#i mean if you try to use ‘proshippers are abusers’ on me lemme tell ya buddy i HAVE been abused | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cios-correct-opinions · 7 months

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DISCLAIMER BEFORE ANYONE SAYS OR ASSUMES ANYTHING ABOUT ME: i am not a proshipper. i am not an anti. i do not use any shipping discourse labels because i've been actively traumatized by both communities and have no desire to put that label on myself. i am just a person capable of critical thinking who enjoys analyzing media sometimes. i do not condone harassment over fiction, and i also do not believe any form of media is free from critical analysis or criticism, especially if it includes harmful propaganda and/or portrayals of marginalized peoples/societies which serve to perpetuate or legitimatize a pre-existing societal bias. do not call me an anti. do not call me a proshipper. do not assume things about me in bad faith. ive got no time for that and ill block you if you do this.

i actually think i kinda have a grasp on what's being said here so lemme explain this bc this is kinda how i feel? i'm gonna explain as best i can since its nearing 3 am and im a lil tired. forgive me if i dont explore every angle of nuance here btw again im tired but the adderall is in my blood so.

ahem.

my main talking point is this: there is a difference between exploration of something, which can include varying depictions and portrayals of a subject, vs propaganda for something, which has the intent of swaying you towards one side or away from one side or blah blah blah you know what propaganda wants to do i'm sure

exploration of dark and taboo subjects such as CSA/SA/abuse in general, paraphilias, mental illness, incest, so on and so forth - especially when done by survivors of those things - are almost never propaganda, no matter how they're being portrayed. someone using fictional characters within a fictional context to cope with their own trauma is, 99.9% of the time, not trying to endorse that behavior in real life. they also often assume the people reading it will understand that they the creator are not trying to endorse that behavior in real life.

example: most people who create fiction based off the mafia do not actually want to be mobsters, nor do they think others should be, nor do they endorse the real life mob, even if their portrayals can sometimes be problematic in other ways and/or contribute to certain problematic societal ideas about gang violence esp when committed by white people, but that's an entirely different issue than the one at hand and has more factors in play.

a deeper example: while a work of fiction can definitely reveal certain creator biases and/or how the creator feels about certain topics, it doesn't mean that every detail in the fiction is weighted the same way. someone may have clear biases towards, for example, women, in their work based on how they write their female characters, but not condone murder in that same work just because murder is part of the plot and/or is framed as a net positive in the storyline. you can have a work which clearly shows a creator's true feelings or thoughts or philosophies or what-have-you on one topic, but not on another, within the same work. learning which of these is true and when is a learned skill. i can't tell ya to do it myself as i am not a teacher

despite it seeming like it should be easy, on the other hand, spotting propaganda can actually be really fucking hard. i am not here to talk about how to spot propaganda, and perhaps will reblog this at a later date with links on how to do that as i am too tired to both write this and look for reliable resources on doing that, so if you want that for now, sorry, you gotta search elsewhere. however, this difficulty often leads to the main conflict i see online:

people believe that an exploration or portrayal of a dark/taboo subject or a subject which contains something that is immoral or illegal in real life, which does not outright condemn that thing, and/or appears on a surface level to be a "positive" portrayal (air quotes bc what counts as positive changes depending on who you ask) even when made by real-life survivors of the thing being explored, is the exact same as propaganda meant to push the emulation of that thing or behavior in real life, by real people, to real people/others/whatever.

this is the issue i and others keep running into online, over and over and over again. people are unable to tell the difference, they are unable to tell the target audience of a work, they are unable to understand why someone would make something a certain way, and ultimately the material upsets/triggers/disgusts/bothers/etc them, and all of this leads to them treating the first group of media like the second. because of that, they assume those creating that content are encouraging its real-world application and that the creators think these actions are okay, or that they will/want to/have perpetrated those acts in real life as well. once they've decided this, it's essentially impossible to convince them otherwise

ignoring the fact that you cannot make these assumptions about a stranger online in good faith literally ever, this is a huge problem. a nazi creating propaganda indoctrination white supremacist fantasy fiction material is nowhere near the same as a CSA & SA survivor creating works of dark fiction/art to cope with their trauma, but a lot of people consider it one and the same because they literally are incapable of seeing the difference. they can't analyze either work by either creator, and are unable to see how the nazi's fiction is different from the survivor's. even if the subjects portrayed in the works are different, too

these people will also insist that any humanization of a villain they deem "bad" or "problematic" enough - which, again, is dependent on who's making those decisions and not any kind of clear standard - means that the creator condones/believes/enjoys those things the villain does, and people who enjoy that character also condone/believe/enjoy those things the villain does. the ultimate irony of it all, of course, is that these people are consuming the exact same media with the exact same characters and exact same story and exact same plotline as the people they are attacking, and many of those people also enjoyed that media. they just seem to think because they enjoy blorbo blingus The Good Guy(tm) instead of zorbo zingle The Bad Guy(tm), that makes them morally superior instead of, yknow, just someone with a different opinion who is reading/watching with a different lens than someone else

obsession with moral purity, moral superiority, and in general an abstract concept of morality, is what has ultimately led us here. in an attempt to be seen as "acceptable" by the masses of the world - regardless of whether they participate in fandom or not - for whatever reason one has, has led some of us to turn on each other within fandom spaces

fear of predatory abusers lurking in the shadows, as well as an inability to actually identify the signs of a predatory abuser caused by a society whose goal is largely to protect those same predatory abusers, as well as a sadly large and growing number of victims of abuse growing up online and sometimes being abused and/or preyed on online (as i myself was) who thus are hypervigilant for this sort of thing due to their own trauma, has all led to a willingness to attack and destroy anyone we think might possibly maybe sorta kinda be a little suspicious without a second thought to the actual probability of that person's guilt, as well as the inability to stop and ask ourselves what we're really doing when we attack people over fictional portrayals of things as well as whether or not these fictional hypothetical transgressions are truly worth destroying someone's livelihood and life over or whether they're something we can simply block and ignore and not worry about

simply liking or disliking something in media has become a source of literal panic attacks for a lot of people because they drive themselves mad looking for a "good, moral, logical reason" to like or dislike something rather than just accepting it for what it is

our lack of understanding combined with an unwillingness to be open to the possibility of alternative interpretations for anything has driven people to commit atrocities. someone is literally dying right now because of it. actively dying. will die soon. because of antis deciding their creations meant it was okay to lie about them being a pedophile (they weren't), get them fired from their job due to these false claims, resulting in them losing their health care, which has 4 years down the road, resulted in their eventual death.

we. must. do. better.

#discourse #anti #proship #antiship #ship discourse #shipping discourse #me #my voice

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