freedom-of-fanfic:

churchyardgrim:

failssafe:

thedarkempressofthenight:

freedom-of-fanfic:

a critical thought exercise

if you are not in fandom and you see somebody in fandom describing themselves as ‘anti-pedophilia’ or ‘anti-abuse’ I want you to take a moment and apply some critical thinking to that label.

who has to explicitly state they’re anti-child molestation or anti-abusing people? Is this not the normal position? This is like saying ‘I’m anti-cancer’. of course you are. Even actual child molesters and domestic abusers are going to claim they’re morally opposed to what they do in the dark, when they think they can’t get caught.

And if that’s the case, do you really think that self-described ‘antis’ are running into open opposition for their views on pedophilia or incest? do you really honestly think that’s likely? Do you really, honestly think a bunch of people leading otherwise normal lives are going to bat for child sexual abuse and beating your spouse? OPENLY going to bat for it, even?

Is it remotely realistic for there to be such a huge amount of unmasked support for csa, rape, and abuse that people have a reason to label themselves as ‘anti-pedophilia’ or ‘anti-abuse’?

Or … is ‘anti-pedophilia’ actually code for being anti-something else? Something that isn’t utterly reprehensible to the overwhelming majority of people. Something that people would reasonably be willing to go to bat for with their name and reputation attached.

Which is more likely: that fandom is overrun with people who unapologetically and openly support child molestation, incestuous rape, and domestic abuse? Or that people who say they are ‘anti-pedophilia’ – a position so normal, so common it’s hardly worth mentioning – are signaling they oppose something actually controversial to oppose?

Just something to consider.

Interesting concept.

Sorry but am I having a stroke or

so there’s a thing people will do where they want to campaign against something, but if they were honest about what the thing is, they wouldn’t be able to garner much support. they can’t say “I’m against romantic YA literature” or “I’m against porn” because people won’t back them as readily. so what they do is attach a buzzword that people are automatically sensitive to and try to connect the two. “romantic YA lit” becomes “pedophilia”, “porn” becomes “abuse” etc etc, even though they’re not remotely the same thing.

you see this happening all over fandom now, where fanworks exploring dark themes, or adult ships with an age gap, or even real life adults engaging in consensual kink play, are all labeled “pedophilia” in an attempt to make an emotional argument against them. the actual definition of pedophilia, as a serious mental illness causing attraction to prepubescent children, is completely ignored in favor of watering down the word to apply to anything that makes certain people uncomfortable. and this is really dangerous, because it creates alarm fatigue and causes confusion over what this word actually means, which leads to real world cases of child abuse being ignored or misrepresented.

making a big deal about being “anti-pedophilia” is like hollering about being “anti-slavery”; of course you’re anti-slavery, what kind of society do you think you live in where that’s something you need to broadcast! certain people cultivate the impression that fandom is full of abusers and predators so that they can hold the moral high ground and use that leverage to police how others engage with fandom, and they misuse the terms for very serious crimes to do so. that’s what this post is about.

thank you so much for this excellent, level-headed explanation of the point I’m trying to make. (My own addition was less eloquent and much more ‘loud’.)

there are a few reblogs from fandom antis on this post now as well. their reactions have shown me something that I hadn’t fully considered: that many anti-shippers actually buy their own press to the point that they genuinely believe things like:

• saying they are ‘anti-pedophilia’ is the same thing as saying they are against the inappropriate sexualization/objectification of teenagers
• there is no difference between fandom being full of objectified teens wrestling with their own objectification via fanworks and the objectification/sexualization of teenagers in mass media
• it is inappropriate to ever acknowledge or address that adolescents can have sexual desire or sexual feelings and express those feelings
• simply acknowledging that adolescents can have sexual desire or sexual feelings and are capable of expressing those feelings (in fiction or irl) is the same as justifying adults who have inappropriate interactions with adolescents irl
• no matter what the reason for its creation, fanworks containing fictional adolescents having sexual feelings or sexual interactions of any kind are exactly the same as objectification/sexualization of adolescents in mass media and have exactly the same effect

I knew that fandom antis conflate fiction and reality (and fanworks and mass media) because it makes their cause look much more legitimate and builds the assumption that people who defend fanworks are proponents of awful things irl: that’s literally what this post is about. but the reblogs on this post make it clear that fandom antis either can’t or won’t distinguish between a fanfic writer depicting child molestation and a real life pro-contact MAP or a person who collects and consumes cp of real children.

They can’t or won’t tell the difference between a person who has been sexualized and objectified their whole life against their will now sexualizing and objectifying a fictional character (which, being fictional, can’t even be hurt by it) and a person who sits at the top of a media empire and authorizes a line of ads that uses sexually provocative images of real people to sell a product.

They can’t or won’t differentiate between interest in nsfw fanworks about fictional, animated characters based on ‘looking good together’ or ‘interesting character dynamics’ who happen to be assigned adolescent ages, and interest in a porno film that kinks on a character being young and inexperienced.* 

(*in the sense that interest in the porno may be founded on objectification/sexualization of teens, just as purity culture kind of drives up the ‘value’ of inexperience and youth and the taboo of sex as inherently corrupting. the porno itself would be a symptom of the problem more than the cause, imho.)

it’s all the same to fandom antis. they believe their own hyperbolic labels because from their POV, all of these things are equally dangerous, equally corruptive, and equally present in fandom. (Which I guess makes sense, seeing as anti-shipper rhetoric is predicated on black and white thinking. when you can only depict concepts in two shades of morality, it’s hard to see or care about nuance.)