#the first time i heard the word proshipper i didn't know what it meant and when asked what i was it was described as

[dont-open-dead-inside-25]

i know it's not my business but i feel it's my sacred duty to educate all my antishipper mutuals on what they're actually standing for...

[insomniaink95]

Uuuugggghhhhh… okay. Proship/Antiship discourse. Inky's got opinions on this...

Okayso, I have never known what the terms proship and antiship ACTUALLY mean. I know about the issues SURROUNDING what the terms mean but not what they actually 100% really mean at all. I did not grow up on tumblr. I had an account for, I think, three months once before deleting it, and didn't come back until I made this account a couple months ago. I also have only ever read fanfiction written by close friends and a single Final Fantasy VII fic from the ancient internet days of 1999(I barely know how to navigate Ao3 to read friends fanfics even). I have never had any real interest in any kind of shipping with the only caveat being a VERY mild fascination involving GriffGuts… So basically no real exposure to any community that was dealing with this.

So about a decade ago(give or take) when I first heard the terms proship and antiship, my understanding of it without looking anything up was that there were people who were against shipping in general and people who generally enjoyed it. I had no outside input and no impetus to go find out because I had heard the terms in a complete vacuum without their actual meanings. It just sounded like another random internet argument that I had no interest in whatsoever.

Several years later I FINALLY started hearing a few people's negative opinions on proshippers as well as other people's negative opinions on antishippers and realized my understanding of this was completely lacking and that it wasn't just some dumb argument and it was based on very important societal impacts. …so I went looking for what the two terms actually meant.

And the reason I have never known what the two terms actually mean is because depending on who's words you're reading the two terms can mean any number of different things with wildly different negative connotations for one group or the other. And it can be any DEGREE of negative connotations depending on who's explaining it as well!

On the most negative edges of the definitions I have heard proshippers described as those who enjoy fictional CP/incest/abuse who don't care that the propagation of that material in a positive light can have a real negative impact upon society and what other's perceive as acceptable irl.

And I have heard antishiipers described as censorious puritans who are against sex-positivity and are often also anti-LGBTQ+ and have even been compared specifically to the "burned furs" movement.

And of course from that level of negative connotation on either side all the way down to some folks thinking it's just a mild difference of opinion and no big deal…

I've got a good idea of what the terms SHOULD mean these days. but I just did another quick web search to see what any young people would run into if they were curious about the term's meanings after just hearing them for the first time. Y'know, what're the KIDS gonna learn these two terms mean today if they go to look it up like I did several years ago.

It's the same jumble of definitions that I ran into several years ago. Both from random people who gained their opinions on what the terms meant from the SAME jumble of definitions to news articles in which the writers did a cursory glance at what the meanings were(basically looked at whatever the first google search result on the subject said) and wrote authoritative articles on the subject.

pulling my hair out!!!

The ISSUE is deadly serious. But these terms have no useful application in society. I don't know the history enough to say if they ever DID, but they don't anymore at least. There's been so much muddying of things by those who don't want their interest in hardcore muppet babies porn to result in reasonable people giving them the side eye and hitting the block button AS WELL AS online "news" content mills doing their best to make a quick buck by churning out articles on the subject that are authoritative and "well researched" when the authors don't know jack and had no interest in ever knowing jack in the first place!

asdlkfja;dfja;kfja;ldfja;sdlfkj

Also, does anti proship mean the same thing as antiship or is that a new term with a completely new meaning??? I am an old man who doesn't even have a smart phone, someone take me back to my room, my grand-kids are supposed to visit soon!