hihi! recently ive been seeing some proship vs antiship stuff on my feed, and while i wouldn't say im new to fandom, im quite new to this kind of discourse and often i do find myself more confused the more i think about it.
ive read some of your posts, and i would say that i suppose im proship(?), but i do feel conscious about using that label because i dont want people to think i like kids or support incest or any other illegal sort of thing. it might sound silly and a bit of a jump, i know, but a lot of my friends think that if u ignore ppl who do like ships like that, then ur just as bad as them- that is, if ppl who enjoy controversial ships are bad ppl at all. to be honest, i don't really know, but i'm not trying to mischaracterize an entire group of people whose motivations for shipping what they do are unknown to me/none of my business.
u might wonder why can't i just find new friends, but that's because most ppl around my age think this, and i do wonder sometimes if they might be right. i don't want to turn a blind eye to things that might be hurting others, especially other minors, but i also don't want to support censorship.
anyways, ur not my parent or guardian, and it's not ur responsibility to educate anyone and im sure u get asks like this all the time, but it would mean a lot to get a second opinion from someone who knows better than me about these kinds of things and i'd be very grateful for whatever insight u might have.
so sorry about the long ask, and i'm really sorry in advance if this was an obtuse question. i hope you have a wonderful day/night!
1. "nothing is illegal as long as it's fiction" — murder is illegal in real life, but you see murders in movies, tv shows, books, video games, etc all the time. and no one goes around and say "omg this is illegal!!!" because it's fiction.
2. proship literally just means "being against harassing real people over fiction and knowing that censorship is a fascist tool and is bad". that is all.
it doesn't mean "liking every single taboo things". you don't even have to like any taboo things in fiction at all. if you think harassing real people over fictional stories is not okay and if you know censorship is a fascist tool and is bad, then by definition, you are proship.
no one says "liking horror movies makes you a bad person because characters were harmed and killed in horror movies" (unless they're stuck in the 80s), because we all know it's... not real.
but when it comes to fanfics and fandom space, some people just can't understand (or refuse to understand) that it's literally the same concept: characters were harmed and/or killed, but it's all fiction.
so... honestly, someone liking taboo things in fanfics is the same as a random person liking horror movies. bad things happen to fictional characters in fictional stories. but no matter how graphic or shocking or morally questionable these bad things are, fiction is just fiction. no one in real life is being harmed in any way.
whereas people who like to shame and harass others over fiction, in order to make themselves feel morally superior, are actually harming real people — because they value the nonexistent lives of fictional characters more than the lives of real, living, breathing people who they shame and harass for the sake of imaginary people (fictional characters).
so you just have to ask yourself who you wanna be. a normal, mature person who understands that fiction is not reality and thought crimes are not real. or a bully who likes to harass others over fiction in order to feel morally superior.
(you can absolutely find any topics in fiction disgusting and not for you. you can mute/block/filer out/scroll past what upsets you. that's totally normal. as long as you don't shame, harass or bully people over their taste in fiction, you're doing the right thing by not being a bully.)
that said, I want to apologize if at any part of my message, I come across as rude or aggressive. please know that that is not my intention at all (my response to you is also to anyone who comes across this post, so not just you specifically) and I genuinely do appreciate you for reaching out and being so respectful about it. I totally get "not wanting to be seen by friends as a terrible person". so I'm not saying you have to stop being friends with them, I'm not saying you have to argue with them or try and change their minds and risk confrontation. as long as you don't actually harass anybody, I think you're already doing the right thing.
also you don't have to use any label if you don't feel like it. because while being against harassment and censorship is by definition "proship", the whole "proship" vs "anti" thing is... yeah, exhausting and honestly childish. I don't go around labelling or promoting myself as "proship" because it's childish. but I am against censorship and harassment. so by definition, I am automatically proship.