GLOSSARY / MEANINGS

This conflict becomes so muddled and confusing when you get deeper into it, but thankfully, there are some great resources to get the vital basics out of the way for you.═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

INTRODUCTION ➛ If you're totally new, please start here:

My personal uses of proship and antiship:

_{^{Screenshot from here}}While everyone has their own exact interpretation of the words frequently used in this discourse, here's a quick guide on how I intend to use them throughout this Carrd:When I say proshipper, anti-anti, profic/profiction, comship... I am referring to people who:
◦ Self-identify as one or more of these openly
◦ Believe some variation of fiction ≠ reality
◦ Are using the term in earnest and not just because they're a bigoted edgelord that wants to watch the world burnWhen I say antishipper, anti, or fanti (I choose not to use fanpol or fancop)... I am referring specifically to people who:
◦ Believe that content that makes them upset should not be ALLOWED to exist
◦ Push the belief that other people should follow their stance, or else they're in the wrong
◦ Take measures to enforce their way of living onto others, whether that's through direct harassment and threats, or merely shaming/isolating/guilt-tripping themWhile I am aware that not all antis fit the criteria above, this is merely to identify things I've already said in past posts that I link in this Carrd. My problem is not with self-identified antis who merely have criticism for proshippers or the way someone may engage with fiction. My problem is explicitly with people who weaponize their own pain in order to control and manipulate others.
_{^{If I add any more of my own posts to this later on, I may start using the term "rad-antis" or "radical antis" to refer to the latter type.}}Do keep in mind that I can only speak for how I use these terms, and other people in my sources may use them differently too. With a deeper understanding of the general way people in this discourse talk, it might become easier to discern what exactly any given post is referring to when using these very broad words in context.

Extended information ➛ If you've dipped your toe in and want to learn more, these are all pretty good places to start!

Professional Studies / Commentary

In this category, I will list the following types of things: direct links to scientific / academic papers, posts made by professionals in relevant fields, or posts that are built primarily out of professional sources and/or are meant to explain them to laymen.I haven't read every one of these because there is just SO MUCH to consume, so I will be open about which ones I am in a position to 100% understand and endorse (designated with a ☑ symbol after the description, as well as a ➔ symbol if it is also included and elaborated upon in my document, which is the first link). But I want to go ahead and leave the links here for people to have access to in case they want to look into them on their own before I can. This is the only category with sources I haven't fully consumed. I may add more specific sub-categories once I've added more individual studies.Please don't link people's personal posts directly in fights, as it directs harassment to the OP. It's more productive to have discussions with people who are willing to hear you out anyway, and we don't want to load people's notifications with constant fighting. Thank you!═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

Documentation of abuse due to discourse

TRIGGER WARNING!!
This category is literally dedicated to all of the worst, most heinous things that have been said or committed in the name of this discourse, usually by antis.Some of this is tame stuff like typical hate comments you could apply to anything, but others are detailed letters filled with hatred and wishes of death (or worse), and others still are actual (sometimes successful) attempts to destroy people's lives or get them to hurt themselves.I would honestly recommend you not take in too much of this at once, especially if you don't need to be convinced that the antishipper movement encourages this type of behavior.Please please take care of yourself.THE FOLLOWING LINKS INCLUDE: Suicide baiting, death threats, death wishes, doxxing, graphic descriptions of harm and violence, equating victims of sexual abuse to their abusers, wishing for (more) abuse to happen to people, constant accusations of pedophilia without evidence, overall demonizing of anyone with even slightly taboo kinks/ships, aggressive callouts and "exposed" posts, grooming, stalking, dehumanization, sending gore or csem to people, sexual harassment...and of course, discussions of many potentially uncomfortable subjects such as rape, incest, age-gap, bestiality, and many more.^{Some screenshots may appear in multiple links due to people wanting to cover everything they know in their compilations, but that certainly doesn't make this trivial. What is there is MORE than plenty to illustrate a disturbing pattern.}═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

BONUS: Silly antics and unfortunate mindsets
_{(still a warning to anyone reading these, but these don't depict harassment, so I moved them)}

Essays and opinion pieces

So, my "Extended Information" section of the Introduction category was for stuff that's largely focused on explaining what anti/proship discourse is and sometimes dipping into its effects.This category is more for meta that isn't strictly about fandom shipping wars, or that only takes a specific part of it to analyze or comment on, or that's more of a discussion than an educational piece. I struggle to identify which of these may be too confusing for people who haven't already familiarized themselves with fandom discourse, but these are just extra things I found to be insightful or interesting.They can be anything from a short TikTok video to a full YouTube essay to a very long blog. Basically any discussions that could relate to these topics. _{^{That's probably going to make this the longest category because good meta is just so easy to find, even if it's just a very short, yet underrated point.}}Please do not assume that everyone featured here agrees with me 100%. We're all individuals, but at the end of the day, these people said some stuff that I felt could be used to back up my stance on some level, even if they would disagree with some parts of it. I am not affiliated with anyone I link to.═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

About how fiction affects reality

Moral implications of one's consumption of fiction

Lolicon/shotacon
_{Almost all of these have elements of the previous two categories}

Analyzing fanti ideology and tactics
_{Will also include occasional dissections of the 'proship' side}

Stuff I wasn't sure how to categorize

Fandom History and Familiar Rhetoric

I really do feel like knowing some of the recent history of what fandom was like 10-15 years ago REALLY adds a layer of understanding to where people are coming from when they reject antiship rhetoric.I also believe it should be eye-opening to see just how much antis can sound like old-fashioned bigots. They share a lot of talking points with TERFs and Christian fundamentalists, which you can see in the first link, as well as scattered amongst the discussions of Strikethrough '07 and the origins of AO3.═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

Keep these in mind!

This is the section where I provide what I can give the benefit of the doubt, from the antis' side, and also point out major issues with the proship side. I do this because there is an undeniable bias in this Carrd, _{^{(whoa, really?)}} and I don't think anyone truly benefits from me omitting genuinely reasonable criticism of the type of people I'm going to bat for here. I think creating echo chambers is part of why these two groups have become THIS polarized, so I at least want to do my part to mitigate that.For this category only, I am revising my personal use of "antis" and related words that I gave in the Glossary section. In this category, "anti" is just anyone who identifies as such and generally opposes proshippers in some way. If I'm speaking of antis who harass people, I will specify that. _{^{I do it like this instead of just revising the Glossary section because my definition from the glossary most accurately reflects the way most of my other sources use it as well, so it's just less confusing.}}If you're a proshipper reading this, you need not come here to insist that I'm using the terms wrong or giving credit where it's not due. I'm not. People are people, not rigid labels, and it seems like not even two of you can manage to just nod in agreement at literally anyone who tries to define proship, because they didn't include a factor that you personally consider part of your proship identity. Stop pretending there's a clear, universally-agreed-upon definition and that everyone else is just mistaken or lying. We can have discussions about what it should mean, how it started, how people misuse it, how it's evolved, etc. but if you deny that it has become bigger than any one of us, you're just demonstrably wrong, I'm sorry.So here's the stuff!
Broken into two main categories: Criticizing proshippers, and engaging with antiship beliefs in good faith._{^{I'm sorry this doesn't look as nice as the rest of the Carrd. I'm running out of free elements.}}═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

Criticizing Proshippers

PROSHIPPERS HARASS PEOPLE TOOYes. Yes they do. And just as there are proshippers willing to harass antis, there are also antis who condemn harassment of proshippers. I personally still believe that there is something a little more… corrosive in antiship ideology when taken to its extreme**, mainly because of the sheer volume and intensity of anti's harassment compared to the generally one-off (but still horrible) proshipper's harassment. But you should never excuse or downplay harassment from proshippers either._{**(Elaboration below the receipts)}I cannot pretend that I have done nearly as much searching for these receipts as I have done to gather the antiship receipts, partially because I've had years to collect those without even needing to try. I never once had to look up evidence that antishippers harass people—those incidents just fell into my lap. But that doesn't mean proshippers never do it, and here's some proof of that:⦿ anti-anti-receipts: A Tumblr blog dedicated specifically to bringing light to anti-antis/proshippers who say horrible things to/about antis, or who turn out to be garbage in other ways while carrying those labels.
⦿ proship-receipts: I've debated about including this one because their collection of direct harassment (tagged as such) is already a bit small, and among those are reblogs of antagonistic anti posts with claims of harassment in the notes when it was just people aggressively correcting dangerous misinformation or having a mutual argument, so I'd urge you to take it with a grain of salt. However, there are a few solid instances of proshippers being shitty in here, such as these: Anon sending a fic to trigger OP - ^_(A) | OP antagonizing someone over their abuse - ^_(A) | Anon harassment - ^_(A) | People giving OP hell over a basic dni - ^_(A) | Two • Posts harassing an anti blog - ^{_{(A1) (A2)}} | OP asking proshippers not to antagonize harmless posts, which I can confirm I have seen proshippers do before - ^_(A) | OP threatening to report antis who interact to the authorities - ^_(A)
⦿ The Infamous 527-page Callout on a 13-Year-Old | (Shorter Twitlonger version without the interview) - (A): A 26-year-old named Mari wrote a 527-page callout doc against a 13-year-old named Kez following several months of back-and-forth arguing and antagonizing each other to various degrees. Their fight had begun with a simple disagreement about aging up minor characters for smut and censoring the name of a fic author Kez complained about on their Twitter when they found improperly tagged NSFW on Tumblr. The video says just about everything I would have wanted to say, though of course there are plenty of very messy details to get into. But I think, ultimately, a 500+ page doc was absolutely uncalled for, and despite Kez being pretty unruly during the drama and doing some things they shouldn't have, the fallout was all too preventable.
⦿ Anon talking about someone disrespecting their boundaries during an art trade event - (A): Note that this is alleged and it's not the mods' fault either way if the anon didn't report the incident to them, but it's entirely in the realm of possibility that this happened, and I fully believe similar things do happen.^{_{I'm sorry, I legit couldn't find any more except one that I'm… not sure if I'm comfortable adding.}}It's understandable to go harder for your own side! Just don't let your bias taint your actions and decisions, you know? I really wanted to actually share these receipts because I feel like avoiding the nitty gritty does a disservice to everyone and turns this section into pure virtue-signaling.**Elaboration on my "corrosive" comment: So like, what I've noticed so far is that with antis, harassment is undeniably more common, or antis will much more often JUMP at any opportunity to call proshippers out. I've found 3 accounts dedicated to proshippers' harassment (not just their opinions to make fun of) and two are run by anti-antis, and are more for calling out bad apples who happen to be proship, not always people whose bad behavior is built off the fandom fight, whereas almost every anti receipt is CENTERED on fiction.Antis that harass people also tend to go much HARDER than proshippers do. While yes, intentionally triggering people, sending gore, and death threats are NEVER okay and I don't want to downplay the effects of those actions... antis are often relentless. They don't stop at one anon hate message. They don't stop until you're gone. Proshippers stab once—and stabbing is bad. Antis run you over with a steamroller, multiple times, and then blast your remains with a flamethrower, and then smash the ashes with a hammer. You are vaporized. There is nothing left of you.Now, the reason why this is the case remains unclear to me. I don't know if it's because proshippers tend to equate their label with anti-harassment and thus preach about it a lot more, or if it's just because antis create an enemy to destroy based not on a concept of self-defense, but on a concept of deserved punishment. But it's clear that there's something about their ideology that looks a LOT uglier when taken too far.I really hate ending this part with "Proshippers have done bad things, BUT UM, ANTIS ARE WORSE", and that isn't quite the message I intend to send with these theories.I just genuinely do not think that the bad behaviors from both groups come from the same places, and I think there's a very clear pattern indicating that there's more to the antis' brand of vitriol that has so many of them feeling genuinely righteous in ruining people over fiction specifically, as opposed to someone being both transphobic and proship by some coincidence. I'm going to stop now before I start repeating myself..PROSHIPPERS ARE JUST AS PRONE TO OVER-SIMPLIFYING, BEING DISINGENUOUS, OR MOCKING ANTIS AS ANTIS ARE TOWARDS THEMIt's a bit of a Human Problem to interpret the supporters of an opinion you hate in bad faith. This isn't inherent to literally any type of opinion, so proshippers may do this as often as antis do.A few specific arguments I've seen antis express distaste for are:⦿ "Antis are a cult!"
Antis aren't a monolith. Many antiship spaces exhibit cult-like behaviors, but antishipping as a whole is not "A Cult", and also proship spaces can also exhibit some cult-like behaviors.⦿ "Lol how can you be triggered by cartoons?"
People can be triggered by anything. Mocking them doesn't improve your position at all.⦿ "Antis must think that all horror movies turn you into murderers!"
Frankly, I understand where this one comes from, but I think it's fair to acknowledge that some of the things antis are against are not regarded the exact same way by real people as murder is. I won't get too long-winded here, but I will at least point out that many men who "would never hit a woman" will pressure her into sex without a second thought, and/or make excuses for why various forms of sexual abuse aren't "really" abuse. This... kind of goes both ways, though. For example, there's no significant societal acceptance of incest, and I find it silly to worry about how incest is portrayed in media. However, rape and violence are both pretty sensitive in their own ways, and I think the way they're depicted by widespread media does matter.⦿ "OH, you like [trope]?? Haha, what a hypocrite!"
Again, I understand this to an extent, but we don't need to pretend that every genre or trope invokes the same feelings. This kind of overlaps with the "Furries who hate lolicon are hypocrites" thing, like even I don't believe that. That's a ridiculous statement. Both interests have vastly different connotations.I don't have receipts off the top of my head, but it's not like I bothered to include an "antis having takes I mildly disagree with" section either because that's not important. Just bear in mind that both sides are going to behave in flawed ways, and you should try not to let it slide just because it's coming from the side you agree with..ANTIS' OPINIONS DO NOT ALWAYS NEED TO BE CHALLENGEDIt's okay for antis to have and voice opinions on fiction. It's okay for them to hate your ships, avoid people who like them, be disgusted by people who even tolerate them, etc. It's okay for them to rant on their profiles or with friends. It's okay for them to go their whole lives feeling that minor/adult ships are wrong. It's only—ONLY bad when they start harassing people or promoting the opposing view as "other", "the enemy", "inhuman", "undeserving of sympathy", or other types of "monster" caricatures that LEAD to harassment and abuse.There can sometimes be a thin line between those things, but seriously, we need to stop belittling people who are merely uncomfortable with our kinks or ships. It's not "weak" or "silly" or "made up" to be triggered by those things either._{And in case my first paragraph wasn't clear enough, I think it's really shitty to jump onto someone's post to argue with them about their opinions on proshippers when they didn't ask, even if those opinions are nasty. If someone isn't making threats or actively trying to spread dangerous misinformation, and they're just venting, LEAVE THEM ALONE. "It's a public post" doesn't mean you have to make their day worse. You can ignore and block. You can literally NOT be one of the reasons that person is afraid to voice their thoughts on their own page.}.PROSHIP SPACES HAVE HAD PROBLEMS WITH ALLOWING TRULY HEINOUS SHIT IN AND DEFENDING IT BECAUSE IT'S "JUST FICTION"I have seen this in various proship spaces (particularly the discourse side of Twitter), and I have also seen antis talk about it, and about how their opposition to it keeps getting twisted into a "pro-censorship" stance, when it isn't.I can absolutely get receipts if you need them, and I likely will go ahead anyway on another day, but I'm sure many antis and honest proshippers will agree that this happens.While I find anti ideology's extreme end to be the picture of unhinged, relentless stalking and desperate cherry-picking, I find the proship ideology's extreme end to be a haven for all kinds of creeps and bigots, who all-too-frequently try to cozy up in those spaces. People who call themselves "anti-censorship" not because they actually are, but because they wish their hate speech wouldn't get backlash. People who are "pro-paraphilia" to such a degree that they mock and insult people who are reasonably wary of MAPs and zoophiles. People who take pride in dunking on children online and amplifying their most embarrassing moments just because they can.I obviously take a major issue with anti posts that claim that proship communities "foster predators". I even once saw one that said something about, "servers full of people who can only ever know how to abuse others", and that's a DISGUSTING fucking thing to say, and it is not true.However, I can't pretend it's unreasonable for people to be uncomfortable with proship spaces if they run into stuff like this, especially if they are already upset / triggered by dead dove content. There have been so many attempts to create new, more specific labels in order to get away from the awful extremists, but the extremists just grab the newer labels and slap them on too, and then we're back at square one. I'm really tired of this, and I have had to come to terms with the fact that me calling this behavior out is undeniably the right thing to do, and that potentially "making proshippers look bad" is not going to turn everyone who reads this into puritan assholes. I think that's what a lot of proshippers are afraid of when it comes to pointing out bad trends in their communities, but we have to choose to hold ourselves and our peers accountable.There are plenty, PLENTY of people out there who see fiction for what it is, without having to drive straight off a cliff and embrace one of two RIDICULOUS extremes. "Neutral" doesn't mean having no backbone or opinions..NOT ALL ANTIS, NOR PROSHIPPERS, THINK ALIKE!I've seen this in action. Why do you think the definitions are so confusing? No matter what a description of proship says, there will be a proshipper that challenges it.You can very often find proshippers in-fighting about topics having to do with MAPs and pedophilia, or whether or not those discussions even belong in the proship discussion anyway, because so many of them view those as tangentially related despite not being fictional. There may be some truth to this, as I can't deny that those discussions are inevitable in proship spaces, especially when arguing with antis about what real pedophilia is and isn't, or when comparing paraphilias to kinks because both are Thought Crimes when not acted upon. And, of course, when fiction and reality directly overlap in the form of RPF.There are certain gray areas of consent or age in a ship that makes antis divided on it. Or even just a single piece of art where one anti views it as consensual and another views it as noncon, so they fight about it. Or one views a ship as abusive and toxic, and another excuses it.You can very often find antis venting about other people calling their OTP toxic and then explaining why they think it doesn't have to be interpreted as such, while usually also throwing the Designated Bad Ship of the fandom under the bus to further convince people that they need not insult their fave ship. E.g. "I can't believe people think [mildly toxic ship] is bad! Go after [adult/minor or incest ship] instead!" ^{_{I've literally seen this in multiple fandoms and it always kills me.}}.PROSHIPPERS FORGET THEMSELVES IN SOME PRETTY EMBARRASSING WAYS

okay, I fucked up this box at some point oh god ugh
(gonna try to remember and recreate an intro for this cause I don't even know, man.)I've seen a couple of strangely dismissive statements in "proship discourse" spaces. It's mainly someone trying to downplay the nsfw nature of their artwork, or (more concerning) reducing complex situations between adults to "it's legal, so it's okay", even though there are obviously legal relationships that can still be damaging and abusive.And especially with the artwork comments, I frankly don't believe some people who say this type of stuff. It feels more like they're being deliberately obtuse, like, "Oh, buhh, well there's no genitals visible, so that means it's 100% all-ages appropriate, you silly goose! Not like context or implications or connotations matter, duhhhh."It… kind of has the same energy as people who try to claim their really specifically-catered-but-technically-not-porn fetish requests are somehow totally innocent and devoid of any other meanings. It's dumb and no one is falling for it.Also, frankly… if you're in a server with minors and one of them asks you not to post something steamy in general chats, would it really kill you to just accept their discomfort and move it to a nsfw space? -_- I just think that's the more appropriate thing to do.Obviously, within reason; we don't generally consider ankles to be scandalous anymore, heh. But characters smirking and blushing and sticking their tongues out and groping one another, etc…. Like, c'mon. Don't play dumb.By the way, I'm sure there are plenty of non-proshippers who say stuff like this too. I think I just wanted to point it out here because I've seen it several times from proshippers, and I do suspect that those attitudes may stem somewhat from the silly arguments they have to have all the time about whether sexualizing X character is bad just because they look young, or if aging up and lewding a teen character who already looks like an adult is bad, etc. I get it! Many of us have had to say "Oh my GOD, they're literally an adult!!" way too many times. But we have to remember not to over-simplify messy real life situations.
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Engaging with Antiship Beliefs in good faith

CW: Discussions of grooming, rape, people not respecting victims, will add more later if needed.══════════"FICTION CAN AND HAS BEEN USED TO GROOM CHILDREN. TAGGING DIDN’T MATTER AT THAT POINT. AN ADULT SHOWED IT TO THE CHILD AND CONTROLLED THE NARRATIVE THEMSELF.”This is a sentiment that I want to engage with as fairly as I can, because although my conclusion doesn't align with what I've come to understand that antis want, I also think that the way proshippers respond to this is often incredibly insensitive.So, my problem with the proshipper's side of this is that they will often just shrug and say, "Well then curate your experience." That person did. That person had the content literally forced on them by a manipulative predator who had a significant amount of power over them. You do not get to blame anyone for being influenced by something that was framed specifically to influence them. You do not get to insult victims of abuse for having a strong hatred for the very content that was used to traumatize them.However, with my current understanding of the arguments from both sides, I still don't know if I can compromise my conclusion in good conscience.With as much respect as I can possibly express for the trauma you've all been through, I still have to recognize that I don't understand how changing the fiction itself would help this situation at all. As dismissive as this statement is, it's true: Abusers WILL use anything. If by some miracle, all the lolisho and incest porn disappeared off the face of the earth, the exact same abusers would have found a different way to do the exact same thing to the exact same victims.When people say "candy is used to groom too", that really is a thing. An analogy I myself have made is that even though fiction can be used to hurt people, it is the same as a knife being used to stab somebody. A knife is not an evil device that can only EVER be used for harm. It is a tool, meant for cutting food up, but often picked up and used differently.The truth is that people have been groomed with lots of innocent things. My abuser didn't use anything but my love for him to get me to do what he wanted.A predator can use anything because the tool isn't what's important. What's important for them is finding out the victim's weaknesses and exploiting them. They could just as easily show them regular porn of adults, or pretend to like their favorite cartoon in order to gain trust, or shower them with compliments for their art, or just give them things like candy and toys, or whatever!And listen: You are NOT WRONG for hating any of those things. If you don't want anything related to a certain cartoon anywhere near you for the rest of your life, that is okay and people should not be trying to change your feelings with "facts and logic".Proshippers: DON'T try to convince survivors that the tool used against them is Good, Actually. It will only ever make them feel like the world does not care about what happened to them—that the world would sacrifice their safety and happiness for some damn pleasure.It is okay for survivors to wish, with all their hearts, that the type of thing used against them did not exist. It is okay for them to wish that, even when presented with reasons it wouldn't solve anything. It is okay for them to have that in their dni and keep it far, far away from them.I repeat: It's ONLY bad when they take it beyond themselves and start weaponizing their own pain against others.Leave them alone. The place to talk about how "well, candy is also used to groom people" is NOT in the comments of a survivor's story, where they've opened up their heart and exposed their trauma for the world to nitpick and scrutinize. It is not okay. It is not necessary. You do not need this one specific person to be on your side. You do not need to "make them see" your point of view. You just need to leave and respect their boundaries.."YOU TELL PEOPLE TO 'JUST BLOCK THE TAG', BUT THAT'S EXTREMELY DISMISSIVE AND DOESN'T WORK AS WELL AS YOU THINK IT DOES."_{^{(I originally wrote this in response to part of a Tumblr post, so I apologize if any of it is structured weirdly.)}}Also, um... this section got so long that I had to use two text elements to fit all of it. So here's an ultra TL;DR: "Curate your own experience" / "Block the tags" only works if people categorize and tag their art correctly instead of trying to pass off genuinely fucked up behavior as "wholesome" or "funny", and antis are not wrong when they point out how pervasive rape is in fiction, to the point that it can be like stepping on a land mine to watch a horror movie. (I used rape as my main example, but this can apply to other bad tropes as well.)There. Enjoy my tangent someday:I’ve spent a lot of time recoiling at anti posts about how fiction affects reality, but there is a very important talking point from some of those posts that actually isn’t doing the "videogames cause violence" meme, but is instead talking about the way survivors of sexual abuse begin to perceive themselves and their own trauma after reading a lot of this trashy rape porn, which is often packed with frankly—yeah—really shitty tropes that paint rape as some kind of oopsie-poopsie uwu misunderstanding.I've been around the smut roleplay sites. I know that a lot of people like to write about some horrible rapist kidnapper 'falling in true love' with their victim, and then 'growing as a person' into someone the victim could actually feel safe with and love. I also know that a loooot of people like to write about 'dub-con', which many antis rightfully point out is essentially a fantasy term for: rape that doesn't take the form of explicit violence or where the victim gives in halfway through and 'learns to like it'. In real life, if someone blackmails you, or drugs you, or 'makes a deal' with you, or pressures you until you say yes, or guilts you into being with them, or literally starts with violence but gets more gentle when you stop resisting—all of that is rape, plain and simple. There's no 'dub-con', there's no 'this rape was worse than that rape', and frankly I would never call real life rape 'non-con' either. Literally, don't. That's fucking disrespectful.Noncon and dubcon are kink words, specifically used in fandom and roleplay settings to clarify that we're talking about play. They are separate from the language used to describe real rape for a reason, and whether you like it or not, it's better that we have them to tag our kink stuff instead of muddling the discussion even further.With all that out of the way, I have to admit that I genuinely struggle with this particular talking point. Because it isn't just calling some writing tropes 'problematic', it’s talking about the fact that prevailing tropes in fiction are reflective of how society views certain things, and how seeing those tropes everywhere is what causes the affected people to feel so powerless in the real world. And that's not to even mention the way the prevalence of those tropes subtly allow unaffected groups to keep pretending that everything's fine and that the way the victims are treated is justified.This is why queer representation is important. This is why racist caricatures are harmful. This is why it’s outright infuriating to me to have the only fucking depiction of sex in popular media be a man and a woman who hated each other two seconds ago furiously eating each other's faces and spearing each other on top of a washing machine.Gonna go on a tangent real quick: As a person on the asexual spectrum, I am not only put off by what looks to me like cartoonishly exaggerated fantasies being passed off as real sex, but also… I felt like I was just, messed up? For YEARS. Because this was ALL there was. I wasn't watching porn as a teenager, contrary to most of my peers. But I was watching romcoms. A lot of them. Lots of enemies-to-lovers, I-hate-you-let's-kiss bullshit. And here's the thing: I LOVE enemies-to-lovers! I LOVE hate-fucking in fiction! But sometimes… sometimes when you only have access to one flavor of a thing, you have to be reminded that it's okay if you are a different flavor, and that you aren't as rare as you're being made to believe.So I do sympathize with this concern about harmful media tropes, and what MANY people in this discourse also echo in agreement: that the way broader media tackles the subject of rape and sexual abuse is extremely lacking right now, and it makes it hard for survivors to see their trauma as valid. To see their experience as just as serious as the 'classic' example of rape.And there's also like—I don't know if people who don't do roleplays about rape even know this? But in my experience, there are a LOT of people who are willing to roleplay 'dubcon', as in unacceptable behaviors that aren't outright physically violent, but they're not willing to make that jump to physical violence. Having a character screaming and crying does seem to rattle a lot of people more than having them get a little drunk and then give in to sexual advances. I'm one of those people, because I'm just in general more rattled by the loud noises and the frantic nature of physical violence.I do not think this tendency is exclusive to the subject of sexual abuse, but I can acknowledge that… in general, it can sometimes have the effect of downplaying other forms of abuse. Whether you're talking about sexual abuse or verbal abuse or neglect orrrr whatever! All of those things are still serious even when they don't get loud and frantic, and that's something the entire population needs to internalize and understand. It is not the sole result of fanfiction, as I’ve seen some people claim, but I think it might be reflective of the way we've all been conditioned to view things on a surface level, where physical violence is always 'worse' than verbal abuse, and where sexual abuse isn't abuse until it's physical. And you know what? I completely believe that people do generally view it that way (at least subconsciously), and that fiction exacerbates the issue.What I believe is that fiction has a mutual exchange with reality. Reality influences fiction influences reality influences fiction, and so on. And that's why it also pisses me off to see people blaming just the fiction for bad things happening, or putting the responsibility for changing broad, systemic, societal problems on the people whose writing is a result of those problems. Yes, fiction is part of the machine we call society, and when harmful tropes are THAT prevalent, they can help perpetuate the problems. But they're not the root of the problems. They're the egg, not the chicken. I personally want more variety in the ways these subjects are handled, but that's not my choice. I don't control what gets made into a Hollywood movie. I don't control what gets put at the front of the book store. Neither does any fuckin fanfic author you'll meet. Fan fiction is the very BOTTOM of the trickle-down effect from the top dogs, the executives, the politicians, the fuckin—talking heads that spew the most unfiltered shit that winds up in some fan fictions as diluted, twisted fantasy paste. We transform that garbage into fantasy paste because if we don't, we will lose our minds!!There's a post… about public restrooms… that words what I just said much more eloquently than I did. So I'm gonna link that here: The Trashed Bathrooms Thread - (A)Now, in order to criticize systemic problems… we have to be aware of them. We can't let ourselves conflate one issue with another and end up dismissing the very valid concerns of people that are being hurt.If you are deliberately clicking on the noncon tag on AO3, that's on you. Regardless of what's in there, regardless of how trashy it is, you knew what you were getting into.However, what if you just want to watch a horror movie, and they inexplicably throw in a rape scene? That has happened to me and I fucking hated it. What if you just want to read a fanfic about a ship you like, but the author writes one character manipulating the other into a sexual relationship and then touts that as #relationshipgoals OTP uwu? What if you write a fanfic that explores a theme of abuse that's deeply personal and based on the way you experienced your abuse, and then some douchebag comments "omg you're breaking my heart, I can't wait til MC feels better!" or worse, you write a cathartic story about the character you project onto severely hurting the character that represents your abuser, and someone comments how bad they feel for the poor bean that your MC was so rude to! These are all things that were mere annoyances to me, but that I’ve realized might be severe mental distress triggers for other survivors of abuse.And I don't think shrugging our shoulders and saying, "Welp, it just be like that!" is an appropriate response when a traumatized person points out how much it hurts to encounter that stuff unprepared, or how paranoid they've had to become if they even want to experience a new story or movie at all.Nobody, let alone people with trauma, should have to fear daring to check out a new anime or a fanfic about their favorite ship, because of the very likely possibility that it's going to have random shock bullshit in there or that it's going to woobify abusive behavior that they literally went through!And… we probably can't solve this problem entirely, because some people are just shit at writing. But… the ways in which people are shit at writing can sometimes be influenced by their internal attitudes about various behaviors.For example, I personally can't fathom how Certified Shit Writer™ Erika Mitchell wrote the entirety of 50 Shades of Grey and managed to be shocked and appalled when people said that what she wrote about was domestic abuse. Which, from the sound of Folding Ideas' YouTube trilogy about the 50 Shades trilogy, IS what she wrote! But because she didn't know that's what she wrote, not only did her story gaslight these disturbing behaviors to every one of her readers instead of acknowledging them as what they were, but Mitchell repeatedly insisted after the fact, in the real world, that there's "no rape in 50 Shades" and that people saying the series is about domestic abuse "trivializes the issues, doing women who actually go through it a huge disservice." EEEGH! Look, I say that exact thing all the time when someone claims that lewding Bakugou is literal pedophilia, but Mitchell used this sentiment to directly make the claim that all of the horrible things Christian Grey does in her books is NOT abuse, and would not be abuse in the real world, which ACTUALLY does women who go through domestic abuse a disservice by insisting to them that what they are suffering through is not actually abuse. That legitimately pisses me off.From Folding Ideas’ video: "Again, it's okay if Grey is a bit of a bastard, but something has to come of it." (He elaborates in various places.)And I feel like this is a much bigger problem than a fanfic that's tagged with rape having shitty tropes in it. Because 50 Shades is touted as a romance story by the author and by its marketing. It doesn't have the so-called noncon tag because it refuses to acknowledge the presence of that subject in the story.And I think this gives a better perspective on my previous conflict regarding when something should be carrying the weight of responsibility for influencing people, or when it should be considered, "just porn".But I've come to realize that "porn vs. plot" is not the distinction I was looking for. As we've established, porn can be influential too, and it can send irresponsible messages.

I want to posit a distinction, instead, between the expectation of genuineness vs. the expectation of a circus performance. I much more often EXPECT a circus performance from porn, so I generally hold it to a lower standard. I am not surprised when "just porn" is trashy and not a good model for morality, because I came here FOR THAT. But… many survivors did not come to a "wholesome" fanfic or to a horror movie for THIS. And neither did I, for that matter. Seeing shock content in a movie that I came to for a good story is so fucking UNPLEASANT. It makes me feel GROSS. It ruins the experience for me!Just because I like noncon fanfiction does not mean I don't also utilize and appreciate warnings, even on a fic or a drawing. I'm not always in the right mental space to enjoy that content, and that is okay. It's like playing a sport. It's not inherently bad for you to do it, but you can't be expected to continuously be at tip top shape 100% of the time. You need breaks and you need to be responsible with your body. Don't overdo it! If you're sore from yesterday's game and you're bound to tear something if you go hard again today, you can choose to take a few days off. And if I have proper warnings on my fictional content, I can choose not to look at it if I'm still raw from something else.There is a time and a place. This content that I'm defending so hard should NOT be inserted into every damn thing, making media as a whole unsafe for anyone who might be triggered by it. Stories that people trust should not be laced with nasty messages that deny the severity of abuse at every turn.Erica Mitchell wrote a circus performance and then passed it off as something genuine. She did not mind the time and place.And with all that said, I am not saying you should never write about rape in a "genuine" story. I do not think topics should be off-limits for exploration just because they're dark and have a higher chance of triggering people than a story merely featuring… pomegranates… er something. But I think Explanation Point perfectly summed up the caveat to that when he said, "There's nothing wrong with portraying sexual abuse in media. There's nothing wrong with joking about sexual abuse in media. But in either case, you have to understand and respect the trauma of real people". (You can hear this quote at 16:21.)Respect survivors of sexual abuse by tagging your shit appropriately and by not passing off your fetish as something "wholesome". Acknowledge your darkness and embrace it, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate place. Don't force the whole world to wallow in it when they didn't ask to.Now, I wanna say something real quick about 'dubcon'. A valid concern about using that word in the way that it's currently used is that, while those things are not dubious in nature, there are things that are? So using a shortened version of a word for something that exists, for something it is not, could arguably be a problem.Dubious consent isn't when someone is pressured into sex or when they stop fighting back in order to not get hurt as bad or when their body feels pleasure even when they don't want it, as we established earlier.Dubious consent is saying, "I like my job, but I wouldn't do it if I wasn't being paid" or, "I'll do this sex work for $400, but not a mere $200". It's the nonverbal flow of social conversation, where someone can ask you if you wanna go for coffee and your version of "no" is "uhhh not now, but maybe later??" It's when someone has to go to court and prove that they were consenting to what was happening in a BDSM scene that went farther than they anticipated, because US law doesn't consider consent a valid defense if someone is injured during a scene. It's when you can't figure out if you're emotionally breaking down after a BDSM scene merely because of the intensity or if it is because the dom went too far. It's when you fantasize about someone who didn't consent to be in your fantasy. There's a question of, is that exploitative, is that nonconsensual-These examples are ALL from Dr. Lehmiller's podcast episode, by the way. I do not take credit for them. But listening to him and Dr. Lucy discuss scenarios like that made me realize that, like all other social interactions, consent to sexual activities can be VERY dubious, but it doesn't look like what fanfics call dubious. So that's my case for why maybe the "dubcon" label is inaccurate as it's generally used now..I may add more points in the future, but I think those two are genuinely important to me and I don't currently feel properly equipped to write effective essays on the other points I've written down for consideration.

Positivity posts to soothe you

We all need a break. I need a break.Plus, if I'm honest, it's not very hard to let all those negative thoughts get under your skin and start convincing you, against everything you know to be true about yourself and about the world, that somehow the bullies are right.Well they're not, and you deserve to feel comfortable and confident and sometimes even a little fluffy.Each of these links simply leads to a post that makes me feel better when I have those doubts. I even separated them into categories again, since we need different stuff sometimes.═══════════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════════

Pure Fluff

Reassurance

Some Unrelated Cute Animal / Stim / Art Blogs or Posts

“Do something. Do something. Don't just ‘believe victims’ the way you believe fairies are real or the way you believe God has your back. Do something.” -Flunderingchipper in "Monstrous Existence".

I made this Carrd because I was getting so distraught at the amount of witch hunts and harassment campaigns against anyone who even touched something that was arbitrarily judged as "proship" by a mob within a fandom that designated themselves as "the good, normal, non-toxic ones" and who walk around like they own the place.I've seen many artists get dogpiled and put through hell, if not outright run off the internet entirely. I've seen others driven to terror and isolation because they know they could be next. And it has to stop. And this is the only way I know how to try and help.But this compilation is not complete. Technically, it never will be. As well, I cannot pretend it doesn't present a biased narrative.I do have my criticisms for certain proshipping spaces, but frankly, I'm prioritizing reaching out to 1) people who are neutral and may fall for the false narratives used to justify harassing people online over art and writing, and 2) reassurance and support for those who have BEEN a target of harassment.If you have been attacked by antishippers, know you are NOT ALONE and you HAVE SUPPORT. What they've done to you is not okay, you are not "gross", you do not deserve it. And there are places you can go and people you can talk to. It's not over. I promise.And if you're on the fence about this whole conflict, or about taboo ships/kinks… I understand and that's okay. You don't have to call yourself proship, you don't have to hate antis, you don't have to associate with anyone whose interests make you uncomfortable, or any of that.Just please stand up for people who are unfairly attacked, even if their art personally disgusts you. Measure the actual, tangible harm someone is being "called out" for and make your own judgements. Protect people who are accused of harm when they have done none! Understand that spreading callouts against artists just for what they draw is not protecting anyone and is actively hurting other people. Don't stand by and let abusive control freaks run your fandom. Don't let them drive innocent people off the internet, or worse. Don't allow that behavior to be normalized. Put your foot down and say, "No. YOU move. This is not YOUR space, this is the internet. Go make your own space if you want one."I am begging anyone who witnesses this stuff to do their little part to keep fandom a safe and fun place, where hopefully the worst drama is just between silly kids arguing about which character would win in a fight or whatever. This moralizing of our every like and dislike is toxic and needs to stop. Please help me improve our spaces.