I want to say something very rude but I feel like if I start with it you’re not going to listen to anything I have to say so instead let me try and calmly explain why you’re wrong
first, constantly calling us “kiddos” is incredibly rude and condescending. saying “you were doing so good and you had to go and ruin it” is incredibly rude and condescending. I don’t think I should have to explain why, but suffice it to say that talking like this to a bunch of teenagers is absolutely ridiculous. I’m a college student, not a 10-year-old.
okay, to the actual criticism.
second, you call us “childish” for wanting people to “scold” the original bingo. putting aside the fact that I don’t recall any my friends who put together the bingo actually telling anyone to attack the original blog, it’s not childish to confront people who are supporting things you find morally reprehensible! would you also consider it childish to call someone out for being homophobic, or racist, or sexist? I sure hope not.
third, you’re probably thinking “that’s a faulty argument because shipping starker isn’t anywhere near comparable to homophobia or racism or sexism.” and you’re right in that it’s not comparable to literally explicitly advocating or participating in discrimination or violence against LGBT+ people or poc or women. but - and I say this as a gay teen who (confession) used to actually be into giant age gap ships - it’s still really terrible. it’s “just fiction,” yeah, but fiction has a real effect on how people, especially teens whose brains are literally not fully developed, understand and interpret the real world. we’ll come back to three later, I’m not done talking about it, but first-
fourth, and probably the actual really important thing to argue, is that yeah, starker is actually bad.
here’s some (hella watered down) biology. the frontal lobe is the part of the brain controlling judgment and self-control. that part of the brain isn’t fully developed until a person’s mid-20s. the pre-frontal cortex helps read and understand emotions. it is fully developed in teens, but the connections within it are not fully utilized. to pull even further back, the brain is made up of grey matter and white matter. grey matter, which stores information, fully matures by early adolescence. white matter, which forms connections between different parts of the brain, fully matures in a person’s 20s.
our brains are physically different than the brains of adults. they work fundamentally differently. we are literally incapable of understanding and interpreting and even perceiving the world in the same way as you do.
(and no, that doesn’t mean that you’re right and we’re wrong, just that ours is a fundamentally different perspective)
how can you - as a mother of a child who either is going through the unstable hormonal mess of adolescence or who will soon - look at a ship between two people whose brains and bodies work in fundamentally different ways and say that it’s ok? how can you look at a ship between two people living in a society where it is a foundational assumption that one of them should be deferential in all ways to the other and say that it’s ok? how can you look at a ship between two people where one of them is still going through raging hormonal changes and doesn’t, physically cannot have the mental capacity to practice judgment and self-control at the same level as the other and say that it’s ok?
you can come up with whatever rationalizations you want for why starker is in-universe ok (“peter’s brain is more developed bc of the spider bite!” or whatever) but I hope I’ve at least made a compelling argument that societal power structures and simple biology make real-world relationships between minors and adults bad. now we need to go back to my third point.
like I said, fiction affects how we perceive and understand and interpret the real world. I’m sure everyone who ships starker is ~intelligent enough to understand the difference between truth and fiction~ but that doesn’t matter. fiction affects how we perceive and understand and interpret the real world. and teens - especially impressionable gay kids like me - who consume starker content are being influenced by the media they consume to believe that it’s possible for teenagers - for them - to be in healthy relationships with adults. that belief will probably not significantly affect a lot of their lives. I know that.
but now I need to drop this facade of being cool and rational and tell my side of the story.
your idea that “starkers aren’t the problem. problematic ships aren’t the problem. people who make other people’s internet their moral responsibility is the problem” is so ridiculous here. so absolutely ridiculous. I am not some hand-wringing moralist childishly screeching about some bingo allowing things I disagree with because I want to control the “mystical children to be protected.” when I reblog anti-starker content, when I support my friends as they call out and spread awareness about groups that support starker, when I get myself neck-deep into a fucking monstrosity of a rant that’s already at almost 900 words in response to your sub-200-word post, I’m doing it because I want to do everything! I! fucking! can! to stop other impressionable gay teenagers from suffering through the same bullshit that I have.
big fat trigger warning: child sexual abuse
when I was 14, I met a 23-year-old man through the internet. we began a “relationship.” I am not going to go into many details of what transpired, but suffice it to say that when it finally dissolved I was left emotionally broken for a long time and with an incredibly warped view of what was acceptable.
so much so that a year later, I lied about my age so I could join an 18+ discord server despite the potential jeopardization of everyone else on it. and so much so that I still to this day kind of think that, because I was a compulsive liar, I deserved it. being a compulsive liar was a crime for sure, but to receive dick pics and pornography from a 23-year-old? to engage in sexual conversations and text roleplay with a 23-year-old???
that’s fucking disgusting and terrible and horrific and I didn’t fucking deserve any of that no matter how much of a compulsive liar I was! and the worst! fucking! part! is that it’s taken me so goddamn long to even accept that it was abuse! because I had been so effectively groomed into thinking that me, a goddamn fucking 14-year-old, could be in a healthy relationship with an adult!!!!
and you know what fucking lead me down that shitty path in the first place?!?! SHIT LIKE STARKER. SHIT LIKE FUCKING STARKER.
not starker specifically. but content featuring minor/adult couples. that is what made me think it was ok. that is what influenced me to let this man into my life. and once I went down that path, it was constantly reinforced by this sense that oh, I’m so mature and emotionally intelligent for my age. that shit is fucking catnip for a insecure gay kid. I’m incredibly lucky that I got out with just a few months of overpowering misery and a few devastated responsible adults whose trust I’d taken advantage of in my wake.
so when you say I shouldn’t “make other people’s internet my moral responsibility,” it makes me angry beyond words. or actually no, it makes me angry to the tune of a giant fucking truckload of words.
your status as a mom who’s been in fandom for ages does not make your opinion on this more qualified. if anything, it makes it less qualified because you do not and will never know what it is like to be a teenager on this terrifying fucking internet. I’m not an outsider trying to control other people’s internet experience. I’m crawling out of a fucking pit that people like you don’t seem to even fucking realize that you dug, and I’m screaming at you as I’m doing it and you should fucking listen to me instead of continuing to insist you know better and blindly shove other people toward this pit.
you can say that I was uniquely unlucky, or uniquely stupid and naive if you really want to be an asshole. but even if you were right, one person falling prey to this is one too fucking many.
so, to the starkers that I hope are still reading this:
if you’re an adult, please stop. please. no matter how airtight you think your logic, your rationalizations are. I am living proof of the harm that your ship can do, of what it can be complicit in. I hope you reconsider.
and if you’re a teenager…please, get as far away from this pit as you can. I thought I could walk on air too. we’re both wrong.
sources on the bio stuff: https://www.teensafe.com/blog/brain-development-part-iii-adolescence-13-18/ and https://knowledgenuts.com/2014/07/25/the-difference-between-teenage-brains-and-adult-brains/