how anti-shipping fosters, encourages, perpetuates, and glorifies abuse in fandom (masterpost)
these subjects come up again and again, so I wanted a masterpost of links to what I’ve written about how fandom anti-shipper culture is tightly related to abuse in fandom.
note: predators, abusers, and bullies are present everywhere in fandom, not just in anti-shipping or pro-shipping (or neutral) circles. this is because abusers will use whatever they have available to them as a tool for abuse. learn warning signs of abusive and/or controlling behavior; these will be far more reliable red flags than what a person ships in fandom.
my objections to anti-shipping (in brief) & an alternative solution to predators in fandom.
I believe that many antis are coming from a genuine place. I just strongly disagree with where your focus lies and your chosen methods of dissemination. In fact, I feel that anti-shipping actively aids predators, for reasons which I’ll try to summarize in brief here.
Anti Shipping is Abusive, The Post
the anti-shipping community is a great place for abusers because it encourages people to develop unquestioning loyalty to and trust of internal authorities, become deeply vulnerable to shame cycles, isolate themselves from outsiders, and avoid critical thought or skepticism of rhetoric.
The icing on the cake is that the things that antis say are ‘bad bad bad’ - incest, ‘pedophilia’ (they mean csa), and abuse - barely even resemble actual incest, csa, and abuse. As a result, when confronted with the real thing I suspect most anti-shippers are completely defenseless.
no matter how hard some anti-shippers try to deny it, they cannot both stop shipping/prevent the creation of potentially harmful content and also condemn harassment and threats.
By demanding/requiring that others change their behavior on sites where antis have no moderating authority, they create loopholes for and/or implicitly approve of action taken to force people to comply with anti-shipper demands. this silent approval gives antis unspoken permission to exaggerate, lie, and create scaremonger material about anything or anyone they disapprove of or want to silence. It also gives abusers in the anti ranks an overlooked ‘blind spot’ from which they are allowed to harass, defame, dogpile, threaten, blackmail, doxx, suicide bait, and assault people who don’t change in response to anti demands.
an unfunny joke about antis
the funny thing about bullies - especially self-righteous bullies that travel in packs, such as antis - is that 99.8% of the time they come out on top of any conflict they get into. this is because as long as a bully’s opponent gives even the slightest fuck about playing fair, being kind, and giving the benefit of the doubt, they will never out-bully a bully.
Miscellaneous:
anti-shippers help abusers hide in a sea of false flags.
anti-shippers perpetuate the false belief that it’s easy to spot an abuser by what they ship, or their age, or some other obvious, easy to see flag.
it’s usually anti-shippers that are deliberately pushing adult content on kids - ostensibly to ridicule it, but still inappropriate
anti-shippers gaslight fandom
Cultlike & authoritarian aspects of anti-shipping (how it traps people in anti-shipping friendsgroups & makes it difficult to leave):
harassment and abuse of others as a form of signaling loyalty to the anti-shipping cause
regarding cults and cultlike communities (and how easy it is to get sucked in)
anti-shippers benefit from an impossible task because the goal is feeling good about themselves by putting other down
antis endanger themselves by learning information that contradicts their worldview, which perpetuates anti-intellectualism.
‘ i didn’t read this but it’s awful’ - loyalty signalling, anti-intellectualism, and a form of harassment rolled together
and finally a few links to my favorite external resource that very beautifully describes why anti-shipping works the way it does:
How Good People and Well-intentioned Groups Go Bad
How it Feels to Be a Bigot
Things About Brainwashing [Everybody] Needs to Know
How to Recognize Gaslighting
How to Recognize a Moral Abuser
