I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since Iāve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.
Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. Itās very easy to get drawn into it
Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually itās pedophilia. Funnily enough, thatās also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because itās an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, itās nice and easy to say āOh so you like pedophiliaā rather then actually engaging with their argument.
The logic goes like this, although thereās many forms of it.
āPedophilia is bad.ā -> Obviously, you agree with this. Youāre a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.
āBecause pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.ā -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesnāt it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic.Ā
āAnyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.ā -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you donāt. But still, it adds up, itās a very easy flow. After all, weāve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?
āSince people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, itās okay to harm them.ā -> Hereās where you might pause again. The argument might not win you over entirely, you might not be willing to do harm yourself, but you may be a lot more willing to turn a blind eye to harm being done to someone. Or to consider it ājustifiedā.
The pattern now repeats for anything else thatās considered āmorally impureā, and āpedophiliaā is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. āAbuseā becomes any ship that the person pushing doesnāt like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.
This is the foundation of āantiā culture, and itās important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. Itās a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions.Ā
A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.
Letās see that argument again, shall we?
āBecause murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.ā
āAnyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.ā
āSince people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, itās okay to harm them.ā
Hopefully, itās now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.
Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I donāt recommend trying to argue/debate antiās. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Donāt let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and donāt control or shame others for what they create or consume.
Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), thatās perfectly fine (itās also called a squick, for those that havenāt heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either.Ā
amandla
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