#proship vs anti discourse

[catgirl-catboy]

Pro and anti shipper discourse reminds me of one thing, the way exclusionist communities are always meaner. Proshippers are so nice in my experience, and antis are scary:((

Yeah, it feels like there's one group that thinks they are able to play god over other people's lives vs another group that can understand that weirdness doesn't always correlate to morality.

I'm both proship and an inclusionist because I'm reasonable enough to know that I'm NOT smart enough to know what is going on in stranger's heads.

[idolomantises]

man i dont want to get all "fandom elder" on people because i think its cringe when people talk about the "good old days" of shipping culture and then ignore the rampant misogyny, queerphobia and racism in those communities but i gotta say: why are people so weird about shipping now?

Like there's really bizarre things i keep seeing younger/newer people in fandoms get upset over. like the obsession with only shipping canon couples. getting upset over crackships. viewing two characters as siblings (who arent considered siblings in the narrative) and getting mad when people ship them. If you get a relationship slightly off people will right a massive thesis statement about it flat out harass you over it. people have to put "not a ship" under platonic art because shippers will blow a fuse if they read it as slightly romantic. pick me queer people getting pissed off when people ship two characters of the same gender and accusing them of "not appreciating platonic relationships" (which by the way, funny to me that this is only thrown at m/m ships and never f/f ships).

Like shipping culture is supposed to be fun, what are we doing here.

[0veil-ablaze0]

I had a dream about a kingdom getting invaded and destroyed after that something about a made up anime about Pokémon-esque thing with animal dessert amalgamation fusion where the finale has these creatures trapped in a gigantic hourglass shaped jar on a stage then it led to a Tumblr proship/anti discourse where the anti seems to be dominant then someone mentioned smut fics being affected (for whatever reason) and then someone rebloged with a "womp womp" type response and something about whitewashed poliwhirl

[this-vs-that]

This question was sent to our inbox. If you’d like for us to post a This or That poll for you, send the 2 things you want to see against each other to our inbox and we’ll let the people decide which one they prefer. Everything will be anonymous.

[furiitha096]

Arrested for proshipping (smuggling illegal goods overseas)

[shadow-redferne]

Proship vs Anti Discourse is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

(PT: Proship vs Anti Discourse is Why We Can't Have Nice Things) (Trigger warning: This post discusses multiple sensitive topics, including abuse, bullying, bigotry and suicide. Reader discretion *heavily* advised)

I've finally gotten around to this post and I'll admit I can already smell the hostility. Just some disclaimers: This post isn't me commenting on the morality of certain media or ships, nor is it me commenting on whether or not fiction affects reality. This is only to talk about the damage this kind of discourse has done to fandom. I am going to warn you: This is *not* a post full of kindness. I am not going to be nice. This post is going to be a bit mean. No. Very mean. Sorry about that. So, TL;DR: Both sides have a harassment problem, and neither side wants to address the issues their communities have, leading to fandom becoming an unsafe environment. So uh, I don't think I need to write a witty introduction here. The current state of fandom is rancid. Harassment has become a giant fucking problem lately. So what's the problem? The problem lies in one thing: 'Proship' vs 'Antiship' discourse.

"Shadow, what the fuck do those words mean?" Proship used to mean that you supported all ships, all forms of fiction, and that you were against harassing anyone who was involved in fandom, as well as against censorship. 'Anti', or 'antiship', meant that you were against some forms of fiction and shipping, mainly ones involving minors or incest. Now you might've noticed that I used the phrase "used to" and the word "meant". That's because both terms kinda got new definitions and became buzzwords, with proship turning into a synonym for 'problematic shipper' (the term 'darkship' eventually came around to distinguish the two apart from my understanding, but uh...as you can see it hasn't helped much!). On top of that, people use the word 'proship' as a verb or type of content rather than an actual stance (ie. 'proshipping', 'proship content', 'proship artstyle', you get the idea). However that's not the main point here. Let's cut to the chase now; both sides fucking hate each other; we'll make that clear, with both sides throwing vile accusations towards one another. However, the more I looked into the swamp, the more distrust I gained for both sides. Something was bothering me, but what? I tried to do a survey; two of them in fact, to see which side was more hostile. Unfortunately, neither survey gave me a lot of useful results, considering I got very little responses from the anti side (So uh, thanks for nothing on that end guys. /nm). The written responses did give one common theme: Fandom has a problem. A problem with harassment, bullying, creeps and bigotry. The antis are particularly horrible when it comes to this. I'm going to start this off by saying that I actually used to consider myself an 'anti' due to my discomfort with noncon and incest. And unfortunately, I was pretty fucking hostile to others (although I never sent death threats, fuck anyone who does that shit). I eventually stopped associating with the 'anti' side when I saw how rampant the ableism was- more on that later. 'Antis' have caused severe harm to fandom, and I don't really understand how anyone can deny that. However, I am pretty fucking tired of everyone pretending that the 'proship' side is the good side. I know the 'proship' side isn't going to like hearing this, but it needs to be said: You guys are *just* as guilty as 'antis' when it comes to being toxic. And I'm not saying that because of the pro-incest stuff or the minor/adult pairings. I'm saying that many 'proshippers' are way too comfortable with being creepy towards others, and the community that claims to be 'anti-harassment'... isn't all that anti-harassment! Here are just some of the written responses I got from the survey:

Here's one alibi from an anonymous user who submitted to the @selfship-confession-box account (pls let me know if you dont want to be tagged)

Another anon that was submitted to the @proship-anti-discussion account

Lastly, here's some of the replies and reblogs to a post talking about an 'ex-proshipper' that left the community due to negative experiences (the OP of said post and the 'ex proshipper' in question did eventually apologize to each other, so I'll cut both of them some slack. I'm only showing the responses because holy fuck are they rancid).

So yeah. So much for the 'proship' community being "anti-harassment" and inclusive to SA and grooming survivors. Now, to the 'anti' side. I will say, the 'proshippers' got one thing right, and that's the fact that 'antis' very much fucking suck. And remember when I said that 'proshippers' were hypocrites? Well, 'antis' are also that. They talk so much about protecting "sa survivors" and how "proshippers are bigoted". But what do the written responses say about this?

and let's not forget *this*

I also want to bring up this comment about the term 'proship artstyle' that I thought was worth mentioning:

In other words... 'antis' aren't as great to hang around either! Now, there's one particular issue I really want to zero in on, and that's the rampant ableism from both sides. As one of the above written responses say, there is a huge problem of 'antis' and 'proshippers' misusing words like 'psychotic' and 'delusional'. The r-slur is also pretty rampant, I've noticed.

Still don't believe me? Okay. Here's a more recent example from an anonymous 'anti' I came across (ironically enough this came up when I searched "proship ableism". Also. fatphobia too? pick a struggle anon)

And that's not even getting into the amount of 'antis' who weaponize the saying "seek help" or "go to therapy". Now, let's go back to the terms supposed original meanings, particuarly the meaning for 'proshipper'. That term was supposed to mean that you were against censorship and harassing people for fiction and ships, and that you didn't judge people for liking certain ships. Meanwhile, 'antis' were supposedly about wanting to get rid of problematic media that could be harmful to minors and SA survivors. But it's time to be honest: Both sides have lost the plot. How am I supposed to believe either side is "anti-harassment" when neither side knows how to respect boundaries? How am I supposed to believe either side cares about SA survivors when you have both sides constantly speaking over said survivors and also harassing them? How am I supposed to believe either side cares about minors when there's been individuals on both sides, yes, including the so called "antis" that "care so much about protecting children uwu", that were outed as groomers? How am I supposed to believe either side is the good side when you have things like this happening:

The last thing I take issue with? The terms "proship" and "anti" as a whole, as well as every single similar term that's come out of this mess. While I do genuinely believe these terms were probably helpful in the past, it's clear that they're not doing any good whatsoever. Both terms have had their original meanings muddied and twisted to the point where they basically have no meaning at all, and the terms existing have created a massive "us vs them" mentality within fandom. There's also the issue of both sides forcing labels on others. I've seen posts that are all "if you believe x, congrats you're a proshipper!" or "if you believe y, you're an anti!". As well as anyone identifying as 'neutralship' (a label I also used to identify with before I stopped associating with these labels entirely) being called a "closet proshipper" or an "anti in disguise". Personally? If you have to force people to pick a side in order for you to trust them, I don't see why I should trust you. If you have to rely on labels like "proship", "anti", "anti-anti", "anti-harassment", "anti-censorship" to come across as a safe person or a good person, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to see you as a good person. You might be wondering why I included the "anti-harassment" and "anti-censorship" labels in that. Well, I'm going to be honest, and you are welcome to disagree with me on this, but I feel like these terms are so fucking unnecessary. Being "anti-harassment" and "anti-censorship" is the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM, a bare minimum that neither side can truly follow. Also, calling yourself "anti-harassment" doesn't automatically make me believe that. Especially when it's been proven time and time again that 'proshippers', the side believed to be 'anti-harassment', isn't all that 'anti-harassment' at all! Now I know what you're thinking at this point; you're thinking that I condone harassment because I'm going after both sides. You're thinking that I don't give a damn about the death threats that 'antis' have sent. No. No. No. That is not what I'm saying. And honestly, if *that's* the message you're getting, I don't know what to tell you.

So no, I'm not saying harassment is good or okay (and if that's the message you got from reading the above... I genuinely do not know what to tell you). I'm saying that you don't deserve a medal or a cookie for not sending death threats or being against people who send death threats, when it's literally the BARE MINIMUM. The bar is in fucking hell at this point. And as it's been shown, neither "proshippers" nor "antis" are truly anti-harassment. Me not liking 'proshippers' doesn't automatically mean I'm okay with sending them death threats, and me not liking 'antis' doesn't make me okay with abuse. And it sure as fucking hell doesn't mean that I don't care either. Because guess what? I do fucking care. It's why I'm fucking making this post in the first place. I shouldn't have to identify as "proship" or "anti" or any other labels to tell you that I care. Me refusing to use a label doesn't mean I'm apathetic to all the harm that's happened. And I sure as hell am not condoning harassment by refusing to hold hands with individuals who can't even bother to respect each other's boundaries. And honestly? If you interpret "I don't support proshippers *or* antis because they both made fandom toxic and unsafe" as "I condone sending death threats and rape threats", that's kind of on you. Here's a simple message I have for anyone who calls themselves "proship" or "antiship", and I am going to be especially mean here: Stop pretending to brand yourselves as the good guys when all you've done is break boundaries, talk over abuse survivors and marginalized groups. Stop being hypocrites, and actually address the issues within your goddamn communities. And stop downplaying said issues by saying "BUT THIS SIDE IS WORSE!" or "BUT THEY DO IT TOO!". Also, stop forcing people to use your dumb labels. Literally all of this could be fucking solved with using the block buttons or report buttons. There is no reason for this stupid fucking infighting. You don't have to like each other, fuck no, but quit dragging those who aren't involved into your messes and ruining fandom for everyone.

To "antis": Quit pretending to care about SA survivors and minors when you're the ones sending them death threats (And maybe address the fucking groomers within your community too, by the fucking way). To "proshippers": Stop being a dick to people who have had negative experiences with your community, stop ignoring the bigotry and stop letting in predators within your community. Now lastly, I know I said I wasn't going to comment on stances, but I do want to say this because it's also very much fucking bothering me. I hate how this discourse just boils down to either "Fiction DOESN'T affect reality at all, it's 100% okay to support ANY kind of media/ship/pairing no matter how problematic it is, and if you disagree with that you're a fascist!" or "Actually supporting ANY kind of media that's problematic and/or depicts so and so is BAD and if you support that you're a horrible human being! And if you disagree with me you're just as bad!" Have you guys perhaps, I don't know: Considered a fucking middle ground? Have you maybe considered nuanced discussions? How about that? Okay, I'm done being mean. In fact, I actually don't have much else to say so here's a video that talks about it a little more nicer than I do

*Sigh* I'm going to regret posting this, aren't I?

[enemywasp]

Been getting a couple replies lately pointing out that proshippers have sent harrasment and threats to people too and I absolutely hate that I can't disagree. I truly do believe antis are typically worse, and certainly more consistent.

But let it be known that when I say I am proud to be part of the proship community, I am never counting any of y'all that don't listen to the anti harrasment point we're supposed to stand with.

I can understand debates, I can understand arguing back. But we should never be the ones going out of our way to interact with people who have polite dnis or attacking someone who doesn't perfectly agree with you, or dislikes certain tropes.

Two wrongs don't make a right, make angry posts all you want but telling someone to kill themselves or joking about rape or triggering topics is never okay. And it completely defeats the point of being proship.

[urfavisaminor]

Shipping ABUSE is supporting ABUSE. a short opinion piece

(P.S. BEFORE ANY OF YOU ASK this is NOT SATIRE!!!!!!! I AM MAKING ARGUMENTS THAT ARE VERY SERIOUS AND MEANY TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY, listen to ur ant queen! blindly. THIS IS A VERY VERY VERY VEYR VERY VEYR EGRYR VERY VEYR VEYR VERY SERIOUS BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I'm not satire I'm not dairy I am serious and smart you people just can't handle my genius I'm so dmart if you disagree with me ur wrong and I'm right

Noq to the main topic, why peoshippers are hitler, while yes, I’m talking about fictional characters, don’t you get it?????? If you write about characters yelling at each other, having a small argument or even an "enemies to lovers"/"rivals to lovers" you’re basically telling your readers that it’s okay to let their partners gasloghtt and hitthem IRL!!!!!! You’re ruining lives with your degenerate scum smut! ITS YOUR FAULT AND I HATE YOU

Bakudeku is proship btw (proship problematic ship) because Bakaga told Deeki to khs once in middle school and was a meanie

“But it’s just fiction!” WELL SO IS NAZI PROPAGANDA so if ur proship just know you're comparable to actual nazis and are clearly racist and ableist and homophobic and transphobic. What’s your next excuse? You’re LITERALLY training people to ignore red flags.

And before anyone says, “It’s just a ship!” let me remind you that words have power. Your abusive ship fanfic lemon could be THE reason someone’s cousin’s roommate's aunt's co-worker's friend decides to stay with their toxic boyfriend. That will happen AND IT WILL BE YOUR RESPONSABILITY. IT *IS* YOU JOB TO HANDLE OTHER PEOPLES TRIGGERS, MAKING THIS CONTENT MAKES YOU HUST AS BAD AS ACTUAL ABUSERS.

NORMALIZING ABUSE IS ABUSE. there's no other motive you would ship this otherwise!

None of you care about real victime (the only real victims are the ones who dont use this shit to "cope"").

In conclusion: You’re all enabling abusers only comparable to the literal devil. Go outside and touch grass. Preferably the kind that makes you itch.

ur wrong and I'm right !

I am so smart so smart so smart

It's okay for me to like problematic media thought! I like problematic ships CORRECTLTy ur just consume it not correctly

try doing it correctly next time

I am not hypocritical

no

[myfandomrealitea]

good lord i think I just spent an hour going through the proship tag and just....what have I even been believing my entire fandom life? like I JUST watched my friends try their fucking hardest to get a fic taken down on ao3 .... the site where I thought we all knew was FOUNDED on principles that I thought we all knew...

I mean. I'm not into most dark tropes. I dont like age gaps and the such but .... I don't think people should be harassed for it either? I'm just a little lost at why suddenly thinking people on the internet shouldn't get death threats over fictional characters or let's be real, RPF that is STILL imaginary, suddenly makes me....a bad person?

suddenly being struck by the revelation that . technically I fall into this category that most people hate. like my favorite ship lately can only be defined as toxic. I'm into toxic yaoi. and that's cool right. it's fine it's whatever I like what I like nobody gets to tell me what I should do. but then it's also like. wow there are people who think I should die for--not being queer and brown like the usual--but over a stupid fucking ship???

I dunno man. I'm just thinking about how no matter what anyone likes no one should be harassed and threatened for it bc a) we're all human and b) why do you like so much unnecessary drama. yeah.

word vomit but the tldr is I think I am experiencing what they call a shift(?)

This previous post of mine may be helpful to you. It details the origins of proshipping, the true definitions, and the mentality behind it. Your current mentality about creating free of consequence (in terms of harassment and similar things) is more or less proshipping summed up to a T. Proshipping is not inherently nor specifically about 'dark content.' It very much applies to bland, vanilla, typical ships and content also.

A lot of people like to get wrapped up in the 'dark content' side of proshipping, which often taken away from the true meaning behind proshipping. It becomes less about defending creating as a whole and more about a constant vicious cycle of defending specific types of creating and content. Antis in particular like to trap you in that cycle because they hope to wear you down and reinforce that proshipping is 'only' about that content while they try to trip you up with it.

Take your down. Do your own research and exploration. Come to your own conclusions. Nobody can force you into an understanding and nobody can or should force you to use specific labels.

[glitterydragoncollective]

Fandoms, proshippers, antis, censorship - a rant

what makes me angry about vocal antis is majorly the fact that they’re fighting against the wrong people and the wrong cause. I understand feeling disgusted and distrusting of proshippers and not liking certain fan works but these are not things and people that actually cause widespread harm. 

I don’t think all antis are actually harassing people. I know that proshippers aren’t all saints. This isn’t even about that really, I’m talking about people most of us have minimised as just being “stupid kids”

And I know this discourse mostly happens online, but many of these “stupid kids” grow into adults, and some of these past “stupid kids” are now adults who have the power to bring that censorship or are going to be in power to cause unwanted change

For now it’s just a lot of hot air being made public, I realize that. I guess I just wanted to make a post about the future

I want to show an example of me previously saying “antis are fighting against the wrong people and cause” with this screenshots. They obviously don’t realize or understand what they’re posting, and compare kinky fantasies wrongly with things like racism or hate speech. 

They think since both causes them to feel uncomfortable, it causes harm

However, sex positive psychologists agree that kinky fantasies about fake people and things that aren’t real, even if they’re gross, they don’t usually cause harm

Emotions, as valid as they are, they’re also not causing harm

But when someone engages with, as an example, underage fics and feels more and more tempted to do something inappropriate with someone who is under aged, then that’s obviously not a kink

it’s not just egregious to compare kinks with real world harm, it’s important to tell the difference for safety reasons too. After all, an abuser can just pretend to be against proshippers instead and this is something that happened

multiple times

And these people - they don’t understand and don’t want to understand the difference. They’re anti-kink and think anything connected to sex or sexuality is shameful - which is a direct result of not just the reappearance of religious purity culture but also the results of fandom becoming mainstream

But fandoms are just too weird and too diverse to be mainstream. This resulted in more and more people not understanding that fanworks are posted for free, because someone wanted to, or because someone wanted to share their passion, not because they want people to engage with easily digestible content that’s made for clicks or that sells

Engagement is, of course, encouraged - but vocal antis aren’t “engaging”, they’re hating. It’s hate that binds them together

And so they will twist the meanings of words or twist what is actually happening IN fandoms to spread a moral panic. They often exaggerate and lie so that more people fall for their scheme

and unfortunately - it often works. 

Victims who don’t know better end up believing that yeah, just finding someone’s fetish art accidentally or intentionally is grooming, purposely interacting with a correctly tagged piece of media they know can be triggering is grooming, it’s no longer the actions or behavior of a person who intentionally targets a child or otherwise vulnerable person to desensitize them to sex so they don’t realize they’re in a very inappropriate relationship

Historically and currently, censoring or banning “pedophilia” or “pedophiles” or cracking down on “abusers” has never actually benefitted anyone. Once we ban and censor any of it, it’ll be harder to even just talk about because we aren’t allowed to, harder to educate about because it’s forbidden and harder to go after because it gets harder to spot. 

SESTA and FOSTA aimed to protect sex workers - but it resulted in most adult oriented websites having to cease operations, sex worker exploitation harder to combat and sex workers were more and more pushed into the shadows

the NCMEC looses its funding and was forced to take down their guides to recognize and stop child trafficking because it mentioned trans victims.

The porn ban on tumblr aimed to protect children by removing child sexual abuse material - and it resulted in queer blogs getting purged instead, trans people not being able to post their post surgery pictures, discussions of safe sex, women’s sexual health and STDs were purged, sex work was banned, porn bots were not banned, white pride was promoted, violence was promoted, and actual pedophiles were and pedophilia was, and, to an extend, still is promoted

When lgbtq-phobia started to rise in the US around the early 2020’s, republicans also purged “pornographic” books - which are written by, for or about POC, are about sexual health and education, are about accepting oneself or simply show queer relationships as normal. 

And all of these things are still happening today. Censorship is a bomb that goes off - there’s no stopping it. Yet what vocal antis promote is the same authoritian regime that decides what is and isn’t harmful - and this despite claiming they’re not those kind of people. All because they’re uncomfortable that there are people who are unbothered about the ships people like unless they cause real world harm

The real world harms I’ve mentioned before can all be prevented with education - and this is something vocal antis aren’t interested in because it makes them uncomfortable, because it’s propaganda, because it nornalizes ___ and they argue in the same or similar ways as the current fascist regime in the US because that’s the environment they grew up in, this is the new normal, other people who raise alarm are just talking too much, they never want to go past their “factory settings”. 

And no, I’m not calling them fascists, they’re likely also victims of being influenced by the wrong crowd - and also because they don’t know better. Some of them do grow out of this immature behavior eventually. 

But it’s high time to finally end this discourse and fight against what’s really causing harm:

That is people with power, that is censorship, that is fascism, that’s people who get away with crimes - but not the tools they use to carry out their crimes. 

It’s okay to feel disgusted at the end of the day. It’s okay to criticize. It’s okay to say “I don’t want proshippers to interact with me”. That’s not censorship either. 

But criticism is not posting lies about people you don’t like, harassment is more than just unwanted interaction, it’s also the call to “make sure proshippers feel afraid and ashamed again” or to rally your friends into “mass reporting that bitch” and they’re someone who didn’t even know you existed in the first place

[eqho]

I think one of the reasons so many antis hate on incest, pedophilia, noncon, etc in fiction but not murder or gore is really because of how desensitized we all are to it. like, you never see people going out of their way to harass some author for making a book that is even remotely sexual or romantic and pertaining to the topic of murder. but the second it's pedophilia or something taboo, it's an issue. it feels like for them it's not just fear of the unknown, but how desensitized they are. pedophilia, rape, etc are rarely discussed online and in real life. people make murder jokes, watch movies with murder (and variants), see murder on the news, etc. but no one is used to incest or stuff similar. discussing such taboo topics, whether it's in real life or fiction, is frowned upon and people avoid these discussions because they make them uncomfortable. why? not really sure.

also, calling them antis feels wrong bc it makes it sound like a whole like.. war we got going on. they're not 'antis' and I feel like proshipper is a term to describe a normal user who doesn't harass people over such miniscule things like fiction. you're not an 'anti,' you're a weirdo that harasses people online over fiction. stop giving yourself some label like you have any significance or superiority in this community. though, at this point, it seems Iike antis ARE apart of this community. we don't even call them anti proship, they're just called antis and we all know what they mean. they have tags, and frequently argue and debate with us. I don't even think we'd be called what we're called if antis didn't exist. "darkshipper" a normal person who just ships things they like. like why do we have these names. I still use them but yk.

[pelman]

Please reblog for more exposure! Also, this isn't an offer to start debates in my replies or reblogs. Express your opinions as loudly and perhaps violently as you'd like, but just to yourselves, not at one another. If you try to start an argument, regardless of what side you're on, I'm blocking you. This is just to gather Tumblr's general opinion.

Anyone on either side of the debate can interact with this post, given that this is a neutral space.

[starrbar]

I genuinely did enjoy problematic ships in a vaccuum until fandom got shitty about it. Now I enjoy them rebelliously. Congrats, y'all, you made me worse. :3

[furiitha096]

Antishippers in fandom is like terfs in feminism, like obviously one is wayyyy worse but it’s like similar format

“I support women’s rights expect for these women I dislike”

“I support fiction expect for this fiction I dislike”

A lot of antishipper arguments actually are like diet conservative ones

“Fiction is not the same as reality”

“Oh so if I tell u to kys it’s fine cuz it’s just words?”

“Trans people are valid”

“Oh so I can identify as an attack helicopter?”

Basically

Obviously they’re different, one is disliking a mindset while the other is disliking people based on something they cannot control. I’m just pointing out similarities

[4drian321]

Proship vs. Antiship

This is the most polarizing discourse I'm aware of in every fandom, in that both sides generally believe the other side is morally atrocious and might cut ties with someone due to their stance on the issue.

Proship (short for pro-shipping) is the stance that people should be able to ship whatever they want, including ships that in real life would be harmful, or morally taboo at the least, such as teacher/student or incestuous relationships. The general philosophy of proshippers, from what I've seen, is "Ship and let ship." Proshippers believe that depicting harmful things in fiction is not necessarily harmful, at least in the context of fanfiction. They are usually very anti-censorship and believe in absolute freedom of artistic expression.

Antiship (short for anti-shipping) is most generally defined as the opposition to proship. I've never seen anyone self-identify as an antishipper, rather, the label is applied to them by proshippers. Though, people will express their opposition to proship openly, such as putting "proshippers DNI" in their bios. Antis generally believe that romanticizing harmful relationships in fiction, including fanfiction, is harmful in real life, due to normalizing abusive or unhealthy dynamics.

When I say this discourse is polarizing, I really mean it. The shipping war as characterized by antishippers (often referred to as "antis") is pedophiles vs. normal people who care about morality. According to proshippers, the war is anti-censorship believers vs moral puritans who will bully you off the internet for liking problematic content. To be clear, there is a real problem of antis bullying and harassing people they deem problematic, but this is not the behavior of the average antishipper. The shipping discourse is very Western and associated with English speakers, and has only recently (2015–present) started to spread to other cultures.

My view is that the popular discourse, the arguments that get 100k likes on Twitter and dominate the conversation, reflect a black-and-white, unnuanced, incorrect understanding of abuse and depictions of abuse in art. Black-and-white views of complex issues are always wrong, and that includes issues of morality. To keep this short, I believe that the responsibilities of artists depend on what their art is for and who will see it. An artist making art for children has more responsibility not to harmfully influence the audience than an artist making content for adults. Artists writing for a niche audience do not have the same responsibilities as artists writing for a general audience. Writers on AO3 have different responsibilities than writers who seek to publish their work and potentially have their book on shelves in libraries and bookstores.

Due to the niche and insular nature of AO3, as well as the tagging system, and the lack of profit incentive, I believe writers on AO3 have relatively few responsibilities towards their audiences. The one important responsibility AO3 authors have is to tag their works appropriately so that those who want to read the content can find it and those who wish to avoid the content can avoid it. I also have the hard-to-prove feeling that there should be some places like AO3 where people can write problematic and even horribly disturbing content, so long as it is a non-profit platform with a tagging system that limits the likelihood of people reading anything with content they don't want to read. Due to this, I fit in best with the proshipping crowd and would call myself proship if asked, despite thinking the entire discourse is wild.

I wrote this to put my views on shipping discourse so everyone knows where I stand and I can link to this if anyone asks me haha

[sagegarnish]

So lately, I've been seeing a lot of little protective provisos before antis* post the EXACT TYPE OF CONTENT THEY'RE SUPPOSEDLY AGAINST.

It's starting to seem as if all the ppl they're fighting could just add a fucking disclaimer and we'd be instantly absolved of all our supposed transgressions.

It feels to me like many antis are actually starting to attempt to pull away from the censorious harassment mindset, while not also getting attacked. By their own friends and people "on their side".

I've seen a lot of "this is a VENT FIC ONLY", and "I do not condone anything that happens in this story" on AO3 in authors notes and tags.

I'm seeing a ton of "I intake media critically, & I hold my faves accountable" in carrds.

I am seeing stuff like "This is NOT MEANT TO BE EROTIC" in the authors notes for an extended explicit gangbang noncon fuck fic with a breeding bench and cum all over.

I am seeing antis who are simply adding little "i don't condone this, PROSHlPS DlE" to GENUINELY FUCKED UP CONTENT.

And that makes it okay to them! It's "safe" now!

Not all antific/antiship types, of course. But a lot of them seem to really think, "Oh okay, they don't condone it, that's fine then." As long as you say "Oh, it's a vent fic" it wipes the slate clean, and you're an acceptable person again.

It's very perplexing, because it's starting to seem like they really do just want us all to add "I don't condone it" before ALL OUR POSTS, otherwise we are "condoning it" by default.

It's so odd to me, having to explain oneself constantly, or be assumed to be a horrible person.

It's almost making me hopeful, because it does seem like the first step to realizing that it's all just imaginary stories. I hope one day they will stop assuming all creators don't automatically just approve of bad shit, just for writing something.

Without the disclaimers.

*Antis are defined here as "people opposed to transgressive/taboo fiction, and who advocate for harassment or punishment for writers/artists who create it, as well as harassing/punishing those who simply passively ship pairings or enjoy kinks"