#dogwhistles sO fucking fast.

[bunnyboy-juice]

GRAAAAAAAH MISREPRESENTING DATA DOES NOTHING FOR ANYONE EXCEPT FEED TROLLS WHO ARE TRYIGN TO TAKE OYU IN BAD FAITH ANYWAY OH MY GD

[ladyimaginarium]

"oh i wouldve hidden anne frank/i'm an ally 2 jews!!" shut the fuck up. y'all can't even denounce hamas or its allies or their supporters. "but they changed the charter!!" & y'all were stupid enough to believe them. y'all apologize for literal fucking terrorism & war criminals on record that was reported by amnesty. y'all can't even denounce blatant antisemites in your leftist spaces. y'all can't even step the fuck up & take responsibility & stop giving bigots platforms & to stop supporting these fucking people. y'all uncritically follow & look up to blatant antisemites just because you agree with them on another form of activism. y'all either engage in atrocity denial or support people who do. y'all either use antisemitic slurs yourselves & dogwhistles intentionally or not or support people who do. y'all can't even criticize & examine your own inherent biases. y'all minimize the impact of antisemitism in our communities. y'all talk so fucking much about antisemitism in fantasy media like goblins or witches or robots or aliens then stay silent when actual real living jews are getting beat up, sexually assaulted & are murdered in the streets because y'all don't fucking see us as people worthy of your solidarity & protection. y'all lose your fucking shit every fucking time a jew or even an ally calls you out on your antisemitism even if we do it in the most politest way ever & then y'all turn around & turn your backs on us so fucking fast the second you get criticized. y'all say "omg correct me if I fuck up!!" but when you are, whether it's politely or angrily, you turn around & call random ass jews "zionists". y'all chase us off our blogs when we say "you can support free palestine without being antisemitic & denying jewish history", see principaliteas. y'all automatically equate jews to medinat yisrael & the israeli government despite the fact that many of us, especially in the diaspora, have nothing to do with the government's actions.

y'all reblog jewish holiday posts & then turn around & say the most antisemitic blood libel shit i've ever seen. y'all would rather protect your pride & wanting to be right on the internet rather than making actual change. y'all can't even take literally FIVE fucking seconds out of your fucking day to slip into your jewish friend's dms & even bother to ask them if they're okay let alone stand up for them when it counts. as an antizionist native jew, no motherfucker, YOU don't get to cherrypick the minorities who deserve your protection & solidarity. literally just say you're lying & fucking go.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

Genuine question coming after I saw you commenting on a STAs post, but how exactly is the 🗿 emoji a nazi dogwhistle? Like afaik it's used to represend someone is "stone-faced" or unamused, you mentioned something about it being used a lot on YT or xitter to signal someone believing themselves supperior in an argument, but idk that's not really enough to call it a dogwhistle? It's just a meme used in discourse and online figths the same way people use 💀 to show they're "dead" or cringed (it's based on a berserk meme) or the 😭 because they saw something embarrassing or ridiculous and are cry laughing

no no it’s usually used like this

“🤓 the (dogwhisle) are not as good as (dogwhisle)🗿”

it’s usually used with another dog whistle, and not just by itself.

it’s why I said “🫵 petite bourgeois 🗿” was a dog whistle. (I got sent this lol go have a look in our asks if you wanna see it)

alot of people who don’t know much about our blog think we are Jewish lol, so we get a ton of different more modern dogwhisles.

this is a 2 in one, because they are implying that I am a capitalist In a antisemitic way and also signaling to other people that they are a neonazi/alt right/other.

that’s why it’s a dogwhistle only people who look for it notice it, like I’ll get you some proper examples when I get them I usually don’t screenshot them.

Like I’m not sure how to explain it properly, but anyone who uses the stone face emoji you should be wary of because genuinely so many fucking bigots man and Nazi’s like most of the young ones use this as a dog whistle for some reason.

I said it initially as like a “the person thinks there in the right” thing but I had limited space in the comments and stuff.

but no it’s just a straight up nazi dog whistle, it’s just popular with the neonazi’s and very young alt right.

No joke every time I see this stuff and I check the replies oh look Nazi’s.

like I don’t know when exactly it changed but it is a dog whistle same way as soyjack and others are dogwhisles.

usually not, but mannnn the amount of actual Nazi’s and alt right people you would not believe.

if you’ve been on here long enough you kinda just figure out what to stay away from fast.

I didn’t know it wasn’t exactly well known that it was a dogwhisle over here everyone in my other spheres knows it pretty well lol, since they are queer and POC and get absolutely harassed by random neonazi’s all the time.

it’s a pretty common thing on YouTube because it’s the most relevant one out of the social medias I still use. since I hardly use TikTok and twitter or anything these days.

I hope I explained it well, I just woke up so I’m a bit sluggish.

[aiyexayen]

it's certainly not friendly to ME.

literally imagine doing that with any other identity.

writing a fic with no straight ships? just tag it "gay friendly" since it's now content that is okay for the gays to view.

a character's gender is never even mentioned? tag it "trans friendly" because trans people cannot partake of anything about explicitly cis people and will be so glad to know you made room for them by [checks notes] making decisions for them and what content is and isn't okay for them as a monolith.

in fact let's do that with every minority that exists. that definitely isn't going to get terrifyingly problematic so so fast.

can't wait to find out what all the fics tagged "[disability] friendly" and "[ethnicity] friendly" think those things mean! a barrel of laughs i'm sure.

like...all that makes us--the united collective of identical asexual people--capable of reading a fic or not is whether it has sex in it? nothing else? and also we couldn't figure any of that out from whether or not smut is tagged, because we can't just...decide for ourselves what content we want to read??

even a particularly good story about asexuality might not be "friendly" for me if i am not in a place to deal with whatever themes it has going on!

and that's not even getting into the fucking DRAGON'S HOARD of smut that my greedy little goblin cave of ao3 bookmarks, works, and wips contains. i find all of them EXTREMELY friendly to this ace at least.

what the fuck is wrong with just tagging "no sexual content", a tag relevant to the actual contents of what is or isn't in the fic. you know. how tags actually work.

the sheer irony of the phrase "ace friendly" being a giant waving red flag warning me of inherent ace unfriendliness lmfao. if that's not a purity culture dogwhistle then they should watch out because it sounds close enough they're gonna come running anyway.

"ace friendly" is a sign i expect to see on like. a queer discord server that wants to let me know it's not going to be a wildly acephobic place. imagining it being on a fic just because of the lack of sex in the fic is sending me.

but tbh i think if people want to use that tag they should so that i can permanently filter it out of my life. makes it easy on me to avoid them.

so i just saw this and i’m not sure how i feel about it

feel free to explain - if you can? i’m still a little 🤔 abt it personally - in the tags

[lunarfoggy]

Why would you say that shit under a post that was clearly trying to help others cope with the loss of an old man? Yeah, okay. I'm sure it gets old fast being around Jimmy Buffet related stuff 24/7 but the man and his music actually meant a lot to people.

lmao dude was like a billionaire walking dogwhistle, where his music was so was shitty conservatives or liberals fucking shit up for the enviroment around them, id piss on his grave if it wouldnt be a waste of fuel and time to fly back to florida for it, pff maybe next time we see family there well make a bathroom break just for em, pourin one out onto the corpse of the bootlicker alcoholism encouraging shitheel

[toytulini]

Hey Do.n*t r.eb.log this, please

Just saw that "this sounds s/uspi/ciously a/ph/ob/ic or possibly t/e/rfy" post reblogged uncritically on my dash, i really keep fallin for yall n ur "we're done being ap/ho/bic now in 2020 we promise!" shit don't I? I keep thinking for some reason we might actually be fucking done

[1hoverman0k]

will you clown and caper around this special wonderland?

Not so fast. I already know that this is actually a dogwhistle for "Do you want to kill whilst high" I dont get high you fucking stoner i just kill people the natural way

[pink-beast-rhino]

See, destiny lore is fucked up.

Bungie fucked up the lore so hard that if you only play destiny 2 you get the noncanonical intro.

That's right baby, Bungie retconned their intro to not be canonical.

Or they did and canonically the Heart of the Black Guarden was never destroyed and the Exo stranger is talking to an absoljte stranher like they already met.

But the real fuckup with Bungie's lore is uhh the lore thinks it's the story.

Let's take the most interesring plot that Bungie created, the one with most intrique and juicy shit, that Bungie fucking did nothing with.

To set the scene for those with no knowledge. Mars is invaded by an empire with a dubiously antisemetic name. In a glorious act of what can only be described as goddawful writing, this empire (called the Cabal Empire) refers to itself as the Cabal.

Cabal is basically a word that means a secret group with an agenda and is often used as an antisemetic dogwhistle. Bungie hasn't acknowledged this.

Anyway, this empire is on Mars fighting time manipulating hyperintelligent robots that know they are failing but do nothing about it (because fuck you).

We kick the shit out of the empire for no real reason aside from fuck you you get told to. You started the war with them, finish it.

Now this Empire has an emperor and seemingly little understanding of the Traveller (imagine if god was a giant golf ball and was as useful as one) and Ghosts (small boxes that revibe you when you die and open locked doors).

Uh oh, the emperor got usurped and an overhyped albino orphan groomed for power has come to uhh claim... the Light as is his right to?

Contrived wank aside, there is lore here!

The Emperor got overthrown by a bunch of people working together. There's cool lore here. The collectors edition of D2 came with a booklet written by the Exiled Emperor about who usurped him and how he wants them dead.

Spoiler alert, later when we meet the Emperor and he gets horny for us, nothing McFucking McHappens about his little black book of traitors and he just kinda fucks off when his (incredibly hot) daughter, who helped usurp him, shows up.

Bungie wrote lore of political infighting as world building and then left it as nothing. Instead telling stories in a written medium rather than taking advantage of the interactive audiovisual medium.

Bungie uses lore, not to worldbuild but to worldbuild and tell stories which is honestly dogshit.

While DE plays loose with known facts of the world, e.g. the reveal of the Tenno, Bungie plays so fast and loose with lore there's debates on what parts of Destiny are canonical to Destiny 2 (e.g. does the Exo stranger getting us to the Awoken and destroying the Heart of The Black Guardian actually happen)

Chewing on what is about Warframe that I actually like.

I used to be big in Destiny. Had a rp blog that was relatibely successful. Got a solid chunk of karma on reddit with my masterpost on the Cabal. Preorder Destiny 2 to the tune of about 120.

But now, the game repulses me.

The sloppy writing, dropped threads, the game itself sucks.

But warframe? Incoherent.

I can pick different threads of throughlines, plotholes are aplenty. Questions asked and never answered.

The obvious answer would be Bungies monetisation and sunsetting is what turned me away. But idk, I always had gripes with Bungies writing. So why does DE's similar style not annoy me?

[canarycontessa]

in no particular order, things I've learned having PCOS

1.  Root cause, root causes, ROOT CAUSES. 

Do you know what the course of treatment looks like if you don't address root causes? It looks like a bandaid for each individual symptom: progesterone to "jumpstart" your hormones (which you can only take for a few months before it starts fucking with your bones), metformin for your insulin issues, electrolysis or waxing for your facial hair, etc. 

NONE OF WHICH gets down to root causes or is in any way approaching a permanent solution (with the possible exception of laser hair removal or electrolysis). 

I’m not knocking these things; if they help in any way and fit your course of action, go for it. But these things are not a cure. There is no formal cure for PCOS, but the thing that puts it in a kind of remission is a complete sea change in terms of how you eat, sleep, exercise, and just generally live your life. Everything from the eggs you buy to the type of pads you use is up for reevaluation.

2.  Exercise does not (directly) affect fat loss, only muscle gain, body comp and hormone regulation. Know it’s benefits and its limits in your regimen. Or, you cannot out-exercise a poor diet. 

Your particular relationship to the scale is something you need to nail down and fast. If you know you’re obsessive and prone to daily weighing, get rid of the scale entirely. If you like tracking yourself week to week, go ahead. Either way, please know that your progress wrt: diet and exercise aren’t always going to be reflected on the scale. 

Unless you’re doing some sort of bodybuilder bulking/cutting thing, then you’re typically going to lose fat WHILE gaining muscle if you have a sensible plan. This can translate to looking better and losing inches while staying the same or even going up on the scale. Don’t be fooled. 

All of this goes for everybody, really, but it goes double and triple for people with PCOS. Get the “calories in/calories out” mindset out of your head. Focus on your hormonal balance. Go by how your clothes fit, how you look naked, how you feel when you move, the feats you become capable of that you weren’t before.  

3.  Your desires are not shallow. No, not even your "shallow" ones. Wanting to look good naked, wanting to not have stubble or hyperpigmentation, and wanting a sex drive that’s more on-point is just as valid as wanting to have a baby or wanting to prevent your prediabetes from becoming full blown diabetes. Period. No buts. I said what I said. And if anyone tells you otherwise or tries to make these things seem frivolous? 

Tune them the fuck out. 

You’re the one who has to live with this disorder, not them, so they can fuck right off. Yes, even your doctor or your mother or your boyfriend or your minister or whoever the fuck. Yes, even other people with PCOS. 

I say this as someone who never has and never will want children, and is more concerned with preserving my health and beauty well into my middle age than I am with fertility. I’m not curing cancer, but neither is any broad that wants to get knocked up. 

We each want what we want. Let’s leave each other to our own wants, shall we?

4.  There's a limit to what a doctor can (or sometimes is even willing) to do for you here, so you have to take the wheel. Remember what I said about band aids? Unless you go to an endocrinologist or someone who specializes in hormonal/reproductive health or just a general practitioner who gives a damn, you’re not going to find an abundance of help with a doctor. 

It’s sad to say, but a lot of general practitioners are either unequipped, underqualified, uninformed or (worst case scenario) just flat out uninterested in helping with what they consider a nebulous disorder at best, or a series of low-priority nuisance issues at worst. 

My main solution to this is to understand deeply and unwaveringly: They may be the doctor, but you are the expert on your own lived experience. Find a doctor that not only knows their business, but who knows that you two are a team.

I’ve been lucky enough to experience both ends of this spectrum. Yes, even the bad ones. 

I’ve had the best insurance money could buy utterly wasted on a doctor that spent months of my time telling me my kidneys were shutting down due to blood in my urine when I already made it clear that the “blood in my urine” was actually my menorrhagia. He completely discounted my lived experience of menstruating for a full 15 - 20 days out of EVERY MONTH and came up with a disorder of his own, wasting so much time sending me back for renal scans whenever the “blood in my urine” didn’t correspond to my test results reflecting perfectly normal kidneys. This guy outright told me that he was more concerned with my hypertension than he was with addressing anything else going on with me. As if it wasn’t all connected.  

I’ve also had supposedly lesser medical staff that took my concerns seriously, conducted examinations promptly, listened to what I had to say and actually laid out what my options were so that I could decide how we should proceed from there. It was one of these places that actually found out that what I’d been dealing with for years was PCOS, giving the beast that tormented me a name so I could draw a target on its back. They broke down their methodology for determining it into layman terms I could understand: 

“your period has these abnormalities, you have these visual markers (skin tags, facial hair, hyperpigmentation), your insulin is up in the prediabetic range and you have multiple benign but problematic cysts on your ovaries. We’ll test a few other hormonal markers in your blood and urine panel but otherwise it’s safe to say you have PCOS”      

5.  There will be people will treat your illness as trivial, not real, a product of unclean living, a product of hysteria and/or all in your head. Even loved ones. Even doctors Even yourself, at times.

6.  Hopelessness and discouragement are almost literally parts of this illness, so treat them as you would any other symptom. I say almost literally because mood swings and a higher probability of depression come with the turf. Also, the uphill battle you’re facing from medical professionals (see Item 4) and even your loved ones just piles onto all this. Overall, this hormonal disorder just wears you down. Self care becomes even more important than ever before, as does finding a community of other women dealing with this.  

7.  Don't get sucked into terf shit while trying to reclaim your femininity. This isn’t really about the disorder itself, I just really wanted to sound off on this right quick (keep in mind I’m a cis woman saying this, I’m not as informed about trans issues as a trans person, but I’m trying to be a good neighbor here. Please do your own research and please understand that hitting up your nearest trans person doesn’t count as research. Google is free and there are literally so many academic and anecdotal resources).

My POV on this is as a cisgender black woman with this disorder. I’ve had my femininity questioned, mocked, and outright denied (misogynoir at its finest) since I was a child. I’ve seen people both overtly and subtly project their weird ideas about gender onto me. And yet I know I don’t go through even a TENTH of the bullshit and violence that trans women of color do. My pain may be legitimate, but it does not give me or anyone with any integrity a free pass to turn the trans community into one big punching bag for my own frustrations.    

There’s nothing terfs love more than preying on vulnerable women that they feel they can recruit. Learn to spot the dogwhistles and reject the sales pitch. They’ll try to court you and make you feel so understood and welcome. Don’t fall for it. I don’t care if J.K. Rowling herself becomes your best buddy. Don’t go there. 

[tonyglowheart]

Re: translations. Hello, if you don't mind would it be possible to say which wordpress one for mdzs is a problem? There are a couple of ones around and some of them are easier to read, but I don't want to make a mistake they are doing so against fandom etiquette. So if you are comfortable with sharing that, please let me know? please feel free to ignore if you aren't comfortable with talking about it!

Hi anon! ,,, lmao is this in reference to a specific post? Bc off the top of my head, I don't know if any of the new ones popping up now are "against fandom etiquette" per se? I think most of the ones I remember being egregious were on twitter, or linked from twitter lmao..

Basically, what I consider bad as far as fandom etiquette goes is: shit-talking ExR (listen I have my beef with them their attitude and their behavior BUT a free readiness to shittalk them now indicates to me more that said shittalker is a purity wanker at worst and an inconsiderate a-hole at best maybe, like read the room...), any mentions of translation "accuracy" as a reason for translating (bc that tends to be a smokescreen/dogwhistle for like purity wank 8), that's not rly how translations tend to *work*, like sure for some measure of the concept "accuracy" applies in tling, but on the other hand tling is a lot of interpretation, and there's various translation techinques and approaches one can take, and sometimes they're not necessarily "wrong" or "incorrect" as maybe having a different set of priorities or styles, as well as tler interpretation of the text), anything about "fetishizing" esp wrt OTHER ppl "fetishizing" unlike them lmfao (bc again that's a specific colonialist or purity wank mindset and I don't fuck with that), or like... and ymmv, but for me, short translation speeds. Like there was one person who said it took them 4 hours to translate a chapter, and that just sounds like a suspiciously short time unless maybe it's heavily machine-assisted translation. which is a soft hrmm from me bc okay maybe someone just is that fast. But like, unless they have the time to being doing translating full time (which seems more likely now lmao but before I was like.. how), then even a rate of, say, 3 chapters in 2 days... seems awfully expedited to me, and seems to indicate no editing or revision of the tl before posting. A full fantl of MDZS already exists, idk what we're rushing for.

these are really rough and off the cuff as far as like my thoughts on the thing goes so don't take these as firm rules or even necessarily guidelines but like.. maybe things to consider if you are concerned

Anyway, if you're reacting to a specific post lmk? bc if it's the one I'm thinking of, I think I just didn't like that tl lol not enough to like recommend it to anyone. But I'm sure I've come across other ones which I didn't like for discourse reasons too lol, knowing me, so maybe it's a different post I'm not thinking of. Just toss me the url end bits after the /post, that at least should work I think

[eternalgirlscout]

another thing i alluded to but really should have been more explicit about in my post on terf rhetoric is the idea that “male sexuality” is inherently predatory to women. this is something i see present in terf posts that make their way insidiously onto the blogs of people who are themselves anti-terf all the time.

and it’s a tough line to walk, like a lot of red flags that trip my terf alert bells, because it is a genuine issue (to use a post i saw earlier and had to sadly inform a mutual of mine was originally from a terf blog as an example) that straight cis men will openly sexualize young women the second they turn 18. this is unfortunately true of a lot of popular posts about domestic violence or how coercive and damaging beauty standards are to women, too--between a third and a half of the time, in my experience, OP is a terf. and i can’t exactly put these things on a list of terf dogwhistles because obviously people SHOULD discuss the dangerous ordeal of being a young woman seen as a sexual object by older men; we SHOULD address domestic violence; we SHOULD acknowledge that being held (and holding each other) to standards of attractiveness predicated on misogynistic, racist, fatphobic, ableist ideas is coercive and wreaks havoc on a lot of women’s self-perception and confidence. 

terfs know that people outside their disgusting little club earnestly care about these problems, and because they willfully refuse to acknowledge how structures of misogyny impact trans women (often, of course, impacting trans women even more than their cis counterparts due to these trends compounding with transmisogyny), terfs take agreement with their posts as validation for their fucked up worldview.

the specific phrasing and point of view i started out with here, about “male sexuality,” is on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to Things To Watch Out For Because OP Is Probably A TERF. all else aside, terfs love to pretend all men are straight unless its convenient to use gay men as a “gotcha.” so, rev up that reading comprehension, because posts that implicitly assume GBPQ men don’t exist... are worthy of suspicion.

but more broadly, it’s hard. it’s hard to know when a post about problems that disproportionately impact women (ALL women, and people who are misgendered as women, and people who experience misogyny, the list goes on and it doesn’t and never ever has ended with Wombyn-Born-Wombyn Check Your Chromosomes At The Door, i hope any terfs reading this can feel me spitting in their faces) was made by someone whose definition of “women” is violently exclusionary to so many of our sisters because they’ve hidden it in language that gets a pass unless you’re paying a lot of attention or you’ve trained yourself to spot it. and i don’t really know what the fix is, beyond blocking and deplatforming all terfs (which... do do that, but you can’t always rely upon every person eight reblogs removed from you to check the source of each and every post).

anyway, this is something i do because i can. terf violence doesn’t directly impact me, so i can stomach reading through their garbage long enough to spend an hour blocking a string of them and recognizing their urls. take some time to listen to people who aren’t in that position. reach out to the people in your life who need to know you’re on their side. don’t send your trans friends terf screenshots like “CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS LMAO” unless they’re in the headspace to make fun of terfs being dumbasses. i’d recommend the Shinigami Eyes extension, too; it’s saved me a lot of time on a few occasions. and really, ultimately, think about what the posts you reblog are really saying, the implications of their word choice. i know the internet is soundbytes and lightning-fast scrolling, but there are things worth taking the time to be careful about and this is one of them.

[theshampyon]

The weirdest part is... Willy McNab may have been a bit facetious, but he was trying to make a genuine point about a genuine issue. He wasn't doing Nazi dogwhistles (30 + 50 = 80 minus the zero = 8 = Hitler? Nazis use a lot of childish codes, but that one was Helen Parr levels of stretch). He was even interviewed by NPR about the issue. He actually had a problem with feral hogs threatening his kids:

WILLIE: It was probably mid-morning. It was a spring day and my wife, she liked the kids to be outside and play, and I would too, and I’m sure she’s the one that let them out that morning to go outside. And we had a little playground set up in the backyard. And uh, she just, she just yells out, “There’s pigs! All in the yard! Everywhere!” PJ: Did she sound scared? WILLIE: She did. You could hear it in her voice PJ: Willie told me the reason his wife was scared is these weren’t like, barnyard pigs, they were feral hogs. They’re more like wild boars – some have big sharp tusks, they’re much bigger, with longer legs. They move really fast. And that moment, there was a bunch of them swarming around his 4 and 5 year old. It was scary.

Because in certain areas of the US, feral hogs are a legit problem. Central Texas has a special Feral Hog Task Force. These hogs cause over $2B in damage to farm property a year. Sometimes they go into suburban areas. They dig up cemeteries. They breed like rabbits (one female hog can have up to 28 offspring a year, her offspring can breed within six months of birth and do the same). They're built like tanks. Most fences may as well be wet paper. You can't poison them, because their corpse ends up poisoning the rest of the food chain and it has no impact on their breeding anyway. And on top of that, the bounty systems introduced to bring the population under control had the predictable effect of people deliberately increasing their numbers so there's always revenue.

However, Willy also stepped on his own point. In the full version of his story, he didn't need a fully automatic weapon. He scared away that horde of feral hogs with a shotgun. A few well placed shots, three hogs taken down, the rest scattered.

This kind of thing is why, when Australia had our big Fuck Gun Nut Culture moment back in 1996 (in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre), care was taken to ensure farmers could still legally obtain certain firearms for necessary purposes like predator- and pest-control. Not only to protect livestock and equipment, but people too. We also have feral hogs, and they're as dangerous as their US cousins. We also have dingoes (which have attacked people numerous times, mostly children, world-famously once killing a nine-week old baby), and some of the world's deadliest snakes. I live in a rural area. The sound of rifles being fired is pretty common. But none of them are "assault rifles". None of them need to be.

[dea-certe]

I need you to realize that you're not getting pissy with someone who doesn't know what you're talking about. You're talking to a parent of 2 kids, ages 10 and 12. You're talking to someone who writes and reads fanfic, despite being 32. You're talking to someone who grew up on the digital revolution, who grew up with parents who had to learn everything I did about the internet and fast. You're talking to someone who knows exactly how insidious neo-nazi crap is and exactly how dangerous the world online is because I lived it. You're talking to a rape victim, to a CSA victim, to someone who only learned that the CSA was bad because of the internet and fanfic. You're talking to someone whose life was saved by the people I've met online. You're talking to someone with a bachelor's degree in child development and criminal justice. So know what you're talking about before you start talking because when you spout bullshit to me, you're gonna get called on it.

One if my fanfics includes an abusive relationship with a scene that is rape. It's not graphic because I'm not great with graphic violence but the emotions are there. Know why and when I wrote it? I wrote it after getting out of an abusive relationship that was similar to the relationship in the story and was in therapy and was finally in a safe space to process it all. The story was a way to process it. I shared it so others like me, in those situations, could see it and realize it was abusive because it took me a long time to accept that what happened was actually abuse.

Some of my favorite stories include graphic depictions of rape and assault. Does it mean I love them because I get off on the violence? No (although it should be noted that a majority of women have fantasized about it more than once and it's not because they want it or because something is wrong with them, but because our brains are trying to put us in control of a situation where we feel out of control and is actually a perfectly normal coping technique). I love them because they show the character taking back control. Harley and the Joker for example. What he out her through is a nightmare, but she got out. She lost control and took it back. And that story is still one of my favorites. The one from Death of the Family is terrible, gruesome, horrifying and one of my favorite tales. It shows her strength in the face of great horror. It's inspiring. Harley is inspiring.

Not everyone who writes those stories do that to get off. The fact is, you can't tell why someone is writing it. What are you gonna do, demand everyone writing it share with you exactly why and then determine if it's for a good reason? You personally? Have it done by committee? You really want to force people to share details of their assaults so you can determine if it's okay if they write it about it? Because that's fucked up.

Secondly, parents are responsible. Mine had to learn about the internet faster than I did to keep me safe. And it worked. You want to know what else works? Fucking talking to your kids. I've got a 12 year old interested in horror and thrillers. I know damn good and well what kind of shit they can find online with that interest. So we keep an open door policy. If they find something, they talk to me about it. My son is 10 and adores YouTube and a lot of people on it. That means he will come across assholes like pewdiepie. That means he and I have talks about neonazis and dogwhistles and racism and sexism and it means he knows when something is fucked up. When his anxiety got triggered pretty hard after a screamer video, it means we talked about how to tell a screamer apart from a regular video.

It also means following rules. They both use my account for YouTube which means I can always see any videos they watched. They don't get social media profiles, even though they want them because neither of them are old enough. And they Fucking. Talk. To. Me.

That's what you're missing. If you, as a parent, don't talk to your damn kid and teach them how to navigate the world and keep an eye on them, then you fail and that is 100% on you. It is not on the people who draw furry porn. They aren't in charge of, responsible for, or in control of your fucking kids. Hell, they've never met your kid. You cannot demand that the entire world be your babysitter for your kids. You cannot demand that everyone be kid friendly 100% of the time because you don't want to do your job as a parent. And that is exactly what you are doing. Demanding that the world be every child's babysitter. Demanding that people who have never met a kid be responsible for it. The fact that you don't get how entirely fucked that is is terrifying. What makes you think you can demand that I and every writer on the planet be responsible for the raising of children we've never met?

“I just want us to have a conversation about why people find problematic fic appealing!” says someone who will definitely shut that conversation down the MOMENT anyone says anything they disagree with.

“I just want you to think through the implications!” says the person who flips the fuck out the moment you bring scientific research on what the implications are to the table.

I’m so sick of people going “waaaaaaah we just want to have a conversaaaaaation” when they don’t want to have a conversation, they just want a bigger soapbox to shout their ideas and denounce all others from.

So much of my LIFE is seriously examining the effect narratives and art have on people but fucking nobody who says “well can’t we talk about how fiction affects reality” cares about what I have to say.