I read about Utilitarianism, and it’s a good way to counter proshipping arguments. Let’s be more scholarly so they can’t keep rebutting with the same things over and over again!
So, from what I think I understand, under a utilitarianist mindset, the decision of any person is based on what would give us the best outcome for as many people as possible.
Proshippers would say that they are Utilitarianist, based on these principles:
The 'good' is equal to pleasure, the 'bad' is equal to pain.
Happiness is a psychological state with an abundance of pleasure and a minimum of pain.
...However, proshippers lack the very first, and most important principle!
An action is 'good' if and only if the consequences of the action are good.
So when proshippers say that they can write fanfiction and ship fictional characters together, they don’t realize that the consequences of those actions are not good.
They hurt people, they trigger people, they scar people!
Let’s go through some thought exercises so that others can counter proshippers with utilitarian arguments!
1) A proshipper has messaged you in your inbox to tell you that you can’t tell others that they cannot ship something.
Their stance is: You telling others what to do is wrong.
Utilitarianist Response: The ends justify the means.
They are arguing that the way we try to make the internet a safer place is wrong. This is the means.
What is the ends of this situation? That if the end result is that less people are triggered and suffer mental and physical adverse effects to the actions of proshippers, this is good.
Telling others what to do is now good.
Then, we have to prove the ends can happen. If you say “I am doing this to so people aren’t triggered by harmful fanfiction,” a proshipper will ask “where are these people you are saving from being triggered?”
(First of all this is a “burden of proof” argument. You shouldn’t have to do this, but to prove the point you kind of have to, sorry.)
Ends:
Find a friend that trusts you and ask them if keeping proshippers from making harmful content has saved them from panic attacks or other things.
Do you yourself have a time when a proshipper successfully stopped making something and you had less anxiety/panic attacks, flashbacks or anything else that ruined your day?
If someone shares a story online of a proshipper who gave up the proshipper mindset or just deleted their account, save it! Make a notes sheet on your phone full of links to these stories.
Find someone who calls themself an ex-proshipper and ask them their story. Actually, why not ask @icequeensnowdragon? They are an ex-proshipper!
These are all good proofs that the end is justifying the means. If more people find happiness in never seeing the harmful content than the proshipper who made the content, than it helps many more people than it could potentially hurt AND MORE!
2) A proshipper says that it’s not their problem, and that they will not delete the fanfiction/hide the shipping.
Their Stance is: I don’t have to do anything you ask me to, so I won’t.
Ultilitarianist Response: Once delegated the next step into the ends, the next person is responsible for the means.
This is hard to understand--once you are given a task to do, the responsibility of the decision is now yours, and not the person that gave it to you anymore.
Let’s use a scenario: Ana goes to school. A group of bullies are throwing dodgeballs at the “nerds” of the school. Ana walks by the bullies telling the nerds to stand against the wall of the school and collecting all the dodgeballs. Ana notices that this may end up with a lot of dodgeballs being thrown all at once at the nerds and goes over to confront the situation. One bully, who is the leader of the other bullies, tells Ana that they will not throw all the dodgeballs at all the nerds if and only if Ana takes a dodgeball in her hands and hits one of the nerds. Ana hesitates, but all the nerds urge her to do it, and the nerd she is meant to hit sheilds his skull as not to suffer too much damage.
The decision is obvious: Ana should do it because it will bring the most happiness to the most people. However, wait, she isn’t a bully. This isn’t her problem! However, now it is her responsibility. Because if she doesn’t throw the dodgeball, the bully will just shrug and walk away from her, and then every nerd, including the nerd she was going to throw the dodgeball at, will get dodgeballs thrown at them. The dodgeballs will probably be thrown harder, and probably more than once. If Ana does decide to throw the dodgeball at the nerd, then he will probably get hurt, but not by much. The other nerds don’t have to be hit by dodgeballs. The bullies are happy if they see a teacher that turns the corner to check on them a minute after Ana was supposed to throw the dodgeball, because now they don’t have to suffer any punishments.
Those two outcomes are possibilities only on Ana’s choices. Therefore, she is responsible.
This is the same for fanfiction. If a proshipper is asked to remove a fanfiction from a tag or delete art from a Discord channel, then the happiness of the other people in that Discord or tag relies on if they delete it or not. If they do not delete it, it will stay there for others to see, and possibly result in triggering someone. If they do delete it, then less people see it and are affected by it negatively. Even so, the proshipper may even get more praise for making different art instead of the shipping art, and be more popular in the Discord because they don’t make others uncomfortable. They also do not get blocked/banned, so that they have a larger network!
This one is hard to argue, because many proshippers are proud and rebellious to our words. So make sure to not only argue this, but use this on proshippers who you think can make the right decisions!
Phew, I’ll stop there, I can make more of these posts later on when I’m not so tired. Thanks for reading all the way through and if you finished it, send me your favorite emoji in an ask. Thank you!
