Fandoms, proshippers, antis, censorship - a rant
what makes me angry about vocal antis is majorly the fact that theyâre fighting against the wrong people and the wrong cause. I understand feeling disgusted and distrusting of proshippers and not liking certain fan works but these are not things and people that actually cause widespread harm.Â
I donât think all antis are actually harassing people. I know that proshippers arenât all saints. This isnât even about that really, Iâm talking about people most of us have minimised as just being âstupid kidsâ
And I know this discourse mostly happens online, but many of these âstupid kidsâ grow into adults, and some of these past âstupid kidsâ are now adults who have the power to bring that censorship or are going to be in power to cause unwanted change
For now itâs just a lot of hot air being made public, I realize that. I guess I just wanted to make a post about the future
I want to show an example of me previously saying âantis are fighting against the wrong people and causeâ with this screenshots. They obviously donât realize or understand what theyâre posting, and compare kinky fantasies wrongly with things like racism or hate speech.Â
They think since both causes them to feel uncomfortable, it causes harm
However, sex positive psychologists agree that kinky fantasies about fake people and things that arenât real, even if theyâre gross, they donât usually cause harm
Emotions, as valid as they are, theyâre also not causing harm
But when someone engages with, as an example, underage fics and feels more and more tempted to do something inappropriate with someone who is under aged, then thatâs obviously not a kink
itâs not just egregious to compare kinks with real world harm, itâs important to tell the difference for safety reasons too. After all, an abuser can just pretend to be against proshippers instead and this is something that happened
And these people - they donât understand and donât want to understand the difference. Theyâre anti-kink and think anything connected to sex or sexuality is shameful - which is a direct result of not just the reappearance of religious purity culture but also the results of fandom becoming mainstream
But fandoms are just too weird and too diverse to be mainstream. This resulted in more and more people not understanding that fanworks are posted for free, because someone wanted to, or because someone wanted to share their passion, not because they want people to engage with easily digestible content thatâs made for clicks or that sells
Engagement is, of course, encouraged - but vocal antis arenât âengagingâ, theyâre hating. Itâs hate that binds them together
And so they will twist the meanings of words or twist what is actually happening IN fandoms to spread a moral panic. They often exaggerate and lie so that more people fall for their scheme
and unfortunately - it often works.Â
Victims who donât know better end up believing that yeah, just finding someoneâs fetish art accidentally or intentionally is grooming, purposely interacting with a correctly tagged piece of media they know can be triggering is grooming, itâs no longer the actions or behavior of a person who intentionally targets a child or otherwise vulnerable person to desensitize them to sex so they donât realize theyâre in a very inappropriate relationship
Historically and currently, censoring or banning âpedophiliaâ or âpedophilesâ or cracking down on âabusersâ has never actually benefitted anyone. Once we ban and censor any of it, itâll be harder to even just talk about because we arenât allowed to, harder to educate about because itâs forbidden and harder to go after because it gets harder to spot.Â
SESTA and FOSTA aimed to protect sex workers - but it resulted in most adult oriented websites having to cease operations, sex worker exploitation harder to combat and sex workers were more and more pushed into the shadows
the NCMEC looses its funding and was forced to take down their guides to recognize and stop child trafficking because it mentioned trans victims.
The porn ban on tumblr aimed to protect children by removing child sexual abuse material - and it resulted in queer blogs getting purged instead, trans people not being able to post their post surgery pictures, discussions of safe sex, womenâs sexual health and STDs were purged, sex work was banned, porn bots were not banned, white pride was promoted, violence was promoted, and actual pedophiles were and pedophilia was, and, to an extend, still is promoted
When lgbtq-phobia started to rise in the US around the early 2020âs, republicans also purged âpornographicâ books - which are written by, for or about POC, are about sexual health and education, are about accepting oneself or simply show queer relationships as normal.Â
And all of these things are still happening today. Censorship is a bomb that goes off - thereâs no stopping it. Yet what vocal antis promote is the same authoritian regime that decides what is and isnât harmful - and this despite claiming theyâre not those kind of people. All because theyâre uncomfortable that there are people who are unbothered about the ships people like unless they cause real world harm
The real world harms Iâve mentioned before can all be prevented with education - and this is something vocal antis arenât interested in because it makes them uncomfortable, because itâs propaganda, because it nornalizes ___ and they argue in the same or similar ways as the current fascist regime in the US because thatâs the environment they grew up in, this is the new normal, other people who raise alarm are just talking too much, they never want to go past their âfactory settingsâ.Â
And no, Iâm not calling them fascists, theyâre likely also victims of being influenced by the wrong crowd - and also because they donât know better. Some of them do grow out of this immature behavior eventually.Â
But itâs high time to finally end this discourse and fight against whatâs really causing harm:
That is people with power, that is censorship, that is fascism, thatâs people who get away with crimes - but not the tools they use to carry out their crimes.Â
Itâs okay to feel disgusted at the end of the day. Itâs okay to criticize. Itâs okay to say âI donât want proshippers to interact with meâ. Thatâs not censorship either.Â
But criticism is not posting lies about people you donât like, harassment is more than just unwanted interaction, itâs also the call to âmake sure proshippers feel afraid and ashamed againâ or to rally your friends into âmass reporting that bitchâ and theyâre someone who didnât even know you existed in the first place