#topic: proship

Once more, we have decided to do a new post debunking radqueer ideology with sources and spoken word from multiple individuals. This will be our hardest post to make due to the extensive research we did to prove it.

This specific post is more straightforward, so it may be shorter than the usual posts we do. It will have a lot of resources, though. They will be sporadically placed on the facts, but there will be a list of sources at the end of it. Like a good research paper.

Side-note: These are only a few of the myths we have found online or have been told by mutuals and people we talk to daily. Please, be aware that this may not be 100% certain, and the information given may be mistaken or skewed. Feel free to correct or educate us, if necessary. 

The Myth: "Proship is inherently radqueer."

Many people have been colluding proship ideology with radqueer ideology thanks to the coiners of the term utilizing proship ideology as their motto. The first coiner considered that being not only proship is queer, but also paraphilia and transIDs (which will be deconstructed way later). Because of this, antishippers had chosen to consider proshippers part of the radqueer agenda ("agenda" used as an alternative term to ideology).

However, is this actually a reality? Or is there more information that has been hidden, whether that's intentional or not?

The Facts:

To preface this, we must talk about the times proship and radqueer were coined.

Proship, as a term, was actually a "misnomer" of sorts. The original term was anti-antishipper (or anti-anti), which came out circa 2015 and 2016. Proship was used as an alternative term, but it was not the main one until 2017. This year is by far one of the major clashes between antishippers and proshippers, with the Voltron: Legendary Defender drama and the Undertale Needle hoax happening at that time. Similarly, the term has been constantly debated due to its etymology being misunderstood (pro- in proship being used as problematic shipping vs pro- meaning "in favor of").

Radqueer, however, was not coined until November 14, 2021 by a Tumblr used named foucault-divine-mephisto (who will be referred as Mephisto on all of the posts from now on). Mephisto has stated that, in the list of the ideology radqueer stands for, proship is in it. However, Mephisto has taken it far from fiction, providing more stances outside of just anti-anti.

’RadQueer’ (radical queer) was created in response to the puritanism, hypocrisy and general rejection in the Queer community regarding a range of marginalized and stigmatized Queersexualities (paraphilias), internal identities (transage, transabled, transill/transnoso, transpecies, alterhumans/transnonhuman etc) and behaviours (social, sexual eccentricity etc). 

After this coining, the term "radqueer" has changed over the time, with no clear definition other than what we have called the "queerification" of paraphilia and mental health, radical support of transIDs and, of course, proship ideology. In fact, the current flag we see around on Tumblr today is not the original, and the most "up-to-date" recoining was recorded on May 15, 2022 by user equiradqueer since Mephisto was supposedly pro-contact for harmful paraphilia.

Because of this, it's important to point out that there is a major point to bring up when discussing the topic: Proship does NOT stand for real-life harm. Proship refers to ship and let ship, freedom of expression in fiction, and the basis of never harming any individual in real life. In the proship coining links, there is a table that states what are the stances and differences between proship and its cousins, comship and darkship. Radqueer, however, does not have a clear statement on contact; a simple scroll through the radqueer tags is enough to let you know its promotors oscillate between pro, neutral, complex and anti contact. On April 26, 2024, an user named glasschewer re-recoined the term to explicitly state that they are anti contact, but were met with controversies due to it being "contact neutral." Otherwise, the stances on real-life damage are generally mixed among the radqueer users online.

Unfortunately, many antishippers have been quick to raise fingers and judge proship ideology as part of radqueer's. We have seen an implicit message from antishippers by lumping us with radqueers on their DNIs; that radqueer is a "final form" derived from proship. However, this is fully false. Proship considers that reality and fiction must be strictly separated, and that paraphilia must be destigmatized, not normalized or treated as part of the queer community. Similarly, there are other ideals radqueers talk about that are not related to fiction.

This baseless correlation is, unfortunately, nothing more than a slippery slope fallacy. Considering that being proship will lead to people becoming radqueers (or predators, as some antishippers put it) is based on fake moral panic akin to the Satanic Panic. Surprisingly, the same idea is shared between antishippers and proshippers alike; the advocacy of predators not hurting minors in fandom spaces. Unfortunately, the war between the puritanical ideals of antishippers and the anti-censorship advocacy of proshippers has been going on for more than a decade, and some radqueers are fairly aware of this.

Radqueers have also mentioned that fiction doesn't affect reality, whereas antishippers believe the opposite. The reality is that fiction does affect reality, but not on a 1:1 ratio. It usually influences emotional states, but some major exceptions apply. Sometimes psychotic people experience difficulty knowing what makes fiction and reality different. This is a symptom that some psychotic people may have and help is available for them.

Conclusion

It is not the first time that radqueers have had "adapted" terms, ideals and whatnot for their own agenda and views. Terms like transabled (people with BIID), transracial (referring to a child of one race adopted by parents of another race) and, as stated, proship or anti-anti, have been sucessfully taken away from other communities and repurposed to fit their narrative, when the real meanings behind them are noble in nature.

While this post is not intended to be accusatory, it is strange to reframe or steal resources off from others to reframe them as part of their community. Besides, comparing the abolition of censorship with purposely hurting others is not only odd, but a bad choice coming from the community that pretends to liberate and protect others.

References: