shalashit

Also be aware because people against antis are very careful of how to present themselves to others. You’ll often see them acting like “anti behavior” is totally unreasonable and overdramatic. These are exaggerations. I have outright seen people who complain about antis respond to a post criticizing a relationship between an 18 year old girl and a man in his mid-late 30s and viewing it through a critical lens with “see this is what I mean, antis just can’t stand when characters are a few years apart” and boil this down to “a ship where the age gap is more than one year apart”.

People complaining about antis are the ones exaggerating and making up stories. If you read carefully, you’ll see they are outright telling you they are pedophiles and/or support/explain away pedophilia.

Please be careful, especially if you’re underage, interacting with such people.

Categorizing the behavior of people who are against antis as exaggerations, saying by inference that all antis are providing reasonable criticism, and also saying that people who say that a relationship between a 18-year-old girl and a mid-to-late-30′s year old man is completely and utterly without question and is only a few years apart is incorrect and blatant strawmanning.

For the record, my stance on those sorts of relationships is that it is legal according to what is pretty much a global age of consent, and cannot be compared to pedophilia or other forms of abuse which are inherently nonconsensual because one party is not capable of consent. That being said, while it is legal, it’s much more likely for the younger party in the relationship to be taken advantage of / the relationship to become abusive. The solution is not to say that these sort of relationships should not exist, but rather to provide resources and education about how abuse can be present in these relationships and help support 18 year old adults to make their own decisions.

Back to the point about strawmanning - I have been told by antis that I should have my uterus cut out, that I should eat glass, drink bleach, etc. etc. I have been told that I deserved to be raped and that I deserved my childhood abuse. I have seen this happen to multiple, multiple people, to the point where there’s at least four blogs that I know of dedicated to collecting receipts of antis behaving horribly to other survivors.

To me, it’s especially upsetting because everyone disagreeing with her is explicitly saying, “You can hate it as long as you’re not actively setting out to hurt real people,” and the fact that she’s just not acknowledging that when she’s clearly read the replies… looks to me like she does support hurting real people, but won’t admit it.  Certainly won’t condemn it.

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Imagine telling your therapist you have intrusive thoughts that you can’t stop having them and your so scared and your managing them the best you can and imagine that therapist telling you your a fucked up individual who belongs in a psych ward for having INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS.

Imagine telling them you wrote about your experiences and posted it on your private blog, tagged so that anyone with those triggers can avoid it, and imagine that therapist tells you your as bad as your fucking rapist.

Now imagine after you leave that therapist because you can’t take being verbally and emotionally abused and then you find out they called your parents to tell them what you told them in confidence in their office. Then the cops show up at your house because they said you were a predator and didn’t mention they reached that diagnosis because you ship Sheith.

(X)

They are literally capable of causing more damage than good in the real world, with victims and the mentally ill.

I can still access it for whatever reason

But if you’re an anti that likes Adora x Catra and mock ships like, idk, Sheith, how does it feel?

Are there kid-friendly and kid-oriented spaced? Yes! I played on many when i was growing up, club penguin, PBSKids, cartoon network, they were a lot of fun. I played on them well into my teens.

Youtube was new at the time and it was an absolute minefield. My parents warned me against using it. But i decided it was fine and i could handle myself, i was around 15.

And honestly, for the most part, it was fine. I mostly watched music videos, AMV’s, and watched anime in 3 parts per episode. And then i found fanfiction. Yes fanfiction videos on youtube.

Anyway, i found fanfiction.net through googling the fics i was reading. And woo boy did i find some very non-kid-friendly fics. I did it knowingly, i wasn’t stupid, i knew what rated M meant. I played rated M games, i was fully aware of what i was getting into.

And, i have never clicked out of fics faster. Most fics were fine, there was bold wording ‘LEMON WARNING, LEMON AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK’ and at the end there’d be ‘LEMON OVER, CONTINUE AT YOUR LEISURE’ or something similar. But the ones that weren’t, i could only blame myself.

I knowingly added in M rated fics, i kept reading knowing the risk that there would most likely be sex, i wasn’t stupid. Teens aren’t stupid, they know what rated M means.

And honestly? I don’t blame the writers. I can’t blame them.

I knowingly clicked on the fics, i knowingly clicked to include rated M fics.

Reading fics is one of the safest ways to interact with fandoms in my experience. If it gets bad, click the back button. Excluding Mature fics will get rid of at least 90% of smut fics. And Archive of Our Own’s tagging system is just glorious. Every possible warning has a tag.

Fandom isn’t a safe space for kids. Can it be totally safe? No. Can it be safer? Yes. By simply tagging things appropiately and teaching them what things are.

If your fic is marked Explicit, then you’ve done your job. If your fic has warnings, you’ve done your job.

I’ll say this bluntly. I do not care if you have the same interests, ships, or likes/dislikes as me. The moment I see someone in any of my “camps” do something shitty I’ll gladly call it out without question.

That being said, and this is clearly not directed to all of you guys just the vocal (i hope) minority, that if you’re a sheith shipper, and you go out of your way to harass someone for drawing art of a ship you don’t like, you’re literally on the same level as antis and I for one won’t stand for it. Have your NOTP’s all you want all the live long day, we all have them, but if you’re a self entitled individual that believes in harassing people to the point where they leave the fandom because they drew something you don’t like, you get no sympathy from me, and all my sympathy goes towards the people you harassed into silence. My only hope is that Karma hits you hard if you’re like that.

An anti is someone in fandom who harasses, threatens, and cyberbullies other fans because of what characters they like, what pairings they ship and what content they write/read.

They claim to be against “pedophillic ships” but their definition of pedophilia is…completely and utterly out of whack. Things antis have literally called “pedophilic” or in support of “pedophilia” include:

Relationships involving two adults

Relationships between teenagers that fall under Romeo and Juliet laws (a 16 year old dating an 18 year old, for example, or even a 17 year old dating an 18 year old)

Relationships involving any age difference whatsoever (an 18 year old and a 20 year old? pedophilia. a 40 year old and a 60 year old? pedophilia.)

Relationships involving people with a height difference (because short people are “child coded”)

Relationships involving neurodivergent and mentally ill people (iirc this was specifically targeted towards autistic people because antis think they’re “child like” which makes them literally children to antis)

Teaching sex ed to kids in school.

CSA survivors writing about their abuse in any capacity.

CSA survivors saying they don’t like their abuse being compared to fanfic about cartoon characters.

CSA survivors saying they don’t want to get involved with fandom discourse

and etc etc etc, the list goes on, and the point is that when antis say they’re against pedophilia very rarely are they talking about actual pedophilia. They’ve misused the word from hell and back in order to shut down anyone who disagrees with them (actual CSA survivors included) to the point where people on this site have alarm fatigue from the sheer amount of false pedophilia accusations these people have made. Their definition of “incest” is also just as incorrect—they consider characters who have been friends since childhood to be “siblings”, they’ve also called ships between adult characters incestuous because one adult is older than the other.

Antis have also

Made constant death threats and sent suicide baiting messages to both minors and CSA survivors

Told both survivors and minors they deserved to be abused/raped/killed

Accused CSA survivors of being pedophiles, pedophile apologists, or just as bad as their abusers

Accused minors of being pedophiles and pedophile apologists for drawing, writing, or shipping minor characters who are their age or older

Flooded people’s submit boxes with everything from pictures of dead animals to torture to actual child porn

Harbored actual abusers (there’s literally a rapist in the anti-reylo community right now who they refuse to do anything about and this is not the only situation like this that has happened - several antis have been outed as actual predators and the anti community protected them every time while anti antis were the ones trying to get attention to the situation)

Used racist, ableist, transphobic, and other slurs against shippers.

Attempted to dox multiple bloggers

Harassed a woman on twitter who had nothing to do with fandom because her username was ‘klance’ (her actual name is K. Lance) to the point she had to contact the police

Threatened to kill show staff members and their families

Frequently ignore callout posts for actual predators and child abusers while giving thousands of notes to posts calling people out for their ships

Denied the identities of other fans to try and make their own arguments look legit (frequently call queer fans cishet, fans of color white, frequently accuse abuse survivors who disagree with them of lying about their abuse, etc)

and I could literally go on all day.

Antis are not about being against “pedophilic ships”, they’re about using the false accusation of pedophilia to harass people who read/write/ship/enjoy things they don’t like and the people who they target are frequently abuse survivors and minors and other marginalized people.

Their behavior doesn’t make fandom (or at-risk people in fandom) safer and multiple abuse survivors (myself included) have spoken out about how antis have made fandom unsafe for us to be in and how triggering their behavior in pursuit of attacking “pedophilic ships” (which, again, are rarely actually pedophilic) is to us. Absolutely nothing antis have done is in pursuit of actually improving fandom and they frequently refuse to do or support anything that people could do to make fandom a safer experience (antis frequently refuse to use tumblr’s filtering system or any blacklist extension, they shit on the proper tagging of fics/fanart/other posts which is a system that exists to help people protect themselves, and multiple fans have stated that they’re now afraid to properly tag their posts because antis use those tags to harass people—something that actively harms fans because if posts aren’t properly tagged then people get hurt by being exposed to content they don’t want to see).

The thing is that media criticism is good, it’s helpful, it’s beneficial to everyone—-this is a sentiment that most anti antis agree with—-and people are allowed to have content and ships they don’t like but what antis do is not media criticism but personal attacks towards people for the media they create and consume that go so far over the line to the point of being criminal, and what antis do is not simply being against certain content but expecting all of fandom and everyone in the world to only consume content that antis tell them is okay (and meanwhile antis are incredibly hypocritical and frequently consume the very same kind of content that they harass others for enjoying—-see: there are antis who ship pairings like Hannigram and watch shows like Devilman Crybaby, while they harass other people who enjoy other content with the same or even milder themes). 

Basically TLDR - Antis paint themselves to be the good guys going on a just crusade against abuse and “abusive ships” but they’re the abusive element in fandom and have harmed countless people with their rhetoric and behavior.

dont listen to this fucking bullshit. your definition was right (well, some also use it to mean “anti kink”, but thats a separate discussion ultimately). this post is the lies and bullshit by someone who DOES support problematic shit, trying to smear those of us who actually see an issue with things like child porn, like middle aged adults fucking children, etc.

an anti simply means someone against pedophilia and related ships and content in fandom (as well as other bad ships like incest, abusive ships, etc). yes, many antis DO harass and suicide bait people over it, but its not as if its some fucking requirement like how OP described it (take note of those carefully chosen words to make you feel animosity toward someone you’d normally be agreeing with. it wasnt an accident. they know their rhetoric is shit, but they also know how to dress it up and make it look ethical when its actually really disgusting. pedo apologists like OP use this tactic to get people who are new to the discussion to side with them and feel invested before understanding what its really about. its a straight up grooming tactic). you shouldn’t judge any group by the actions of a few. Antis are no different. The true definition of an anti is just someone who is anti-pedophilia and anti- the apologistic culture in media, regularly intentionally toeing the line to slowly normalize more and more bad shit.

as for the list:

as a group, we are not calling any relationship between two legal adults pedophilic. some misuse the term for that, yes, but its not pedophilia and we dont call it that. adult age gaps CAN still be toxic, yes, for example, a 40 year old regularly going after barely-18s is still predatory, even though it is, by definition, not pedophilia. Showing this sort of relationship in the media is intended to blur the lines there, and older adults regularly seeking 18-19 year olds are typically the sort of adults who’d also pursue a 15 year old if there were no legal or social consequences for it. OP is taking this concept and twisting it around to make it sound like we think a 30 year old dating a 35 year old (or even a 60 & 90 year old) is anything near the same as an adult going after a pre pubescent child.

This one’s more grey area - some people see these as still toxic, some dont. It’s more divided, but both sides have good enough arguments that personally i dont condemn anyone based on their attitude toward this alone.

I have literally NEVER seen anyone say a ship is pedophilic based in height. Ever. My guess would be OP either pulled this out of their fucking ass (or is parroting someone else who did), or at best, there was some popular ship where one/both character’s ages were non canon, but that based on looks (height being one factor), it was obvious one was written as an adult and the other a child, and OP is twisting it around to suit their own horrible rhetoric.

this one is also shit and the vast majority of the anti community would condemn anyone saying this shit. Its ableist as fuck and we dont think that way. Sincerely, your local autistic.

I admit there ARE portions of the community who think this way. Its NOT universal and those people usually heard the arguments from pedophiles who dont want children having education that protects them, without realizing it was from a pedo, and haven’t heard the logic and evidence supporting the fact that proper consent-focused sex ed actually protects children from sexual abuse and helps them develop appropriate boundaries.

Another one pulled outta their ass, no one says CSA survivors discussing the trauma is pedophilic, and OP can fuck right off. Same on the next two points about survivors. Sincerely, your local CSA survivor/anti.

This is more shit. No one says childhood friends growing up and then dating is incestuous???? Probably another case where one random fuck with zero logic who doesnt represent us all said something stupid, and so anti-antis like OP are painting us all with that same brush. That, or someone on the anti-anti side made a blog pretending to be an anti and said that to use as a gotcha point (i know that sounds far fetched, but its actually a really common tactic in all tumblr discourse and internet discourse in general, not just shipping discourse. It happens all the damn time). There’s also literally no way anyone ever said age gaps are incestuous because that makes about as much sense as saying that yellow & blue make pink.

On the next section, anti-antis are also guilty of all and more. You can say the same of any demographic. Every group has bad eggs. Judging the whole group by a few shitty people in it is wrong.

As a psych student, seeing people trivialise and misuse terms like this makes me want to scream. Every time you use a serious psychological term for your fucking ship war, you take away the believability and credibility of actual abuse survivors coming out and telling their stories. You know what people think when they read a post calling someone an abuser or a pedophile apologist? “Guess someone’s mad at a Sheith shipper again.” And you know what that’s thanks to? YOUR FUCKING MOVEMENT.

They say that fiction and reality are equal and they say only Good, Pure content can be enjoyed.

That alone is enough to not listen to them. Without all the abuse stapled on.

I would also like to add that most recently they have ignored the EXTREMELY OBVIOUS RACISM from @chicks-n-pizza who sent a violently anti-Semitic message to a Jewish user, used the N word, and posted anti immigrant rhetoric (including comparing humans to “swarms” at the border).

Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:

Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)

And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography

I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet

I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it

Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society

It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free

And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)

Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places

I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women

Just think about the hot-button issues in the fannish community, the topics that consistently and reliably get people worked up into a lather, the themes that provoke the nastiest conflicts and inspire the most dedicated resistance movements. Think about the fights that are most likely to spill out over their cyber boundaries and start affecting people in the real world - in public harassment at cons, in doxxing and ‘outing’ to family and employers, in malicious legal allegations.

It’s about sex. It’s always about sex. 

From the constant tantrums over ‘problematic’ shipping to the righteous doxxing of ‘pedophiles’ (which in current tumblr parlance means anyone who draws or writes canonically underage characters in romantic or erotic scenarios), fandom’s big efforts at moral reform always seem to revolve around restricting and controlling the sexual expression of the majority-women community. You won’t meet many people who stay up past their bedtime to scream at strangers on the internet about unethical portrayals of non-sexual violence - unless, of course, they suspect the women involved in its creation are getting off on it. You’ll struggle to find an anti blog dedicated to the insidious social ills of torture whump fic, or goopy hurt-comfort where all manner of human suffering is put on display for the viewer’s enjoyment. The purity crew dress up their agenda as a desire for collective self-improvement and raised moral standards, but they don’t seem too worried about aspects of public morality that don’t somehow tie back into sex. What they’re upset about is the same thing conservative minds have been upset about since basically the dawn of time - there are women out there in the world doing icky sex things without the permission of their communities.

And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ - they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ - they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.

The core assumption underlying all of it - an assumption that I’m sure our puritan forebears would find deeply comforting - is that women’s sexual expression is a matter of public concern, and that women are directly responsible for upholding the moral standards of their communities by restricting themselves to a narrow repertoire of publicly controlled, socially condoned sexual outlets. Anything beyond that repertoire is a grave moral breach.

Ah yes Keith. The 14 year old 18 year old. It’s amazing how he can be only fourteen years of age when he is eighteen. I sure do love me an 18 year old who is only 14, because that makes fucking sense

Or are you talking about the end of the series, when Keith is a 14 year old 22 year old man? It’s astounding how Keith grew up approx. four years but remained 14 years old throughout. Truly it is a miracle of life that Keith, introduced at 18, who had a flashback like once to when he was 15, and ended the series at the age of 22, has remained forever 14.

Yes! Antis normalise so many abuse tactics, and slowly eroding someone’s sense of personal boundaries is one of them! It’s NOT OKAY to speculate/ask about someone’s masturbatory habits outside of being directly told “yeah, feel free to think about what I get off to”. If you went up to your coworkers and told them “I bet you get off to gay porn” that would be creepy as all get out, crossing so many lines, and would get you immediately fired for – take a wild guess – sexual harassment.