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.
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.