morven

[morven]

Also, let teens and everyone express how they feel about themselves at the time. There is NOTHING WRONG with one's nature or identity changing over time, because that's what people do.

Exclusionist culture is trying to claim all aces ID as ace at "like 12-15" then later change their minds because they're actually gay or trans (apparently gay and trans aces don't exist and neither do bi, pan, etc people) and had internalised homophobia/transphobia or were just a kid who 'grew up', also putting asexuality in quotes cos it's therefore 'not a real thing' i.e. reusing the same vile shit thrown at other LGBT+ people (esp. bi and NB people) by bigots both in and outside the community

I didn’t ID as a-spec until well into my 20′s.  The exclusionist argument is invalid.

[morven]

Re-follow me at @anheliaaescar

This Tumblr, @morven, is no more. I have remade at @anheliaaescar — please follow me there instead.

[morven]

Retiring this account

I lost the device I'd set up as an authenticator for this account and the only way Tumblr will remove it is if I have a photo of myself on here from before and will send them a photo of me holding a written message they specify.

The only photo of me on here is from 20 years ago and my face isn't that clear. Not going to work.

Thus, I can never authenticate again. I currently have two devices logged in to the account and can still post and receive messages, but I can't log in on my new phone or my PC.

Therefore, since I was in the mood for a fresh start anyway, I have created @AnheliaAescar (name of my #1 OC) and will be posting there from now on. If you want to keep following me, see you there!

[morven]

Trans people do not have a life expectancy of 34. That shit is unscientific bollocks.

Our murder rate is a little higher than average but not by that much. Our suicide rate is a much worse — that's where the big problem is.

If I remember correctly, 34 was the average age of murdered trans women in one survey, not our overall life expectancy.

“DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER??!!” hahaha it’s funny because trans people have a life expectancy of 34 specifically because of hate-based violence

[morven]

Or karts. I could have ridiculous levels of fun.

A k mart that’s closing would be the best place to have a mental breakdown

[morven]

I feel the length of your original post killed any clarity it might have had. I'm glad to hear that your point was not to defend these things antis do.

You see, I too often see aggressive antis get no criticism from their own side whatsoever. Except for insufficient zeal. I see much apologia instead, treating it as understandable and rare, when it isn't either.

I haven't seen shippers issue death threats to antis, or suicide baiting from them. I have seen deliberate misunderstanding and mockery.

Thanks for clarifying.

I absolutely believe fandom should be criticized. I've seen a lot of fucked up stuff. I rarely see the people who behave the worst get that criticism. A lot of it is anti-shippers finding vulnerable teenagers and survivors to deem enemies who deserve no respect or humane treatment.

This does not good for anyone except give the anti a brief satisfaction of an Acceptable Target to take out their rage on.

Also like listen I get that antis definitely have bad batches like.

I am aware we have people here and there sending death threats to minors for enjoying underage ships.

People who get upset when a WOC gets with a MOC instead of her getting with a white lady or a MOC gets with a WOC rather than him getting a white guy, and acting like ships involving POC that are of the opposite sexes are lesser than gay ships involving white people.

We also have the occasional bunch that get upset when a character they believe should be ace is put in a relationship, which is particularly bad when they get upset about this when it’s a gay relationship. (I’m asexual and gay and I’m all for ace characters, but getting publicly upset when a character turns out to be gay instead of ace is homophobic.)

Not to mention the ones that say something is queerbaiting when it’s really not (although this happens rarely tbh because generally it is queerbaiting lmfao.)

Plus the ones that send hate to shippers of a bi woman being with a decent guy (I’m a lesbian and I don’t find a woman in media being revealed as bi and then put in a relationship with men constantly revolutionary at all since that could be a form of queerbaiting in which she’s used to attract a gay audience but never or rarely has that subject brought up or shown again. I particularly dislike when she’s paired with an ‘incel’ or ‘chad’ lmfao. I specifically hate when she’s in a love triangle in which the female love interest is a bitch and the male love interest is just the best guy ever.)

Of course, the ones that hate gay characters when they’re villains and don’t want other gay people to enjoy them. Like it’s okay if you hate them of course! It’s also okay to criticize writers for writing a gay character as a villain, and I encourage that, because that is a trope I’m getting tired of seeing as gay heroes lack! But there’s nothing wrong with lesbians/bi women enjoying a wlw villain and gay men enjoying a gay villain. If the villain’s something like a rapist or abuser, that’s another story of course!

So yeah, there are a few anti ‘types’ that I really can’t stand, but as someone who’s a current anti and a pre-shipper, I’ve gotta’ say I would take the antis over shippers any day lmfao.

Like overall that’s definitely not the majority of antis, because most of us do enjoy ships with conflict! We love hero/villain ships! Heck, we love villain/villain ships!

The kind of ships we don’t condone are ships involving

rapist/victim,

abuser/victim,

underage/adult

family member/family member,

lesbian/man,

gay guy (not bi)/woman.

The majority of us antis are abuse victims. Abuse victims that were groomed by our abusers that used the tool of fandoms and general media normalizing the kind of content I listed above by romanticizing, sexualizing, and fetishizing it through portraying these things in a positive way, and then having fans support those portrayals.

The rest of antis came from people that listened to us when we spoke up about it for the most part, while the remaining few realized it wasn’t normal to get off to this kind of stuff before they became desensitized to it.

Meanwhile shippers are people who never faced groomig like that and never had anyone close to them face that, because it’s easier to act like all of us stranger abuse survivors that became antis due to how our abuse was normalized would just somehow magically lie about this, because it’s easy to believe that when rather than bothering to do the hard thing like hearing and considering our voices so you can feel better about getting off to the abuse we faced through fictional entertainment, rather than value those of us that have faced very real abuse more than a piece of fictional entertainment.

Shippers like to act as though antis are antis just so we can feel like we’re on a high moral ground in a superior kind of way, and that’s such a silly thing for shippers to believe, but I guess it makes them feel better by helping them feel like we’re the bad guys for speaking up about them getting off to abuse that very real people face, and getting off to shit like that fictional not, and then expecting people to not voice discomfort, critique, or skeptism around them.

When in reality the vast majority are antis are antis because we want to keep other potential victims from facing what we and those we stand up for faced and believing it was romantic or normal. The rest are that very small number of the kinds of antis I listed above, and even those at least want the same thing, even if they are going a bit overboard.

Almost none- if any- just want to feel like they’re better for having ‘purer’ ships so they can scold people who don’t have the same ships as them, but like I said, shippers claiming something so simplified about their enemies probably let’s them sleep better at night and convince themselves they’re right.

I’ve been both a shipper (I was a minor and didn’t know better since fandom is built around normalizing disgusting shit) and an anti (I grew up lmfao.)

And I would take the kinds of antis I listed any day over the shippers I generally saw in fandom.

Shippers that send triggering content to abuse survivors, such as pictures, videos, and audio of the kind of abuse they faced.

Shippers that don’t listen to minorities when they say something they’re producing or supporting is fetishistic towards their community and homophobic, racist, transphobic, islamphobic, anti Semitic, and/or sexist.

Women that produce content of gay men, or men who produce fetishizing content of lesbian women, or straight people that produce content of gay people, or cis people that produce content of gay people, and almost all of not all of their content is sexual, and then don’t listen when LGBT people speak up about how they’re fetishizing them, because the producers of that content care more about getting off to LGBT people than the actual people.

Adults who get off to a minor being put in a sexual situation with an adult.

Adults who get off to minors being in sexual situations with minors.

Anyone who gets off to rape or incest.

Cishet people who don’t care how they’re harming the very little representation wlw and mlm have when they put a lesbian with a man and a gay (not bi) man with a woman, because it hurts to see our representation erased like that, but they care more about their ship than us real people.

Anyone who doesn’t get off to a character being aged down to five while another is kept at twenty-one or some shit like that, but also don’t speak out against people that to get off to that very much pedophiliac content that should send up red flags, because they’ve been in fandoms so long they believe in “ship and let ship” just that much, to where they’ve become so desensitized and set on that saying they don’t realize just how dangerous something like that is anymore.

Essentially, antis can be extra every once in a while, but at least it’s built upon caring for those harmed in real life by the fictional content fandoms dish out, and as an anti I generally see other antis calling that one out.

Meanwhile shippers have in general become so set on their “ship and let ship” motto that they might find a shipper getting off to a five year old character and twenty-one year old character a little weird, but stick to that motto rather than calling out behavior that should be seen as dangerous, but they’re too stubborn to recognize. As a shipper, this was something I saw constantly. In fact, I don’t recall any shippers ever drawing a line when it came to this shit. Perhaps they wouldn’t interact with them, but they wouldn’t shut that shit down, even when it got that bad, or worst.

I see antis correcting other antis and having debates to make it a better community. I saw and see shippers refusing to draw a line in fear limits will result in shippers claiming they’re an anti. A community without limits is a risky one, and proves just how risky fandoms have become.

I used to see shippers defending their ships with the claim “it’s just fiction”, as though fiction doesn’t have an influence reality. I now see more and more shippers claiming the fiction they consume would not be harmful in real life, and see fiction is beginning to influence reality more heavily than ever as shippers begin to defend abuse in fiction by claiming it’s not really abuse and would be fine in even real life.

Antis aren’t perfect, but we’re getting better, and overall we’re built on a pretty solid ideal of making sure people don’t go through the same things we did.

I would rather be a part of something like that than a part of something that has no limits when it comes to what they can get off to, and is too afraid to correct the mistakes in its community in fear of being shunned as too ethical.

As someone who’s been both a shipper and anti, I’m glad I got approached by an anti that helped me realize the fandom content by abuser was using to normalize his treatment of me was anything but romantic, and that’s why antis speak out against this– so we can possibly get other potential victims to realize the abuse fandom has sexualized isn’t sexy at all.

Despite this, shippers complain about antis speaking up about their ships and frustrating them when we hate on their ships for abusive aspects, as though we’re just trying to tell everyone to not have fun, when in reality we’re looking out for those that were groomed around us having their abuse sexualized and those in danger of having such occur, and we are speaking up about how we dislike the aspect of people getting off to the type of abuse we faced.

How in the world is a shipper fangirling or fanboying about their abusive ship more important than an anti speaking up about how they dislike the sexualized abusive aspects of that ship involving abuse they went through? Here’s a hint– it’s not.

An anti speaking up about their very real abuse in such a way will always be more important than a shipper not wanting to see their fictional abusive ship critiqued will be.

Grooming tactics through media is a primary abuse tactic, which of course involves fandom, and shutting that down so the chance of abusers getting away with their abuse and the chance of abuse being seen as normal through desensitization is so much more important than any ship a shipper might have and find entertaining.

Real people are more important than entertainment.

To say otherwise shows the worth of a person, and whether they should even be bothered with when debating fandom problems.

Another thing that should be taken into account is why in the world an adult is getting off to an underage character being sexualized, or why in the world anyone gets off to rape, abuse, or incest?

Just because fandom normalizes it doesn’t mean it’s normal, and just because shippers have become desensitized doesn’t make them shipping it any less disgusting in reality.

On another note, when I was a shipper, and even now looking at current day shippers, it was a common thing to deny pedophiles or abusers would ever be in the space of shippers, because shippers would never condone that kind of thing in real life.

And yet I’d like to bring up how the same way LGBT fandoms attract LGBT folk, and women-based fandoms attract women, and POC based fandoms attract POC, and macho fandoms attract men, and geeky fandoms attract enthusiasts…

… of course fandoms centered around getting off to pedophiliac and abusive content is going to attract pedophiles and abusers. Even if a shipper isn’t one of them, the fandom they defend shelters them.

And the kinds of people fandoms hold and condone without speaking up out of fear of being shunned says a lot about the shippers.

[morven]

What gets to me about Rule 34 of characters is that it's so rarely in character. Rather, it's almost always poses and activities straight out of porn with the same disconnect from actual sex that regular people have.

It's all so weirdly cold and mechanical, like just painting a pornbot with a character's face.

[morven]

Alana misses the PeopleMaker too.

(nickname refers to the amount of sex that used to happen on it at quiet times)

Florida didn’t fucking break the PeopleMover though. God fucking damn you Eisner. You fucking destroyed the PeopleMover you piece of shit.

[morven]

Let's make 2018 a year when we stop replicating oppressive patterns in social justice spaces.

[morven]

And you don't teach through fear. Girls are terrorized enough.

“Let teenage girls get excited about things without shame.”

but also

“Teach teenage girls to think critically about the media they consume, lest they internalize and replicate harmful messages.”

[morven]

So glad to hear of another person liking them! They are my favorites of all time.

Not many have read them, much more should. There is a tiny fandom and there is the Kencyr Wikia.

I just started the 8th book in this series today, and I can’t get over how in depth the story goes throughout the series. The different Gods and histories are so interesting to read about. It stays exciting, and P.C.Hodgell’s writing style is consistent even with the large gap before she retired to write more. Jame is one of my favorite heroines from recent high fantasy series that I’ve read.

[morven]

commiequeer posted an article about why child porn should be legalized. it is about real life children, not stupid fictional characters. it is still on their blog if you search "child porn." i do not think this is the person to defend

I disagree with their position on that. But I don't think that therefore they are wrong about everything. On the topic of age Gap relationships there is some really wrong, over simplistic discourse going on that hurts real life people who are doing no harm, and I will always challenge that.

[morven]

dog stop arguing with a fifteen year old it's embarrassing

To who exactly? If you come to this site and argue with adults, you're opting for it. Are they babies who can't handle disagreements?

[morven]

The history of 'dyke' shows it was used for WLW regardless of whether they also had attraction to men. Most terms that originated before the mid 1970s did not distinguish and it's revisionism to claim otherwise. Don't listen to the radfems on this, they lie.

And I honesty cannot see the harm of anyone with same gender attraction using fag. It has been used as a slur on gay women sometimes, especially butcher ones. No harm is occurring. It should not be used by heterosexuals.

it’s hilarious how antis say that ppl with an age gap can’t date bc of the power imbalance. as if /any/ relationship can be completely equal in power. if we apply this same logic to other areas, people of color and white people cant date, people in dissimilar economic classes can’t date, cis people and trans people can’t date.

this severely limits the dating pool, so I guess we all just have to date our clones.

[morven]

I don't recall them saying there was no power differential with an age gap. You might want to check that.

To clarify, my position on fiction vs reality is that fiction of course can, otherwise nobody would get so passionate about it, but the results are not easy to predict and very dependent on framing, cultural content and personal experience. Common sense is poor science and frequently doesn't align with experimental results. Quite often there are several different results to balance.

And of course any power differential can be used to abuse. But the presence of one doesn't automatically mean a relationship is abusive.

I want discussion of harm and in depth thought about it. I don't see much of that, just rigid dogma and polarizing arguments that convince few. I don't think the current state of the discourse is helping much.

it’s hilarious how antis say that ppl with an age gap can’t date bc of the power imbalance. as if /any/ relationship can be completely equal in power. if we apply this same logic to other areas, people of color and white people cant date, people in dissimilar economic classes can’t date, cis people and trans people can’t date.

this severely limits the dating pool, so I guess we all just have to date our clones.

[morven]

Thanks for the response!

Yes, totally agreed that a lot of the time, people are using their survivor status as a cudgel for the same kind of fandom infighting that's always gone on. It's especially noticeable when someone is anti one ship and pro another when there's little observable difference, and using their survivor status to justify both.

It's also very unfortunate that actual criticism and analysis, and pointing out generally disturbing stuff in fandom, is drowned out by the cacophony of shipping wars. It's got to the point that "pedophilic ship" is more likely about, say, a 17 and 18 year old pairing than something actually questionable.

Other than that minor nitpick I largely agree with your piece and I think it's something everyone involved in fandom should read and have a think about. Valuable stuff.

BIG WARNING FOR LINK; sexual abuse, r/pe, incest, just bad shit, some in descript so be careful.

This is a read that I could not put out accurately into words. Please read if you’re in the shaladin shipping discourse, or in any shipping discourse for that matter.

[morven]

The thing is that "antis" have been known to stretch the definition of pedophilia past breaking point.

For example, the Voltron fandom, in which people are insisting a ship of an 18 and 25 year old is somehow pedophilia. Or the YoI fandom, which flips out over a 17/18 pairing. Or the Overwatch fandom, where people have said that nobody should ship a 19 year old, or that people should not ship a pair of women in their 30s because they might have known each other when they were 14 and 17.

None of those are pedophilia. And that's what I see antis raging about for the most part, not shipping 12 year olds with adults.

So unless you make it clear you're talking about that case, a lot of people like me will think of ridiculous pedophilia accusations.

To be clear, you can not like other age gaps too, but don't call them pedophilia or attack people who disagree.

it’s hilarious how antis say that ppl with an age gap can’t date bc of the power imbalance. as if /any/ relationship can be completely equal in power. if we apply this same logic to other areas, people of color and white people cant date, people in dissimilar economic classes can’t date, cis people and trans people can’t date.

this severely limits the dating pool, so I guess we all just have to date our clones.