Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I never saw true beauty till this night.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) dir. Baz Luhrmann
Some folks in this community clearly believe that the LGBT acronym ranks identites in order of importance and it shows.
jewiish
THE LESBOPHOBIA
I first starting identifying as a lesbian when you were in elementary school. Find your own lane.
technosexuall
“how dare you say lesbians aren’t more important that everyone else in the community???”
anyway….
get this: everyone is equally important. if you think it’s lesbophoic to say that lesbians are equal to the other community members then you have some serious issues with how you look at and treat queer people who aren’t lesbians.
For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:
1. Is the author dead? x
2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x
What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.
In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.
Why is that important?
Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”
You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.
Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.
Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?
Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?
Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?
All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.
If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:
Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment
Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences
People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up
Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??
So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?
If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?
Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?
Is your author dead?
Is your baby in the bathwater?
Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?
Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?
Is your baby in the bathwater?
Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”
The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.
There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.
Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?
Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?
Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?
Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?
How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?
Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?
Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?
Have you killed your author?
Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?
Another realization: “disgust as morality” leads directly to “mere exposure leads to moral decay”
As you are exposed to something frequently, you become acclimatized to it. It stops eliciting disgust. This happens with everything from gore to porn.
There has been research after research showing that fictional depictions don’t lower empathy for real victims or decrease the perceived severity of the crime, but it does lower disgust reactions at fictional depictions of it.
To antis, this lack of disgust is the normalization they are fighting against, because disgust is how you know something is wrong. If you no longer feel disgust, your morality is compromised.
That’s what I mean when I say antis resemble Puritan Christian morality. Christianity has so many conflicting instructions regarding morality, and many areas where it’s flat-out vague. And yet they know exactly what is good and natural, and what is horrifying and sinful.
How? It’s disgusting.
Antis are impossible to argue with, because the logical arguments are made post hoc to defend what they already know: this disgusts me because it is wrong. The disgust is the true basis of their argument, and no reasoned argument will touch it.
Like honestly it is so important that people stop associating radfem solely with TERFs because it blinds y'all to how insidious, pervasive, and dangerous radfem rhetoric is.
Are radfems transphobic? Yes. But that’s not all they are.
Radfem rhetoric is behind a lot of the queerphobia, biphobia, aphobia, panphobia, kinkphobia, polyphobia and sex negativity in general on this site. Their rhetoric is woven intrinsically into kink criticism and exclusionist ideology. But because it doesn’t have “trans people are evil” on the tin, y'all are swallowing those pills wholesale without giving it a second thought.
And then, because “radfem” has come to mean “TERF” on this site, when people point out to you that you’re parroting radfem rhetoric, you’re able to easily dismiss it by saying “How dare you call me transphobic!”
My friends. Transphobia is not the only dogwhistle radfems use. It is not the only pillar of their toxic belief system.
Familiarise yourself with all their beliefs. Think critically about all of them.
If you don’t want to be called out on spreading radfem ideology, make sure your ideals aren’t borrowing from the more subtle and less overtly disagreeable aspects of their belief system.
anti-kink/kinkphobic radfems reblogging DDLG/CGL posts to scream ‘think of the children!’ (incidentally exposing their followers to it whether they liked it or not) was a major catalyst in the formation of anti-shipping rhetoric & the resulting communities, which are massive sex-shaming engines of hatred & fear-mongering.
and a major reason exclusionism took off so well is b/c radfem lite™ ideology & rhetoric has been pushed & popularized on tumblr for years before that.
here’s some radfem lite™ rhetoric you may have encountered on tumblr:
- men are the literal worst. they are the source of all evil. kill all men
- men are constantly invading women’s spaces to trick/trap them into having sex with them.
- violence against/harassment of women is always primarily related to their secondary sex characteristics OR their failure to cater to men
- the only form of consent that counts is enthusiastic consent
- internalized misogyny is the only reason women harm each other
- women are soft, sweet, smart, kind, community-oriented, nurturing, never ruled by impulse or sexual desire, etc. women are just Better than men in every way
- compulsory heterosexuality is the main reason cis women think they’re attracted to cis men
- rape culture is so powerful a force that it’s impossible for women to consent to uncoerced sex with men
- BDSM communities are full of abusive men looking for women to beat
- women who ‘sexually cater’ to men (by dressing provocatively, doing sex work, having kinky sex with men, working in the porn industry, etc) harm other women by doing so
- women who indulge/acknowledge/enjoy their sexual attraction to men harm other women by doing so
- gender isn’t even a thing. it’s literally not real (’gender critical’)
- we’re all nonbinary
any one of these things on their own might seem kind of reasonable, especially when caged in flowery language or carefully implied instead of stated outright. and some of them have a grain of truth in them that lends them that fleeting sense of legitimacy.
but buy enough of them, and you’re well on your way into the radfem fold - and all the demands of perfect self-control, sexual purity, & virtuous behavior it places on you. (ironically … just like misogynists. whom they happily ally themselves with.)
putting sexualizing fictional characters on the same plane as child predation....i fucking hate this hellsite
I've been seeing "anti-anti" as a dni on stimboards. Would you mind helping me understand what an anti-anti is? How can I know if I am one or if I'm allowing them to interact with me (yes if you allow them to interact is on the dni lists). This sort of thing seemed like your wheelhouse but I apologise if it's not or if the question is irritating.
Oh boy. Welcome to the mudfight.
Trigger warning: Child sexual abuse, bullying
“Anti” isn’t a thing people call themselves these days, but it comes from the world of anti-shipping in fanfic (thinking a certain relationship or pairing is disgusting and reprehensible and nobody should ship it). It also ties in to the anti-porn movement. The claim such people generally make about themselves is that they are trying to protect children from problematic fanfiction that “glamorizes” or “romanticizes” incest, pedophilia, and abuse. Here’s an attempt to define the term as it’s used now.
The anti definition of an “anti-anti” is, therefore, “a person who supports incest, pedophilia, and abuse”. Which sounds very terrible! Who wouldn’t want to stay as far away from those people as possible?
And, well, I’m an anti-anti. I actually care a lot about keeping children safe from sexual abuse. I just happen to think that “antis” are aimed at mostly the wrong targets, since they’re misdefining their central terms, have chosen the exact wrong methods to do it, and are in fact harming child sexual abuse survivors, doing nothing to prevent abuse, and generally behaving like an abusive cult.
What I think is a good way to make children safer in fandom, from my study of trauma, resilience, and healing: Promote widespread education about safe sex, healthy relationships, bodily autonomy, and consent; provide clear labels and warnings for all kinds of sexual content, even/especially if the relationship depicted is not entirely safe or healthy; teach fans how to find the kind of content they want and avoid the kind of content they don’t; allow for many diverse depictions of sex and relationships and encourage a healthy discussion about the relative merits and evils of different situations; encourage people to know that it’s totally normal and healthy to have weird sexual fantasies or desires, and that doesn’t mean you actually want or need that to happen in real life; promote knowledge about trauma and abuse, how to recognize it, and healthy ways to heal from it.
What antis think is a good way to make children safer in fandom, as far as I understand it: Prohibit all discussion or depiction of people under the age of 18 in relation to sex. Declare any adult who wants to talk about or depict people under the age of 18 in relation to sex a pedophile who is risky to children. Define “pedophilia” to mean any relationship that involves people under 18, any relationship containing anyone who is a minor in the source material who has grown up in the work of art, or any relationship between adults that has an age gap or in which one member seems visually smaller, younger, or less mature than the other. Define “incest” to mean any relationship in which characters have known each other since childhood or have a bond that seems familial (mentoring, comrades, “you’re like a brother to me”). Have no clear standards whatsoever for what “glamorizing” or “fetishizing” means, so any fan activity that includes forbidden topics is bad. When a fan is seen to be a fan of, or to produce or consume fanworks about them, assume this person is a “pedo” who will inevitably harm children if given the opportunity, and harass the shit out of them and/or dox them to parents or employers.
I... don’t actually have a ton of evidence for examples of antis saying this stuff, because honestly, it’s so toxic I have to avoid it for my mental health. If you wanna go dig through the garbage and see just how bad this gets, sources of Shit Antis Say closest to me are probably @lizcourserants and @shipcourse on Twitter.
Tl;dr: An “anti-anti” is someone who opposes the idea that the only way to “prevent child abuse” is to send violent and threatening messages to people whose ships or fanfic are insufficiently “morally pure”. “Anti-antis DNI” is a sign that someone is okay with censorship and abuse as ordinary parts of social life on the internet.
(@namings has had some good insight over the years on why there’s so much overlap between the stimboard community and antifandom and anti-BDSM, despite there being a big overlap between autistic people and people into kink, but their archive is not, she said fondly, optimized for easy browsing.)
Also, because antis are so incredibly toxic, things have come around to such a degree that in some fandoms the label “anti” gets slung around to silence anyone who wants to have a conversation that includes any kind of critique about anything in fandom. So, for example, if there is a lot of racism in the way a fandom treats a black character, and someone points it out, they get labelled an anti because that way the people who enjoy the racist tropes don’t have to stop and think about why they like the stories they do. “I don’t have to listen to anyone talking about racism because they’re just a horrible anti and a bully” is a great way of protecting oneself from having to think about serious issues.
There are several differences between the purity-culture antis (who everybody in fandom calls antis) and the anti-racism advocates (who sometimes get labelled antis in an attempt to shut them up and drive them out of fandom. (Yes, yes, of course there are exceptions to every rule, and these neat distinctions are not 100% applicable in every case, but they are still a good rule of thumb in my experience.)
One difference is which direction the harassment goes. Purity-culture antis use harassment and bullying as one of their main tactics. They don’t just talk about general trends; they identify specific people they don’t like and harass them every way they can and lie about them to try and get everyone to think they’re a horrible evil person who abuses children when in reality the “worst” thing they’ve ever done is write stories about teenagers having crushes on one another. They often target people in an attempt to silence them and/or drive them out of fandom, and they often whip up mobs of people against their victims. Anti-racism advocates, however, are far more likely to be the victims of harassment than be the ones doing the harassing. Instead of making targeted attacks of individual people, they tend to make general posts pointing out larger trends in a particular fandom and explaining how racism contributes to that trend. They then get harassed, often viciously, by white fans who hate it when racism gets pointed out. They often get nasty (and completely false) rumors spread about them. So, yeah, in general, purity-culture antis harass people; anti-racism activists get called “antis” as part of the harassment they receive.
Another difference is whether or not the person who is critical of #thing has actual evidence to back them up. “Reading or writing about two teenagers in a consensual relationship is pedophilia and makes people more likely to abuse children” is absolutely, verifiably untrue, as are pretty much all of the purity-culture anti claims. “Fans consistently edit a black character out of gifsets to replace them with a white character so the black character’s good traits and/or relationships can be given to a white character, and this is caused by white prioritization which is a form of racial bias” is true and easily verified. “Any fic which includes any mention of rape is glorifying abuse and encouraging rapists” is, again, provably false. “The fandom trend of turning black protagonists into villains and giving all their good traits to white characters is based on racism and white prioritization” is provably true. In general, purity-culture antis base their claims and views on sex, gender, age, abuse, and all related topics on ideas that are easily disproven by any study of actual scientific studies of the issues involved; anti-racism activists who are labelled as “antis” usually have pretty solid research backing up their claims of how racism, white prioritization, and white supremacy work.
tl;dr--purity-culture antis are nasty pieces of work who use harassment as one of their main tools and are really, really wrong about sex and gender and rape and child abuse in fiction and why people write those themes and what it does to people who read them. Sometimes that label gets thrown at anti-racism advocates and others who are demonstrably NOT like antis in either tactics or rationality, so it helps to stop and look at who’s getting called what and why and is it actually true or not.
“The Amazing Maurice is a fantasy book. Of course, everyone knows that fantasy is “all about” wizards, but by now, I hope, everyone with any intelligence knows that, er, what everyone knows… is wrong. Fantasy is more than wizards. For instance, this book is about rats that are intelligent. But also about the even more fantastic idea that humans are capable of intelligence as well. Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewellery into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting than the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic. In the book the rats go to war, which is, I hope, gripping. But then they make peace, which is astonishing.”
— Terry Pratchett 2001 Carnegie Medal Award Speech
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