Devia estar a dormir

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. 

people don’t use stories about death to groom kids into murdering people. stories about people getting killed don’t teach kids that murder is fine. kids usually understand that death is sad and harmful, often because many have experienced death of family members or because the idea of it gives negative emotions.

kids don’t inherently understand that an adult pursuing them is bad. kids don’t inherently know how to get out of abusive situations. pedophiles DO use pedophilic content to groom victims, fictional content included.

So basically, a group of antis decided to prioritise fictional beings over real life, breathing ones.

Assuming you missed all of the above and so used a term as belittling as ‘drama’ unintentionally:

Here’s the thing: people do use stories about murder to encourage children into murdering people. Children usually do understand that death is sad and harmful - but not always! -, and sometimes children and teenagers do not care. Sometimes they haven’t understood the real life consequences of what they’re doing until they’ve actually done it. Children have been caught emulating violent video games by picking up weapons to use on others; teenagers have been caught trying to abduct others to kill them in the woods to summon cryptids like they’ve seen in youtube videos.

And if someone is absolutely determined to encourage a child into doing something immoral, they will use whatever that child is interested in to encourage a bond between the two of them, and groom said child.

If a paedophile (as in, a grown adult who is attracted to prepubescent children - and no other ‘meaning’ of the term as some antis would like to think) wants to groom a child, they will use whatever media or interest that child is interested in to do so. I hear a lot of antis railing against Lolita, but how many 12 year-olds and under do you know who are raptly fascinated by the works of Vladimir Nabokov? If someone had wanted to groom me as a child they would’ve talked about barbies and pokémon. Is it therefore the fault of the companies that handle those franchises that they were hypothetically used to groom me? No; that’s ridiculous.

Additionally: how dare you shift the blame from the paedophilic groomer in this scenario onto the child simply because of what media they might have consumed? Onto the people that produced that content? The only person to be blamed in this scenario is the paedophile abusing a living child.

Undoubtedly, paedophiles do use media with paedophilic content to groom children. They also use every other kind of content. We cannot, therefore, ban everything just because a paedophile might use it.

I absolutely believe that media - whoever it is produced by -, should always have its ‘problematic’ content tagged and warned for. But, as long as it is not hurting a real life, living breathing person, that problematic content absolutely has a right to exist.

I’d apologise for bringing up such a serious discussion on a years-old post of yours, but apparently you’re still open to harassing others over entirely fictional content so nah.

Since we’re looking at specifics, this is Thundercats nonsense about a fictional adult cat (Thistleclaw) confessing an attraction to an equally fictional younger cat (Spottedpaw) whilst she’s still an apprentice - so either a teenager, or a young adult. Ignoring the whole part where they’re cats who mature at a much faster rate than humans anyway, because human readers are meant to sympathise, if not empathise, with these characters.

Anyway, paedophilia is literally an attraction to prepubescent children. (Ignoring the part where these are cats -) If Spottedpaw is still a teenager, that’s hebephilia (if Thistleclaw is much older than her; the details were sketchy here, it could be a tiny age difference or not /shrug). At least get your terms right? (It’s really hard to ignore how quickly female cats sexually mature here.) If she’s a young adult, she’s perfectly legal (if there were laws governing the sexual activities of cats) - there’s no crime in anyone being a bit naive.

Mostly what I’ve gotten from this very specific instance is that more children should be given the birds and the bees discussion, as relating to common household pets. Seriously. It’s important for children to be educated in at least the basics of sexual health and safety, along with the general ‘and this is how cats are different from humans. And this is how rabbits are different from humans. And…etc.’ My four year-old nephew knows that just because the cat does something, doesn’t mean he should be doing it.

Regardless, for anyone with half a brain reading: please do not refer to instances that you sincerely believe to be something as awful as actual paedophilia as ‘drama’. The abuse of real, breathing individuals - and particularly children - is a terrible, grievous thing, and reducing it to something as trivial as a fandom ship-war or drama belittles the suffering people go through and have gone through, and actively makes it harder for abused individuals to get the help they need and at-risk individuals to spot the actual predators in their midst.

The OP showing Junpei having fun at a picnic with Itadori and the others:

Me after reading the manga:

O Lidl tem colecção de roupa edição limitada e esta merda tá a ser uma sensação tal que o pessoal tá a tratar isto como a nova PS5, a esgotar os stocks de todas as lojas e a revender no OLX a esta exorbitância

2020 may be the worst year so far but at least she’s a comedian assjfklflskd

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