Standing by as a casual observer to what's going on with the fish blog, I decided I'd make a single discourse-y post on it, then shut up. Because out of all nonsense on this website this discourse is the one I feel most passionately for, and as a relatively popular creator on other platforms, and one who's been uncomfortably silent on it before, I thought I might as well speak up.
Pro-shipper. Anti-anti. Whatever label you want to call it. That's me. If that makes you uncomfortable, or like you no longer want to read my stuff, that's fine; I cordially invite you to take the nearest exit ramp.
I'm not really inclined to write up the whole scientific basis, for why antis are full of shit. I do have advanced degrees in neuroscience and psychology, but if you're actually looking for a well-sourced academic essay, @antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx has a ton of citations and their field of study is even more appropriate than mine for this. I don't have the desire to write up my own essay on a such a basic, widely accepted tenet of psychology, that "writing dark content does not make you an abuser, writing 16/17 year old smut does not make you a goddamn pedophile", it's actually fucking WILD that this site has latched on to such an ice cold take severely lacking in scientific basis, but if you're sincerely looking for arguments about it, again, adybpt has all the sources, and I'd potentially be willing to chat about it a little in DMs. Mirror neurons are my jam.
I know I've been mistaken as an anti before, because I tend to write anti-approved things. Parental content, platonic content, Pure Pairings, little smut or slash. And in that anti-approved content, content I have watched proud anti-shippers gush over, I've written all the trash. Rape, torture, abuse, suffering, PTSD. Sex trafficking, child soldiers, substance abuse, mental illness. And it's certainly not all clearly condemned in the writing. I've written fucked up abuse apologism/borderline glamorization, and got all the praise for it, because it was for a Pure Pairing like Johnlock or Hyuroi, and meanwhile, watched some of those same people giving me positive comments turn around and lambast someone as a pedophile because they wrote a fluffy aged-up AU of Sheith. I have watched people I thought I knew, people I thought were my friends, laugh "sure, suicide baiting is bad,,, but like you ship royed, what do you expect." Over and over and over I've seen death threats, rape threats, mass harassment campaigns mounted, and it's as disgusting as the cognitive dissonance is astounding.
The reason I'm posting this is because writing what I do, what I have, was the only coping mechanism I had for a really long time. My teachers were friends with my abuser, my therapist willfully triggered and exacerbated a panic attack without my consent, and I didn't know how to reach out to friends: ALL I had was working out trauma through fiction. Properly tagged fiction, warned as such that if the content upset you, you would be warned beforehand and wouldn't have to see it, and I can't even begin to tell you how many comments and DMs I've gotten from fellow survivors wanting to tell me how much it helped them. And I'm tired of sitting here watching these rabid fucking asshats proclaim "it's for the children!!! we care about survivors!!!" as they suicide bait and harass those same survivors in the exact same breath, for not coping in a nice, socially pleasant, cutesy, Purity Police Approved way. I was lucky enough to cope in that socially acceptable way. Many people aren't, and they deserve exactly the same support I've gotten.
(And for all those that claim the Nasty Ships are only okay as long as it's Cope Shipping Only, you can take an exit ramp, too. It's a slap in the face. It's pouring gasoline on someone and threatening them with a lit match to disclose something deeply personal and traumatic, and then giving them a hug and pretending you're a hero for not setting them on fire. It's more insulting than the antis who don't even pretend to draw a line in the sand.)
tl;dr if you think calling someone a child molester because they followed a twitter account that posted lolicon one time last year is okay, if you think harassing someone for a Nasty Ship is in any way, shape, or form, okay, you are actively contributing to a toxic culture of bullying and harassment that has actively made fandom culture more dangerous for the very minors you want to protect. If you think I'm an abuse apologist, or whatever the fuck the buzzword is now, for writing about abuse, then you are welcome to leave.
