#this is targeted at people vaguely 18+ and more specifically queer people who have been out of the closet for longer than like a year

[panuccispizza]

my tbh of the day... get the fuck out of online queer/discourse spaces and get the fuck into things that you enjoy and bring you enthusiasm and inspire you. meet queer people in those spaces. you will be happier btw.

[trilies]

Someone tried to come up with a “sfwrarepair week” for a fandom i’m in because they had problems with the mods of the actual rarepair week shutting down wank and being open to all rarepairs

but their interest post was, like. terrible.

and i had to write a super long response to it because it frustrated me so much, with the op clearly not caring about actual csa survivors despite ~wanting to help them~

but then the post disappeared from the main tag and i couldn’t reblog the post even from the op’s original site and so this has just been hanging around in a plurk paste i’ve had open for weeks now, so i figured i should just fling it out there because i’m not wasting that work lmao

This post (and if I’m honest, the base idea) is actually harmful to actual CSA survivors and I’d like to call attention to this, especially since the OP isn’t giving the impression that they’re interested in the words of an actual CSA survivor.

I’m going to go in order of the post to give my criticism.

1. “being a safespace for minors, csa victims, incest survivors, people of color, LGBT individuals, etc.”

If this were just about making people feel safe, then there would be zero need to judge or insult people outside the group as occurs repeatedly throughout this post - the focus would be on the people IN the group.

For that matter, you wouldn't make an open call for a group like this anyway because the people in it would all have different comfort levels, so you can't just go "oh all this content will be safe for you" - you don't even know what their needs are yet. How can you guarantee that?

“Safe” ships, even those defined by the OP, can still be written in a way that is triggering or problematic.

Triggers aren't just in what the relationship is, they can be in the subject matter or the theme or what happens in the fic and it's like...okay, how much are you screening for? How are you protecting your members beyond just screening what ships are allowed?

A group actually meant to help abuse survivors, people with triggers, etc would not just have a flat set of rules set out before it's even got members, it would be organically constructed with consideration to the people in it and what their specific needs are.

That is only speaking of CSA and incest survivors as well... because that’s all this post suggests. It offers nothing in terms of how it would explicitly help queer fans, or fans of color. What it does offer for CSA survivors? (The only one I would say I am qualified to speak of in terms of experience.) Only vague platitudes that, from my perspective, only apply to the ideal of CSA survivors. Not actual CSA survivors, like those who do ship things you don’t approve of because it helps them recover.

Which actually leads us to

2. “this means there would not be ANY pedophilic [...] ships”

First of all, as a CSA survivor: stop using “pedophilia” as a description for fictional ships. This dilutes both the actual meaning and the seriousness of the word, which in turn harms actual victims as that word is robbed from them. Use an actual definition.

Because that’s the second issue with this statement, in that there is no actual definition given. That is a problem in the current fandom climate because, along with diluting the seriousness of the word, the meaning now varies wildly from person to person.

By “pedophilic”, do you mean a ship featuring someone 18 or up with someone beneath that age? What about characters where it’s unclear, such as Xanxus, who was frozen at age 16 and one could argue that he’s still that age? Or that he’s not because anime? What about with a gimmick that features time travel, such as the canon instance of Hana liking TYL Lambo and not recognizing or liking him as 5 year old Lambo? Where do the Arcobaleno fit in any of this?

By “pedophilic”, do you mean any ships featuring characters that are under the age of 18? Is it only pedophilic if it’s an 18+ adult shipping them? How are you going to check for that? What about the canon time travel used as both a gimmick and an arc?

Other types who allege they’re against “pedophilic ships” have said that it’s any ship with a height difference, any age difference at all even if the characters are still both adults, if a character’s boobs are too small, if a character isn’t smart. And, yes, those are all things I’ve actually seen!

Or will you oblige anyone who claims a particular ship is pedophilic?

This vagueness is a problem. Admittedly, the vagueness was not started by you, but it was started by people who claimed the same intentions as you, OP, and if you’re going to make a claim that you want to help CSA survivors, then you need to be far more clear than this.

3. [the same thing but re: incest]

Admittedly, I’ve seen this as less of a problem with misusing incest, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen it at all. You may want to clarify that you mean explicit blood relations (for example, Bianchi and Gokudera) or... Well, I can’t recall anyone explicitly adopted, but the idea is the same there. None of the “they referred to each other as brothers, ignoring how that’s often used in a way that has nothing to do with incest, but so that makes it totally incest”.

4. “ otherwise harmful ships”

This is the largest red flag out of everything, and we’re not even past the first rule in the original post. This has a similar problem to everything else about this list of not-allowed ship, only it’s much worse because it’s target is arguably everything.

What do you mean by “harmful”, OP?

Do we judge “harmful” because of the characters, or because of the ship?

How will you regulate this incredibly harmful descriptor so that it isn’t misappropriated by bullies and harassers to silence fans, whether as them as a person or what they ship? Because I can guarantee you that I could come up with any completely bullshitted reason to hate on every single character or ship combination from KHR, and others easily could as well for malicious reasons.

This is a frankly terrible rule and, considering the kind of rampant bullying that comes from people who like to claim they’re against ““pedophilic”“ ships against CSA victims, I do not trust it. I do not trust it at all.

5. “this blog would NOT be in “competition” or in any kind of rivalry with the original khr rarepair week blog”

Now this is either an outright lie, or someone who has not considered their own words, and I could not tell you which is worse when it comes to a declaration of a “safe space” for minorities or people with trauma like CSA and incest survivors.

The entire original post ABSOLUTELY positions itself as competition to the actual khr rarepair week, not an alternative. Not only does it position itself as “competition”, but it tries to sell itself to people as the “better choice”.

It’s an attempt at a bit of sleight of hand. The post tries to show itself as friendly, just here to help people... But, as I stated before, if it really had an interest in helping people, it would focus on those people.

Instead, numerous times, you see the OP making judgment calls and negative comments to others - mainly implications of people participating in the actual khr rarepair week. There’s a series of connections throughout the entire post:

We start with “pedophilic ships” being banned to “help” CSA survivors in the first rule, and then leap from that to, in the second rule, “people who don’t feel comfortable in an event run by people who support pedo ships”.

(Reminder: still no idea on what ““pedo”“ ships even are by OP’s definition.)

So we’ve already started by associating the people participating in the regular khr rarepair week as the problem, instead of people simply not being comfortable with just the ships themselves - fictional things that are easily avoided.

Then, at the very end, the OP makes the explicit connection between ““pedo”“ ships and “freaks”.

So is the connection clear yet? The way they steadily escalate things until the implication at the very end? How that all does its best to frame KHR Rarepair Week as a negative? As something that Good People (tm) would never do unless they “must”? The implication that their “SFW” rarepair week is better?

So for the OP to claim they’re not trying to start anything, while their entire post ramps up the connection between khr rarepair week and Terrible Things (tm), is a... dubious claim at best.

The rest of the post isn’t that big a deal. It serves perfectly fine as a base interest check for half of it. However, the other half? That other half set off warning flags so intensely for me as a CSA survivor that I couldn’t stay quiet. I’m not saying this to be a “troll”, or to start trouble for no reason.

Additionally, that good half is tarnished by the problems of the bad half. If these are the red flags I feel they are, then that means if there are people in the group who harass others - I can already spot what-the-fuck-khr in there, a notable harasser who has called a CSA survivor a slur - then it weakens the promise to make this a truly safe space.

It’s simply that I’ve seen a lot of people claim they care about CSA survivors, a lot of fans who try to prop people like me up to signal their own virtue, only for them to turn around and lash out at CSA survivors like myself when we do not exist as only a prop, when we step a toe out of line.

If that happens again, then I don’t want anyone to be caught in that, especially some of the wonderful people I’m familiar with in the tags, such as [blank] or [blank]. I see a lot of red flags in there that I’ve seen harm other people when left unchecked.

If people want to give this a shot as run by the OP, that’s their right, and I wouldn’t take that away from them. I believe it is important to help and look after CSA survivors, especially us for one another. However, I feel like these criticisms are something anyone going for this should keep in mind, especially if they’re not CSA survivors.

Maybe I’m wrong about all of this. I will freely admit that the original post set me off something awful. Maybe some of my concerns are merely because this is an interest check post, and there wasn’t time for the OP to go indepth on just what they think “pedophilic” ships actually are, etc.

If that’s the case, then I’ll gladly have a discussion with the OP, if they truly care about CSA survivors and what is harmful to them. I’ll recant if I can be reassured this is all in good faith, and even support this endeavor.

However, as a CSA survivor, this post as it is worries and frustrates me.