I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since Iâve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.
Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. Itâs very easy to get drawn into it
Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually itâs pedophilia. Funnily enough, thatâs also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because itâs an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, itâs nice and easy to say âOh so you like pedophiliaâ rather then actually engaging with their argument.
The logic goes like this, although thereâs many forms of it.
âPedophilia is bad.â -> Obviously, you agree with this. Youâre a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.
âBecause pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.â -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesnât it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic.Â
âAnyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.â -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you donât. But still, it adds up, itâs a very easy flow. After all, weâve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?
âSince people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, itâs okay to harm them.â -> Hereâs 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 âjustifiedâ.
The pattern now repeats for anything else thatâs considered âmorally impureâ, and âpedophiliaâ is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. âAbuseâ becomes any ship that the person pushing doesnât like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.
This is the foundation of âantiâ culture, and itâs 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. Itâs a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions.Â
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.
Letâs see that argument again, shall we?
âBecause murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.â
âAnyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.â
âSince people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, itâs okay to harm them.â
Hopefully, itâs 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 donât recommend trying to argue/debate antiâs. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Donât let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and donât 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), thatâs perfectly fine (itâs also called a squick, for those that havenât 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.Â
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