Anti-Shipping as Hate
Mar. 23rd, 2024 03:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithBehind the Curtain: Anti-Shipping is a Bad Faith Position
Anti-shipping in fandom isn’t new. For as long as fandom has existed – our earliest sense of an organized fanclub for any book or franchise is the original Sherlock Holmes series — there have been people with strong opinions about pairings, romance, etc. Ship wars are practically synonymous with fandom at this point, whether it’s Ron/Hermione vs. Harry/Hermione vs. Draco/Hermione in Harry Potter, or all the way back in the 70s with Luke/Leia going to war against Han/Leia shippers. Anti-shipping at its most basic, then, is simply what it says on the tin; someone who is against a specific ship, sometimes to the point of getting angry or upset when it’s mentioned (odd but reasonable, since triggers are odd) or to harassing other shippers (not reasonable at all).
True, but in addition to becoming more vicious, anti-shipping has also become more common. It's ubiquitous in many fandoms to the point that people seem to view fandom as a hobby of complaining and a fun place to collect a posse to pick on people. Fandom used to be primarily about squeeing over things people loved.
Over the last ten years or so, as social justice ideology has trickled into the mainstream through sites like Tumblr, overall awareness of issues like BLM, Occupy and queer marriage equality, and other sources, anti-shipping has changed dramatically.
That's the kind of thing I mean about the mainstream taking over fandom. It's much less tolerant and welcoming now. It's openly hostile and often drives people away.
The modern form of anti-shipping, by sharp contrast, isn’t just informed by social justice terminology; it’s informed by radical feminism, anti-sex politics, and Evangelical perspectives on things like pornography and transness, mixing with social justice buzzwords. Anti-shippers don’t just dislike specific ships; there’ll always be a moral or ethical reason attached, sometimes with some grounding, sometimes ludicrous and based on circumstantial evidence at best. Furthermore, the harassment that took one form in pre-2010 antishipping has evolved for a changing internet. More and more people have their identities attached to their work and their social media, which means now flaming someone isn’t just about rude comments on their work; it can extend to calling parents, calling workplaces, fabricating serious accusations and other actions with major, long-ranging consequences.
Let's call a spade a spade. It's stalking. It's harassment. It's abuse. It frequently breaks laws and routinely breaks people. In its more extreme forms, it's evil.
The shift from “this ship is gross because of the age difference” to “anybody who likes it is gross because of the age difference” to “people who like this must be sexual predators” is notable, and chilling, especially since it’s exactly what serves to justify the harassment going to the lengths it does.
Exactly. The obsession with what other people choose to read and write is dangerous. Especially because people are losing the ability to distinguish between fantasy (entertainment is made-up stuff) and reality (believing people do in everyday life the stuff they read or write about).
The change in language extends past that, too. Now it’s not just “porn of Edward Elric”; it’s “sexualizing a minor”. Nobody cared that much prior to 2010 or so, but now, well, it feels weird to try argue for sexualizing a minor.
That's blazingly hypocritical in a society that sexualizes everything. Look at beauty pageants for little girls.
It Sounds Good On Paper
Not if you know anything about abuse it doesn't.
One of the most agonizing, challenging things to try explain to anybody is why this is bad.
It breaks people. That's bad. People have committed suicide over cyberbullying. But usually it just causes anxiety, depression, and general misery. Bullying people is bad. This is not a complicated concept. The bully always has an excuse. Don't believe it.
Everybody hates pedophiles.
Which is a problem when you consider that it's a sexual orientation, which is not chosen, and which cannot be changed with extant technology.
*[Writing]. Writing, as in, creating fiction. None of this is happening to real people. Now, that said, there’s been a lot of conversation about representation, and appropriate ways of writing difficult topics. It’s not something to dismiss entirely out of hand… but nobody is being physically hurt here, not directly.
Yeah, that's the part that bothers me the most. People are losing the ability to distinguish fiction from events.
Ships – as in, pairings of two characters – aren’t an inherent measure of positivity. They aren’t always intended to be healthy anyway. Additionally, ships by definition are so open to interpretation.
Ship and let ship. Don't like, don't read. Don't be a dick.
If you abuse people for liking things you don't like, YOU are the problem with fandom today. Your opinion does not entitle you to hurt other people.
Overwatch fandom is plagued by antis who consider a 20-year or so age gap between adults problematic
Also a problem in real life, where total strangers feel entitled to walk up and bitch about someone else's relationship that is absolutely none of their business. Fuck right off with that.
Also very Western. That sort of thing is normal in many Asian cultures.
*****[who will say anything…] And this is where you get into the real double-faced nature of this, which has done a number on a lot of people I know. This whole statement is already manipulative, but this sets up that no matter what someone says in their defense, you’ll read it as an excuse.
The best defense: look up that sort of phrasing in a check list of abuser tactics. You can often find it under things like gaslighting, narcissism, and flying monkeys. And then quote the source. Cockroaches can't stand spotlights. If you just grab their abuse, name it, and kick that shit out in public then it makes people extremely uncomfortable and they usually look for someone to pick on who will take it quietly.
Or just leave the venue for a week or two. People have short attention spans nowadays. If the venue doesn't have the privacy controls for your to defend yourself from attackers, you may want to look for a better one anyhow.
I can’t tell anybody how to deal with these situations, except for this: just because somebody is very emotional about something does not make them correct.
All feelings are valid. However, sometimes feelings lie to you. And your feelings do not entitle you to harm other people.
because it is often then the same people fearmongering about kink at Pride
Right, because who is more likely to have studied anatomy and psychology and at least a handful of different first aid classes? The perverts. Folks, when someone has a heart attack at Pride, chances are it's the top who has a CPR card.
A young ace person in fandom expresses frustration at the focus on romance and sexuality in fandom, and a ‘concerned friend’ (who will never actually identify themselves as a TERF) comes to agree with them and talk about how all of these people making light of Serious Problems like Rape just don’t understand.
If you're frustrated with current portrayals, make something better. Or if you're not creative yourself, prompt for it in any of fandom's many prompt calls. Or start a rec list for the few good examples you've found. Do something to solve the problem instead of just whining about it. Whining doesn't get you an ace hero in a sex/romance free plot.
By contrast, there have been a number of confirmed deaths and near-deaths related to antishipping.
Hardly a surprise. Humans will eat each other.
some ships “shouldn’t be shipped”,
Which is flat-out censorship and therefore wrong. It is none of your business what someone else likes, reads, writes, fantasizes about during sex, etc.
6. So What Do I Do?
1) Choose internet venues that give you control over your space.
2) And then keep it tidy. If trolls come in, boot them out. Ensure your audience knows that your expect "Don't be a dick" standards and will enforce them if necessary.
If you choose to go into venues where there are no privacy or moderation controls, it is likely to be a shitshow of some sort. Some venues are notorious for this.
Especially if you’re autistic like I am, this all sounds like a lot. It’s paranoia-inducing, that’s for sure. A lot of people decide to settle on a neutral position, thinking it’ll keep them safe or out of it (and sadly it rarely does); but I think it’s much simpler than that.
Or you can just say "fuck it" and decline the invitation to other people's drama.
If you believe that harassing people for fiction is bad, you’re a pro-shipper.
Eh, I've been an activist, a privacy advocate, and a gender scholar for decades. It predates the recent hullabaloo.
You’re not obligated to like or get along with everyone, or sign off on everybody’s decisions. You’re not even obligated to ship anything particularly spicy or problematic. All you have to do is look at the rhetoric used to justify harming others and decide, “No, not for me. Not today.”
Well said.
Anti-shipping in fandom isn’t new. For as long as fandom has existed – our earliest sense of an organized fanclub for any book or franchise is the original Sherlock Holmes series — there have been people with strong opinions about pairings, romance, etc. Ship wars are practically synonymous with fandom at this point, whether it’s Ron/Hermione vs. Harry/Hermione vs. Draco/Hermione in Harry Potter, or all the way back in the 70s with Luke/Leia going to war against Han/Leia shippers. Anti-shipping at its most basic, then, is simply what it says on the tin; someone who is against a specific ship, sometimes to the point of getting angry or upset when it’s mentioned (odd but reasonable, since triggers are odd) or to harassing other shippers (not reasonable at all).
True, but in addition to becoming more vicious, anti-shipping has also become more common. It's ubiquitous in many fandoms to the point that people seem to view fandom as a hobby of complaining and a fun place to collect a posse to pick on people. Fandom used to be primarily about squeeing over things people loved.
Over the last ten years or so, as social justice ideology has trickled into the mainstream through sites like Tumblr, overall awareness of issues like BLM, Occupy and queer marriage equality, and other sources, anti-shipping has changed dramatically.
That's the kind of thing I mean about the mainstream taking over fandom. It's much less tolerant and welcoming now. It's openly hostile and often drives people away.
The modern form of anti-shipping, by sharp contrast, isn’t just informed by social justice terminology; it’s informed by radical feminism, anti-sex politics, and Evangelical perspectives on things like pornography and transness, mixing with social justice buzzwords. Anti-shippers don’t just dislike specific ships; there’ll always be a moral or ethical reason attached, sometimes with some grounding, sometimes ludicrous and based on circumstantial evidence at best. Furthermore, the harassment that took one form in pre-2010 antishipping has evolved for a changing internet. More and more people have their identities attached to their work and their social media, which means now flaming someone isn’t just about rude comments on their work; it can extend to calling parents, calling workplaces, fabricating serious accusations and other actions with major, long-ranging consequences.
Let's call a spade a spade. It's stalking. It's harassment. It's abuse. It frequently breaks laws and routinely breaks people. In its more extreme forms, it's evil.
The shift from “this ship is gross because of the age difference” to “anybody who likes it is gross because of the age difference” to “people who like this must be sexual predators” is notable, and chilling, especially since it’s exactly what serves to justify the harassment going to the lengths it does.
Exactly. The obsession with what other people choose to read and write is dangerous. Especially because people are losing the ability to distinguish between fantasy (entertainment is made-up stuff) and reality (believing people do in everyday life the stuff they read or write about).
The change in language extends past that, too. Now it’s not just “porn of Edward Elric”; it’s “sexualizing a minor”. Nobody cared that much prior to 2010 or so, but now, well, it feels weird to try argue for sexualizing a minor.
That's blazingly hypocritical in a society that sexualizes everything. Look at beauty pageants for little girls.
It Sounds Good On Paper
Not if you know anything about abuse it doesn't.
One of the most agonizing, challenging things to try explain to anybody is why this is bad.
It breaks people. That's bad. People have committed suicide over cyberbullying. But usually it just causes anxiety, depression, and general misery. Bullying people is bad. This is not a complicated concept. The bully always has an excuse. Don't believe it.
Everybody hates pedophiles.
Which is a problem when you consider that it's a sexual orientation, which is not chosen, and which cannot be changed with extant technology.
*[Writing]. Writing, as in, creating fiction. None of this is happening to real people. Now, that said, there’s been a lot of conversation about representation, and appropriate ways of writing difficult topics. It’s not something to dismiss entirely out of hand… but nobody is being physically hurt here, not directly.
Yeah, that's the part that bothers me the most. People are losing the ability to distinguish fiction from events.
Ships – as in, pairings of two characters – aren’t an inherent measure of positivity. They aren’t always intended to be healthy anyway. Additionally, ships by definition are so open to interpretation.
Ship and let ship. Don't like, don't read. Don't be a dick.
If you abuse people for liking things you don't like, YOU are the problem with fandom today. Your opinion does not entitle you to hurt other people.
Overwatch fandom is plagued by antis who consider a 20-year or so age gap between adults problematic
Also a problem in real life, where total strangers feel entitled to walk up and bitch about someone else's relationship that is absolutely none of their business. Fuck right off with that.
Also very Western. That sort of thing is normal in many Asian cultures.
*****[who will say anything…] And this is where you get into the real double-faced nature of this, which has done a number on a lot of people I know. This whole statement is already manipulative, but this sets up that no matter what someone says in their defense, you’ll read it as an excuse.
The best defense: look up that sort of phrasing in a check list of abuser tactics. You can often find it under things like gaslighting, narcissism, and flying monkeys. And then quote the source. Cockroaches can't stand spotlights. If you just grab their abuse, name it, and kick that shit out in public then it makes people extremely uncomfortable and they usually look for someone to pick on who will take it quietly.
Or just leave the venue for a week or two. People have short attention spans nowadays. If the venue doesn't have the privacy controls for your to defend yourself from attackers, you may want to look for a better one anyhow.
I can’t tell anybody how to deal with these situations, except for this: just because somebody is very emotional about something does not make them correct.
All feelings are valid. However, sometimes feelings lie to you. And your feelings do not entitle you to harm other people.
because it is often then the same people fearmongering about kink at Pride
Right, because who is more likely to have studied anatomy and psychology and at least a handful of different first aid classes? The perverts. Folks, when someone has a heart attack at Pride, chances are it's the top who has a CPR card.
A young ace person in fandom expresses frustration at the focus on romance and sexuality in fandom, and a ‘concerned friend’ (who will never actually identify themselves as a TERF) comes to agree with them and talk about how all of these people making light of Serious Problems like Rape just don’t understand.
If you're frustrated with current portrayals, make something better. Or if you're not creative yourself, prompt for it in any of fandom's many prompt calls. Or start a rec list for the few good examples you've found. Do something to solve the problem instead of just whining about it. Whining doesn't get you an ace hero in a sex/romance free plot.
By contrast, there have been a number of confirmed deaths and near-deaths related to antishipping.
Hardly a surprise. Humans will eat each other.
some ships “shouldn’t be shipped”,
Which is flat-out censorship and therefore wrong. It is none of your business what someone else likes, reads, writes, fantasizes about during sex, etc.
6. So What Do I Do?
1) Choose internet venues that give you control over your space.
2) And then keep it tidy. If trolls come in, boot them out. Ensure your audience knows that your expect "Don't be a dick" standards and will enforce them if necessary.
If you choose to go into venues where there are no privacy or moderation controls, it is likely to be a shitshow of some sort. Some venues are notorious for this.
Especially if you’re autistic like I am, this all sounds like a lot. It’s paranoia-inducing, that’s for sure. A lot of people decide to settle on a neutral position, thinking it’ll keep them safe or out of it (and sadly it rarely does); but I think it’s much simpler than that.
Or you can just say "fuck it" and decline the invitation to other people's drama.
If you believe that harassing people for fiction is bad, you’re a pro-shipper.
Eh, I've been an activist, a privacy advocate, and a gender scholar for decades. It predates the recent hullabaloo.
You’re not obligated to like or get along with everyone, or sign off on everybody’s decisions. You’re not even obligated to ship anything particularly spicy or problematic. All you have to do is look at the rhetoric used to justify harming others and decide, “No, not for me. Not today.”
Well said.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-23 01:59 pm (UTC)Is it just my imagination, or is online society becoming less civil? I mean, I remember the flame wars on usenet of the 80's and 90's... and yet it seems worse nowadays. But then, that would be a reflection of society in general I think. People seem to be... meaner... more stressed and grouchy certainly.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-23 02:36 pm (UTC)Also, I hadn't realized pedophilia could be considered or is a sexual orientation - but that kind of makes logical sense? (I do remember seeing that elsewhere.) Sexual orientation isn't something people chose. And how unlucky to be born with that.
I think some of the difficulty is a lot of people tend to take a morally superior attitude, or feel they are taking the moral higher ground. But the difficulty with that - is we're all flawed, with various quirks. And whose to say what the moral higher ground actually is? It's a sliding scale. And in assuming it - the individual could easily be falling into the role of cyberbully. Just because someone loves a messy fictional relationship or character, does not mean they support or like that behavior in actuality. We move love abusive relationships in fiction, but steer clear in reality.
The internet, specifically some social media platforms - have a tendency to bring out the worst in people. Twitter (Xitter) is set up as a marketing platform - where a negative tweet will be retweeted and quoted across it in seconds. It actually is set up for negative marketing to thrive. It wants controversy and battles. Dreamwidth isn't set up that way - it's more of an interactive correspondence site, and kind of pushes against that behavior. The old Voy users groups were also kind of set against it, since too many posts broke those sites, and they had headings and ways you could avoid the trolls easily. But, Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook - all have that woven in.
It's in a way made it worse.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-23 07:19 pm (UTC)*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.
>> Also, I hadn't realized pedophilia could be considered or is a sexual orientation - but that kind of makes logical sense? (I do remember seeing that elsewhere.) Sexual orientation isn't something people chose. And how unlucky to be born with that. <<
The technical definition of pedophilia is sexual attraction to children. So that's an orientation. They may not act on their attraction, so not all pedophiles are necessarily also child molesters, a fact that people really don't want to acknowledge.
The crimes of child molestation and child abuse are wider. One doesn't necessarily need to feel arousal in order to find children suitable as victims -- they're small, inexperienced, and don't have the legal rights of an adult to trouble you directly. So not all people who harm children are necessarily pedophiles.
Trying to insert facts and logic into a conversation where people only want to discuss emotions will make them go berserk.
So yes, it's a very unfortunate situation. Most people only think of pedophiles who are criminals. They don't think about the tween or teen who is slowly realizing that their interest in companions is not ageing up the way their peers are. Unsurprisingly, pedophilia has astronomical rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. After all, the only way to avoid committing a crime is to keep perfect control of your sexual desires for your whole life, and humans simply aren't perfect. There's no cure, and the few treatments are health-wrecking. This is a soul-destroying situation.
>> I think some of the difficulty is a lot of people tend to take a morally superior attitude, or feel they are taking the moral higher ground. <<
That's true in many arguments about sexuality.
>> But the difficulty with that - is we're all flawed, with various quirks. <<
Exactly. Nobody's perfect, and that's a huge problem when a single slip can cause serious harm. It is not reasonable to demand perfection of humans when everyone knows that humans are inherently imperfect.
What is a young person to do when they realize their orientation? If they admit it and seek help, they can be imprisoned in a mental institution for life because they're "a risk to society." And that makes it a crime of being rather than a crime of doing, the way homosexuality used to be here and still is in some parts of the world. There aren't safe treatment. Society despises them. It's no wonder so many wind up with self-harm and suicidal tendencies.
I like looking at other cultures to see what solutions they've come up with, if any. Some are not replicable with extant resources, but others are. Terramagne has a couple that are promising in terms of practical results, although a gray area in human rights.
One is a hermitage, where pedophiles choose to live in a community, usually rural, that doesn't allow anyone under a certain age, typically 21 or 25. They're free to come and go, it's not a prison, but most of them live there because they want never to be around youth, so they tend to stay put. This can be considered a curtailment of freedom or an unhealthy isolation from society, because while they're free in theory, they rarely use it in practice.
Another is a chaste companion. Like a sober companion, this is someone who sticks with their charge to backstop willpower and make sure they don't get into trouble. Basically, the person gives up privacy to gain security.
>> And whose to say what the moral higher ground actually is? It's a sliding scale. <<
Now throw in the fact that some highly successful historic societies practiced relationships with large age gaps, although it was usually a mature man with a tween or teen boy, so more ephebeophilia than pedophilia (which modern society tends to conflate).
>> Just because someone loves a messy fictional relationship or character, does not mean they support or like that behavior in actuality. We move love abusive relationships in fiction, but steer clear in reality. <<
It's also important to look at how the story portrays a relationship. I write about abuse quite frequently, and a substantial number of my characters are survivors of child molestation, domestic abuse, etc. But I don't make those look like good things. I've written about the issue of pedophilia as a sexual orientation a few times, and I've had people go apeshit and flounce out of my blog because I looked at that as a problem to be worked rather than an excuse to hate or kill people.
Talking about problems is important. People need to know how to recognize warning signs and what to do if they spot trouble. Hence all the links I include.
>> The internet, specifically some social media platforms - have a tendency to bring out the worst in people.<<
I agree. Now when we talk about the internet as a whole, it's like Underhill or the Jedi Tree. It contains only what people bring into it. The tool is neutral; the problems arise from how people choose to use it. You can decide to build a safe place or a very dangerous, abusive one.
Another aspect is lack of social skills. Society has been falling apart for several decades, and that means people today have fewer opportunities to learn positive ways of interaction. They also feel free to do a lot of obnoxious things that used to be curbed by social expectations.
>>Twitter (Xitter) is set up as a marketing platform - where a negative tweet will be retweeted and quoted across it in seconds. It actually is set up for negative marketing to thrive. It wants controversy and battles.<<
When you get to specific platforms or sites that belong to a person, the setup can create a positive, neutral, or negative foundation for interactions. Many are negative and some are downright harmful in their infrastructure. People choose to build these things, and other people choose to patronize them. So vote with your feet -- don't use services that encourage people to harm each other.
>> Dreamwidth isn't set up that way - it's more of an interactive correspondence site, and kind of pushes against that behavior. <<
DW has robust moderation and privacy tools for people who wish to use them, so it's a great place to have healthier interactions. It's not perfect but it's a lot better than average.
I support the right of people to create and use platforms that are neutral or positive. They should not be stuck with abusive, harmful platforms for lact of better options.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-24 04:55 am (UTC)This is the origin of "the September that never ended". Before AOL gave "everyone" Internet access, most users were connected either thru a college/university or a job.
In both cases, there were people whose *job* it was to deal with complaints about users from their site(s) who were making nuisances of themselves. So bad behavior had consequences. Rather serious ones.
And even those of us who got net access at several removes had an incentive to behave because our access still had top go thru the business/education sites at some point, and it usually wasn't that many hops between you and them.
Address used to be !tektronix!reed!qiclab!leonard so if the folks at reed or tekronix got a complaint they'd pass it on to qiclab and my friend who ran qiclab would tell me to shape up because he didn't want to lose his ability to connect via reed (Reed College).
But AOL and the others that followed didn't *care* they were paying for their links and didn't care about complaint from outside.
So consequences for those who didn't want to "play nice" evaporated.
So it was a race to the bottom.
This probably helped undermine social skills, as folks get less and less exposure to them online, and stuff like news coverage tends to focus on the bad actors anyway.
The various laws meant to "help" sites moderate things are backfiring badly. Attempting to control content actually *removes* your immunity from prosecution for content that someone posts on your site.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-24 02:24 pm (UTC)I'd agree this is a difficult topic to discuss rationally or logically. I can't. It makes me cringe internally, and I don't have direct experience with or a history with the topic. I know people who do and it's a triggering topic.
And our society does have issues with sex - we still to one degree or another have the Victorian mentality towards sex and sexuality. And to one degree or another appear to be more comfortable discussing and handling violence - "gun violence" - and watching it, then sex. It's very odd. We can watch and discuss children picking up and playing with guns, and learning how to target shoot in the Boy or Girl Scouts, but sex, not so much.
>>It's also important to look at how the story portrays a relationship. I write about abuse quite frequently, and a substantial number of my characters are survivors of child molestation, domestic abuse, etc. But I don't make those look like good things. I've written about the issue of pedophilia as a sexual orientation a few times, and I've had people go apeshit and flounce out of my blog because I looked at that as a problem to be worked rather than an excuse to hate or kill people.<<
I think a lot of people simply don't want to discuss it at all or see it discussed? It gets back to that Victorian Mentality about sex that I was discussing in the previous paragraph. In English Lit courses across the United States, specifically in the Ivy League Colleges of the Northeast, Victorian Literature is taught almost exclusively, and the American Publishing Industry for about a century has kind of pushed that writing style as "literary". Or so I've noticed. Which makes it almost taboo to discuss sex in a graphic manner or sexual topics.
An example of people's discomfort with sexuality - is a comparison of how people reacted to the film Barbie (which has no sex in it and veers away from it as almost taboo - which was part of the satire actually) and Poor Things (which is explicit with sex). There was a negative reaction by a lot of women who applauded Barbie, to Poor Things, in part due to the very Victorian mentality that Poor Things is deconstructing.
And admittedly there is a fine line between exploitation and discussion in some stories. Take "Lolita" for example? Or say, the film, Poor Things. I am discussing sexual molestation in a novel that I'm revising, but certainly not as a good thing - but as a past trauma that informs a character and has affected their life and decision-making. I refer to it, without describing it.
There's also a fine line between seduction and rape, and often seduction can become rape. And that is a topic most people do not wish to discuss. And when people don't want something to be discussed or seen - they tend to try to shut it down. Out of sight is out of mind - is their perspective. I disagree - all they are doing is repressing it. It's better in some situations to discuss it. And if you can't - to walk away from it, or just keep it out of their personal space. A lot of people have the view, right or wrong or neither, that discussing rape, child molestation, pedophilia, seduction, or anything in that purview is similar to okaying it or exploiting it or admitting that the writer personally supports or enjoys it. It is not. Quite the opposite in most instances. Being curious about something, or feeling the need to better understand the behavior in order to address it - is not the same as stating it is acceptable behavior.
Also there's a tendency in our society to demonize the person not the behavior. Molesting a child is horribly selfish behavior - but the person is more than one thing. Labeling them a pedophile isn't fair or correct, since they may also be a very good teacher or doctor or photographer, family man, father, etc. It's hard, I think, for a lot of people to understand that people can do horrible and wonderful things at the same time? Woody Allen is an example. People are more than one thing. And I think a lot of people find it easier to categorize or label someone as their bad behavior and write them off along with everything they've done. Then to see the whole person, and realize it is just the behavior that was the problem not the person themselves.
I like how various artists have attempted to discuss this - showing that a character who say kills someone isn't just a murderer. Or a character who rapes someone isn't just a rapist, and can be loving, and can be redeemed, that what was horrible is the "rape" not the person themselves. And we can feel empathy for that character without condoning their actions. You can separate a person from their act, actions do not define the person or certainly not just one action.
>>I agree. Now when we talk about the internet as a whole, it's like Underhill or the Jedi Tree. It contains only what people bring into it. The tool is neutral; the problems arise from how people choose to use it. You can decide to build a safe place or a very dangerous, abusive one.<<
This is very true. It's how you choose to use it and the platforms. I've been on the internet since roughly the 1990s, with the early usenet groups, and list-serves, and even then people could be abusive and nasty, if they chose. The trick is to know how to navigate it.
>>When you get to specific platforms or sites that belong to a person, the setup can create a positive, neutral, or negative foundation for interactions. Many are negative and some are downright harmful in their infrastructure. People choose to build these things, and other people choose to patronize them. So vote with your feet -- don't use services that encourage people to harm each other.<<
This is true to a degree? However you can manipulate or use these platforms in a way that doesn't harm others or to just discuss things. It depends on how you do it. Or what you are using it for? Every forum has its issues. There's a tendency to demonize the forum, much like demonizing the internet, when in reality they are just tools - it's how we choose to utilize them that can create a negative or positive experience, and more importantly who we choose to interact with.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-27 10:35 pm (UTC)Try pointing out that if orientation = behavior, then by that logic all heterosexual men* should be locked up as rapists.
*Yes, I know there are more nuanced details. I also know that most men are not rapists! I just think this is the most efficient 'hit' to get across the core point of the argument - most people know the terminology and will know/care about/be someone in the target group. (Also, most women will have been nervous about a man at some point in their lives, so the double standard of "If you say no you'll hurt his feelings"/"PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES!" can be discussed.)
>>Terramagne has a couple that are promising in terms of practical results, although a gray area in human rights.<<
I don't really see either of your proposed solutions as more of a human rights violation than, say, insisting that a violent alcoholic not drink, or having a sober companion.
Sure it infringes on one person's rights a bit, but if it is a free choice that is fine, and if it is not a free choice, well, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, and if that requires having an assigned companion who will sit on you until you chill out, it's more freedom than one person in jail and the other in the morgue.
And side note: there are plenty of people with plenty of problems of all types (not just sexuality or libido issues) who very much do not want to hurt other people and willingly curtail their freedom - stuff like quitting drinking, pausing or dissolving a relationship where you are the dangerous one, voluntary commitment, and so on. So I think a lot of people might
Perfect? Nope! But there are plenty of worse things to worry about. Also, if someone wants total freedom, there's always that solution from The Dragonriders of Pern for incorrigibly antisocial folks: Dump 'em with some supplies on a tiny, deserted island. They can do whatever they want without being constrained or helped by the rest of society.
Oh, and for another possible solution, though likely best used in conjunction with something else... the Shakers (and I suspect some monastic orders, though I haven't researched that) expended a lot of the energy that would have otherwise gone to libido and romance in physical labor, craftwork, etc. Probably a healthier overall treatment than some of the medicinal options, and you get nice stuff out of it.
And we really need a cultural option for people to say they can't do X for safety reasons and have it respected.
>>...highly successful historic societies...<<
Just because something counts as successful by some metrics doesn't necessarily mean it is equally beneficial across social strata, or a group/individual basis, or whatever. Plus, there's the conflating variable that sometimes life sucks enough that it is possible to lose the fine details of what plays into the whole mess.
>>It's also important to look at how the story portrays a relationship. <<
Yup. Something that glorifies suffering...ugh, no thanks. But something that has some suffering and then recovery from that is much better (at least in my opinion, YMMV.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-24 02:06 am (UTC)I think the anonymity of the internet makes some people feel more free to be hateful. And if the person they're attacking is just a faceless abstraction attached to a name, that adds a layer of deniability.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-24 06:40 am (UTC)People are quite freely harassing people under their real names. So demanding wallet names, like the Facebook sewer does, doesn't fix things at all.
Most of the people who maintain pseudonyms (anonymity) are people who have more risk from trolls and hate speech. So de-anonymizing does not stop the abuse, it just makes vulnerable populations more unsafe.
It easier to blame "anonymity" and propose the usual fix that isn't, than to face the fact that people are turning into assholes under their wallet names, and don't GAF.
Yes ...
Date: 2024-03-24 07:11 am (UTC)I observe that people are just generally meaner, and especially, the places that used to be refuges -- like fandom -- have ceased to be so. That applies both to meatspace and to cyberspace.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-24 03:58 pm (UTC)Ysabet is correct, too. Meatspace has also become far less civil. People got cut off in traffic 40 years ago, but I don't remember them shooting each other.
Yes ...
Date: 2024-03-24 06:36 pm (UTC)Over time, though, things changed. It shifted more to saying that demonizing specific groups -- like Jews or black people -- was wrong but doing the same thing to other groups was acceptable. I didn't agree with that.
Eventually they quit even trying, and just went back to "four legs good, two legs bad." :/
So the problem with that is it allows people to build up momentum. They demonize one group, then another, then another. And we saw that in WWII -- it wasn't just the Jews being targeted but also the Romani, homosexuals, scientists, activists, the unemployed, even Germans who had a disability. It just snowballed. That tends to happen if there's no friction to slow it down.
Hence why speaking up is important.
Exactly!
Date: 2024-03-29 03:40 pm (UTC)(Uncensored speech is another way. If social media *encourage* someone to post "I'm going to livestream video of how I'm going to rob this bank," the bank will be safe! If people spew hate, you can block them, or privately share their hateful posts with others so the others will block them too, without getting into questions of censorship OR interfering with monitoring for when, if ever, they become violent.)
And finally...the Internet without both uncensored content, filtered only by individuals, and anonymity wouldn't be fresh enough to be worth paying for. It's like X now...all the big corporations paying for access may be making Musk richer, but sooner or later they'll notice that, while they're screaming at each other, no one is listening, because people who wanted to watch corporate-owned TV already *had* TV.
Re: Exactly!
Date: 2024-03-29 03:45 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-24 07:30 am (UTC)See now, you're smart enough to realize when something is harmful to you and avoid it. Apparently this skill is dwindling.
>> I think the anonymity of the internet makes some people feel more free to be hateful. And if the person they're attacking is just a faceless abstraction attached to a name, that adds a layer of deniability.<<
It can increase the tendency. But lack of anonymity doesn't seem to reduce abuse. I've also seen large increases in meatspace assholery.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-27 10:01 pm (UTC)Possibly a trauma response. I've been in situations where I recognize that A Thing is bad for me, but when I try to object or meet my needs or point out the problem I get told no, or outright prevented from meeting my needs. The end result is that sometimes I have a very passive response to unhealthy or upsetting situations, and that is assuming that I even recognize the situation as 'bad.'
Some of this was childhood stuff, some of it was me being a low(er) ranking adult. So take that, magnify it across society, and it's not surprising that the skills to identify and protect ourselves from harm are eroding.
Then you get to the other part of the problem, where a person who is socialized that 'having boundaries/meeting your needs is Bad' project that attitude onto other people. This can be done unconsciously, and even when people are aware, it can be very hard to override.
>>But lack of anonymity doesn't seem to reduce abuse.<<
but it can dramatically increase unpleasant behavior. There are studies correlating facepaint/masks/etc with increased aggression. It is also a common strategy to defuse an attacker by humanizing yourself/the victim. What's that saying, "It's real hard to hate up close," I think?
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-29 03:51 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-31 01:28 am (UTC)The "I walked to school in the snow barefoot uphill both ways and survived, so quit whining" person isn't so much flaunting their weakness as, well accepting their ill-treatment as normal and unremarkable. They don't need to be more/less vulnerable, they need their empathy turned back on so they can, at minimum, make sure the kid has shoes to go to school. (And if your normal was no shoes, it takes effort to overwrite that programming and not pass it along to other people.)
Of course, then they will likely have a rather dramatic emotional reaction once their prior experience is recontextualized from 'normal' to 'severely dysfunctional.'
Real-life examples... well, look at all of the 'This is a slap in the face, /I/ had to pay back my student loans' arguments that come up every time someone mentions student loan forgiveness.
Weakness-as-excuse...
Look up Wounded Gazelle Gambit, when coupled with manipulation. Some people will also claim ignorance, stupidity, weakness, etc to get away with stuff.
Or research dominance theory, particularly the way a lower-ranking [usually physically unimposing, i.e. a kid or visibly frail adult] person can get away with a lot that an equally ranked person wouldn't. And there is also the Fawn response, which is designed to appease aggressive social dominants.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-25 02:52 pm (UTC)Do I condone things like adult X child/teen, teen X child, abuse or incest IRL? No, I don't. But fiction isn't reality, nobody is actually getting hurt. And if I ever end up writting something glorified or romantized I'll warn people about it either in the description or tags cause I wouldn't like it either to be hit with things that I don't like or aren't good for me.
I'm not old, I'm turning 20 this summer. And while there was stuff exposed to me as a child that I shouldn't have seen. I feel like the current internet isn't really equiped/knowlageble about how to filler or tag to avoid the things that squick/trigger you. Nobody younger then 13 should even be on the internet without supervision. And while 13 yo aren't stupid, they don't have the best critical skills either.
I do understand the idea of not wanting to expose kids in fandom to stuff that might harm them. But it feels like nowadays you're not allowed to have spaces anymore where fiction is treated like a playground for adults. As somebody else said; its paranoia inducing.
Another thing I dislike about this is the Tumblr thing of having DNIs. I don't think the concept itself it completely rotten. But more often then not, the DNI isn't actually going to stop the people OP doesn't want to interact with + now the people who don't like them have a list of triggers to spam them with. I think the DNI, as it exists now, is flawed. + I'm personally biased against them cause its usually done by antis.
a different take
Date: 2024-03-29 03:58 pm (UTC)I'm enough of a free speech absolutist to say Musk doesn't qualify for the title, but I, personally, like to avoid any mention of any body parts, because when bots spot mentions of bodies they start showing you patent remedies for things that go wrong with bodies. And images of diseased body parts. It's disgusting.
Priscilla King