Anti discourse is eating fandom from the inside-out at the moment. This sort of thing is everywhere in the past few years, because the minority of people who gun hard for that sort of thing are so widespread, self-assured, and so ready to drop vile accusations at the drop of a hat that they are almost impossible to ignore.
I feel like a lot of people see this going on but don’t want to talk about it or comment on it, because they’ve seen the sort of fire that can be drawn if you don’t toe the line absolutely. People skirt the issue, or avoid talking about it, because really, who does want to deal with that whole mess? Who wants to risk the backlash? And then there are the folks who haven’t engaged closely enough to see through the buzzwords; the people who see a post that proclaims that it’s condemning “real pedophiles”, and like any outsider rightly would, thinks, “oh God, that’s awful!” and clicks reblog.
It’s a good camouflage, maybe even the best. I feel like these people might even have one-upped the TERF posts claiming to rail against misogyny, but by analogy at least I think people can be shown what’s really going on.
If we are going to make fandom a safer and less toxic place, I think we need to start facing this behavior head-on and stop averting our gaze as a community. As an individual it’s hard, I know. But there are real world consequences; self harm, mental illness, and suicide attempts (believe me when I say that I know from experience), that cannot be swept aside as easily as antis/fandom police can proclaim that anyone who disagrees with them simply deserves to die. If you’ve ever had tangential contact with that sort of discourse and have internalized what these people say as the norm, I think it would benefit you to take a step back and realize how unhealthy a mentality that is to have. It’s easy to denounce anyone who questions you as a degenerate unworthy of life. Makes things a lot easier for you, but I think that we all know where that can lead.
If you are reading this and truly are unaware of what I’m talking about, let me give you a brief run-down. I don’t have the time or the stomach to jump into this discourse as deep as the rabbit-hole goes, but I will give some context as to where I am speaking from. I am a queer woman with clinical OCD. So called anti-shipping/anti-fic/fandom purity discourse started appearing in my sphere round about four years ago, and pretty much nothing since has been as dangerous to my mental health. I cannot begin to sum up how much self-hate and anguish this sort of gaslighting has resulted in for me, but let me tell you, it’s been bad. My compulsion to deal with this sort of thing tends to manifest as anxious research, and so, trust me. I know what I’m talking about here.
Namely, if you are a complete outsider, there is a school of thought that has taken root in certain younger fan communities, among groups that feel like they lack control over the world at large. As fandom is often the main community that these folks have (I counted myself among that crowd), this frustration has evolved into an reactionary ideology that takes ideas about the cultural impact of fictional works in our society to ludicrous, absurd extremes.
Ideas about poor portrayals having the potential to convey negative ideas to a reader have evolved into the creation of a code of morals that frames any interaction with fiction as a form of moral advocacy for that which it contains. Shipping is reframed as an expression of beliefs about desirable relationship dynamics. Depictions of abuse are reframed as advocacy for abuse. The concept of romanticization, which usually is only applied to ideas in the context of otherwise contextless mainstream works without prior warnings, is transformed into an indictment of any depiction of any that could be perceived as harmful which is not followed by an explicit condemnation of said act. This becomes even more absurd when you consider that these attacks are often aimed at fanfiction which has already been tagged with explicit warnings for the reader. Always invoked to justify this is the spectre of “negative influence on the children”, but this is both neither the responsibility of random internet users operating in adult-tagged spaces, and also, as with the video game violence scare of the 90s, mostly unjustified fearmongering.
Perhaps even worse, this logic is extended to fictional elements that might be thought to recall certain negative ideas in the mind of the reader. Short characters are, fairly offensively, dubbed “child-coded”, and it is verboten to include them in any adult works. Similarly, adult AUs of younger characters which include sexual content are condemned simply because the characters concerned were initially portrayed by a different author as younger! This leads into a deeper rabbit hole, where fictional characters, who are plot figments with no “real” version or portrayal, are effectively reframed as if they were actual people, who can be harmed by the way that they are portrayed in fanfic. In some extreme fringe cases, I have actually seen this been expressed literally; by invocation of alternate realities in which fiction is real, or through otherkin.
These people will claim glibly that they are fighting against real abusers, and who would want to hear what a dirty abuser might say in response? But don’t be fooled. This lens is almost solely turned back on people in fandom communities who are most vulnerable, and is driven by an underlying fear of sex, sexuality, queer expression, and perceived “degeneracy”. Any slight excuse to construe a transformative work as impure is taken as license to reframe the author or artist as scum, and therefore worthy of the harassment they will ultimately receive. Tellingly, the most affected groups are often queer women, and this sort of thing can and does destroy lives and careers. Moreover, the vicious cycle of social pressure and retribution for stepping out of line ensures that this toxic ideology holds people who step into it in its grip, lest they be expunged from their communities. Sight is lost of the fact that, at the end of the day, all that the perpetrator is guilty of is creating fanwork that some people might find distasteful.
There’s a lot more to say which I won’t, but I will stress again that the harm that this sort of thing is doing cannot be underestimated. It’s an insidious and toxic mode of thought that seeps into communities through the buzzwords it leverages - accuse somebody of being a pedophile and people pay attention! But these words are being misused, and this discourse distracts from actual predators even as it is cause for unjustified targets to be suicide baited, driven from fandom spaces, and vindictively destroyed. People who already suffer from mental health issues, and especially anxiety disorders such as OCD, can be driven to self-destruction by the repeated accusations and gaslighting. We need to remind people that these behaviors are not normal, are not the righteous causes they present themselves as, and are not tolerated. In fandom communities particularly, I honestly believe that this issue is one of the most insidious and dangerous that we currently face. Fandom has become nominally progressive, at the expense of trojan horse ideologies such as the anti/purity discourse positioning themselves as too risky to shout down.
I think it is time to stop turning a blind eye, recognize what is happening in our communities, deradicalize the people who are responsible for the harassment, and try to fix some of the damage that has already been done.
