Wait, isn't "anti" stuff more like "anti-pedophilia" and stuff? Like, you have a point about anti-porn attitudes, but from what I've heard just "anti" on its own means against stuff like kid porn and incest porn and legitimately f*cked up sh*t like that.
Okay! So this, I think, is actually a great example of what I was talking about, and a really useful thing to understand. (CW rape, child abuse, etc)
Smarter people than me have written much better essays about why policing thoughtcrimes is a bad road to go down, and I will probably reblog some of them next time they cross my dash for more context. What I want to talk about is the trigger mechanism, the âoh, this looks like danger!!!â immune response in how we look at different kinds of porn, and how that applies to anti culture.
Hereâs the thing: I am anti-pedophilia. I think that, for most people, thatâs a stance that largely goes without saying! Adults who prey on children are bad. Iâm also against incest; relatives who prey on their family members are bad. Above all I oppose rape. Sexual predation of any kind is bad. In fact, Iâd say thatâs the most important item on the list. There is plenty of room to argue about where the lines are between âadultâ and âchildâ and how teenagers fit in the middle, and thereâs plenty of room to get historical about the lines between ethically terrible incest, distasteful-but-bearable âaristocratic inbreedingâ between distant cousins, and the kind of consanguinity that tends to develop in a small town where everyoneâs vaguely related to everyone else by now anyway. The core of the issue is consent, and it has always been consent. Pedophilia and incest are horrific because they are rape scenarios where the abuser has far more power and their victim far fewer resources to cope, both practically and emotionally; because harm to children is, to us as a culture, worse than harm to adults, for a lot of very valid reasons; and because they constitute betrayal of trust the victim should have been able to put in their abuser as well as rape--but they are all rape scenarios, and thatâs why theyâre awful.Â
These things are bad. It is good for us to have a social immune response system that recognizes these things when theyâre happening and insists we step in. That is a good thing to develop! It helps us, as a society. It can help the people being victimized. Itâs the same reason educators and childcare workers in the US are all mandated reporters, why we do background checks on people working near kids. These things happen, and theyâre terrible, and itâs good that we try to be aware and prepared for them. (Though obviously studies show weâre a lot less good at protecting the vulnerable than weâd like to pretend we are.)
The question is: why does that same social immune response trigger, and trigger so angrily, in response to fiction?
Anti culture is fundamentally an expression of that social immune response. Specifically, itâs that social immune response when it is set off by a situation that, while it has some similarities to the very bad real-life crime of sexual predation including pedophilia and incest, is in and of itself harmless.
If youâre instinct is to flare up in anger or dismissiveness because Iâm calling these things harmless, I want to ask you to just take a deep breath and bear with me for a bit longer. What youâre feeling right now is an allergic reaction.
Humans tell and read and listen to stories about âlegitimately fucked up shitâ all the time. Itâs part of the human condition. Itâs part of how we process those things happening, not just to use, but to other people in the world around us. Itâs part of how we process completely unrelated fucked-up shit, playing with fears and furies and insecurities that we all have, through so may layers of fiction that we donât even recognize them any more, playing with power dynamics in metaphor and making characters suffer for fun. Aside from the fact that literally all stories do this to some extent or another; aside from the fact that drawing lines between âok thatâs good storytellingâ and âthatâs too fucked-up to write aboutâ is arbitrary, subjective, and dangerous in its own right; aside from all of that, these stories are stories. All of them.Â
Even the ones about rape, about incest, about pedophilia. Theyâre words on a page. No real children were harmed, touched, or even glanced at in the making of this work of fiction. This story, pornographic though it may be, is part of a conversation between consenting adults. (And if a teenager lies about their age to consent, that is a different problem altogether.)
Stories in and of themselves, no matter what theyâre about, are no more dangerous than a crate full of oranges. Which is to say: utterly harmless, unless all you have to eat is oranges, all day every day, and you find yourself dying slowly of nutrient deficiency--which is why representation matters. Or unless someone wields one deliberately, violently, as a tool to cause harm, and someone gets acid in their eye--which is the fault of the person holding the orange. And unless you happen to be allergic to citrus.
The key here is this twofold understanding: First, the thing that hurts you can also have value to others. Real, legitimate value. Whether youâve undergone trauma and certain story elements are straight-up PTSD triggers or you just donât like orange juice, that story, those tropes, that crate of oranges may be somewhere between icky and fundamentally abhorrent--but we understand that that is still your reaction. Even if you donât understand how anybody could ever enjoy it; even if every single person you surround yourself with is as sensitive and disgusted and itchy about this thing that makes your eyes hurt and your throat stop working as you; that doesnât make it true for everyone. That doesnât make oranges poisonous. No real children were involved in the writing of this story. It is words on a page.
But, secondly: the thing that has value to others can also hurt you. Just because a story isnât inherently poison doesnât mean it canât cause you, personally, pain. Thatâs what a PTSD trigger is: an allergic reaction, psychological anaphylaxis, a brain thatâs trying so hard to protect its own from a threat that isnât actually present (but was once, and the brain is trained to respond) that it causes far more harm and misery than the trigger itself possibly could. And no, itâs not just people with PTSD who sometimes get hurt by stories. There are many, many ways a story can poke the part of your brain that says, this is Bad, I donât like this, I donât want to be here. The story is still, always, every time, pixels on a screen and ink on paper. The story causes no physical harm. But it can poke your brain into misery, it can stir up your emotions, it can make you want to cringe and run away. It can make you want to scream and fight and go after the author who brought this thing into existence. It can make you hurt.
This is an allergic reaction. This is your brain and body, your reflexes and instincts, trying to protect you from something that isnât really happening. And just like a literal allergic reaction, it can do actual harm to you if it gets set off. This is real. The fact that stories can upset you to the point of pain and mental/emotional injury is real, even though itâs coming from your own brain and not the story itself. There are stories you shouldnât read. There are stories I shouldnât read, regret reading, will never read, because they hurt me. That doesnât mean theyâre the same stories that would hurt you. That doesnât mean they donât have value.
If getting upset about stories is fundamentally an individual personâs allergic reaction, their brain freaking out and firing off painful survival instincts in the face of a thing that isnât, in and of itself, a threat? Then the anti movement is a cultural allergic reaction.
Fandom as a whole has a pretty active immune system, which doesnât mean we have a good immune system. We try very hard to be aware of all the viruses and -isms and abuse and manipulation and cruelty, both systematic and individual, that exists around and within our community. Weâre primed and ready to shout about things at all times. The anti movement is that system, that culture, screaming and shouting and fighting at a harmless thing on a grand scale. It wants to stop that thing, that scary awful thing that trips all of its well-primed danger sensors, at all costs. Itâll swell up and block off our airways (our archives) if it has to. Itâll turn on the body it came from. Itâs scared and protective and trying to fight, and itâs ready to fight and destroy itself.
Luckily, fans and fanfic and fandom and fan culture are a lot bigger and older than they often get credit for, and itâs not like these cultural allergies are anything new. We could talk about shippers and slashers in the X-Files fandom in the 90s. We could talk about the birth of fandom in the days of Star Trek. We could talk about censorship and book burning going back centuries. We survived that and weâll survive this, too.
But god, does the anti movement my throat and eyes itch. Man is it irritating, and sometimes a little suffocating, to realize how many stories just arenât getting told out of fear of what the antis will say. And thatâs the real danger, I think. What are we losing that would have so much value to someone? What are we missing out?
