*parts a bead curtain as i enter the room, carrying a glass of lemonade*
hey….
nothing you ever read, watch, or participate in will be ideologically pure and without its problems. your quest to consume the most unproblematic material will be, in the end, fruitless. your enjoyment of anything will be sapped away, leaving you a husk starved for media.
it is okay to enjoy things that have problems to them, so long as you do it critically and with an open mind, and take care to consider others.
*leaves the way i came*
This is possibly the healthiest post I’ve seen on this site
a lot of people need to get comfortable with the idea that what you believe to be immoral and what you think should be illegal don’t have to match up and probably shouldn’t
too much “this character did something bad” talking about fictional characters like they’re autonomous entities and not enough “why have the writers made this character do the bad thing and how does it contribute to the overall plot and themes?”
Ur literally saying ur not a defending pedo behavior while saying drawing child porn is okay wtf is wrong with u bro. disgusting.
I’m not saying child porn is okay. I’m not saying drawing child porn is okay. I’m saying that drawing cartoon characters, that you own, in sexual positions is just… Meh. It’s a non-issue. Children aren’t being harmed. (And IIRC, the pictures in question were aged up characters.)
There isn’t a crime here. If it’s not your thing, whatever. I don’t draw it or look for it myself. It’s just not child porn, and equating it to child porn actually hurts victims of abuse.
If you’re clogging up the CSA tag with stuff about cartoon characters and cancel culture and whatever, that makes it harder for real people to find resources. It makes it harder for real people to get help. It takes the focus away from actual child in really danger, and that’s a problem.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but this thing seems like a psyop. If I were a pedo (and I’m not), I would convince a bunch of people to accuse others of pedophilia for no reason, thus creating a huge pool of people who may or may not be pedophiles. If you accuse everyone of being a pedo, it makes it really, really hard to figure out who’s really a pedo. It would make it easier for real pedos to get away with crimes. It’s called muddying the waters.
You’re probably too young to remember pedobear, but that was the gist of that meme. This bear cartoon was being used by pedos to identify each other, but then it became a meme where people photoshopped the bear into kinda sexual situations. Then people who didn’t know the history of pedobear started using it. Everyone was using it, so the FBI wouldn’t track pedophiles using the bear anymore. They’ve done it before and they’re doing it again.
Congratulations, purity police! You’re doing the exact thing pedophiles want you to do.
Couldn’t help but notice this reblog in a certain recent “queer is a slur” discourse post.
Beyond being ahistorical, it is significant in its third paragraph, which is almost entirely made up with TERF and alt right dog whistles. For anyone who has even a basic idea of what to look for, this blogger has just outright shown their hand.
Let’s start from the beginning of the text I’ve marked in blue:
“a pedophilia and incest apologist”
This is a very handy tactic especially prevalent in alt-right rhetoric these days. It stigmatises anything it is attached to, in this case the person who coined the term “queer theory.” Topics like pedophilia and incest are extremely taboo and emotionally laden, and attaching them to a subject will cause many people to automatically distance themselves from that term out of a semi-instinctive desire to not associate themselves with such things. Spread this attachment widely enough, and you can push entire groups into abandoning terminology, praxis, and people.
We’ve gotten to the transphobic dogwhistle now. This is an accusation frequently used against trans men and nonbinary AFAB people, especially those who pursue relationships with men. With the current surge in transphobic public rhetoric, it has received a new breath of life, and trans mlm are currently facing a slew of accusations of being straight women/girls who have just fetishized gay men to the point that they’re trying to “become” gay men/boys themselves (CW: link leads to transphobic hate site genderhq.org). These accusations are even being used in queer circles–including by trans people–to gatekeep who “gets” to write fiction about mlm. Just a week ago, for example, queer writer Alex Marraccini accused indie trans mlm author Ana Mardoll of fetishizing mlm, claiming that Ana’s “fetishistic” writing isn’t nearly as groundbreaking or liberating as the work of realcis gay men.
I’m not sure who the blogger is referring to here as there’s no real consensus on who first used the term “queer studies.” However, I think they may be referring to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who was most certainly not a straight woman. She was queer and came out as a trans man, though as far as I know continued to publicly prefer she/her pronouns (hence my own pronoun use here).
“use intentionally over academic language”
Ah, good old anti-intellectualism. If I can’t understand you, you must be using over-academic language just to confuse me on purpose. This dogwhistle not only gives people an excuse to dismiss anything they don’t understand straight away, it pushes the conspiracy theory that we academics are part of an ivory tower conspiracy to Queer Everything for…reasons (see below).
“to obfuscate that their founding texts and members are Marxists”
And of course we have one more “incest and pedophilia” whistle to round things off, just to doubly ensure that people understandably disgusted by those things attach them to queer theorists.
Anyway, once again I beg the good people of Tumblr to please pay close attention to TERF rhetoric, where it comes from, how it’s used, and the other movements that it is tied to. I am not being a paranoid conspiracist when I say that “queer is a slur” discoursers and “pedophilia and incest” scaremongers and their ilk (including anti-kink discoursers) are tied to TERF rhetoric, which is itself allied increasingly with the alt right. They are telling you this for themselves. Listen to them when they tell you who they are.
The commenter said nothing racist or homophobic. Yet, considering the environment in fandoms these days, you could easily assume the troll reply was a brainwashed progressive.
it’s kind of deeply depressing that there exists this entire vast subculture of progressive-learning 15-19 year olds online who are legitimately filled with anxiety over their media consumption diet and closely monitor themselves and others to make sure nothing they consume is Problematic™ lest they be ousted from their social circles. at the exact age where it’s actually good to have a varied media diet and be able to critically engage with harmful elements, too
straight up if you are high school or early university aged and you’re spending time feeling significant guilt and anxiety about what you choose to read or watch because of your online peers and shaping your media diet based on fear, you do not have to be around those peers anymore. there is a vast world outside this kind of person
fandom is a hobby, not a form of activismadult women aren’t inherently creepy for being in fandom and having hobbies apart from raising babies and doing taxesthe vast majority of people pushing back against the worrying trend of instigating harassment over fictional characters and relationships aren’t incest supporters or pedophiles, actuallyliking a m/f ship doesn’t make someone a dirty heterosexual invading your spacepreferring gay ships doesn’t make you ‘’woke’’ and good
no one owes you a disclaimer that they are a good person who recognizes that their favorite fictional villain’s actions are evil and that they don’t condone those actions irlliking a fictional villain is in no way comparable to advocating abuse/murder/genocide/etc and you’re a fucking idiot if you believe thatjust because a woman is attracted to a fictional villain doesn’t mean she’s promoting toxic relationships or going to end up in a toxic relationship. assuming women can’t tell fiction and reality apart stinks of internalized misogyny some rando’s a/b/o fanfics have none of the level of influence that popular tv shows and movies spreading propaganda haveno one owes you a detailed description of their traumas and mental health problemsabusive relationships are not the same as enemies to lovers shipsy’all need to chill the fuck out over people, relationships, actions and events that don’t actually exist and learn how to enjoy and discuss them like normal peoplefandom is a hobby, not a form of activism
my general opinion on shipping is that anything is a game, because 1 it’s all fictional anyway, 2 if you tag it properly only people that are actively looking for it will find it, 3 if it’s not canon then it’s not canon, 4 it’s just fun, nothing deep
“but it’s problematic or just wrong…” yeah, and what? if you don’t like it, it’s not for you. if it makes you uncomfortable, remove yourself from the space where it’s presented/discussed. “but the author/s never intended for this relationship to be read like that…” yeah, but I’m the author of this art/fic/meta and my intention is different, and I want to present this thing in non-canon context, let me play in this space that would never exist
block people and tags, exclude them from searches, and just enjoy the things you enjoy, instead of looking for things that will make you dislike the fandom
because, you know, that’s what fandom is about - enjoying things
[image description: a screenshot of text that says Aposematism (Greek, apo = away, sematic = sign) is the use of warning coloration to inform potential predators that an animal is poisonous, venomous, or otherwise dangerous. End description.]
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