Sanders Sides Fander

Sanji making Usopp poke the creepy dead body, but then also pulling him back and stepping in front of him when it actually turned out to be dangerous is very older brother of him.

I would be vastly more sympathetic to the “the term purity culture should refer only to a specific religious system of misogyny and using it to talk about antis elides its origins, thereby devaluing a serious issue” argument if anti culture wasn’t functionally defined by using the word “pedophilia” to mean “what happens when anyone of any age writes stories where a character younger than eighteen kisses someone or is otherwise sexual.”

Like. I’m just. I’m sorry, but you cannot grossly misuse such serious terms as pedophilia or incest by arguing repeatedly that depiction is always endorsement, that there’s no difference between fictional people and real people, and that any sexual fantasy a person enjoys precisely because it isn’t real is indistinguishable from a fantasy they want to see enacted IRL, then get mad when someone points out that you’re morally policing the sexuality of strangers using strikingly similar arguments to the purity culture people.

When someone writes gory, gruesome murder stories, even if they’re written from the POV of a psychopathic killer, our first thought is not, “oh shit, that person is either an aspiring serial killer or they have bodies in their basement,” because we understand the distinction between fiction and reality. But if someone writes about dark sexual themes and suddenly you’re freaking out about their sexuality IRL? That is because you’ve absorbed puritan views about sex, ie, the idea that your sexual imagination and your sexual desires are one and the same, such that, if you indulge in “sinful” fantasies, it’s as bad as doing those things.

The reason religious purity culture is so obsessed with female chastity to the point of demonising masturbation or premarital anything is due to the belief that female sexuality exists solely for male pleasure, and therefore male approval. A father ‘owns’ his daughter’s chastity until he ‘gives’ her to a husband; therefore, she must stay ‘pure’ for their sake, because any indulgence on her part will ‘taint’ that purity. Crucially, the belief is also that one woman is potentially representative of all women: one ‘loose’ woman can make all women loose in the eyes of men, and therefore you aren’t just protecting yourself and your chastity by acting modestly, but the reputation of other women you’ve never even met. You’re simultaneously responsible for the virtue of women as a category while also being the keeper of such specific chaste value as, through you, belongs to your father and future husband. This is also why ‘pure’ women are encouraged to shun ‘impure’ women - impurity is transitive by association, such that if you, a ‘pure’ woman, are seen to associate with an ‘impure’ woman, well; that must only be because you, too, are secretly impure. This being so, it’s likewise expected that men, being more sexual creatures, will be lustful and sexually desirous, such that women are expected to curtail the presentation of their own sexuality in all forms to avoid ‘tempting’ them to sin, both against themselves and, potentially, other women; this is both deeply misogynistic and a way to blame victims for ‘leading on’ their assailants.

It’s also the exact same logic that antis use - not because antis are misogynistic patriarchs, but because they, too, argue that an individual’s sexuality must be curtailed in order to prevent hypothetical strangers from being ‘tempted’ towards their worst inclinations or, if they didn’t have those inclinations beforehand, made to ‘stray from the path’.

“You can’t ship those two underage characters - someone might use that fic to prey on a minor!” Such a thing, if it happened, would inarguably be the fault of the predator, who did not magically spring into existence the second the fic was written, even if the fic in question was actual darkfic and not just two 16yos consensually getting to second base; nonetheless, anti logic - like purity culture - will blame the ficwriter for ‘inciting’ the predation.

Like. Never mind the fact that, by comparing fanfic readers to Woody Allen and R. Kelly, you’re proving my point about antis not being able to distinguish between actual pedophilia that happens to real underage children in the real world and stories about fake teenagers fucking; never mind how a large number of people who *do* write sexually about fictional children are victims of child abuse themselves looking to process their trauma - why is the baseline assumption that, when *anyone* reads or writes darkfic, they must be sexually identifying with the abuser and not the victim? Not to break your brain, here, but people fantasise about dark things happening to them a hell of a lot, and that’s both normal and healthy - as is fantasising about things specifically in the context of them not being real.

I once received a DM comprised of just that sentence. Nothing else. No constructive criticism or any reason as to why this person clearly agreed with my own view of myself.

For someone who has never told anyone in their real life that they write anything, reading something like this from an anonymous user only solidified in my mind the fact that this person was right.

I’m not a good writer.

After an embarrassing amount of minutes passed, in which I thought about deleting every story I ever posted, I decided to delete the message instead. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean I could delete the feelings it caused or change the fact that I’m not a good writer.

Two weeks went by and I didn’t write anything, let alone post. Then I received a comment on a story I had posted three years prior, one I’d written after a death in our family. The comment read, “Thank you for sharing this heartfelt story. I really needed this. I just lost my mom and this really got me today.”

I stopped thinking about being a good writer after that. I thought instead, “what if I had deleted my stories and that one person three years later hadn’t read it that day?”

Here’s what I realized: no one is a good writer.

Good means to be approved of, but stories aren’t created from approval. They’re built from life experiences, feelings, and emotions Therefore, the impact of anyone’s story isn’t good or bad. It’s a million other things.

Heartfelt.

Sad.

Funny.

Inspiring.

Romantic.

So to all the story writers out there, hold your head up, write what is in your heart, and never doubt that there isn’t at least one person out there that needs to read your story.

So, no.

Please, don’t stop writing. Don’t compare to other people, because we’ve all got difference styles and experiences and voices. Your voice cannot be anyone else’s because it is yours. Don’t silence yourself for the people who just want to tear you down.

Write, and never feel bad for doing it. Even the stuff you wrote years ago that doesn’t reflect how you write anymore. Accept it for what it is and where you were at that time in your life. Be proud of yourself and your growth.

Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. It’s very easy to get drawn into it

Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually it’s pedophilia. Funnily enough, that’s also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because it’s an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, it’s nice and easy to say “Oh so you like pedophilia” rather then actually engaging with their argument.

The logic goes like this, although there’s many forms of it.

“Pedophilia is bad.” -> Obviously, you agree with this. You’re a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.

“Because pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.” -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesn’t it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic. 

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.” -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you don’t. But still, it adds up, it’s a very easy flow. After all, we’ve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?

“Since people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, it’s okay to harm them.” -> Here’s where you might pause again. The argument might not win you over entirely, you might not be willing to do harm yourself, but you may be a lot more willing to turn a blind eye to harm being done to someone. Or to consider it ‘justified’.

The pattern now repeats for anything else that’s considered “morally impure”, and “pedophilia” is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. “Abuse” becomes any ship that the person pushing doesn’t like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.

This is the foundation of “anti” culture, and it’s important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. 

A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.

Let’s see that argument again, shall we?

“Murder is bad”

“Because murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.”

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.”

“Since people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, it’s okay to harm them.”

Hopefully, it’s now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.

Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I don’t recommend trying to argue/debate anti’s. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Don’t let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and don’t control or shame others for what they create or consume.

Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), that’s perfectly fine (it’s also called a squick, for those that haven’t heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either. 

The typical example of the first argument is usually about abusers using fiction that depicts pedophilia or other abuse in order to groom a victim. It is true that abusers have used fiction as part of their grooming tactics. Antis will say that this means that that fiction should be censored to prevent this. This is a bad argument for two reasons. First, it misplaces the blame for abuse from the abuser to the tool/method of the abuser. Second, it misunderstands the fact that even “vanilla” or “non-problematic” things are used by abusers as part of their grooming tactics. 

Hey guys! I don’t know if anyone is at all interested, but I’ve made a discord server for talking about writing. Right now, it’s about my writing and fics, but anyone can talk about their own writing, too, if they want!

Also, if you have questions or just want somewhere to hang out and talk or whatever, feel free to come on over and join us. We’d be happy to have you.

About a week ago I posted this.

I’ve been getting horrible messages like this in my ask for months, including:

and my personal favorite

After getting the message saying “Just go kill yourself” I was completely done dealing with this person’s horrible messages and replied with just an “Okay.” and logged off tumblr.

About a week later I logged back on with 17 messages in my ask, most of them from the anon. I scrolled down and at first when I logged off, the anon messaged me things like

I scrolled up more and all of a sudden they started sending me more and more messages like

This was extremely surprising to me. I thought “After all those horrible messages you sent to me for MONTHS about hating me and wanting me dead, you say ‘sorry’ and that you ‘cant be responsible for someone’s suicide’?”

But I guess the lesson goes like this: