to things wrong with the media and the messages it promotes doesn't lend much credence to the 'ship whatever, regardless of age' people I've mentioned here. If you are reacting to, say, sexualization of teens and minors, what message are you selling in your fic? Take an example from another 'fiction is not reality' blog, on the Alpha/Beta/Omega trope. This trope, based on a sexual caste system, is a soft touch on sexual slavery. Omegas cannot marry people of their own free will, and Alphas cannot be penetrated or 'topped'. Alphas cannot go with alphas, and males undergo estrus and hormones like normal human women.
ABO is fucking fantastic, the world-building, the fluff (scenting is so fucking cute), the smut (the fact I have a pregnancy kink has nothing to do with this I swear...) I even love non A/O pairings (my favourite fic concept is a male omega who is trans alpha, who is married to a female beta. They want a baby but his suppressants prevent him impregnating her, and then he has to go through heat and his wife gently takes care of him over the week and easing his dysphoria with love)
Free to fic, alright. We need some more positivity!I love omegaverse fluff because even the base level is still k/inky lolBeside the classic A/O I enjoy A/A pairings, love the trait clash/power battle/taboo element they often have.
O/O I tend to avoid because there’s a point where things get way too wet and messy and whiny even for me, and that’s where it’s at.
Totally neutral on B/O, it feels like a regular pair 90% of the times I read it.
And I’m more positively inclined toward A/B because holy hell the “I’m not good enough to satisfy my partner” anxiety is off the charts, the angst is /chef’s kiss.
Again, I don't think these people have a lick of self-awareness. You want to promote more wholesome messages, even though you have argued such wholesome messages are the realm of 'antis' and how a 'purity culture' should not be attained, as that is authoritarian. However, it is fine for pro-shippers to promote positive messages in order to change people's thoughts. How are they going to do this? Promote it in fiction.
I also think there’s an inherent fault in depending so much from big companies to deliver what you need, because on one hand you’re holding them responsible, sure, but on the other you’re putting a sign on your head that spells “exploitable”
You become another number bringing in money and nothing more. More than that, you become a faceless figure who’s willing to give them money because you’re desperate for something.
Push for positive change in mainstream media, but don’t depend on them. Boost local and indie authors, encourage and support horizontally for more and more diverse content to just be out there. It doesn’t matter how good (which is a subjective judgement) and well produced: get it out there to exist.
But wait! Isn't fiction fiction? It's not real, so why go through all the trouble to promote something that doesn't exist?
Because they don't believe the garbage coming out of their mouths. What pro-shippers don't want you to do is notice. They don't want you to have the same analytical skills they claim to have. The minute you use these skills to point out what massive hypocrites they are will earn you the 'anti' title. Going back to the 'reactionary media' point, one has to ask: why, then, the excuse for rape and underage fics? They don't even accept those among them who condemn it - they argue all ships are valid, even if they are underage. But if these fics, these tropes, these messages, are all reacting to the culture...how, exactly, are you showing yourselves to be better than the mainstream media you condemn?
You aren't condemning racism; you fear and cannibalize each other the minute one is suspected of it. You are for freedom in fiction, yet when someone touches on race, homophobia, or gender identity in a light you don't like, you will dismiss and dog pile that person. You promote free speech, yet turn around and say you have no obligation to listen to your opponents, while condemning safe spaces.
If you are reacting to child molestation and the reality of rape in your fiction, why do you get angry when someone says you are window-dressing it? Why are you arguing for the sexualization of underage characters, even when you sympathize with these characters, even when you say these characters awaken your sexual identity, by saying you are reacting to the culture? This isn't a reaction at all; instead, you are internalizing the thing you say cannot exist by way of it being fiction.
The argument 'I am reacting to something, therefore I cannot be at fault, as I didn't start it' means you are playing the victim. Writing underage ships and creating underage content doesn't make your excuse of, 'well I'm just reacting to the media' any valid. If you were truly reacting to the media's promotion of sexualization of teens, women, girls, and racism, you'd be right at the forefront with your work sending a clear message: 'We do not want this. We can be better.'
The message you're sending instead is, 'Well everyone else does it. It's just fiction. Who does it affect? No one.'
Nothing happens in a vacuum. You can't react to racism with more racism. You can't react to sexism with more sexism. You can't react to rape and paedophilia with your own variants of rape and paedophilia, more so if you are treating it as a glamourous thing. Reality affects fiction, and if you are all reactionaries, you show your hand when you write and draw your works. People are not stupid. Outsiders will clearly see what you are doing. You're not creating content for adults; you aren't creating content or exploring taboo subjects to make people think. You're normalizing elements of the behaviour you condemn in the media.
No fan truly believes normalization can't occur through fiction. It can. Star Trek brought blacks and Asians to the forefront. 'Rambo' highlighted the treatment of Vietnam war veterans. 'Jaws' encouraged the killing of great whites, even though the film was based on bull sharks. 'I Spit on Your Grave' showed that women didn't have to be victims of rape. 'Lolita' was written through the eyes of a paedophile (or hebephile, whatever). 'The Camp of the Saints' was about a massive invasion of non-whites to white countries. All of them had taboo themes. We, as adults and consumers, absorb these messages and interpret them as we will.
Likewise, adults and those with common sense can see your underage pairing fic, see that you aren't condemning it but glorifying it, and wonder what sort of person does that. If you're 'reacting to the media'; if it's 'just fiction', then I and others will assume you think your readers are idiots. What you write is out there for the public to see. Your medium is the message. What you say, the stories you craft and the art you put out there, is done to influence opinion.
These people are not your friends. They are not for free speech. They are still crying over the 2016 election. They refuse to allow criticism of their works. Why? Because they don't want to face their own massive hypocrisy. They don't want to see how they fetishize the taboo topics they want a discussion of. And finally, they don't want to see that the true authoritarians are them.
Fanfic is like the mirrors of a funhouse: everything you write is a reflection of you, and all it takes is a stone to smash the glass house you built. You're not sending positive messages if you are reflecting all the horrible things about the world; instead, you show yourself to be a swamp monster.
I would also like to add as a final note the comparison between paedophilia/rape in fiction versus 'satanic' music and 'violent' video games: video games have a story and have a message. 'Manhunt' was hugely controversial, but the story within it wasn't just a glorification of violence but a world where people pay to see criminals butcher each other for money. It was to show how media and violence, over time, could desensitize and reprogram people (an ironic thing, as pro-shippers deny this). It was to show inhumanity on public display. Marilyn Manson's music is considered Satanic, yet his music contains messages about Hollywood hedonism, selfishness, and the obsession over material things. The video game 'Metal Gear Solid V' had the character Paz being raped, and the player can hear it over a tape. It was not glorified. Later, the character Quiet is almost raped by a Russian soldier. She frees herself and kills him.
Fanfics writing underage and rape porn don't have a similar post to stand on, more so since they can't stop using 'it's just fiction' to hide the fact they're just awful writers who are incapable of handling serious issues.
Lastly, pro-shippers were throwing around this organization. I would like to tell them that if they think paedophile vigilantes are wrong, they are welcome to interview the inmates in prison who beat child molesters to death. They are also welcome to interview the parents and jury members who had to listen to what happened to that child. The queer artists who wrote such pairings should also consider the amount of CSA which occurs in LGBT circles, and how taboo that is. Nothing like reacting to media and reality by inadvertently continuing to create the content you condemn. But no one ever asked, let alone assume, pro-shippers had self-awareness anyways. Why should we hold them to any other standard?
Just remember: stop noticing things. They really don't like it when you do.
(I would also like them to actually read the studies they write, and stop assuming stigma is what makes paraphilias work. You can't keep everyone in comfort, especially since people have to pay for their mistakes.)
(Addendum: this will likely be a series, with the next piece being on 'rape fantasy', and the nature of criticism.)
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