anticallouts

[anticallouts]

Tumblr has very, very black and white views on a lot of things and I also don't like how they call everything they don't like abuse or accuse people they don't like abusive or toxic. False abuse accusations are much heavier than people actually think and it reflects poorly on you if you accuse them of abuse just because they dared have a different opinion than you or they were being mildly abusive

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#mod fox #no response needed

[anticallouts]

Callout culture is selfish and abusive in because they don't mind targeting young kids for saying something racist or stupid in general instead of blocking or educating. They'd rather ruin their view of the Internet from a young age and force them to try again even though they apologized.

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#mod fox #no response needed

[anticallouts]

If someone doesn't like a properly tagged fanfic, that's okay, but they should move on and just not open it instead of attacking the author. A dead dove: do not read exists for a reason, so if you go and read something you don't like, you shouldn't expect anything else.

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#mod fox #no response needed

[anticallouts]

If anyone condones someone being abused on Tumblr or anywhere really for daring to like a morally grey character and still admitting they are a bad person or omg, daring to write a dead dove do not eat fic and properly tagging it, especially if it's for the sake of PROCESSING TRAUMA, you are the worst kind of person, when was the last time you had any kind of human contact?

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#mod fox #no response needed

[anticallouts]

Some people like dark topics because it helps them cope and they're struggling with mental illnesses themselves. Some just think dark themes in fiction are neat. Keyword is fiction, there is no way they would support all that in real life, you owe no explanation for why you like this particular thing. If anyone tries to force an explanation, they need to grow up, not you.

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#mod fox #no response needed

[anticallouts]

Most of the callout posts these days are just about friendships falling out and relationships falling out. The abusers don't understand it affects people in real life. I just read recent callout and honestly it's a miscommunication that was made into something bigger. People kill themselves over this shit. It's childish. I wish all these people who write callouts could see the face of their victims after they release it to gain some self-awareness. There are real people behind the computer.

Let's call it what it is.

Bullying.

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#mod fox #no response needed

[anticallouts]

Some rando: This character should not have the chance to become a better person

Me: Why

Same person: Because they are a bad person!

Me: But what if that character was allowed to become a better person so that they are no longer a bad person?

Same person: You’re an abuse apologist

[anticallouts]

anyway, i’m all out of fucks to give. fuck hiding people’s names anymore, here’s what’s been going on ever since i drew those baby minotaur drawings

content and trigger warnings for screenshots: death threats, pedophilia accusations, casual ageism, harassment, transphobia, a graphic rape and violent threat towards a child, and probably other stuff too

#this is a really good example of what happens when people surround themselves in discussions of pedophilia day in and day out #they start seeing it EVERYWHERE - even in places it clearly is not

[anticallouts]

People should hit the block button if they're so angry that they want to attack people who have actually apologized in a rage. Your feelings are valid and it's okay to be angry and hurt, but you'll feel much better if you block instead of sending them threats.

👉🚫

#big agree #mod fox #responses

[anticallouts]

you don’t need purity in the material you consume

you have a brain, you are capable of critical thinking, you can sift through the material and keep what is edifying for you and discard what isn’t

flaws don’t necessarily make material worthless

[anticallouts]

Pals, I’m gonna tell you one of those hard truths, and I hope that you can read this and think about it in the spirit in which it’s intended.

The vast majority of you do not have “triggers”, you have “squicks”. If you learn the difference, I promise you will be happier and healthier, and you will feel much MUCH less as if all media is attempting to personally attack and traumatize you. 

It is ABSOLUTELY LEGIT to dislike something in a piece of media, or to feel disgusted and revolted by it, or to have an aversion to it for any reason and to any degree. That’s normal! That’s absolutely normal, and if that has happened to you, then you are normal too.

But… Words matter. Words have power. There is a difference between “disgust” and “trauma response” – if a person without PTSD or other forms of trauma calls something that disgusts them a “trigger”, they are giving that thing undue and dangerous power over them. You do not have to legitimize your disgust, because your feelings are already valid. But saying “this triggers me” if it doesn’t actually trigger you in the clinical definition means that you are voluntarily giving up some of your own power and agency to the thing you dislike. It means that you are allowing the thing to have a disproportionate impact on your life, that you are giving it power to affect you and get under your skin and stay there. You are building it up into something much more terrifying and monstrous and serious than it deserves to be. Calling it a “squick” makes you bigger than the thing that’s grossing you out – it makes the gross thing into something that you can have power over, that you can vanquish and reject and entirely discard from your life according to your own whimsy. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “squick”, it’s something you don’t like which causes that icky squirmy “ew! no thanks!” feeling. Here’s the Fanlore page for more detail.)

We live in a society that wants to take power away from so many of us at all costs. Nobody hands you power or agency or confidence or strength – you have to claim those for yourself. If you have the ability to take control over something that squicks you, do it. Stand up for yourself and your media experience, and use the word that gives you power. You can turn your back on a squick and walk away without more than a lingering “ugh” feeling; it is almost impossible to do that with a trigger. A trigger ruins your whole day (ask me how I know!).

Words have power. Disgust is a normal human emotion. Your feelings are valid even when they’re not severe and catastrophic. 

[anticallouts]

Thanks for the advice, I talked to my friend about it and she admitted that she was really hurt by my actions but didn't say anything because she thought that I had a right to be vengeful and angry and I'm in the process of trying to change my negative actions

I'm glad to hear that, anon! I hope you two get this rough business figured out and move on to a brighter, happier future together. 😊❤️

#mod fox #responses

[anticallouts]

U: We'll get started on those asks right away!! Also u: disappears

I'M SO SORRY! every time i look at the inbox i start crying in shame. my semester just started. i'm running around with books and loose papers falling out of my arms. do you have an extra pen i could borrow? have you seen my keys? i lost them on campus on my SECOND DAY.

in summary, i am a mess.

#mod fox #responses

[anticallouts]

Is bringing up old stuff a friend did to hurt them even though they were going through a rough time and has changed since then callout culture? I've done this repeatedly with an old friend out of rage over her past actions and I wanted to pass my hurt onto her because I couldn't see her for anything than her past actions and ended up believing that she was incapable of change.

that's not callout culture, no, but it is being a shitty friend. it's also a red flag for abusive/manipulative tendencies, since many abusive relationships involve that kind of dynamic. (constantly bringing up past mistakes, making the victim feel guilty and obligated to make up for those mistakes to an excessive extent, making the victim feel like no one else would put up with their mistakes except for the abuser, etc.)

i'm definitely not saying you and your friend are in an abusive relationship, those are far more complicated than one single worrying behavior. however, i am saying that that behavior is unhealthy and unproductive and it needs to stop if you two want to remain friends. unfortunately, if you two can't work it out and the friendship has too much emotional baggage to stay stable, it needs to end peacefully rather than fester and become toxic to you both.

allow me an anecdote, if you will.

my best friend/queer-platonic partner and i nearly ended our relationship a couple years ago over something like what you're describing. he became friends with and started hanging out with a group of people who loudly, proudly, and openly bullied me and my other friends. it created a lot of tension as i tried to understand why my best friend was cozying up to antis, and it became harder and harder to defend him to my other friends as we all faced the brunt of the abuse being hurled at us.

now, my qpp had his reasons for doing what he did. as it shook out, he was trying to infiltrate the group so he could be a good influence and try to get some people out of that mindset. but that didn't mean that what he was doing wasn't hurting us. eventually i had to come out and tell him that if he didn't stop hanging out with those people, then he and i would have to part ways. we lived together at the time (and still do) so it wasn't as simple as blocking him on discord and being done with it. i'm actually very glad for that. it forced us to have a heart-to-heart about our feelings and my pain and his motivations, and at the end of it he decided to stop associating with and supporting the bullies because our relationship was more important and he didn't want to keep hurting me.

does that mean he never hurt me? does that mean he didn't willingly pal around with antis who were personally harassing me? no. but he listened to me when i told him what he was doing was hurting me, and he changed his behavior.

now, years later: i don't bring it up anymore except on occasion, in passing, usually as a joke. there's some distance from the incident and it's not as painful anymore. i don't hold it against him. when we argue - which we still do, as every couple does - i don't bring it up to wield as a weapon against him. to do so would force us both to constantly relive that horrible period of time where we almost lost each other.

you don't have to forget what your friend did or said and how it hurt you, but if you can see that she's changed, you need to let it go. if she's never formally apologized, you could ask for one as closure. if she has, accept it and forgive her and move on with your lives.

(you should also apologize for your behavior, even if she hasn't called you on it yet. you fully recognize that what you're doing to her is hurtful and yet you continue to do it, you know that's wrong.)

i wish you both peace and luck.

#mod fox #responses #advice

[anticallouts]

clicking on ‘callout posts’ here is wild because there’s like, a 90% chance it’ll be something like ‘they once reblogged a post from someone who follows someone who drew amethyst as white’ and a 10% chance that it will be like ‘stole a human being’s kidney in an alleyway’

[anticallouts]

I just realized the reason so many people will call someone “an abuser” when the facts of the matter indicate instead that the person is actually simply “an asshole” is because you can’t just create engaging social media guilt by association drama by demanding people unfollow x or y if they’re simply an asshole, but if you re-reframe banal assholishness as genuine psychological abuse it means you can also start shit with anybody who associates with the asshole in question. That might also explain why people say “this person is a gaslighter” when they instead mean “this person says lies”.

[anticallouts]

a writer who writes the most fucked up “dead dove: do not eat” problematic pairing and fully tags and warns for the content they create will always be worthy of more respect in my eyes than people who call others weirdos because of who they ship. This is because a writer who writes disturbing things but gives me plenty of warning about them has demonstrated, regardless of what happens in the fic, that they value the consent of real people, and that they value my consent to see such content and will always offer me the option to avoid or withdraw. On the other hand, a purity cultist who demands I explain my trauma and exactly why I might be drawn to dark content, regardless of whether they’re the purest fluff writer to ever write, has demonstrated a lack of respect for my boundaries and the attitude that they are entitled to whatever they want to take from me. 

There are a lot of things that bother me about purity culture, but I think the most disturbing is that it clouds the very definition of consent, and then teaches this confusing version (you must consent to deep dives into your trauma and how it affects you for the benefit of strangers who have already decided you’re a bad person, and not consenting to that automatically makes you an abuser, also no one can consent to reading or thinking about disturbing content ever because thinking about it means you want it irl) to young, vulnerable, and often traumatized individuals, thus making it harder to understand their trauma and easier for them to ignore the real warning signs of abuse (like demanding that you agree with the abuser otherwise you’re literally the worst and most harmful person ever) because it teaches that abusers only come in one type, and that all abusers are “nasty shippers”.

This is especially dangerous because real life abusers teach their victims that the abuse is happening because the victim is a bad, evil person. One of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD is literally “Places undue blame on themself or others for what happened”. Teaching traumatized people that consent is a luxury only “good” people are allowed to have is incompatible with support for abuse survivors. tl;dr a writer who tags “dead dove: do not eat” has demonstrated respect for the necessity of consent. A purity cultist who sends anon hate has demonstrated a lack of respect for consent.