#jfc purity culture

[threadbareturnbacks]

"The current state of cultural and material decline plays an important role in the shift toward Puritanism in media and art, in consumer appetite, and in the political posture of the State. That is to say, with the compounding crises we are bombarded with (everything from climate disaster to rampant racialized police violence to genocide) as a part of our daily lives under late capitalism, the need for escape, and indeed, the need for that escape to be completely unchallenging and non-confrontational, has become imperative. Moreover, as control over our own material realities becomes less and less feasible, the last lone place we believe we can exercise agency is within the landscape of that which we consume. This has resulted in the consuming public approaching all media and art with a moral imperative — that which we consume must be perfectly virtuous, sanitized of all problematic or complicated ideas and depictions, because it has become the stand-in for our very realities, our very political action as citizens; consuming has become our praxis.

- The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire by Carlee Gomes, Nov 2023

[angrbodic]

Minors who go into kinky, adult-oriented content and then proceed to complain about "proshippers"? I just have one question:

Why in the hell are you looking at 18+ content? It says it's 18+, you have no business interacting with it or the content creator.

The only person to blame here is yourself. Stay out of adult spaces.

[secondbeatsongs]

oh. ao3 is being DDoS'd.

welp

[ifdragonscouldtalk]

Sad, someone really cool you just followed actually has a really bad take on something you feel strongly about

[hjbender]

Normalizing! Sexualizing! Fetishizing! The children! ThE CHILLDRAAAAN!!1!1!!1

So I'm not like an anti, I would never send death threats or anything to people but I do wonder if there is something to be said about perpetuating the sexualization of teenagers through fanart/fanfic? I recognize that that is a cultural issue, and I recognize that sexualizing fictional teens is not on the same level as sexualizing real teens, but it still perpetuates the concept. Even if society has normalized something, it's worth fighting back against it in smaller ccommunities.1/2

--

This isn't to say that people should be harassing others, nor is it to say that I think proship are child predators. I think there's a lot of reasons why someone might like a character that doesn't equate to them wanting to harm real people. I do think we have a responsibility to discuss these things in fandom. While fandom itself isn't activism, pushing back against concepts like homophobia has always been an important aspect of fandom. Fetishizing youth is a problem & should be critiqued. 2/2

LOL.

Okay, first of all, we've had this conversation about a billion times. The fact that you're still stuck at a 101 level does not make this new territory.

Second, where do you think YA fiction comes from? It's not written by teenagers. Lots of authors like to reminisce about their teen years. It's not about an older person being horny for teens. It's about remembering being that age.

Third, you might have no libido, but I was a horny little demon as a teen. It wasn't about ~fetishization~. Wanting to fuck was a normal part of my teen experience and the teen experiences of everyone around me. I didn't manage to get laid until 16 because I was a mega loser, but I'd have gone for it at 14.

The idea that teens are pure and sexless

FUCKING BONKERS

Come back when you've un-learned your regressive Christian purity bullshit.

[evilwriter37]

No, actually, I don't think a list of prompts for writing/drawing torture needs to have a "don't do this in real life" disclaimer at the top. Jfc, purity culture really has seeped its way into the whump community. Is nothing safe?

[pansnovidinnia]

Your post misses one glaring issue; most of the anti Stolas/anti Stolitz blogs are ALSO Blitz critical. They acknowledge that Blitz shouldn't be forgiven for what he did to Verosika, they point out that he's being hypocritical with the Sinsmas episode. They don't coddle him at all. I don't know where you're getting that from. They just acknowledge that Stolas is abusive, WHICH HE IS. Season 1 has an entire montage of how Blitz feels chained to Stolas and their relationship, there have been multiple moments where Stolas abuses the power he has over Blitz sexually, and Stolas constantly sexually harasses him. None of them made that up. Blitz is the victim in his relationship with Stolas, acknowledging that doesn't mean they're coddling him.

I also don't know where your whole spiel about "purity culture" came from. If we're going to see characters like Stella and Valentino as abusers, why would we not hold Stolas to the same standard? The show calls them out, but not Stolas? Why are you mad that people call attention to that?

And if you don't like those tags, FILTER THEM. Don't bitch about people expressing dislike of the narrative's direction. Especially because your post had the media literacy of a cactus. Jfc, you come off as so pretentious while also sounding dumb somehow

hello angry anon, im a dumb cactus, go fuck yourself

youre also a dumb cactus, actually. i was talking about how absurd their hatred is. they yell how HB is the worst show ever having the worst abusers and rapists ever and try to "cancel" it with their "anti" bullshit. anti stolas anti stolitz etc. its not a critique or acknowledgement. its hatred and trying to sanitize media, while shaming those who like the otp/character. if they would just talk about poor writing or do character/otp analysis without EWWW STOLAS IS THE WORST I HOPE HE FUCKING DIES FUCKING RAPIST, i wouldn't care. but you're a dumb cactus, you won't understand. 🙋🏻

[nikniknikin]

We're platforming H@rry P0tter... why now exactly?

Had to scroll back in my blog to figure out what this was about and I'm assuming it was the fantasy land poll post? I guess? I skimmed the options and was annoyed pokemon wasn't there. So I reblogged with that tag.

bro i hate jk as much as the next trans person but if you cant handle seeing the words as an option in a poll that was not even made by me maybe you are not ready to play outside with the big kids. i suck my teeth and snarl whenever the mcyts talk about HP but you can't deny it was/is a cultural touchstone and is??? a relevant fantasy world that shaped a lot of pop culture.

Purity is impossible, stop trying to live an unsullied life, and focus your energy on actual harm reduction and not thought policing, jfc.

[moomemoome]

twitter drives me crazy bc the younger teens on their are so goddamn stupid. they put their actual ages in their profile and then follow nsfw accounts. ????? if theyre gonna break the rules at least be smart abt it!!! why doesnt it occur to them that putting in a fake age would make it less likely for them to be blocked 😭😭

also the incessant purity culture. they claim a character is a teenager in shipping arguments when that has literally been stated no where in canon, and they get upset over the smallest of age gaps between adults. and they say consuming even the slightest bit of dark content makes u problematic and a terrible person. let me consume these dark topics and themes in peace jfc!! i think ppl who consume fictional incest and underage content are freaks, but i block them and move on w my life 😭

also the whole proship vs antis debate is fucking stupid. how abt we leave each other alone and we do our own separate things. god

[djeterg19]

Jfc I hate purity culture so much...

[littleabriel-blog]

JFC the comments...for the love of all that's holy, don't look.

Purity culture really is out of control, and these people are using the same "think of the children" argument that the Christian Right used to argue against LGBTQ rights (and STILL use). And the sad thing is that they don't see the irony.

Kink should not be as controversial as it is for something that is essentially sexy pretend

[hjemne]

On any given day France is only about two steps away from sliding straight back into imperialist nationalism istg

So much goes back to how protective the powers that be are over the French language, and how they constantly construct enemies who are out to destroy their language and colonial heritage.

I've been reading various decrees from my most hated and despised enemy l'Académie française and its absolutely mind-boggling how they wrote about how they could "defend" and "save" French through the standardisation of English. They say standardisation would create a new language (a global English) which is no longer a "language of culture" (and so no longer a threat to their precious french i guess???). And then they IMMEDIATELY turn around and go 'and we must return to the "purity" (yuck) of French, and so l'Académie française needs to dictate and control how French is used.' My guys... how is that not reinforcing the standardisation of language which you think will kill English??? Oh wait I forgot it's because the french language* is the "unique instrument" which can bring world peace and is the most specialest of languages. *the French of France

The future of the French language is in Africa, no matter how much the Académie wants to pretend they can maintain control over it. In the words of Ahmadou Kourouma, 'the French have their language. They have violated many peoples but they would like their language to remain pure. This is not possible.' The Académie's insistence on 'preserving the purity of French' blablabla because its oh so important that it can be used to express (Western) art & science is a deeply conservative and imperialist stance that serves to reinforce France's power over its former colonies. What good does the language serve if it won't allow its speakers to express themselves, their cultures, and their lived realities? African religions cannot be accurately expressed in 'standard/proper' French, and gender queer people (& women tbh) simply cannot exist within the French language when the Académie continues to call gender-inclusive language an "aberration" which puts French in "mortal danger" from other languages which will 'prevail' at French's expense. Which really shows that institutionalising and promoting la Francophonie isn't actually about facilitating inter-group exchange via a shared language; it's about giving France's cultural, political and economic control over former colonies the façade of being something other than neocolonialism.

And I really cannot stress enough how much of France's cultural identity is based around its imagined superiority and exceptionality (which is literally baked into French law!!). Like so much of French political rhetoric is based around this need to fight back against some existential threat posed by The Other. You've got the extreme right Reconquête party (REconquest, jfc) calling mass 'remigration' & has the backing of 7-8% of voters (and the far-right FN party getting another 30%). And then ''''''centrist''''' Macron calls for 'demographic rearming' (not via easing immigration rules, but by pushing for more French babies to be born) and talking about the need to create a 'society of vigilance' against the 'Islamist hydra' and ceding to the far right in order to pass his immigration bill (1/3 of which was deemed unconstitutional or legislative riders, including a section which would've required foreigners to live in France for 10 years (!) before becoming naturalised citizens.

This is a country where every single child is taught to internalise that 'the masculine takes precedence over the feminine' and is 'neutral'. Where a national sporting hero is loudly denounced as a reverse racist for pointing out that there is a cultural belief of white superiority in France, meanwhile 9/10 black people in France say they've faced racial discrimination.

France uses the rhetoric of 'not following republicain values' as a cudgel against those who are inherently excluded from its white, bourgeois, male & catho-laïque* conception of 'universalism'. If you don't - or can't - conform, or dare to speak out against the unyielding assimilationism, it's labelled a sign of communautarisme, which according to the right, is basically the same as being an organised, hostile, separatist faction working to destroy the pure and noble Enlightenment values and heritage of the République. There is no room for multiculturalism. In france, you have the freedom to conform to its narrow definition of universalism. And if you don't follow along, well, clearly you're too uncivilised to know how to use your freedom properly, because there's no way you'd use it to criticise France, a country which is perfect.

The rhetoric being used and the policies being implemented in France are incredibly concerning, as is the massive support for extremely far right political parties. I don't know what's going to happen in French politics in the next few years, and in all honesty, I'm scared to find out. What I do know, is that the process of fully decolonising if a long, long way from being complete, and we need to be ready to think critically about things we feel attached to or assume are politically neutral.

*laïcité = secularism. In theory it's about separation of church and state, but it relegates all 'ostentatious' symbols of religion to 'private' life, so in practice it's used as an excuse to increasingly exclude religious minorities (especially young muslim women) from public spaces. You're not allowed to wear in public schools religious head coverings (e.g. hijab, kippah) or long skirts (only if the school thinks you're wearing it for religious reasons. you can for fashion reasons. France is valiantly protecting young women from ;;;;misogynistic radical islamist extremism;;;; which tells them what to wear, by telling them what to wear, don't you see).

I'm using catho-laïque to mean that, despite the emphasis on laïcité, secularism in France is effectively secular Catholicism. Catholicism underpins French culture and is taken for granted as being the neutral default. 6/11 of their national public holidays are Catholic religious days of observance/celebration, meaning the whole country shuts down for a week each year so the Catholics can observe their religious calendar, and it's never brought up as a potential conflict with secular politics.

The French language itself also has this same Catholic cultural bias too, making it hard, for example, to discuss African religions or cultures in Académie-approved 'proper' French language. Ahmadou Kourouma (from the Ivory Coast) wrote an essay about the difficulties of expressing his reality in written French when there's no word that truly encapsulates his God, religious practices, and the oral culture of his native language malinké. He called for an open, multicultural and equal francophone world, which can only be done by accepting 'africanised' or other non-standard uses of French, but this is firmly rejected by the western arbiters of French who very much do not want to decolonise and decentralise the French language. I wonder why.

I love this quote from Kourouma because it summarises everything so succinctly: 'We cannot be totally free if we do not possess the language which allows us to express ourselves completely.' It should be fairly clear at this point that 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' all take on very specific and restricted meanings in the context of the French state, but I still think it's worth pointing out the hypocracy and neocolonial implications of the French ideals vs how they're used in practice.

I'd definitely recommend his novels, which you can find here in both English and French.

I'd also definitely recommend checking out the icon that is Lilian Thuram who has suffered more than any tumblr user at being accused of pissing on the poor by people who misread the title of his book La pensée blanche and call him an anti-white racist. He also wrote Mes étoiles noires which is also a good read.

Thuram is just such an incredibly interesting guy. He talks a lot about how he wasn't born black, but became black aged 9 when he moved to Paris from Guadeloupe (a French territory in the Carribean), and became aware that other people had assigned him a category based on his skin colour which marked him as lesser. He uses Simone de Beauvoir's framework of how she wasn't born a woman, but became one through socialisation to talk about race which is super interesting. Also, it's why he told the biggest figure in the French far-right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, "personally, I'm not black" when Le Pen was bitching about the French national football team not being white enough. King shit, even if it went over people's heads. He's so cool, go read his interviews. He is fighting an uphill battle, but oh boy is he fighting. (here's his anti-racism foundation's site in French).

You can read an incredible discussion about race, politics and football in this book (p.177-194). When I tell you that a footballer getting a red card for headbutting someone had real implications for the discussion of race & immigration in France, I'm being dead serious.

This is the sort of reaction that Thuram gets btw

"oh wouldn't Africa have been better off if it kept you [i.e. 'you should have stayed in Africa if you hate white people so much'], what a shame..."

He's literally french!! from the caribbean!! oh my fucking god how do you not see this is literally the type of racist thinking that he's talking about ahhhhhhhhgghhhgg

"he was praised in 1998 [after he won the world cup] by all of France, and no one made any reference to the colour of his skin. He's ruining this beautiful memory with his racist ideas."

OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FACTUALLY INACCURATE. i think they said this just to piss me off in particular. What do you mean that no one talked about the 1998 French team's skin colour? That's all they talked about for years. You mean to tell me that the incredibly famous slogan 'black-blanc-beur' [black-white-arab] was not about ethnicities??? And Thuram is only now bringing up the topic of race? Get so fucking forreal. Boohoo your memories of the 98 victory are being ruined by racism? You know who else's were? Thuram's.

And you know how i can be so so certain that it wasn't just leftist academics who were talking about la France black-blanc-beur? You know who cannot stop bringing up the French team's skin colour? Jean-Marie Le Pen [OG far-right racist politician]. You know who else goes on about how the media would not stop telling you about the racial diversity of the team and how everyone in France was talking about the team's skin colour? Eric fuckin Zemmour [current extreme-right political shithead]

(no translation, it's all just racist bullshit. It is funny how close he gets at times tho. 'lots of young, aspiring football players after 1998 felt like they'd experienced social exclusion, and football was an area which they felt they could thrive in and escape the misery of growing up in the banlieu.' YEAH MY DUDE. he's so close to putting the cause & effect together for why marginalised ethnicities from disadvantaged areas are overrepresented in professional football. but no, he has to go on about how these new plays weren't like Zidane (the golden boy of assimilation via football), they sucked because they rejected all authority by eating... halal....hmm....) (Zemmour also takes the time to bitch about how 1998 was also when the anglicism 'coach' entered popular use in France, because he has to really emphasise how the world cup victory was part of the 'suicide' of the French nation in any and all ways possible. It's honestly just pathetic more than anything at this point. He just cycles through the same 4 scapegoats overe and over (I can only assume it's because he's allergic to all forms of diversity) )

Like..... absolutely everyone is in agreement that the ethnic diversity of the 1998 team was a huge talking point. This is the one thing that everyone across the political spectrum can agree on. So WHY would you make it your argument that 'no one made any reference to his skin colour uwu'. The team was THE example of the successes of French integration. And yeah, it sucks to realise things weren't as good as you thought they were, but Thuram has every right to turn around and ask why the acceptance of his 'frenchness' by society was conditional on the team's success. Why whether he (& other non-white players) was 'worthy' of representing France (which he has done in more matches than all but one player ever in French history) was not just a question of football abilities, but also about whether he was 'dignified' enough to be French. And why talking out against inequality and injustice made him less deserving.

There are definitely other , smarter ways of fighting against the stupidity/foolishness of certain spectaters [referencing the fact that Thuram discussed the many many times that spectators made monkey noises at him & others during football matches]."

Ohhhhhhh my god Thuram is literally examining at the systems in society that led people to make such blatantly racist gestures. Does this guy think he should go to racist football fans one by one and tell them nicely to stop?? The description of it as 'bêtise' is also driving me up the wall because its so dismissive of how serious and horrific these overt and public displays of racial hatred are. 'J'ai fait une bêtise' is I did a whoopsie, I did a dumb thing. Also the fact it's qualified with 'certain' spectators. 'Oui okay something bad did happen, but it wasn't that many people, it wasn't that big of a deal, and you should be dealing with it in a different way because talking about structural racism makes me uncomfortable.' Killing you with my death ray. Do more introspection and less historical revisionism.

Also Thuram has literally addressed this

« J'ai l'impression que l'on parle du racisme avec superficialité. Comme si c'était un phénomène individualisé, de personnes "pas gentilles". Non, c'est une idéologie politique qui a une profondeur historique ! »

Anyway.... long long rant over. there was a documentary on netflix about french football and black blanc beur back in 2017 ish and if anyone knows how to track it down i'd love to rewatch it. Also here’s a link to some articles on the topic if you want to read some more.  

[abushelandablog]

Smdh some people really hate fun

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

I had some thoughts about where the dinluke discourse had been going today but given the current state of things in my country, I will instead leave this here blog post for reading and thinking on--

[the-only-universe-here]

Jfc I don't open gira's blog for a bit and all of a sudden the antis have gone for her

This, folks, is what I call projected omniscient purity culture, because clearly people are 100% aware of 100% of the content from people that they like/reblog things from... all the time. Obviously.

Please note the sarcasm.

I hate to ask this cause it feels stupid but I dont wanna do a bunch of research on whatever the recent cod mw fandom discourse is,

but I saw the reblog of someone accusing you of supporting people who write sexualized pedophilia and that really is personally my only """"moral"""" with nsfw shit, (I'm a patreon subscriber and ig I just wanna know where my money's going) is THAT true?

this is such a never-ending nightmare.

i used to follow an artist who, 5-6 months ago made racist art featuring gaz in a slave context, which I didn't like, retweet or interact with in any way. they also made under-age art of ghost soap, which I also didn't interact with . people on twitter called me out yesterday, for retweeting art they'd made as evidence I stood by/encouraged/was an avid fan of all these tropes. Also, the art I retweeted wasn't either of these previous examples of art, but one where ghost and soap were sleeping in a bed together, as adults, peacefully. I can't emphasise enough that I have not interacted with this artist at all, for literally six months.

genuinely, my only crime is not unfollowing + blocking this artist earlier on, and then daring to retweet a fic tagged with "non-con" (ghost gets soap off in a context where he can't really properly consent, they're in front of a crowd of strangers and they have to fuck, but both parties are into each other) written by a friend as I wanted to support their writing.

and now i have pedophile claims because I accidentally retweeted a fandom bingo post that defended loli-con, and then immediately un-retweeted it when I properly read it.

And people are calling me a zoophile for supporting someone who wrote zoophilic fic and called people slurs (???) and I genuinely don't know who they're talking about there.

And the same people called me racist for making Horangi's eyes in the monster!AU sensitive because they thought I was making fun of Asian eyes. The real reason is because he's a cat hybrid and cats are sensitive to light (and I'm Chinese).

I tried addressing all this in a simpler way earlier on, and responded to an ask talking about my "support" for the artist who drew the slave Gaz art by saying the fanart in question was tone deaf and in poor taste. It wasn't enough for some people, so I'm happy to say it again - yes, it was racist, and the reason why I didn't want to be more aggressive is because I didn't want to extend all this mess by throwing this artist under the bus - I genuinely believed them when they said that wasn't that their intention, and think they should've deleted the post at the time.

And also I'm now called a rapist bc I like to entertain fics with dom/sub dynamics that dip into cnc, as an asexual woman who's personally repulsed by sex when it comes to myself.

That's everything so far. I really don't know what you people want from me anymore. I followed the wrong artist. I retweeted the wrong post. And I've undid those actions now. And for so many people to have taken literally everything spread by these people at face value, without even checking if their claims are true, is incredibly hurtful and isolating.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

like if people could focus on applicability > emotionality just once that would be lovely