#what the fuck are you doing teaching literature if fiction is useless in reality? fucking assholes

[sephirthoughts]

How do I tell my friends I might be a proship without telling them I'm a proship.. 😓

I think you do it exactly like that. You tell them without telling them. What do i mean? Strap in, babe.

The term proship is useless for now, so forget about the term. The defiinition of proship is what? You don't think people should be harassed for what they read/write/enjoy in fiction, and you oppose censorship. My brother in fandom, that is the stance of nearly every single irl human being, if they think about it for five seconds, and are not a lunatic maga freak or an evangelical christo-fascist.

You see, outside the internet, no one has even heard of pro and anti ship. I know this, because i have mentioned the terms to normal people, and then had to explain at length, and then admit that i write fanfic and then everyone wants to see it, and it's a whole embarrassing thing.

BUT people have heard of moral panics, censorship epidemics, thought policing, fascism, evangelical bullshit, and other forms of oppression of all kinds. People with working brains don't support those things, because they can see their effects in the past, and know what they eventually lead to.

At the core of every hand-wringing, pearl-clutching, think-of-the-children purity movement, is the theme that ideas are dangerous. The thing is, they're not wrong. Ideas are dangerous. Do you know to whom? To the oppressor. To the ones in power, invested in maintaining the status quo. To anyone who wants to keep you meek and obedient. Anyone who wants to control and exploit you.

It is no coincidence that the first thing taken from people who are being denied their humanity and basic rights, are the means for transmission of ideas. This always takes the form of literacy denial and language control. Every single time. From attempts to eradicate native languages by conquerers, to the american slave holders prohibiting slaves from learning to read or write, to women under sharia law today. Why? Because ideas are extremely powerful, and if you can read and write, you can be exposed to and transmit ideas.

Ideas teach people that they are individuals, that they are inherently worthwhile, that they have the absolute right not to be controlled and used like livestock. That there is beauty and truth outside the hell they've been taught to accept as the only reality. That they deserve kindness and compassion. That theirs is a righteous anger that can catch and spread, till it burns like wildfire, and clears out the filth and stagnation of the violent, oppressive, monstrous powers that be.

When those ideas catch hold, the oppressed will inevitably get together and rebel against the opressors. Oppressors fucking HATE being rebelled against, because their power is ALL based on fear, and on tricking the oppressed into accepting and participating in their own oppression, and once the facade is broken, and their weakness is exposed, and the fear fades, their power vanishes.

What does this have to do with making fictional characters do kissy-kissy on the internet? Turns out, a LOT. Because people who benefit from the censorship of dangerous ideas ALWAYS start out by trying to spread panic amongst regular people about certain ideas being dangerous. Ideas like, FOR EXAMPLE, fictional portrayals of so-called immoral acts.

It's easy to get people to agree that they don't want children to be sexually exploited, so the censorshippers use language that equates the producing or consuming of fictional or nonfictional literature on sexual topics, with actual child sexual exploitation.

They want people to believe that the very idea of sex (outside their own sanitized and censor-approved criteria) will turn these poor poor brainless ignorant innocent stupid children into willing and easy victims for the ravening pedophiles that are lurking around every corner.

That the idea of queerness in books will turn adults into sexual predators and children into prey.

Or that the idea of sorcery in Dungeons and Dragons will turn children into satanic cultists, who will murder their families for evil rituals (that panic really happened in the 1980s guys it was wild).

Or that reading the ideas in the actual bible would incite black slaves to revolt against their white masters (it absolutely did and it was fucking awesome).

Or that reading the ideas in the actual bible would incite serfs and peasants to revolt against the Catholic church and stop paying them all that delicious indulgence and tithe money, that the church was extorting out of them using their enforced ignorance and fear of going to hell if they disobeyed the clergy.

Or the Victorian belief that reading about the very idea of women standing up for themselves or having any kind of sexual agency at all would teach wives to turn against their husbands, abandon their kids, and run away to live in lesbian wiccan cults in the forest (sounds kinda based tbh) thus destroying the very fabric of society.

That one popped up again in the 1990s thanks to Pat Robertson and his cult of evangelical misogynists, but this time it was that women would abandon their husbands and kids and run off to live like shameless sluts with the homosexuals and artists in the big city (and by the way they'd also be having abortions constantly just for fun because women LOVE abortions and Enforced Family Values are the only thing stopping them from gleeful rampages of fetus-slaughter), thus destroying the very fabric of society.

But the censorshippers know how obviously evil and oppressive their goals are, so they don't start with proposing total control of your thoughts. They pick things that it is easy to get people to agree with, SUCH AS PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM FICTIONAL PORTRAYALS OF SEX, thus using people's disgust and fear as sleight of hand, to get them used to accepting the mental framework that ideas can be dangerous to them, and that banning and burning THOSE YUCKY BOOKS is ok.

Because into the fire with all those yucky books with the scary sexy stuff or satanism or bad language or uppity women, also go books like Orwell's 1984, and Fahrenheit 451, and then Marx's Das Kapital and Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and then actual science books with evolution in them, and then all those pesky women's studies books, and then anything that even admits queer people exist, and then history books that document segregation and slavery and the Holocaust, because those really make oppression and slavery and genocide look bad, and if people know the signs to look for, it won't be so easy to oppress, enslave, and genocide them again.

By the way, notice how the so-called evil topics being banned and screeched about by the censorshippers and puritans are never violence, or murder, or war, or guns, or rapacious money-worship that chooses to let children starve and die in the name of profits for the super-rich?

That is because violence, murder, war, guns, and rapacious money-worship that chooses to let children starve and die in the name of profits for the super-rich are the tools of the oppressor, and if people realize those things are horrible and wrong, it's harder for them to trick you into submitting. It's so blatantly obvious that once you realize it, it feels like "how could anyone not see this?"

FACT: It starts with "we need to protect The Children from being exposed to Evil Sexual Content" and literally ends in Authoritarianism. That is not an exaggeration, that is the verifiable historical pattern.

It is happening in the US right now. The evangelicals and incels and magas are taking away the bodily autonomy and basic human rights of real women. The rights our mothers and grandmothers fought tooth and nail to grasp. They are demonizing and harming trans children. The equality that we queers and freaks have been striving so hard for, and still haven't even reached, is being violently and relentlessy asaulted, all in the name of The Children.

They call it Family Values, but it is fascism. Do not be fooled by these monstrous pigs, just because they are doing the oppressing while holding up a banner of righteousness and morality. They want you enslaved or dead, and that is the bottom line.

These puriteens and antishippers, who are online in their very loud and energetic mobs, shrieking and screaming and trying to incite hatred and panic about "minor-coded" anime characters and incest ships and age gaps (and height differences now apparently), are simply parroting the ideas of the authoritarians, the fascists, the oligarchs, and the theocracies of the past, wrapped up in therapy-language and newspeak.

The internet is a wonderful place for connecting people from all different cultures and backgrounds, but it's a double-edged sword, because, like in any free meeting space, hyperspecific subcultures begin to pop up. Some of those subcultures are based on hate and fear. The current crop of hand-wringing puriteens are one such subculture.

Here on the internet, it may seem like the puriteens are in the majority, but it's only because they are extremely loud and energetic. For the most part, people don't even take part in such discourse, because they just want to go about their business, enjoy their little stories about fictional kissy-kissy, and live their lives.

The antis and puriteens are weaponizing outrage, in order to crush and destroy everything they are scared of, or think is yucky, or don't understand, just like every other reactionary hyper-conservative movement in history.

That is all it is. Reactionary conservatism from a bunch of angry kids who are terrified of the very idea of sexuality, because they have created their own internet echo-chamber, in which sex has become so demonized, that all its forms are now evil, to them, and must be killed with fire.

TLDR: the default brain configuration of the adult human being IS proship. Because all proship means is "i am not an asshole and i oppose authoritarianism."

IN CONCLUSION, my dear anonnie friend, rather than coming out to your friends and saying "i'm proship" thus risking their knee-jerk emotional overreaction by using an unfairly demonized term if they are antis, OR risking confusing them completely if they are not of the chronically online ilk, maybe don't say anything at all. Show them where you stand. Use your actions.

For example, don't take part in shit-talk of so called illegal or immoral ships. Don't support the harassing or bullying of people who like ships the antis think are yucky. Don't listen to puriteen or anti language without at least saying "hey bro that's uncool you sound like an evangelical mom right now".

If your friends really are antis, then you are the voice of reason, now, comrade. The voice of reason is usually very quiet. But that's ok. Change begins small and happens gradually, through slow and steady progress.

Remember, no one changes anyone else's mind by yelling slogans at them, or telling them that they're wrong and an idiot. Even when they are verifiably wrong and an idiot.

Thank you for the ask, and I hope everything works out! Vaya con dios!! 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤