Periodic reminder that you are not immune to reactionary radicalization through fandom.
We all know the “jokes” about how old bronies either came out as queer or became fascists - except they’re not really jokes, and a lot of the queer ones admit to having been in the pipeline before they came out (some in a way that implies they never totally got out of said pipeline and don’t understand the gravity of it),
GamerGate was an entire right-wing reactionary movement that was - and this is not hyperbole - partially responsible for turning fascism into a “legitimate” position by the American Overton window, composed entirely of people who feared losing their fan spaces,
We’ve had terfs right here on tumblr dot com BRAGGING about how useful fandom is as a recruiting space,
TJLC was a big pipeline for acephobia on this hellsite in particular, when people argued that headcanoning Sherlock as ace was inherently homophobic because it was denying a TOTALLY GONNA BE CANON (while the creators were promising that it wasn’t going to be canon) gay pairing, and puritanical, and just HAVING that headcanon was saying that people COULDN’T ship Johnlock, all in the interest of a “fake” sexuality and “pretending to be oppressed” and oh whoops there you went,
We see people who all but center their fandom activity and identities around figuring out which people in predominantly queer fandom spaces are SECRETLY PEDOPHILES AND GROOMERS, acting consciously or otherwise under the assumption that predominantly queer fandom spaces are just massively infested with them in a way that other spaces are not for SOME reason, who twist the definition of “pedophilia” in these spaces until it covers shipping a 17-year old fictional character with an 18-year old fictional character, or a 30-year old with a 45-year old, or including an autistic character in a ship, and drawing two 17-year old characters kissing constitutes “child porn”, and who unironically say we should bring back the Hays Code and Censorship Is Good Actually And Our Problem Is We Don’t Do It Enough and this often becomes a pipeline to “sex ed is child abuse; people shouldn’t even know what sex is until they turn 18; you need my consent to wear certain outfits in public if I see them as sexually charged, and Pride SHOULD be an assimilationist sideshow for our corporate overlords family-friendly party with no sadness or anger or ESPECIALLY acknowledgement of sex allowed”,
We’ve seen otherwise progressive people defend literal hate symbols in fanart when pushback against the above brand of reactionaries gets corrupted into zero-nuance “it’s us vs. them so anything they don’t like is Good”,
Even outside of those examples some of the most vicious, unapologetic, blatant queerphobic abuse I’ve seen in recent years hasn’t come from right-wingers but from LGBT+ people, dressing their deep, violent, seething hatred for queer people who aren’t exactly like them in a thin veneer of progressive language, who have become so convinced that they’re the main character of the fucking universe that they think writing or enjoying a queer story that doesn’t resonate with them is more queerphobic than sending a queer person who writes or enjoys such a story countless rape and death threats and denying their identity,
We’ve seen these examples again and again and again, and we keep seeing it again and again and again, so I am once again on my knees BEGGING people to recognize that this is not Something That Happens To Other, BAD People, or Something That Happens To People In BAD Fandoms, or Something That Happens To People On The OTHER Side Of Perennial Drama; this is something that CAN happen to you.
These things are the result of the fact that fandom is, by nature, a place of heightened emotion and if you don’t know what to look out for that is very exploitable; you need to know the methods people use to do this, simply Being In The Right Fandoms or Liking The Right Ships is not enough.
So, if you see someone trying to convince you that you have the ONLY valid approach to any specific character, or ship, or show, or whatever, that your ship is activism and your fanfics are praxis, and liking something else or liking the same thing differently is Only For Bad People, that is the single biggest red flag that YOU NEED TO RUN, THEY’RE TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT WANT
Seeing people reblog this with mile-long DNI pages that talk about about “irredeemable media” and “you’re a pedophile if you like XYZ mainstream piece of media and I hate you” and “if you like these things that are bad irl happening in fiction in any context that’s apologism for them in reality and you should be ashamed” and “if you’re okay with consenting adults having weird sex and talking about weird sex with other consenting adults and putting weird sex in appropriately tagged fanfics that means you support rape and pedophilia and bestiality and incest and you’re evil” and “terfs and exclusionists and gatekeepers gtfo BUT combination labels aren’t valid and trans men aren’t really oppressed beyond collateral damage and fuck off if you think they are lol” and doing the biggest facepalm of my life like
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ABOUT 👏 YOU 👏
So I sincerely hope, if you’re one of those people reblogging this, you’re taking it as a call to seriously reflect on those beliefs and how you came to hold them, and not just sitting there smugly thinking that when I said “YOU are not immune to this” I meant “YOUR FOLLOWERS may not be immune to this, but YOU are, oh great and glorious Knower of Pure from Irredeemable, holder of the True Correct Media Opinions”
Let’s simplify it a bit: No one is immune to doing evil, period. Always reflect on what you are doing and saying and why. Becoming complacent, thinking that you’re a “good person” and thus can only do “good things” is the fast-lane to the worst kind of evil: that which tries to justify itself as good.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, indeed.
