Antis: “Some obscure fanfic on AO3 normalizes abuse but us bullying literally everyone doesn’t!”
Antis: “reading fanfic is retraumatizing you!! but me comparing you to your abuser and telling you to kill yourself is doing absolute wonders for your mental health”
Antis: “oh, I don’t condone those other antis who harass or abuse shippers. But have you considered that maybe if you’re shipping an abusive ship, you kind of deserve it?”
Basically, because I know Mobile is bad with links, the article points out hat the broad, “sfw only, no titties allowed” wave on the internet in recent years is largely due to Apple’s absolute stranglehold on the App Store. Apple has strict guidelines about NSFW content that choke creators right out of mainstream social media, even on sites like Reddit, for users of their products:
But there are fewer and fewer mainstream sites and services that support porn and adult content, and much of that attitude has grown out of Apple’s strict controls over the App Store and the iOS ecosystem. Steve Jobs famously suggested that “folks who want porn can buy an Android phone,” and Apple has repeatedly leveraged its unprecedented power over millions of smartphones to sanitize the apps that are available on iPhones. Apple does not allow apps “that contain user generated content that is frequently pornographic.” In 2016, Apple famously deleted all third-party Reddit apps that allowed users to toggle NSFW posts on and off; even now, it is impossible to access porn on an iOS Reddit app unless you jump through various hoops.
remember though that this anger isn’t about Being Horny On Main, it’s about sex workers, their platforms and followers, NSFW creators and their art, and adult content communities that are continually being shoved out of spaces they created in recent years:
Tumblr’s leadership seems to believe that the community using Tumblr for adult content is the same as any other porn site—showing a serious disconnect with how its users actually interact and connect on its own platform. “We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community,” he wrote.
The value of Tumblr for NSFW creators and fans was in the autonomy to curate something original, and the freedom to express and share what they’re into—something that can’t be replaced by algorithmically-suggested porn on the rest of the internet.
it was mentioned before somewhere else, but 20% of Tumblr’s traffic is brought in by content they’re now flagging as “adult”
This is yet another example of a platform ignoring adult content when it helps the platform flourish, and then leaving those users out to dry when it’s time to crack down for some monetary gain or face-saving. In addition to being a terrible way to treat your user base, banning adult content on Tumblr will stifle a lot of creativity.
The communities that will feel this change the most will be the already-marginalized. “Tumblr banning adult content is a huge loss for the LGBTQ community, especially those with overlapping marginalized identities,” Kitty Stryker, a queer porn performer and consent activist, told Motherboard in an email. “For many, that’s the one place we could find porn that represents us, made by indie performers who created their own content outside of an often racist, transmisogynist, fatphobic industry. Tumblr was where our content could exist without pushing us into the restrictions of a misogynist, male dominated workplace.”
So when I was a kid, probably 12 or 13, I checked out a compilation of post-apocalyptic science fiction stories from the public library. It looked like every other book on the shelf. It was fic from a dozen different authors, and the blurb on the inside cover was pretty vague.
Of the stories in that book, 2 were R-rated. One had surprise rape. One had surprise inter-generational incest. For the shock value. To make the reader ~think. Dude authors. Do I wish I hadn’t read it? Yah. Kinda. It lives in the back of my head with the other gross detritus of the world, all the horrible upsetting shit I’ve read. I read a Star Trek licensed novel with animal torture in it, to illustrate the horror of sociopathy, and I wish I hadn’t read that too.
During the summers of middle school and high school I read voraciously and while I managed to steer clear of MUCH upsetting content I sure as hell stumbled on some doozies.
If my library had been Ao3 I would have gotten a pop up asking me — hey, kid, there’s gross shit in that book, are you old enough to check it out?
And if I was a dumb kid I still might have said ‘yes’, but I would have had a heads up.
Quick personal statistics!
Surprise incest I’ve read in paperbacks I bought in a store or checked out from the library: I’m going to say…. half a dozen instances? Dozen? Surprise rape, at least double that. What is it about the fantasy genre that brings out the creepy writers, and why do they consider sexual assault ‘gritty realism,’ could they fucking stop.
Surprise incest I’ve read on Ao3: none. It has warnings and I avoid it like the plague.
Surprise rape I’ve read on Ao3: none. It has warnings and I avoid it like the plague.
Ao3 is one of the safest goddamn places on the web to read fiction because it has a standardized, mandatory labeling system. Is there appalling content on it? Oh god yes. Does it do a better job of warning you about that content than any library or bookstore? Oh my god yes by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.
I vote funding for my local library every time it’s on the ballot, even though there’s gross shit on the shelves, because I think it’s a resource that’s important to have.
I donate to Ao3 even though there’s content I find fucking appalling archived there, because I think it’s a resource that’s important to have.
Because I know that defunding libraries won’t stop gross dudes from writing gross shit and calling it ‘thought provoking literature’, and I know shutting down Ao3 won’t make creepy fic vanish from the internet. It’ll just take the warning labels off it.
anti-antis be like “antis are toxic for harassing people over their ships!!11!” and then go back to shipping abusive/pedophilic shit and being proud of it as if they aren’t the problem
Real living people who can be hurt are more important than fictional characters who can’t but go off, I guess.
obviously you can’t read so let me spell it out:
i’m talking abt how it’s unfair that people who ship abusive/pedophilic ships complain abt toxicity in fandom spaces when they’re the ones causing a lot of it
And I’m talking about how it’s not toxic to enjoy fictional unhealthy relationships because fictional characters can’t be hurt but it is toxic to harass real people over fictional ships. I can read, thank you.
how can you look at illustrated abuse/incest/pedophilia/cp and think “oh this is hot”
like how fuсking disgusting do you have to be to not see a problem with this? there’s some part of you that thinks it’s fine, and that’s not fine
How? Easily: by being a sensible adult who can distinguish fiction and reality. If you can enjoy playing for an assassin in a video game and not condone murder than you can enjoy an abusive ship and not condone abuse.
“ah yes. i’m tungle used allshipsareok and i love having an entire cast of characters to choose from and still choosing to ship something that’s obviously harmful because i can’t do it irl because that’s Bad apparently so i use fiction to live out my disgusting fantasies”
What part of “enjoying an abusive ship and not condone abuse” did you not understand? Do you believe that Breaking Bad fans fantasize about selling drugs, Dexter fans fantasize about being seral killers, Hannibal fans fantasize about eating people and they all just “use fiction to live out their disgusting fantasies”? Because that’s not how it works. It’s not about fantasies, it’s about adrenaline and intense emotions. It’s about conflict and drama. It’s about catharsis. And by the way, fiction doesn’t harm people, people harm people.
shipping characters is voluntary so ur literally saying “i enjoy pairing a character who is shown to be abusive to with the character they’re abusing” which is nasty and also stop arguing with me bc ur nasty is showing and i don’t like talking to ugly people like you who think fiction exists in a vacuum 💀
Shifting the goalposts, resorting to ad hominem and going “stop arguing with me”, how cute. Why am I not surprised. Anyway, I’m sorry that “people can enjoy fictional things they don’t condone in reality” is a too complicated concept for you but most people have common sense to distinguish one from another. Fiction doesn’t exist in vacuum but neither does it affect reality in 1:1 way. There is a reason why multiple studies prove that violent video games don’t make people more violent. There is a reason why extremely popular shows I’ve mentioned don’t increase the crime rate in society. There is a reason why cp laws in most countries don’t apply to fictional minors. Anyway, my point still stands: fictional ships don’t harm real people, harassing people for fictional ships does.
Finding certain fictional content appealing is not voluntary.
Wow, and to think for a second you had a good post, OP.
The anti-fujo movement is racist, sexist, and transphobic. That really a look you want to enjoy?
lmao suck my toes bitch
So it is a look you want to enjoy?
guess so if it means i get to make fun of people who think fetishizing mlm relationships is ok
Fujoshi means fan of BL, that’s it.
You can’t fetishise sex/a relationship. That’s not what fetishise means. You can objectify them but:
These are fictional MLM, they are literal objects with no feelings. To quote you: It’s anime. Go outside.
ohhh my god. oh my god is this conversation fucking real
fictional shit still harms real people. and you can fetishize mlm relationships, thats the same fucking thing as objectifying, its the fucking definition of fetishize. saying youre a fan of BL is even worse, by saying youre a FAN of BL thats literally proving my point that fujoshis fetishize mlm. its not a healthy way to represent mlm couples, and again, it harms real people. yaoi isnt supportive of lgbt people, its gross and harmful. hows about you go outside, hettie.
Fictional shit doesn’t harm real people, it can’t physically go out and attack you. People can use fiction as a tool to harm others, but people can also use a goddamn puppy as a tool to harm others, so.
No, it’s not. The definition of fetishise is “a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.”. A human being, or two human beings, doing sexual things being portrayed in a sexual light is not fetishisation. Yaoi was made by LGBTQ people, not all BL portrays abusive relationships, it’s fucking racist to say otherwise.
Also I’m queer and NB but nice fucking try.
how the fuck is is racist, youre just throwing things at me now. yaoi is made by straight women for straight women. i dont care if youre q/eer, its harmful and sabotages the lgbt community. the yaoi community is gross, thats that.
It’s racist because fujoshi is a Japanese term you’ve completely misappropriated to mean, in your eyes, something homophobic and shameful. To apply all problematic tropes in romance media (which exist) to all yaoi, the Japanese term for fictional MLM relationships, implies that Japan has never created a nuanced or realistic portrayal of gay men, and that all their media is gross and homophobic. That’s fucking racist.
Also, yaoi is made primarily by queer people, but even if it weren’t the case, straight women being aroused by two men having sex is literally completely normal and a natural response?
@rottenboysclub can explain from a more nuanced perspective.
In Japanese, fujoshi just means a woman has at least one fictional mxm ship. It’s a fandom term. Fujoshi started as a misogynistic insult on 2ch to say that women who are interested in any kind of fictional mlm shipping content are unsuitable for marriage (basically not a yamato nadeshiko), and rotten in the head.[Source](links to abstract, you can read the full paper by clicking html at the side there)
Fujoshi has since been reclaimed and, when used as a fandom term, means the following (translated from Japanese):
“Fujoshi is women who like novels, manga, etc. that deal with male-male love, such as yaoi or BL. [usage of ya here implies that it’s not limited to BL/yaoi, but simply includes it]
“A word used to refer to a woman who like works depicting male-male love.”
The current anti-fujoshi movement on this site was spearheaded by TERFs, as a way to insult trans men and accuse them of being “females fetishising gay relationships”. Using fujoshi in this way (with the definition of “females fetishising gay relationships”, rather than the Japanese definition) is a TERF dogwhistle for trans mlm. [Sources here]
The reason that mxm romance stories were traditionally aimed at women (not necessarily straight women), is because romance in general was seen as a “girl thing” in Japan - doesn’t matter if the pairing is mxm, fxf or mxf, if the focus is on the romance aspect in a shoujo/josei-esque style, then it tends to be marketed toward women. In contrast, geicomi, which are marketed to gay adult men, are gay erotic manga and focus on the sex rather than story. The markets are changing and converging recently, hence why we have things nowadays like gachimuchi BL, which is a sort of middle ground between traditional sappy BL romance and porny geicomi, often drawn by gay male artists, and has dual market appeal to both mlm AND women. Gachimuchi is still considered a subset of BL.
Yaoi is a subset of BL but doesn’t constitute all of BL itself. Yaoi is a doujinshi / fancomic term in Japanese, and usually refers to parodies of existing media (aniparo) with mxm content, with a nonsensical or absent story. Yaoi stands for Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi "No peak, no fall, no meaning", referring to what is essentially story-less fluff. This was coined to contrast with professionally published BL stories at the time (’80s) which often had very complex storylines and themes. Also to point out that yaoi can be interpreted to be the English term PWP, as in “Plot? What Plot?” but NOT necessarily “Porn Without Plot” like a lot of people assume (most likely because of the usage of the PWP acronym which caused confusion). Not all yaoi is pornographic, and not all fujoshi like yaoi (nonsensical parody slash fan-comics)
According to various surveys, about 50% of fujoshi and female BL mangaka identify as something other than cis or het. Famous well-known fujoshi such as Kabi Nagata and Akiko Mizoguchi are lesbians. In addition, according to gay mangaka Gengoroh Tagame, a lot of fujoshi and BL mangaka may appear as cis het women on paper, but in actuality are closeted lesbians, bisexuals, trans men, x-gender, and even some who were writing under a pen-name and later turned out to be cis gay MEN. [source]
Speaking of men, for one survey in the US of BL readership, a quarter of respondents were male, and for another, depending on the volume in question, male readership was anywhere from 15-20%, all the way up to 50%. More conservative estimates put male readership around 10%. Also, here’s a small list of male BL artists and geicomi artists who work on BL anthologies / BL Magazines. Keep in mind that these are just a few that are public about their gender, and a lot of other male BL authors are closeted and will not disclose that information.
Welker, James. (2006) Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shôjo Manga Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Societyvol. 31, no. 3
Antonia, Levi (2008). “North American reactions to Yaoi”. In West, Mark. The Japanification of Children’s Popular Culture. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 147–174.
Brenner, Robin E. (2007). Understanding Manga and Anime.Libraries Unlimited. p. chapter 3 p. 137
TLDR: I’m just a clueless gay man and I don’t know a thing about your boku no big hero six academy discourse, but I do have a problem with your attitude. Don’t throw out misogynistic slurs or sexual threats, and don’t misgender people just because you were proven wrong on the internet. Also there are lots of sources because you are completely and utterly wrong about pretty much everything you said.
Am I the only one who thinks the type of fan content that gets antis’ approval is actually way worse for the LGBT community than regular slash fiction? Everything antis or their sympathizers write is scrupulously desexualized as if to make extra sure no one reading–including actual LGBT people–might get aroused. Every gay couple has to be picture perfect relationship goals 100% of the time. There’s this persistent mentality that if you’re gay you HAVE to be in a relationship and your partner is your SOULMATE who COMPLETES you and never ever argues with you or needs their space or has any flaws that aren’t cutesy and harmless. Anybody who actually thinks relationships are anything like your typical anti-approved glorified wholesomeness porn is in for a rude awakening.
‘In the center of Bebelplatz, a glass window showing rows and rows of empty bookshelves. The memorial commemorates the night in 1933 when 20,000 “anti-German” books were burned here under the instigation of Goebbels. There’s a plaque nearby that says something like “Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end.” ’
Interesting but rarely mentioned: most of the content burned that night came from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (institute for the science of sex) headed by Magnus Hirschfeld. The institute and Hirshfeld himself were some of the first to openly campaign for the right to have sex with someone of the same gender, the right to transition if you did not identify with your birth sex and for the general acceptance of queer people. The team had already performed the first SRS operations in Germany and in addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s emancipation. Photographs of the night of the book burning are plastered across history books world wide, but the queer movement that was destroyed that night often goes unmentioned.
