Anti vs Pro-Ship Meta Survey

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Fan Survey
Title: Anti vs Pro-Ship Meta Survey
Surveyor: asterosian
Date(s): March 28, 2020 -
Medium: Google Forms survey
Fandom(s): Panfandom
External Links: https://asterosian.tumblr.com/post/613876472892014592/anti-vs-pro-ship-meta-survey
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This article documents a currently unfolding situation within the fannish realm. Content may change quickly, and the page structure itself may undergo major revision. New details are very welcome.

The Anti vs Pro-Ship Meta Survey is a survey created by asterosian in March 2020. The survey kicked off discussion regarding the "anti-shipper"/"pro-shipper" labels.

Rationale

I’ve noticed for a long, long time that antis frequently misrepresent the views, opinions, and perspectives of the pro-shippers/anti-antis I’m familiar with. I’m willing to believe that since they’re generally not among our circles and only reading our arguments when they encounter someone who chose to argue with them personally, they simply haven’t been exposed to what most of us are actually saying, only what the few they’ve encountered are, or worse, their only exposure is through other antis creating strawman arguments and they haven’t actually heard any of us. It’s incredibly irritating to me to have my stances misrepresented constantly like this, but I can understand that misconceptions will arise when you’ve limited your exposure.

What’s new to me, and this is jarring as all hell, is seeing a few self-identified antis… agreeing with stances I tend to think of as inherently pro-ship/anti-anti stances? My experience with antis always had shown them arguing against these same ideas or seeming to behave in ways that indicated a belief in the opposite stance. I know antis aren’t a monolith, and I know I shouldn’t think of them as such, especially when I complain about antis treating us like a monolith, but it’s really making me wonder where the line between anti and pro-ship resides. Have I been seeing misrepresentations of anti beliefs? Are there antis who are anti-in-name-only but side with antis because their only exposure to pro-shippers is strawman arguments and misrepresentation? How dramatically would things change if we could just talk to each other civilly without personal attacks and assumptions? How many people are picking a side when they’re actually more in a gray area between anti and pro-ship? How much of the discourse is miscommunication and a failure to understand each other’s actual arguments?

I’m moments away from starting a survey to finding out the answers to these because I genuinely want to see what sorts of results I’ll get, but I’m really wondering how much of this discourse is strawmen, people only seeing the most extreme of the other side, miscommunication, and a lack of understanding.

Example questions

Do you ship anything "problematic"?
  • Yes, for coping reasons
  • Yes, because it's fun
  • Yes, to explore darker topics
  • No, but not because I would be against doing so
  • No, because I'm morally against doing so
  • I used to, but I stopped for moral reasons
  • I used to, but I stopped for reasons unrelated to morality
  • I have ships I'm not certain are "problematic" or not
  • Other:

Alice believes that fiction does have an effect on reality, but that the effect is not as direct as "you read the thing, you do the thing". However, Alice is uncomfortable with minor-adult, incestuous, and potentially abusive ships, and she will not engage in these ships and will ask others to refrain from bringing them up around her. As she has no interest in discussing it, she doesn't pay attention to whether her friends engage in these ships or not, and does not express any thoughts about people who do ship it. What is Alice?
  • Alice is an anti
  • Alice is pro-ship
  • Alice is neutral
  • There is not enough information provided to answer the question

Carolyn likes looking at fanart and fanfiction for a ship. She's even created some of her own. She hangs out with shippers for this ship and reads and recommends fanfics with them. However, Carolyn does not want the ship to become canon. She prefers if the canon characters kept their current dynamic and she just imagines an AU with her friends about the ship. Does Carolyn ship that ship?
  • Yes, Carolyn ships it
  • No, Carolyn doesn't actually ship it
  • Unsure
  • There is not enough information provided to answer the question

Discussion

On Pillowfort, azul-ora commented:

Having been out of the tumblr loop for so long, I'd forgotten how utterly lacking in nuance these discussions are. The questions about "what beliefs do you hold about anti/pro-shippers" in particular were so impressively extreme that I found myself at a loss for how to answer them. Within those questions, I could take serious issue with the wording of even just one of the answers, the one that grouped incest, abuse and CSA into one category. Like, these things may be similar, but they are not necessarily so, and they are certainly not the same. Not all abuse is created equal, and I find it unreasonable to casually group them so. But alas, nuance is not something we are allowed, it would seem :/

[...] you'd need a lot of ground to cover the nuance of difference between the impact, effect, reasoning etc of CSA, abusive relationships and incest. I mean, of the three, incest is the one that most stands out from the grouping. They've obviously been collated together on the grounds that all three are taboo, without stopping to consider that incest is taboo for a very different reason than CSA and abusive relationships (at least, in my mind: I'd be curious to see whether others agreed that there's a difference in reasoning there).

Regardless of what you were discussing, however, I don't think that the free answer box at the end of a survey is the right place to put such wordage as would do the topic justice. And ultimately, I guess I just find it a little redundant to try and do it there anyway. I don't think it would be unfair to say that the survey's construction indicates the author, while perhaps sick of the "anti"/"pro" divide, is still operating fairly firmly within the general tumblr mindset, and speaking from experience, nothing tends to break that down but a lot of time away from it, and a lot of exposure to more rational and nuanced debate.[1]

Pillowfort user PC wrote

The survey was pretty pro-ship-leaning though, while most of my opinions square with "pro-shippers", I do not want to identify as any part of that discourse(tm), so it was hard to answer some questions that weren't aimed at non-antis/non-pro-shippers.[1]

Pillowfort user ciiriianan wrote

Wow this survey is ... very limited.

It's also trying? But clearly doesn't have any actual training in making surveys.

... and no evident idea that there might be an objection to the entire framing of the discussion.

I probably qualify as 'pro-ship' by many standards, but I'd rather consider myself 'pro-tagging' and 'ship and let ship or not' ...

the question about what shipping means is... interesting? Didn't include what I consider the key part of shipping, which is 'finding the relationship compelling and thinking about it a lot', and seemed to have an unspoken assumption that 'shipping' something means thinking that there's a healthy romantic relationship there, which... hn. Maybe that's part of the problem.

And the questions about 'is this person pro or anti' -- no. This person is not using that framing. This person is demonstrating the limits of the framing!

Do you ship something problematic -- a) define problematic (I know i know, it's part of the discourse) b) define ship (see above -- some characters have unhealthy relationships that are interesting from a literary perspective!) and c) do you really expect people to accurately self-report things they find shameful?[1]

Tumblr user cringegoblin said in his tags:

#this is really interesting honestly #i'm say i'm an anti but honestly i'm this close to changing sides bc so many antis are so holier than though #i'm against gross ships too but people have the right to do whatever they want #as long as it's not disgusting or illegal #but it is also a thin and blurred line #also i don't get into the discourse very much i just watch it

Tumblr user tootransforthis commented

I also think part of the problem is presenting it as a dichotomy of either you’re an anti or anti-anti. I call myself neutral but it’s more that I don’t want to choose a label because there is a lot of nuance that isn’t acknowledged, by either side. Because of that I tend to be in the grey area between the two. Furthermore, choosing a “side” means choosing to deal with the negative stereotypes and connotations that come with.

The labels make it easy to write people off and ignore them instead of trying to have a discussion-which is why the nuance is lost or ignored. Instead people trade snappy phrases- not just “Fiction affects reality” but also “let people ship what they want”- which I generally agree with. But then people use it when they get upset that others are critiquing their ships- not attacking them, just making valid points about how certain aspects are problematic- because those people don’t want to acknowledge what they ship isn’t perfect. What ends up happening- because people use labels and these phrases to replace actually discussing what they believe- is that now some people will associate this phrase with “you can’t critique my ships” instead of “don’t harass people over fictional ships”.

It’s really just all a mess.

Results and findings

References

  1. ^ a b c Post and comments on osteophage's Pillowfort

See also

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