Antishipping as the cool new trend, or: why are most antis under 25 years old?

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Title:	Antishipping as the cool new trend, or: why are most antis under 25 years old?
Creator:	freedom-of-fanfic
Date(s):	June 19, 2017
Medium:	online (tumblr)
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	antishipping as the cool new trend, or: why are most antis under 25 years old?, Archived version
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Antishipping as the cool new trend, or: why are most antis under 25 years old? is a 2017 essay by freedom-of-fanfic.

The essay is part of a series of essays posted by freedom-of-fanfic on the topics of social justice and the antis culture that plays a role in tumblr culture.

There are two parts to the essay.

The first part is here., ^{Archived version}

The second part amends the original post by adding links to cites to support various statements:

added some sources to the original post. I figured if I was going to make this many assertions, I should provide at least a few links

The Essay

I really think that antishipping is a movement that’s gaining ground with the younger & newer arrivals to fandom spaces; a kind of ‘cool trend’, so to speak. In aggregate, antishipping culture is beautifully constructed to be particularly appealing to teenage or college-age people - and especially American people - who are marginalized, oppressed, often social outcasts in real life and often under-educated about their own marginalized identity, and I kind of wanted to get into why. the other day I posted to talk a little about why I think antis tend to be young (and American). To sum up & simultaneously add a little more:

a brain still growing - until the age of 22-25, the frontal lobe of the brain does not finish development. the frontal lobe handles higher reasoning skills and complex problem-solving. Thus: the growing mind is particularly prone to incomplete reasoning, black and white thinking, and total empathy failure, making it hard for those under 25 to fully comprehend the impact of their actions, sympathize with others, or tackle social problems with nuance. Truly comprehending that others come from entirely different worldviews or have entirely different experiences and that being different doesn’t make them wrong and that most deep-seated problems need complex solutions that require nuance tends to come with this final brain growth. (Not always, of course. but often.)

current American sex education being mostly scaremongering and abstinence-only + ready availability of sexual content, specifically pornographic material, online + hypersexual marketing = a deeply fucked cultural understanding of sex that adolescents are particularly unequipped to detangle

escaping religious/Christian fundamentalist tenets but not their mindset: for a religion supposedly based on forgiveness, organized Christianity is not very forgiving. Everyone is a sinner & a single sin is enough to doom you to eternal hellfire, if you don’t do the right thing you’ll face Judgement in heaven/your salvation is always uncertain, and sinners must be cast out from your midst: the moral/communal purity that organized Christianity often demands can take years to deprogram (and this is not to mention the gender essentialism, homophobia/queerphobia, and anti-sex/anti-kink messages, accompanied by a strong undercurrent of anti-intellectualism to discourage self-education on these subjects!) teens just breaking away from this toxicity are especially unequipped to untangle themselves & tend to take the same purity standards with them to a more liberal cause instead (such as enforcing ‘social justice’ in shipping), with a side-order of internalized, unexamined anti-lgbt/sex/kink/etc rhetoric that dovetails rather neatly with exclusionist rhetoric.

exclusionary gatekeeping as baby’s first lgbt/queer culture lesson' - transformative fandom is a frequent haven for marginalized people who don’t see themselves in the media they consume (so they change the media to meet their emotional, sexual, social, etc needs, you see?). because it’s not taught in schools here in the US, it’s not too uncommon for newcomers to get their first big dose of history and cultural education that’s not centered around straight white men in fandom. but what are they learning? here on tumblr, since about 2013, exclusionists have used the relative lack of education on queer history to build an false history, one where the gender binary is strongly enforced and sexualities can only exist on the binary axis: nb/queer/ace/pan and sometimes even bi and trans -identifying people are erased or ‘not oppressed enough’. this history is the one that young entrants into fandom are more likely to encounter first and have no knowledge with which to counter it. Antishipping derives its mode of operation and principle values from exclusionists. It dictates who can write or do what based on their sexual/gender identity (and sometimes race as well). Its definition of social justice is also heavily influenced by exclusionists because its members are mostly young people who learned all their queer history from exclusionists.

the particularly adolescent vulnerability to peer pressure (the need to belong & the fear of being ostracized): teens are particularly inclined to be influenced by friendships and maintaining social ties. antishipping is a highly cohesive, insular culture with enforced rules of conduct, striking clear in/out lines & engaging heavily in use of peer pressure. antishippers are encouraged to break ties with those who don’t conform to their rules of conduct, so existing friends are pressured to become antishippers themselves or risk losing their friendsgroup. once ‘in’, friends will abandon you for not keeping the party line & persecution of outsiders is encouraged, further strengthening the need to conform. to stop antishipping is to lose your entire social media community/support structure and potentially endure a hate-mob of your former associates. In other words: it’s easy to become an anti in order to keep your friends and almost impossible to quit without losing everything, and teens are especially vulnerable to this kind of social structure.

having a just cause & a space to control: adolescence is a time of particular powerlessness as decreased monitoring expands your horizons rapidly but your ability to affect the problems you see (usually) doesn’t. antishipping rests its laurels on a(n incomplete, corrupted) form of social justice/righting the wrongs of the privileged. being an anti feels like making a difference b/c your actions have visible impact on your immediate surroundings. (and having a space you feel you can control can be even more urgent with additional pressures like abusive home situations, past traumatic experiences, academic pressure, untreated/unrecognized mental illness, being forced into the closet b/c of queer/transphobia, etc.)

an American (and to a lesser degree, western European) post 9/11 cultural shift from prioritizing personal freedom to prioritizing communal safety; those under the age of 20 were 3 or younger or not yet born when the shift happened. antishipping prioritizes communal ‘safety’ (‘bad’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘inappropriate’ things must never be mentioned to protect people from hearing about them and being either corrupted or harmed) over personal freedom (allowing ‘bad’/’dangerous’ things to be discussed, and it is up to the individual to personally decide what content to avoid).

of course, all of this is conjecture based on my own experiences and observations, and it’s not a set of rules - just circumstances that I believe absolutely encourage young fandom members to end up falling headfirst into antishipping and either never notice how hurtful it is or never get the courage to leave it behind. And I think there’s a lot more the popularity/prevalence of antishipping today, but this post is already longer than I meant it to be.

(I always go light on racism when i talk about antishipping because while antis frequently accuse shippers of racism, it’s disingenuous to class racism as the same kind of oppression as lgbt+-phobia & misogyny, particularly in America - they’re related, but not the same. Centering non-white (and especially black) voices does not get the same focus as centering lgbt and women’s voices in fandom, and I think it’s easy to dismiss legitimate charges of racism as ‘anti bullshit’ when we class all these types of marginalization together.)

Comments

warpedellipsis reblogs earlgraytay:

escaping religious/Christian fundamentalist tenets but not their mindset: for a religion supposedly based on forgiveness, organized Christianity is not very forgiving. Everyone is a sinner & a single sin is enough to doom you to eternal hellfire, if you don’t do the right thing you’ll face Judgement in heaven/your salvation is always uncertain, and sinners must be cast out from your midst:

This isn’t totally accurate. The “you’re a sinner damned to hell” is more like background radiation. On top of that, there’s both “you’re better than everyone else because you’re reaching for heaven **in the correct way, unlike them**” and “everyone sins, just like you, so that means you have to forgive and forget”. They’re conflicting ideas: usually the first is applied to anyone you’re not supposed to like, and the second to people you’re not allowed to disparage. This is how American religion both maintains superiority over others and ignores its own failures. So, you’re not allowed to challenge the rules, you’re not allowed to ask why or question anything, and you have to defend any hypocritical behavior of your own people.

Which is what some toxic fandom/sj looks like.

People might keep exactly that behavior, or people could do something like rebel against the “do not question/forgive and forget for your own”, and turn against anyone for absolutely any little thing. That’s freedom to decide who’s good and bad, as opposed to the hypocritical “morality” they had to put up with before. It’s carrying out justice for all those people you were forced to “forgive”. You no longer have to pretend they’re good and perfect, you can revile them just like you reviled outsiders.

Again, what a lot of toxic stuff looks like

People are very bad with telling the difference between “this hurts me greatly, so I do not want to interact with you anymore” and “you deserve hellfire for this”, especially coming from this toxic background. It’s why it’s widely recommended to take time to cool down before doing something you’ll regret, before irreparably burning bridges. And yet, we’re encouraged to treat everything as “hellfire” level. It takes a long time to untangle what’s worth burning bridges over and what’s worth seeking social repercussions. Someone that hurts you greatly is not always the same as “this person is a danger to other people”. And a post about “this person hurt me greatly” is not something other people should spread around as if it’s talking about a person who’s a danger. Those things are easy to confuse and mistake for each other, especially when everything is public and there’s no real difference between those types of posts. Fb, tumblr, other sites by their nature aren’t supposed to be things you take excessive time to think about how you’ll respond. It’s supposed to be fast-paced, see/click, not like journalism and meditations and long-form blogging.

Maybe there should be a cultural agreement that vent posts like that aren’t shared, that they’re responded to with sympathies just as you would a friend telling you in person, but they’re not used to stir up or go after anyone. If it’s that sort of thing, call a friend or use text/personal IM.

fandomisnotyoursafespace responds to freedom-of-fanfic:

Yeah, let’s not include aces in with the actual LGBT people, given how disgustingly homophobic (as well as misogynist) ace Tumblr is, and how it deliberately distorts LGBT history to invite itself into a community it despises. “Reactionary exclusive gatekeeping” my fucking ass.

Also, while LGBT issues definitely get more focus in fandom than racism does, the bunch who came up with the term “klandom” for people who ship, say, Steve/Bucky instead of Steve/Sam and who rail against Rey for “taking the focus off” their pweshus cinnamon roll Finn are antis pure and simple. Nobody is obliged to ship anyone they don’t want to.

#antis #asexies

freedom-of-fanfic replies to fandomisnotyoursafespace]:

I like how out of everything in this post you honed in on the mention of ace identities as being part of the LGBT community and decided to take that apart - a passing, brief mention in conjunction with a lot of other identities -and following it immediately with taking my closing comment about racism in bad faith. I mean, if that alone doesn’t speak about your priorities …

Anyway, I guess it’s time to play Oppression Olympics because we’re all so fond of it.

That’s a beautiful example of respectability politics you’ve engaged there - the argument that unless a group behaves ‘correctly’, they don’t deserve protection or recognition. Let’s not decide who is and isn’t ‘actual LGBT people’ based on how some people in a group behave as if their behavior has any relationship to how straight and cis they are. This is the same argument that antis (and exclusionists) use to decide who they listen to: you’re not a ‘real’ survivor/gay person/mentally ill person/whatever-the-fuck unless you behave the way they want you to. It’s also been used to oppress pretty much all marginalized groups throughout history.

Is the person you linked being disgusting? yes. Are there many ace people on tumblr who say disgusting things? also yes. Should they be called out and stop being assholes? Fuck yes! Does that mean that all ace people are magically no longer ace? no, that’s absurd, and your argument is idiotic.

This continuous insistence that ace people are indistinguishable from straight people and experience minimal social difficulties or discrimination, and never belonged to the queer community before is factually incorrect, and the arguments used to vault them out of the queer community are identical to the ones used against bisexual people.

I enjoyed your second link immensely - I’d recommend everyone read it, especially to get a nice clear picture of how trans people were (and continue to be) misunderstood even within the community, how people whose identity didn’t exactly fall in the Major 4 were still largely invisible, and how bisexuality used to (and still does) only ‘count’ if you’re in a wlw/mlm relationship. (and how this guy has completely forgotten that queer went through an intense reclamation process in America in the 80′s/90′s and went on to be used in a mainstream way to refer to the community as a whole for the last 15-20 years or so.) It’s great to see the perspective of a gay man who lived a lot of that history, because it’s the views of people who were in the community but still invisible - it’s a viewpoint that doesn’t get enough discussion on tumblr.

So: let’s not with the ‘who belongs here’ gatekeeping rhetoric, please? But hey, fail-fandomanon (from which you hail) harbors a solid community of biphobic lesbians, TERFs, and ace-exclusionists, so your position is not a surprise!

(For the record, I enjoy fail-fandomanon a lot and have enjoyed a lot of your posts here on tumblr, but this is a point on which we’re just not going to agree anytime soon.)

To your second point: of course there are antis that misuse accusations of racism to discredit people who ship things they don’t approve of, but let’s be real: fandom has a racism problem. There’s absolutely a bias towards shipping white characters over POC (especially black) characters. And who can wonder? it’s almost like there’s a lengthy American history of being really fucking gross to POC and thinking of non-white bodies in oversexualizing or desexualizing or stereotypical ways. (This problem gets aggravated by anti-shipping applying pressure to fandom and raising the stakes of criticism to insane levels for everyone, but it would exist even if antis weren’t here making it worse.)

in conclusion: There’s value to making the effort to deprogram your brain in light of white bias in media, but that’s not the same thing as making people ship things they don’t want to.

#aphobiaI #couldn't find the link i wanted most but oh well #another time #racism #exclusionary politics

no-discourse-onlywrites responds to freedom-of-fanfic:

I’m honestly surprised they included bisexual and trans individuals tbph, considering that aspects of Tumblr treat them like ass. I don’t agree with EVERYTHING MOGAI/aroace Tumblr does or says but as a bisexual, I’m well aware of EXACTLY how it feels to be told I have no problems and that I’m just like the cisgendered heterosexuals, so I’m inclined to do with aroaces what I’m told to do with every group on Tumblr (except those we don’t like, apparently) - sit down, shut up, and listen.

uselesslyinformedpersonal responding to freedom-of-fanfic:

Yo, the op mentioned something about neuroscience that needs some elaboration, because without it the post lacks some depth.

The human brain has, as far as you need to know, neurons, and a second part, called the myelin sheeth (read, fatty layer that makes the brain go faster) and what op means by “not fully developed” is that the frontal lobe of adolescents is lacking the sheeth, so while they can think rationally if they try to, their reaction is much more emotional because it takes longer for the rational part of their brain to catch up.

Sorry, just noticed that. I’ll shut up now

athenadark responding to freedom-of-fanfic:

I’m about as anti anti as you can get and I want to add something you did not

although this post is very detailed it overlooks two basic concerns

1. the lack of POC, primarily black, characters to fan because the larger fandoms are made often by racist networks or studios Marvel, CW, Netflix had a moment where i thought they might not be,] and this trickles down

often there is a preference to character types in fandom as opposed to characters in general, so the same fan tends to like the same model of character over and over and this includes characters who are POC, for example Stiles in Teen Wolf and Mac in the Fades are written from the same character creation sheet and if you like one you’ll like the other, but Mac is played by Daniel Kaluuya.

So the chances are if we took supernatural and reversed it so the Winchesters and Bobby and Castiel were black a lot of the same fans would still enjoy the show - but there would be assholes who wouldn’t watch it just because and good riddance

by the time you get to fan-writing anyway you see a character as characteristics and dialogue and have to descritbe them in fic to remind you what they look like [or is that just me]

a lot of the shows/movies etc that people are set up to fan over rarely have anything but the token black characters, but where that character is given depth and wit they tend to be fanned but not shipped - which has a lot to do with anti behaviour. Antis, to set themselves as the moral majority will pick a character they think is being sidelined and use the accusation of racism to get people to like him more - that they are better people because he is their fave

2. fandom as a collective is an international experience and you focus on US viewpoints and US fandoms, which is exclusionary and naive, there are people on tumblr from all around the world, I’m in the uk and i regularly chat with people in Europe, Australia, the Phillipines, Malaysia and the theing they share is fandom

it’s not just an American experience, although I’ll concede almost all of the anti’s i’ve discovered [i have opinions, they all find their way to me eventually] were American

nederys responding to freedom-of-fanfic:

agreed, i thought the posts and the links were constructive but that the viewpoint was very american for something as worldwide as fandom

ravewulf responds'to' athenadark:

To some degree I think this also extends outside of shipping contexts (although most of it is either shipping related or at least started there). I’ve seen it in regards to shows themselves as a whole (Teen Wolf specifically) that are vilified for perceived SJW reasons whether they hold true or not that creates a ton of peer pressure to conform to hating a show even if you do like it.

#Fandom #fandom problems #peer pressure #purity wank

the-real-seebs responds to freedom-of-fanfic]:

woah this blog is full of really interesting writing that addresses a lot of things in much more depth than i have usually tried. so basically, if you want to see arguments against anti-shippers and against harassing people, but you always wanted them to be better-cited and sourced than mine? look over here at this person.

#tw: antis

cookingwithroxy responds to the-real-seebs:

It’s not just a thing of fandoms and anti-shippers, this is a good description of why a lot of Social Justice is being done badly these days, because most of it’s proponents are young, upset, and very willing and happy to listen to people who will give them a narrative to justify what they want to do. Be it accuse random people of being pedophiles for no actual reason to accusing everyone who disagrees with their politics of being racists or homophobes.

fierceawakening responds to the-real-seebs:

Is anyone else getting tired of the way that one von g3ll mini post gets linked over and over as if it settles the matter, when there are… a lot more than just one elder arguing that exclusionism was not the order of the day back when? Like who is that guy and why is he more trustworthy than bi women

lostsometime responds to the-real-seebs: ohhh shit i never made the “post 9/11 community safety mindset” connection before you’re right holy crap that’s exactly what that is

#sj #tumblr sj

nederys said: agreed, i thought the posts and the links were constructive but that the viewpoint was very american for something as worldwide as fandom)

I appreciate your input! But because I’m just really bad at letting things go, I felt the need to reply/rebut your arguments.

Re: racism in fandom: Let me start by saying that I’m a white American. Racism here is generally color/feature-based (Racism functions very differently in other countries, from my reading/understanding). Here, I’m talking about racism from an American standpoint because it’s what I know the most about and where many fandom racism discussions center. Also, American racism has a disseminated effect because American media (influenced by racism) has significant multinational viewership.

Because I don’t suffer from racism I try to sit down and shut up on this point more often than not. For a lot of good posts from non-white people in regards to fandom, please check out wrangletangle’s racism tag. I also highly recommend stichomancery on twitter for incredible commentary.

That said: all your arguments as to why POC are less shipped/popular in fandom are the same arguments that are frequently applied to explain the lesser popularity of women in media - there’s less of them and they tend to be written more poorly. And these arguments hold a lot of truth. American media centers white (cis) male stories, and it’s no surprise that fandom follows their footsteps.

But the counterargument - which has also been presented in regards to the lack of popularity of women in fandom - is that even when given central roles, fandom still doesn’t seem to like them as much. Characters of color have to be far more impressive/remarkable than their white counterparts to receive similar levels of adoration, and sometimes even that fails.

Both media underrepresentation of non-white stories and fandom underappreciation of non-white stories flow from bias towards whites in American culture in general. The media feeds continued white bias in a positive feedback loop. I think that as media and society gets better about this fandom will in consequence get better about this because it’s all part of the same system.

As I said in my reply to fandomisnotyoursafespace: I agree that anti-shipping exasperates fandom bias towards white males by raising the stakes of receiving criticism of any kind incredibly high. Fan creators don’t just make ignorant mistakes that need to be corrected: they must be punished eternally and can never apologize or recompense enough for the hurt they caused.* Of course this induces many fan creators to avoid subjects where they are likely to make ignorant mistakes, such as writing characters that don’t share their skin color.

This undoubtedly contributes to the popularity of ‘whitecock’ pairings like kylux, because you can’t make ignorant racist mistakes in creative content about white (cis) men. But it’s just as disingenuous to assume that kylux shippers hate black people as it is to assume antis pick nonwhite characters that are being sidelined to champion just to make themselves look better. You can’t automatically know why any given person may demand more creative content about a character. It’s perfectly reasonable to want more content about non-white characters in fandom - it’s just that the punishing way that this demand is frequently carried out is having the opposite effect. (It would probably be much more effective to praise and rec quality fanworks featuring non-white characters and leave lots of encouraging comments, instead.)

What I’m trying to say is that it’s very, very easy to erase non-white fandom members who want to see characters that share their skin color or background get more attention in fandom when we dismiss all accusations of racism as anti-shippers trying to control and manipulate everyone else. If you have an AO3 account, I’d encourage you to read the comments left by fans who are not white on ‘Your Vagina is a Bigot; My Vagina is a Saint’, which address this erasure.

*There’s not enough differentiation in fandom between malicious intent to harm and ignorant error from lack of awareness: both are treated as equally ‘on purpose’. On the other hand, the harm a person does out of ignorance doesn’t disappear just because they didn’t know better. But web 2.0 does like (and encourage) dogpiling on people who do something shitty, on purpose or not, which raises reputation stakes very high, and even higher -surprise surprise - for people in marginalized groups.

On your second point, you’re right: my posts on this subject have been very Americentric. I do resent you calling that ‘exclusionary and naive’. I’ve not hidden for a second that these posts revolve around why experience has taught me that most antis are young, oppressed Americans, and thus all of the content in this post revolves around why American culture particularly encourages fandom members to become anti-shippers.

Fandom is, of course, a multicultural experience, and while Americans make up a significant chunk of the English-speaking fandom spaces, we are by no means the only voices here. I’ll keep trying to account for that in my posts and be extra clear when I’m addressing American experiences specifically.

Source: freedom-of-fanfic racism this is an americentric post

nederys replies to freedom-of-fanfic]:

No need to apologize! I know wanting to reply to everything XD and it was actually a nice read, I agree with what you’re saying. If you’re curious, my remark of American-centrism was more about the “whitecock” post you linked to. I largely agreed with it, but for mainly two tangential reasons I was remembered of some issues:The hegemony of American discourse and perspectives in fandoms that actually have a high amount of people from other areas, like Europe. This way, for instance, I’ve found...

#fandom talk #racism

spacesemmel responds to freedom-of-fanfic]:

Here’s the thing though, and it makes fandom for non-American fans hell more often than not: we can’t win arguments with poc antis. (antis of color? Sorry, please give me the benefit of the doubt here – English is not my first language, I’m looking for a respectful term.)

How often have you heard people defend themselves against antis by disclosing personal information: stop it, I’m an abuse victim too / I’m not straight either / I’m shipping this to cope? Because the current discourse climate goes like this: your word on topic x only has weight if you are of group x. Now add that to the fact that for Americans, all Europeans are white. (And therefore privileged over PoC, and so nobody has to treat them with any respect at all because punching up against your oppressors is always ok, aka tumblr logic.)

It doesn’t matter if we’re a minority in our country, if the rest of the world sees us as terrorists, if our language has been taken from us, if we’ve been killed by the thousands in a genocide Americans might not even cover in their history classes - xenophobia is not racism, and anything that’s not racism is a lesser offense and therefore makes you less oppressed than me, so stfu, your word doesn’t count.

I get where that attitude comes from originally, that it’s born out of real oppression and desperation, and I understand the place it has in the original context. But twisted by anti mentality, in the hands of bullies, this is a dangerous weapon and a convenient silencing technique.

I’ve seen people get attacked for shipping two white people even if the fandom has PoC, I’ve seen people get attacked because they DID ship a character with a PoC (Marvel’s Natasha Romanoff and T’Challa come to mind), I’ve seen people get attacked for not drawing fanart of non-white characters, I’ve seen people get attacked for doing so (”gaining fame by exploiting Black bodies”.)

So either you think all of these are right, even though some of them are contradictory – or you think that some of these accusations are wrong or at least open for discussion, and then it must be okay to defend yourself against them.

Ask yourself, would you tell a white, gay anti who tells you not to ship something: I’ve critically thought about this, and I still disagree with you, so I’ll keep doing it?

Would you dare saying it to a PoC?

Non-white people can be antis, and they can be as power hungry and vicious as any other anti – only in my experience others hardly ever stand up to them, because apparently in the US, people are more afraid of being labelled “racist” than “pedophile”.

Full disclosure: there are countries in Europe where there’s a very small black population. (And a non-existent Black one, because no colonies, no slavery, etc). I went to public school all my life, I use the metro a lot, I go to the supermarket – and yet, I can count the (offline) conversations I’ve had with black people with both my hands. I was not raised with the same white guilt many US citizens are. Which doesn’t mean people in middle Europe don’t realize that they have privilege and responsibility, only we’re used to look for other things. For example for me, the scariest thing I’ve seen in fandom was on a Fantastic Beasts Kinkmeme: A prompter who found the movie too white wished for a retelling of the story but with PoC instead of the two Jewish main characters.

They asked to erase two Jewish women as if it was the most casual thing, they were not met by any opposition at all. That’s what I find so puzzling about US-centric social justice – it’s only for some.

But see, even though I think that was an extremely disrespectful way of trying to get more representation, I truly and honestly believe that in the end, everybody has the right to make fandom about them. Mainstream media mostly doesn’t, and that’s what the transformative part is for anyway. So write about PoC, write about non-straight characters, write about whatever makes you happy, whatever you need to see more representation of, but don’t bully other people into doing the same by swinging the buzzword axe. And if you’re feeling unrightfully attacked, it’s okay to defend yourself. You are nobody’s punching bag.

#fandom discourse #racism mention #antisemitism mention #us-centrism #bullies who get away with bullying make me so fucking angry #I remember a fanartist getting [[doxx]]ed for drawing an interracial pairing some poc didn't approve of #like he got death threats and hate and the full anti treatment #and in response #he apologized #because he's such a kind person but also WTF HAS THIS DISCOURSE CLIMATE DONE TO PEOPLE????

[not-even-even]:

also, do I have to go to the reprogramming camp for liking two white disabled nerds in Pacific Rim or not, it's the usual "well, you are allowed, IF you questioned it enough, where enough = never enough"

dadbob responds to freedom-of-fanfic]:

OP: why won’t the kids let me be racist and ship pedophilia?? must be because of the gays!!! must be because you’re sad pathetic teenagers with undeveloped brains!! must be because they’re babies!!! catholicism!!!! uhhhhhbvbvvgvmb 9/11!!!!!!!!!!!!

just come to terms with the fact that you’re a pathetic piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to interact with fandom at all

and in conclusion, piss your fucking pants :)

tendergingergirl replies to athenadark:

That’s because America has such a toxic religious history. This country seems built on the act of suppression, even though, that was not the original intent, but it always comes back to power…those who want to keep it badly enough, that they will deny the existence of humanity in others.

2018 followup

freedom-of-fanfic posted a revised version of the essay in October 2018, noting that their opinion had changed:

I’ve tweaked it a bit to correct some stuff I now think is just patronizing/incorrect, but overall, I now think it’s overly reliant on adolescent growth stages when the best explanations are societal changes (fandom being on viral social media, fandom being conflated with social justice activism, and increasingly authoritarian trends in 21st century America.)

Further Reading

• I think the general mindset and culture of Tumblr is effecting what people choose to write about in fic (2015 post)
• Fandom is not your safe space (2015 post)
• AO3 & Censorship (2016 post)
• AO3 Content Discussion (2016) (post)
• The Three Laws of Fandom (2016 post)
• Like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom. they can and they do, and many are perfectly great people. (2017)
• List of Content Banned by Archives
• Ok, well don't say I didn't warn you. by Bokai (May 2017)
• antishipping as the cool new trend, or: why are most antis under 25 years old?, freedom-of-fanfic (June 2017)
• Could you talk some more about how current antis relate back to the LJ social justice scene and when the morph from debating fanworks to dissing people happened?, ^{Archived version}, freedom-of-fanfic (July 2017)
• But I’m going to go more into how tumblr’s very structure led to a ‘race to the bottom’ sort of enacting of punishment via social justice, freedom-of-fanfic (July 2017)