Anti-Shippers

Anti-Ship BingoAnti-ship bingo cards created by saiditallbefore.

At this writing (mid-2016), for the last few years there has been a Tumblr-based phenomenon of fans bullying other fans for reading, writing, drawing fanart, or otherwise being fans of ships that allegedly “promote abuse,” especially child sexual abuse. Here are some of the types of fic that have been targeted:

Anti-shippers, or “antis,” frequently claim without offering any proof whatsoever that those who create or consume fanworks of such ships are complicit in CSA and other forms of interpersonal abuse. This is in spite of there being absolutely, positively no established scientific correlation between fanfiction and real-life crimes. Their assertion is that vulnerable young people will read these fics and believe that abuse is okay — which is victim blaming. It also ignores (a) the pervasiveness of abusive messages in all media and (b) the fact that fanfic writers these days tend to overtag, if anything, in case any element of their fics might be considered even slightly triggering. Some antis have claimed that their abusers used fanfic to groom them, not acknowledging that abusers will use anything they can find. When challenged on their claims, the antis cry that they are being “bullied,” “gaslit,” or “silenced.”

Antis sometimes claim that survivors of sexual abuse are allowed to read or write such fics “in order to cope.” This has frequently led to people's survivor or non-survivor statuses being demanded by total strangers on the internet. Frequently, antis will at best ignore, at worst harass, survivors who say that fanfic has nothing to do with abuse and that antis should stop using them as weapons.

There are entire Tumblr accounts, too many to count and not deserving of links here, devoted to anti-shipping. There are also entire Tumblr accounts devoted to combatting the antis. Just a few of them: Unpopular Fandom Opinion, You Are Not Damaged, The Shipper Armada, Survivors Against Antis, A Tired Trauma Victim (now password-protected due to harassment by antis), Anti-Anti-Wincest, Why Can’t You Just Play Nice, and Anti-Antis Positivity. There have also been any number of posts from other fans, especially older ones — such as this one from farashasilver informing Tumblr that she is not their mommy and that they can shove their Helen Lovejoy act up their collective ass.

Here is an incomplete list of anti discussions on meme:

Here are two excellent comments from the May 17 discussions:

I just want to tell these people on repeat that fandom is not a safe space. Fandom is not a safe space. You are personally responsible for controlling your own fandom consumption. If not, your parents or guardians are responsible for controlling your fandom consumption. The same thing goes for which books you choose to take out at the library. So if you're having trouble, go to your parents and say “I can't handle this myself. I need you to filter and monitor my internet use”.

But, people do have options for controlling their own fandom consumption, and these can include establishing an actual, small safe space.

Furthermore, people should bear in mind that there are dangers present in trying to create a safe space. People sometimes use the idea of a safe space to manipulate others and to sweep abuse and bullying under the rug. “[Whatever] can't possibly be going on here, and definitely not by me, because we're a safe space!” And also, the idea of a safe space can be used as a club to beat other people with; manipulative, power-hungry bullies can set themselves up as the enforcers of the “safe space”. It can turn toxic. If you really do want a safe space, you have to find a small area you can control (SUCH AS NOT TUMBLR), set out specific, limited and narrow rules, and also effective moderation. It might not work out, but you can try.

/rant

I do wonder, though, how much the changing internet use attitudes of parents has affected people who came to fandom later. A lot of parents used to be all “Stranger danger! Don't give out info online! The internet is the wild west! Stick to safe websites! And tell me if something bothers you.” - but things seem to have changed since then. Has the lack of that kind of attitude encouraged kids or younger people to have false expectations of safety and of things being designed for their protection and personal comfort? At least the whole “take care online” thing can encourage personal responsibility and some kind of awareness that you need to avoid places which don't meet your needs.

You don't walk into the wild west and start complaining that you're not being catered to and coddled and why isn't your personalised safe space already set up just the way you want? What's all this dust doing in the desert?! And it's too sunny, but I refuse to get a hat!

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What about when survivors project their personal trauma onto characters and situations that are not portrayed or even intended to resemble actual sexual assault? Because it's one thing to be criticized for eroticizing a (fictional) person's (entirely fictional) canonical sexual assault. It's another thing entirely to be berated for months because “Character X said something that reminds me of something my abuser said to me, how dare you ship him with Character Y?!” I've seen the latter happen so many fucking times–hell, I've seen it happen far more than I've seen people actually shipping a canonical survivor with their canonical rapist/abuser–that I've lost all patience with the “this hurts survivors!!1!” argument.

In all the “rapey ships” wanks large and small I've seen over the past few years, only one of them (Jessigrave) involved a canonical rapist/survivor ship. The rest of them were subtextual, metaphorical, extreme interpretations, and/or people projecting their own damage like a goddamn IMAX, followed by a crusade against anyone having shippy thoughts of any kind about them. If you write non-con fic for a ship, you're a bad person for eroticizing rape. If you write fluff for the same ship, you're a bad person for not taking abuse seriously. I am so sick of this conversation being controlled by people who take the rapeiness of the ships they hate as understood and unquestionable, when 99.9% of the time, they're not actually talking about canon and they shut down any other (honest and valid) interpretations as “apologism!!”

So no, you don't get to use the nebulous assertion of “my trauma” to make blanket statements about ships (or kinks) you don't like. It's perfectly understandable to say, “I don't like this ship because certain elements remind me of my abuse/assault.” It does not make you a bad person and I will gladly tag my posts and my fic appropriately to help you avoid it. But saying “No one is allowed to ship this ever because it reminds me of my abuse/assault, and if you do ship it, you're a bad person”? In what universe is that reasonable? Like, I once walked out of a movie and cried in the bathroom for the remainder until I had popped blood vessels in my eyeballs because a scene reminded me of my late grandmother's alcoholism–does that give me the right to tell people categorically not to watch it? That the film has no redeeming artistic value whatsoever? Should I (loudly) boycott the Oscars in perpetuity because it was nominated for a few? Tell other people who enjoyed the film that they're terrible people for not being outraged at the depiction of an alcoholic falling off the wagon, and shut down their interpretations of the scene as pure “apologism”? If fandom talked about substance abuse like they do sexual assault, I would be 110% justified in doing all of that and more. But I wouldn't, because I understand that fiction is a means to explore the entire range of the human experience, from truly awful suffering to exquisite joy, from all possible angles.

At the end of the day, you are responsible for you. It's up to you to manage your own mental health, to curate your own internet experience, to moderate your own media consumption according to your own personal principles and limits. You are well within your rights to dislike or even be disgusted by certain kinds of stories just for existing. But remember that you can only really speak for yourself.

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