antiantishaladin

[antiantishaladin]

Perhaps at one point anti truly was short for “anti-shipper” and truly innocently meant someone who poo-poo’d on ships they just didn’t personally like. But at this point, anti is really synonymous with “anti-pedophilia” so if you see someone complaining about antis, be 1000% wary of them because they are probably a pedophile or at least a pedophile apologist.

Also be aware because people against antis are very careful of how to present themselves to others. You’ll often see them acting like “anti behavior” is totally unreasonable and overdramatic. These are exaggerations. I have outright seen people who complain about antis respond to a post criticizing a relationship between an 18 year old girl and a man in his mid-late 30s and viewing it through a critical lens with “see this is what I mean, antis just can’t stand when characters are a few years apart” and boil this down to “a ship where the age gap is more than one year apart”.

People complaining about antis are the ones exaggerating and making up stories. If you read carefully, you’ll see they are outright telling you they are pedophiles and/or support/explain away pedophilia.

Please be careful, especially if you’re underage, interacting with such people.

Complaining about antis has become a pedophile dogwhistle.

[antiantishaladin]

I'm really upset that va is an anti :( I loved her content, but I guess I gotta unfollow and block. I mean jesus "I have more of a following than your pedophilic fan blog ever will" who says that shit??

Yeah. I just unfollowed and blocked on main, too. And it’s really dangerous because she has a lot of influence on this site and using that to validate the sick people who send me asks calling me burnt waste who deserves to get raped is going to do some serious damage. To real people. Unlike whatever pedo ship Tumblr targets next. I’m so disappointed.

[antiantishaladin]

For the people who are out there “fighting the good fight” and “trying to make fandom a better place,” I have two important questions for you:

1. Is the author dead? x

2. Is your baby in the bathwater? x

What do I mean by those things? Let’s start with #1. The Death of the Author is a type of literary criticism, the extreme cliff notes version of which is that art exists outside of the creator’s life, personal background, and even intentions. I’m using it slightly differently than Barthes intended, but that’s okay, because the author is dead and I’m interpreting his work through my own lens.

In fandom, the author is dead. In fact, the author was never alive in the first place, not really. The author has only ever been the idea of a person, because unlike published fiction, the only thing we know about a fanfic author is that which they choose to tell us about themselves.

Why is that important?

Because it might not be true. Hell, that happens in real life with published authors, who have SSN’s on file with their publishers, who pay taxes on the works they create and have researchable pasts. If the author of A Million Little Pieces could fake everything, why can’t I? Why can’t you? Why can’t the writer of your favorite fic in the whole wide world?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “you can only write about [sensitive subject] if [sensitive subject] has happened to you personally, otherwise you’re a disgusting monster that deserves to die!!” Or maybe “you can only write [x racial or ethnic group] characters if you’re [x racial or ethnic group] otherwise you’re racist/fetishizing/colonizing!”

You can play this game with any sensitive subject you can come up with. I’ve seen them all before, on a sliding scale of slightly chastising to literal death threats.

Now, I could tell you that I’m a white-passing Latina whose grandmother was an anchor baby. I could tell you that I speak only English because my family never taught me to speak Spanish, something which I’ve been told is common in the Cuban community, though I only know my own lived experience. I could tell you that I’m mostly neurotypical. I could tell you that I’m covered in surgical scars. I could tell you lots of things.

Are any of these true? Maybe! I could tell you that my brother has severe mental development problems, so uncommon that they’ve never been properly diagnosed, and that he will live the rest of his life in a group home with 24-hour care. Is that true? Am I allowed to write about families struggling with America’s piss-poor services for the handicapped now?

Am I allowed to write about being Cuban? After all, I did just say that I’m Cuban. But is it true? Can I instead write a character that’s Panamanian? Maybe I really am Panamanian, not Cuban. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. Maybe I’m really French Canadian. Should we require people to post regular selfies? I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me speaking Arabic, and I’ve been told that I look Syrian. What’s stopping me from making a blog that claims that I am Syrian? Can you even really tell someone’s race and ethnicity from a photo?

Am I allowed to write about being a teenager? Am I allowed to write about being a college student? Am I allowed to write about being an “adulty” adult? Can I write a character who’s 40? 50? 60? How old am I?

All of this is to say: you can’t base what someone is or is not “allowed” to write about on a background that may or may not be real. No matter how good your intentions. And I get it - this usually comes from a place of well-meaning. You’re trying to protect marginalized groups by stopping privileged people from trampling all over experiences that they haven’t suffered. I get that. It’s a very noble thought. But you can’t require a background check for every fic that you don’t like.

If you say “you can only write about rape if you’re a rape victim,” then one of three things will happen:

Real survivors will have to supply intimate details of their own violations to prevent harassment

Real survivors will refuse to engage and will then have to deal with death threats and people telling them to kill themselves for daring to write about their own experiences

People who aren’t survivors will say “yeah sure this happened to me” just to get people to shut up

Has that helped anyone? I mean really - anyone??

So now let’s get to point #2: is your baby in the bathwater?

If your intention is to protect marginalized people from being trampled upon, stop and assess if your boot is the one that’s now stamping on their face. Find your baby! Is your baby in the bathwater? Which is to say: find the goal that you’re advocating for. Now assess. Are you making the problem worse for the people you’re trying to protect? Does that rape victim really feel better, now that you’ve harassed and stalked them in the name of making rape victims feel safe?

Let’s say you read a fic that contains explicit sex between a 16 year old and a 17 year old. Is this okay? Would it be okay if the writer was 15? 16? 17? Should teenagers be barred from writing about their own lives, and should teenagers be banned from exploring sexuality in a fictional bubble, instead of hookup culture? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about their experiences as a teenager? Is it okay for a 20 year old to write about being raped at a party as a teenager? Is it okay for a 30 year old? How about a 40 year old? Is it okay so long as it isn’t titillating? Is it okay if taking control of the narrative allows the writer to re-conceptualize their trauma as something they have control over? Is it okay if their therapist told them that writing is a safe creative outlet?

Is your author dead?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Now let’s take a hardline approach: no fanfiction with characters who are under 18 years old. None. Is the 16 year old who really loves Harry Potter and wants to read/write about characters their own age better off? Should they be banned from writing? Should they be forced to exclusively read and write (adult) experiences that they haven’t lived? Will they write about teens anyway? Should they have to share it in secret? Should 16 year olds be ashamed of themselves? Should we just throw in with the evangelicals and say that the only answer is abstinence, both real and fictional?

Let’s say that no rape is allowed in fiction, at all. None. What happens to all the hurt/comfort fics where a character is raped and then receives the support and love that they deserve, slowly heal, and by the end have found themselves again? Are you helping rape victims by banning these stories? Are you helping rape victims by stripping their agency away, by telling them that their wants and their consent doesn’t matter?

Is your baby in the bathwater?

Fandom is currently being split in two: on one side, the people who want to make fandom a “safer” place by any means necessary, even if that means throwing out all of the marginalized groups they say they want to protect - and on the other, people who are saying “if you throw out that bathwater, you’re throwing the baby out too.”

The whole point of fandom is to be able to explore all kinds of ideas from the safety and comfort of a computer screen. You can read/write things that fascinate you, disgust you, titillate you, or make your heart feel warm. This is true of all fiction. People who want to read about rape and incest and extreme violence and torture can go pick up a copy of Game of Thrones from the bookstore whenever they want. Sanitizing fandom just means holding a community of people who are primarily not male, not straight, not cis, or some combination of those three, to higher and stricter standards than straight white cis male authors and creators all over the world.

There is nothing you can find on AO3 that you can’t find in a bookstore. Any teenager can go check out Lolita, or ASOIAF, or Flowers in the Attic, or Stephen King’s It, or Speak, or hundreds of other books that have adult themes or gratuitous violence or graphic sex. The difference is that AO3 has warnings and tags and allows people to interact only with the types of work that they want to, and allows people to curate their experiences.

Are these themes eligible to be explored, but only in the setting of something produced/published? Books, movies, television, studio art, music - all of these fields have huge barriers to entry, and they’re largely controlled by wealthy cishet white men. Is it better to say that only those who have the right connections to “make it” in these industries should be allowed to explore violence or sexuality or any other so-called “adult” theme?

Does banning women from writing MLM erotica make fan culture a better place?

Does banning queer people from writing about queer experiences make fan culture a better place?

Is M/M fic okay, but only if the author is male? What if he’s a transman? What if they’re NB? Who should get to draw those lines? Should TERFs get a vote? What if the author is a woman who feels more comfortable writing from a male character’s perspective because she’s grown up with male stories her whole life, or because she identifies more with male characters? What about all the transmen who discovered themselves, in part, by writing fanfiction, and realized that their desires to write male characters stemmed from something they hadn’t yet realized about themselves?

How can we ever be sure that the author is who they say they are?

Who is allowed to write these stories? How do we enforce it?

Is it better for none of these stories to ever exist at all?

Have you killed your author?

Have you thrown out your baby with the bathwater?

[antiantishaladin]

People need to stop assuming that people are writing for a young audience, especially if said content is labeled as explicit. I don’t market myself towards young people. Young people should not be reading my stuff. Your argument of “what about the children?” is invalid.

[antiantishaladin]

Like if y'all really wanna talk about retraumatising yourself, imagine having a fucking anti as your therapist

[antiantishaladin]

Whump and smut are valid genres.

Y’all just think your personal taste in fiction is a good basis to be a pretentious asshole.

[antiantishaladin]

I'm kinda surprised I didn't make it

Looks like the blocklist got deleted. Would you happen to have screenshots? 🤔

I can still access it for whatever reason

[antiantishaladin]

Antis: Oh you mean normal people?

Me: No. No I do not, because normal people don’t throw a tantrum about how other people interact with fiction. Nor do they send death threats and wish for actual people to die. Normal people also don’t think writing is the same as abusing someone.

[antiantishaladin]

Just heard that Adora and Catra are seen like sisters from the voice of Catra herself. I just find this amusing for how I hear antis are reacting to this. (If you’re not an anti and ship Adora and Catra, you’re still valid and hope you still have fun with your ship)

But if you’re an anti that likes Adora x Catra and mock ships like, idk, Sheith, how does it feel?

[antiantishaladin]

The internet isn’t a safe space for kids. That isn’t a controversial statement. There is no ‘but’. The internet isn’t a safe space for kids.

Are there kid-friendly and kid-oriented spaced? Yes! I played on many when i was growing up, club penguin, PBSKids, cartoon network, they were a lot of fun. I played on them well into my teens.

Youtube was new at the time and it was an absolute minefield. My parents warned me against using it. But i decided it was fine and i could handle myself, i was around 15.

And honestly, for the most part, it was fine. I mostly watched music videos, AMV’s, and watched anime in 3 parts per episode. And then i found fanfiction. Yes fanfiction videos on youtube.

Anyway, i found fanfiction.net through googling the fics i was reading. And woo boy did i find some very non-kid-friendly fics. I did it knowingly, i wasn’t stupid, i knew what rated M meant. I played rated M games, i was fully aware of what i was getting into.

And, i have never clicked out of fics faster. Most fics were fine, there was bold wording ‘LEMON WARNING, LEMON AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK’ and at the end there’d be ‘LEMON OVER, CONTINUE AT YOUR LEISURE’ or something similar. But the ones that weren’t, i could only blame myself.

I knowingly added in M rated fics, i kept reading knowing the risk that there would most likely be sex, i wasn’t stupid. Teens aren’t stupid, they know what rated M means.

And honestly? I don’t blame the writers. I can’t blame them.

I knowingly clicked on the fics, i knowingly clicked to include rated M fics.

Reading fics is one of the safest ways to interact with fandoms in my experience. If it gets bad, click the back button. Excluding Mature fics will get rid of at least 90% of smut fics. And Archive of Our Own’s tagging system is just glorious. Every possible warning has a tag.

Fandom isn’t a safe space for kids. Can it be totally safe? No. Can it be safer? Yes. By simply tagging things appropiately and teaching them what things are.

If your fic is marked Explicit, then you’ve done your job. If your fic has warnings, you’ve done your job.

If someone who is under 18 Knowingly clicks on an Explicit or Mature fic and that fic has been tagged, the writer is not at fault. The writer has done their job, it’s been tagged, the reader has been warned. There’s no stopping teens from reading explicit fics. They’re fully aware of what they’re doing.

[antiantishaladin]

When do y'all think antis will admit that a vast majority of the purity politics they support is rooted in radfem ideology

[antiantishaladin]

When do y'all think antis will admit that a vast majority of the purity politics they support is rooted in radfem ideology

[antiantishaladin]

Currently not dropping names, currently

I’ll say this bluntly. I do not care if you have the same interests, ships, or likes/dislikes as me. The moment I see someone in any of my “camps” do something shitty I’ll gladly call it out without question.

That being said, and this is clearly not directed to all of you guys just the vocal (i hope) minority, that if you’re a sheith shipper, and you go out of your way to harass someone for drawing art of a ship you don’t like, you’re literally on the same level as antis and I for one won’t stand for it. Have your NOTP’s all you want all the live long day, we all have them, but if you’re a self entitled individual that believes in harassing people to the point where they leave the fandom because they drew something you don’t like, you get no sympathy from me, and all my sympathy goes towards the people you harassed into silence. My only hope is that Karma hits you hard if you’re like that.

[antiantishaladin]

What is an anti? I had always heard that anti meant someone who was against pedophilic and incest ships

An anti is someone in fandom who harasses, threatens, and cyberbullies other fans because of what characters they like, what pairings they ship and what content they write/read.

They claim to be against “pedophillic ships” but their definition of pedophilia is…completely and utterly out of whack. Things antis have literally called “pedophilic” or in support of “pedophilia” include:

Relationships involving two adults

Relationships between teenagers that fall under Romeo and Juliet laws (a 16 year old dating an 18 year old, for example, or even a 17 year old dating an 18 year old)

Relationships involving any age difference whatsoever (an 18 year old and a 20 year old? pedophilia. a 40 year old and a 60 year old? pedophilia.)

Relationships involving people with a height difference (because short people are “child coded”)

Relationships involving neurodivergent and mentally ill people (iirc this was specifically targeted towards autistic people because antis think they’re “child like” which makes them literally children to antis)

Teaching sex ed to kids in school.

CSA survivors writing about their abuse in any capacity.

CSA survivors saying they don’t like their abuse being compared to fanfic about cartoon characters.

CSA survivors saying they don’t want to get involved with fandom discourse

and etc etc etc, the list goes on, and the point is that when antis say they’re against pedophilia very rarely are they talking about actual pedophilia. They’ve misused the word from hell and back in order to shut down anyone who disagrees with them (actual CSA survivors included) to the point where people on this site have alarm fatigue from the sheer amount of false pedophilia accusations these people have made. Their definition of “incest” is also just as incorrect—they consider characters who have been friends since childhood to be “siblings”, they’ve also called ships between adult characters incestuous because one adult is older than the other.

Antis have also

Made constant death threats and sent suicide baiting messages to both minors and CSA survivors

Told both survivors and minors they deserved to be abused/raped/killed

Accused CSA survivors of being pedophiles, pedophile apologists, or just as bad as their abusers

Accused minors of being pedophiles and pedophile apologists for drawing, writing, or shipping minor characters who are their age or older

Flooded people’s submit boxes with everything from pictures of dead animals to torture to actual child porn

Harbored actual abusers (there’s literally a rapist in the anti-reylo community right now who they refuse to do anything about and this is not the only situation like this that has happened - several antis have been outed as actual predators and the anti community protected them every time while anti antis were the ones trying to get attention to the situation)

Used racist, ableist, transphobic, and other slurs against shippers.

Attempted to dox multiple bloggers

Harassed a woman on twitter who had nothing to do with fandom because her username was ‘klance’ (her actual name is K. Lance) to the point she had to contact the police

Threatened to kill show staff members and their families

Frequently ignore callout posts for actual predators and child abusers while giving thousands of notes to posts calling people out for their ships

Denied the identities of other fans to try and make their own arguments look legit (frequently call queer fans cishet, fans of color white, frequently accuse abuse survivors who disagree with them of lying about their abuse, etc)

and I could literally go on all day.

Antis are not about being against “pedophilic ships”, they’re about using the false accusation of pedophilia to harass people who read/write/ship/enjoy things they don’t like and the people who they target are frequently abuse survivors and minors and other marginalized people.

Their behavior doesn’t make fandom (or at-risk people in fandom) safer and multiple abuse survivors (myself included) have spoken out about how antis have made fandom unsafe for us to be in and how triggering their behavior in pursuit of attacking “pedophilic ships” (which, again, are rarely actually pedophilic) is to us. Absolutely nothing antis have done is in pursuit of actually improving fandom and they frequently refuse to do or support anything that people could do to make fandom a safer experience (antis frequently refuse to use tumblr’s filtering system or any blacklist extension, they shit on the proper tagging of fics/fanart/other posts which is a system that exists to help people protect themselves, and multiple fans have stated that they’re now afraid to properly tag their posts because antis use those tags to harass people—something that actively harms fans because if posts aren’t properly tagged then people get hurt by being exposed to content they don’t want to see).

The thing is that media criticism is good, it’s helpful, it’s beneficial to everyone—-this is a sentiment that most anti antis agree with—-and people are allowed to have content and ships they don’t like but what antis do is not media criticism but personal attacks towards people for the media they create and consume that go so far over the line to the point of being criminal, and what antis do is not simply being against certain content but expecting all of fandom and everyone in the world to only consume content that antis tell them is okay (and meanwhile antis are incredibly hypocritical and frequently consume the very same kind of content that they harass others for enjoying—-see: there are antis who ship pairings like Hannigram and watch shows like Devilman Crybaby, while they harass other people who enjoy other content with the same or even milder themes). 

Basically TLDR - Antis paint themselves to be the good guys going on a just crusade against abuse and “abusive ships” but they’re the abusive element in fandom and have harmed countless people with their rhetoric and behavior.

Before you believe a word they say, actually look into some anti anti blogs and get the other side of the story because anti’s side of things is a total distortion of reality and the truth. Try: @anti-anti-survivor, @theassholeantiarchive, @leproblematique, @antipurity for starters.

[antiantishaladin]

I see a lot of posts going around talking about the need to be critical of fanfic, and how we gotta watch out for the messages we’re sending

Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:

Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)

And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography

I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet

I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it

Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society

It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free

And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)

Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places

I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women

And I’m going to need it to stop

[antiantishaladin]

Shiro is 20+ and keith is confirmed to be 14, wtf is wrong with you dude

Ah yes Keith. The 14 year old 18 year old. It’s amazing how he can be only fourteen years of age when he is eighteen. I sure do love me an 18 year old who is only 14, because that makes fucking sense

Or are you talking about the end of the series, when Keith is a 14 year old 22 year old man? It’s astounding how Keith grew up approx. four years but remained 14 years old throughout. Truly it is a miracle of life that Keith, introduced at 18, who had a flashback like once to when he was 15, and ended the series at the age of 22, has remained forever 14.

One day he will be in his ninties telling his grandneices and nephews about how he may be old and grey, but he is, in fact, still 14.

[antiantishaladin]

You know what? I am going to say it. I don’t give a fuck if cis straight women are out there getting aroused by m|m content, even if they never end up being queer themselves on any kind of way. I seriously, honestly, do not give a single dirty, moldly, bitter fuck. Why the hell is that a problem? WHEN and IF they are homophobic, THEN we can start calling out that HOMOPHOBIC BEHAVIOUR, not the movie, manga, fic, fancomic or whatever the fuck they are using to have any kind of pleasure, all of them none of your godang business anyway. Like, honestly you all out there thinking you are so progressive because you think the porn you watch determines your morality? How the fuck is that any different of the anti-porn sentiment of radfems that results on the actual oppression of sex workers, sex shaming that results in even more misogyny, not to mention a completely devaluation of what homophobia ACTUALLY is? News flash: it isn’t! No matter how you pretend otherwise! When and IF they do something actually harmful, then we can talk about them not being the best allies possible. But until then, you are doing jackly doodly do by pretending them just enjoying a piece of content is enough to treat them like shit or as a danger. Just fuck off with that shit and start getting some perspective for once. Queer people have a lot more problems than thinking what straight person is consuming the same content we enjoy too.