ur a little old to be doing “fandom” and ladling as a french aristocrat

French quasi-aristocrat, thank you very much. My people were all provincial haute bourgeoisie imitating the fashions of the 18th and 19th century Parisian elite, and we were only in a position to do so insofar as we chose to enrich ourselves on a continent (and later country) with no true European aristocracy and did so via an economic system that recreated the dynamics of medieval feudalism. When one considers all the Uptown Anglos and their sycophants who deck themselves out like royalty and parade through the streets as such every Carnival I’d say we’re positively humble by comparison.

As for fandom, it’s cute that for the first time I’m getting lumped in with the “fandom moms” who are apparently the scourge of the anti crowd of Tumblr teenagers for some reason, but I think there’s more than enough sound rebuttal on that subject elsewhere. One’s fannish interests don’t magically vanish once one turns 18/21/25/whatever age you consider someone too old for such things.

fiction-is-not-reality:

fandomisnotyoursafespace:

thefandompolice:

thewoesofyaoi:

thefandompolice:

thewoesofyaoi:

They have us blocked but im petty so here we go 😊 .

Asking non-gay/bi men to stop portraying our romantic/sexual relationships in a fetishizing way is bad and misogynistic ? Telling yall to stop portraying elements like incest/abuse/pedophilia between two men as sexy is a bad thing ?

Do yall even hang around any gay/bi men or do yall get all your information from Tumblr? Like everyone in this thread is nasty, but lets start with anon. Anon you think its okay to generalize all gay male erotica as “big dicks, no lube, and turning straight guys gay” when 1) you aren’t even a gay man and 2) you probably eat up those boring ass johnlock fics where the word gay isn’t even mentioned. Its funny because the tone of your ask makes you sound like you know something when in reality you don’t know jack shit and need to stay in your boring whitebread straight girl lane :^) .

Now for everyone else in this hellhole of a thread. Yall non-gay/bi men don’t know the needs or the wants or the desires of mlm and need to shut the hell up and take a back seat when it comes to gay male erotica. No one is telling you to stop drawing smut or writing fanfiction. We are telling you to stop fetishizing mlm, but yall are so pretentious you can’t even see that maybe gay/bi men know more about this subject than you do. You people believe you are above homophobia and yet find media like killing stalking to be hot and sexy even though its about the torture and abuse of a gay man by a straight man. It disturbs me that the general attitude in fandoms and elsewhere sees the sexual gratification of non-gay/bi men more important than the safety and comfort of young gay minors, who often see this type of shit and become confused and misguided because of its awfully inaccurate depictions of our sexualities and relationships.

And last but not least Lmao @ 21st century whatever you are the nastiest. “Some gay men are the most misogynistic therefore I have an excuse to be homophobic and fetishize gay men and gay sex”. That’s what you sound like. Its pretentious and condescending to act like you know how our relationships work or to act like we are doing OUR OWN erotica and porn wrong. You and all the straight fangirls can go choke I don’t give a shit about homophobes, especially homophobes who think just because they aren’t a man that they can’t possibly harm gay/bi men. Bye.

– mod L

I like how some of your mods are cool and others are little psychos that tell people to choke while pissing themselves over Killing Stalking.

Turning straight boys is one of the most common tropes in live action gay porn that get’s millions upon millions of views. You expect me to believe

you’ve never searched for live action porn. Have you ever been on male run sex story sites for men? Because everything they said was accurate.

Like you keep calling them out of touch when they’re obviously the ones who have gone to the male run sites and stepped outside Tumblr long enough to know what the normie gay guy is googling.

If you think the normie gay dude cares about scientifically accurate soft and cozy erotica lit you’re fucking hilarious and not only do I not believe you’re who you say you’re I don’t believe you have ever left Tumblr and A3O ever. I think I’m the only man I’ve ever known in real life who likes erotica lit and even I’m lukewarm on it because I’d rather just watch fucking porn.

You’re pretending there is some type of objective authentic way of writing men being together while claiming they’re the pretentious ones.

And it hasn’t escaped my notice that every anti-slash person in this discussion so far has not been a gay man and rarely even a trans man, but some form of gender special who has this weird hang up on “authentic yaoiz” that need to be textbook accurate. Let’s never forget that fucking creep who wrote that big long anti yaoi essay chastising straight girls for neglecting to talk about anal douching. ‘Cause that’s something that I often stop the flow of a sex scene to include. /s

Than when I called her out for the bullshit she was she just messaged my gay ass ignoring all of my criticisms and talking about anal douching some more since I offhandedly mentioned how that would quickly dry up your ass.

Anakinsbugs post

got passed around by everyone in your circle and

got over 24,000 notes which is quite a lot for discourse and the whole thing was a lie. And it was made by a creepy freak of a girl, roleplaying as a trans gay dude.

I love how people like you both fail to read our FAQ and the post you are trying to criticize. This response is legit so stupid. Lets just break down each point you try to make.

“Turning straight boys is the most common tropes in live action gay porn and gets millions of views”. Show me the statistics. Show me where millions of people watch porn videos about turning straight boys. Don’t make a statement claiming its reality and not have anything to actually back it up. And yes I have been on male run sex story sites for mlm and those non-gay/bi men generalizing all mlm run content as “big dicks, no lube, and turning straight boys” is not only wrong, but also homophobic as Fuck.

“Like you keep calling them out of touch….blah blah blah (your continued nonsense)”. Yes because they are out of touch. Non-gay/bi men will never ever be in touch with gay/bi male experiences no matter how much “research ” they do. Its also really condescending for a bunch of people to try to splain some bullshit to a marginalized group of people they do not belong to. Also what the hell is “a normie gay guy” ? How does a bunch of non-gay/bi men (who most of whom are obviously cishet pieces of shit) know what the “normie gay guy” is googling ?

“You’re pretending there is some objective authentic way of writing men together while claiming they’re the pretentious ones”. Pretending ? Pretending what? We (us mods) and this blog have never claimed there is an authentic way to write mlm. We are only against the fetishization of mlm in the media, in fandom, and in real life. You and all your little gremlin friends would know this if yall took one moment to read our FAQ or scroll through our blog. And yes they are pretentious because they are trying to splain some nonsense to a marginalized group of people that none of them belong to in the first place.

“Gender special” Hmmm sounds kind of truscummy to me. If you took the time to read our FAQ you’d know that I, mod L, am a cis bi man Lol. Mod N is a gay trans man. Its actually really wild that you don’t believe any gay/bi men are against mlm fetishization. Its also really sad that you clearly hate nonbinary people .

Anyway im done. Go back to squeeing about yaoi with all your cishet friends 👋. Also don’t call me or anyone else a psycho, you bloated toadstool.

Also what the hell is “a normie gay guy” ? How does a bunch of
non-gay/bi men (who most of whom are obviously cishet pieces of shit)
know what the “normie gay guy” is googling ?

Porn companies collect data on terms searched on the website and terms searched by registered users who have identified their gender and sexuality. Many popular porn sites release the data annually because people think it’s interesting.

That’s gotta hurt.

If you’re arguing these guys are lying and out of touch it sounds like
you’ve never left Tumblr. It’s not even really them “doing research” so
much as it is leaving a super far left place obsessed with social
justice.

You
get offended because that’s not what you do and that’s not the kinda porn you
like,

but where is the lie when talking about men as a general group?

“And yes I have been on male run sex story sites for mlm and those
non-gay/bi men generalizing all mlm run content as “big dicks, no lube,
and turning straight boys” is not only wrong, but also homophobic as
Fuck.”

They’re joking about the fact that the porn written on sites like menonthenet would get these gay men yelled at if they posted it to A3O and you saw it.

The community is very uncritical so men write their fantasies freely and sometimes it’s garbage and sometimes they forget to add the lube. But no one gets shamed or yelled at or told to choke or kill themselves because being a bad writer does not warrant you a death via social justice.

The normie (average) gay dude is apparently interested in the sexual fantasy of sucking a straight dudes dick so good he changes his sexuality because those videos have millions and millions of views. Pretty problematic, ( I guess? Not really. I’m not a porn cop.)

Kinda off topic: This whole treating gayness like it’s beyond straight peoples comprehension and their ability to write is exhausting. You guys sound like you’re playing a spy game with decoder pins and trench coasts. I’m tempted to change my icon to Cthulhu every time I see it.

What are you gonna do now start dictating to gay men we’re doing porn wrong too?

Anyway I leave you admitting I was mistaken about something. Straight boy videos don’t get a million views, they get several million views.

Meet the straight tag.

And that’s not really a bad thing and nothing to be ashamed of if you
weren’t so up tight and controlling of everyone problematic sexuality and porn tastes we could all just shrug and laugh.

TWOY is profoundly dishonest, but this post is worth reblogging for the wealth of information it contains. Including the screencaps that TWOY themselves posted, all of which I endorse 100% as absolutely fucking true.

Beside the absolute gem that this whole thread is, let me introduce you to the perfect textbook reaction to when the dogma of an ideology is questioned (taken from the notes): it gets explained away as part of the ideology again

“I wouldn’t be surprised if half of those videos were uploaded by cishet women who didn’t believe gay men could be anything but effeminate, so they call the actors “straight”, meaning “straight-acting.”

Pure anthropology, tumblr version.

Actual (cis) gay guy chiming in on this thread to confirm that those stats about our porn habits are not at all surprising. Turning a straight guy has never been a fantasy of mine, but it’s all over the place in content made by and/or for gay/bi men. Regarding that note @fiction-is-not-reality quoted, the generally understood actual explanation for gay porn actors who are or claim to be straight/straight-acting is that it really is just acting or, as a friend of mine once joked, they really are gay-for-pay and you can tell since those guys only ever bottom. You don’t have to be hard to bottom, so it’s an easy (relatively speaking) position when you’re not sexually attracted to your partner. Also, men who identify as “masc” or “straight-acting” are extremely common on most hookup apps and a reflection of the gay/bi male community’s complicated relationship with traditional masculinity. I can’t fathom how anyone could come to the conclusion that it’s something women came up with.

And yeah, M/M erotica outside fandom spaces varies extensively in quality just like any other, and it’s often just as unrealistic as the people in the OP’s screencaps describe. Speaking as someone who enjoys non-humiliating feminization – wearing lingerie to bed, calling my ass a pussy/boypussy, pregnancy fantasies, etc. – in my own sex life I disagree that those things are inherently misogynistic, just as stuff like daddy kink and the very concept of twinks don’t actually promote incest or “pedophilia” (actually ephebophilia, but I know how Tumblr antis are). Whenever I’ve talked about M/M erotica written by women it’s never been to condemn its very existence – because without it I would have had significantly less reading material that spoke to my own sexual interests growing up, even though I wasn’t really the target audience – but rather to make suggestions based on my own experiences for people who want to write their smut more realistically. Like, yeah, sometimes there’s no lube and no prep because sex can be spontaneous like that, but unless you’re leaning on the power of narrative conservation in fiction it’s probably going to sting and it’s almost definitely going to be messy when it’s all said and done.

Hey, uh, FYI, it’s generally not very nice to put ship hate in a character’s tag, especially since it’s ship hate to a lot of ships. At least tag it as ship hate.

I’ve had this debate before when I answered an ask meme involving Zelda. I fundamentally disagree with the way some people on Tumblr seem to treat courtesy with regard to tagging, particularly in this case since there is a difference between a NOTP – a personal preference to not ship something – and ship hate – active antagonism toward a ship and the idea that anyone else would support it. I made it clear in my answer that other people are free to ship what they like, and my stated reasons against shipping Ike with women (what I assume this ask is specifically referring to) are lifted directly from canon rather than any visceral hatred I have toward those ships. What I said about Ike/Elincia shippers really only pertains to those who refuse to acknowledge that non-straight readings of him are possible and in fact encouraged by certain supports and his two paired endings and arguably reference back to series archetypes and romance tropes (ex. Marth and Nyna or Roy and Guinivere as hero/princess pairings that are not love interests, or that Ike/Soren has parallels with Sigurd/Deirdre). That’s certainly an annoyance directed at certain shippers, but it’s not hate.

As I mentioned when the issue came up with tagging in the Zelda fandom, I find the idea of character and ship tags populated only with the same universally positive content to be incredibly dull. There’s room for neutrality on these subjects, for criticism without total rejection, for clinical “I acknowledge why people would like this character/ship this pairing but feel no investment myself” readings as well as “I don’t like this character/ship for X reason(s) but it’s fine if you do” ones. If anything I think having a broader picture of what people have to say about these things contributes to more active fandom discussion.

Social Justice Calvinism

janiedean:

jonstarks:

callofcuchulainn:

By popular request, and explanation of the term “Social Justice Calvinism”

Social Justice Calvinism, like regular Calvinism, revolves around the idea that human society is so steeped in sin that, not only is it inherently irredeemable, but almost everyone involved is essentially damned (to hell, in the case of real Calvinism, to … I dunno being bad, I guess, in the case of Social Justice Calvinism).

Similarly to real Calvinism, Social Justice Calvinism allows for a small, elect group of people who are miraculously able to rise above the morass of evil that is human society (in real Calvinism this is due to G-d’s will, in Social Justice Calvinism, this comes as a result of their overwhelming moral superiority).

As in real Calvinism, nobody knows who the elect of Social Justice Calvinism are, but they are identified by certain signs (in the case of real Calvinism these signs include prosperity, in Social Justice Calvinism, these signs are things like using trigger warnings or sharing photo sets of queer people of color).

Like real Calvinists, Social Justice Calvinists tend to shun and loudly denounce much of the society that they see as inherently corrupt so as to demonstrate (as much to themselves as to everyone else) that they are likely to be members of the elect. However, because membership in the elect is impossible to determine, a Social Justice Calvinists are often wracked by guilt and anxiety as to whether or not they are actually members of the elect.

Finally, and most importantly, much of Social Justice Calvinism’s appeal comes from its goal of challenging a corrupt and oppressive power structure, and its hints of moral clarity. Social Justice Calvinism so especially frustrating because the things that are being fought for are so important (see I’m one of the elect). As with salvation and prosperity in real Calvinism, many of the signs of goals and signs of the Social Justice Calvinist elect are actually quite desirable, but unfortunately they come at the price of believing that nearly everyone, up to and including you, is damned.

@tombliboos @janiedean okay but this is Perfect?

… wow, everything I’ve ever thought about The Discourse in a neat post. OP you’re a blessing.

we could probably have a long debate about the fact that social justice calvinists come from the US and US society was basically born out of calvinism…

As most of my experience with Calvinist Protestant groups involves specifically their anti-Catholic strain, allow me to add on to this analogy from that angle. Calvinist morality does indeed fixate on communal guilt and self-loathing based on who may or may not belong to the elect, but that’s not to suggest that they don’t see value in a consistent external enemy as well. Contemporary US Calvinists, i.e. evangelicals or “non-denominational” Christians, have their well-publicized indictments against homosexuals and the promiscuous and Muslims and so forth, but the original enemy of their religious movement and one that still occasionally gets brought up in situations where it would be relevant is the Catholic Church. While all of the Protestant denominations that formed during the Reformation and its aftermath did so because of some objection to the Church’s dogma and/or practices, Calvinism was the most influential group to be virulently anti-Catholic, with a legacy that engulfed England before crossing the Atlantic and becoming the backbone of Anglo-American culture.

I bring this up because Calvinists’ antagonism toward the Church is in many ways comparable to the way fandom purity culture can end up treating content creators and others who could be said to have a strong intrinsic connections to issues of representation in media (ex. being LGBT and/or POC, particularly when they belong to the specific group(s) being represented). In both cases canon is treated as if it must be “pure” at all times: pure of pagan elements and anything else not in or of the Bible on the one hand, and pure of any “problematic” representational elements on the other. Both suggest a fear of nuance, that Catholics are aware of and completed unbothered by the fact that much of our doctrine and beliefs come from Church Tradition (some of which indeed borrowed from various pagan religions) rather than Scripture, or that people within a fandom may enjoy exploring darker themes and messier relationship dynamics in fanwork with or without any kind of moral prescription to accompany them. For fandom this devolves into intense pressure on content creators to produce fiction with as few problematic elements and as much “good representation” as possible, because antis and their ilk seem unable to separate fanon from canon or recognize that fanon has its own worth and does not need to be considered inherently inferior to canon.

When this inevitably doesn’t happen because of the harshly punitive nature of purity culture’s moral code (comparable to what I believe is referred to in some Calvinist circles as backsliding), the next move then becomes to declare that everyone involves in the creation of the “problematic” media – and anyone who unapologetically enjoys it – is “canceled.” When it comes to people who feel represented by the work in question and who speak positively of that representation, their opinions and ultimately even their LGBT/POC/other marginalized group identities get invalidated in the same way. This happens even in cases where this invalidation is fundamentally absurd, ex. when a group of mostly non-male fans talks over mlm on the subject of M/M representation. Incidentally, guess which group of Protestant denominations popularized the equally absurd idea that Catholics aren’t really Christians?

This is how purity culture has gone from “I reject your canon and substitute my own [fanon]” to “I reject your authority over your own canon and proclaim my less problematic fanon to be canon.” The resulting cultural landscape all feels very monotonous as well; just as Calvinist doctrine appears remarkably rigid for a religious movement that initially marketed itself on individual interpretation of Scripture, the perfect fandom for purity-obsessed antis would be millions of identical fluffy coffee shop AUs where everyone is queer and POC and no real conflict ever happens and the sex – if it happens at all – is the most blandly vanilla and endlessly repeated erotica ever put to print.

The parameters may shifted just a little to include people who aren’t white and straight (and probably also coffee), but that all sounds remarkably Puritan to me.

Towards a working definition of “anti”

shinelikethunder:

Most of us know it when we see it, but I figure any discussion about fandom antis and how to respond to them would benefit from having a solid answer to “what even is an anti, anyway?” Laying out the exact characteristics that distinguish anti wank from every other kind of wank also helps clarify what, exactly, is going on here, why it’s appalling, and also why it’s appealing to those who engage in it.

I’m going to define it as a behavior rather than a particular type of person. The anti movement is:

1. A form of intra-community aggression within fandom, that
2. Seeks, as its primary goal, to designate out-groups who are fair game for social brutality, by
3. Categorically declaring certain forms of fan engagement (ships, characters, fic genres, fanart styles, video game mods…) to be intrinsically morally wrong and in need of stamping out, regardless of how or why one engages with them, and
4. Justifies this by claiming a causal relationship between the targeted activities and some form of (usually SJ-flavored) real-world harm that they allegedly promote.

The order is important, because it goes from most to least essential. 1 is fundamental context, 2 is ultimate purpose, 3 is the mechanism used to accomplish that purpose, 4 is the justification for using that mechanism.

Let’s take it number by number.

Keep reading

rabbittiddy:

leproblematique:

fiction-is-not-reality:

theassholeantiarchive:

a-ranting-chief:

lesbiankrolia:

normal people multiship but anyone who self-identifies as a “multishipper” is 99% guaranteed to be a creep.

@theassholeantiarchive @just-antithings

???????????

I tried going through the notes, sure that I was missing some kind of context that would make the original post suddenly make sense, but I only got people going “wtf op?” and then OP:

and it didn’t help, I’m still confused.

I looked through the notes of this post and someone was ‘kind’ enough to translate the thing:

In other words, people who openly label ourselves ‘multishippers’ are far less likely to buy into the anti worldview that something shouldn’t be shipped on the basis of its moral value. I’m sure that this doesn’t apply to all openly-declared multishippers and that some do have attitudes along the lines of ‘ewww, you can’t ship that!’, but it’s been my observation that a multishipper label does lessen the probability that someone is an anti or holds anti-adjacent views.

You know what’s the funniest thing about this? If this is OP’s reasoning, then it also clarifies why a lot of antis keep foaming at the mouth at fans over 30 / call older fans ‘disgusting’ and other such charming terms. This is because older fans also tend to not look at fandom and shipping through a primarily morality-centric lens, but rather a pleasure-centric one (as in ‘does this ship please me / make me feel hot and bothered’ versus ‘is this ship an ideal to strive toward.’ Nota Bene: under this model, a ship can and does fit the pleasure criteria by being ‘wholesome / healthy’, if that’s what the shipper is into – it’s just that someone operating on a pleasure-centric framework is far less likely to start howling if other people’s enjoyment comes from a different source than their own, when compared to someone who judges ships primarily on the basis of morality / immorality)..

There’s also the thing that older fans view it as a hobby or interest, while antis tend to view it as a political area or a competition, sometimes both.

Part of it is the outside subcultural zeitgeist change (from inclusion and cooperation to derision and competition) while another part is this seeming push to go back to the worst part of the 90s in the wider youth culture.

Hence why older fans tend to be DLDW and MSINYS, while Antis (and s lot of younger fans) seem to be the lovechild of Conservative Evangelicals from the 90s and the hipsters that nobody liked back in the late 00s early 10s.

jakathine said

you’re definitely asking a lot of questions i’ve been wondering too. and yeah, voltron’s pedo thing is so bad i was going to get ‘involved more’ with fandom and quickly backed off cause so many of this people 16 and under were doing this (plus im an 18+ person anyways) and i certainly didnt wanna be involved. i feel u on the BNF of sherlock (got involved w/that at one point) but yeah. it’s rly weird this puritanical viewpoint where everything MUST be ‘unproblematic’

Indeed. It was already kind of a long shot that I’d ever get involved in VLD. I was mostly watching it as a follow-up to The Legend of Korra since it’s much of the same creative team. The basic premise does not appeal to me at all, even though it’s soft enough sci-fi that I can at least consume the media and be entertained even if I don’t have the desire to do much else (not unlike Star Wars, which coincidentally also has a nightmarish fandom that liberally applies social justice rhetoric in the name of ship wars). For whatever it’s worth I think that Sheith has the most interesting dynamic, even if I’m still not as invested as I was with Wuko in LoK, and Klance is strangely light on shippy moments given how large a following it has ~~which might explain how age discourse and the cries of pedo/incest obsession got so big~~. I don’t see myself ever doing a post series on Sheith, put it that way – not that I think any of the major VLD ships can possibly be lacking for meta.

I need to talk for a bit about fandom.

I was browsing through some of the tags for ships I follow but with which I do not actively engage when a question occurred to me: when did fandom spaces become so puritanical? The first fandom in which I noted the flagrant and widespread misuse of the term “pedophilia” was Voltron, maybe a little over a year ago, and while I’m aware that a phenomenon in one megafandom can indeed spread outward to show up in others (as happened with omegaverse AUs and Supernatural, or so I’ve read), this type of draconian – and often factually incorrect – moralizing and the corresponding culture of self-censorship and quick blocking have become so prevalent that it’s hard to imagine it beginning from a single source. I suppose I should be thankful that my current primary fandom has enough incest and other sketchy sexual stuff going on in its canon to largely ward off the “anti” culture.

Of course I’ve been in fandom spaces long enough to have a healthy degree of skepticism. For the first half year or so that I was on Tumblr I was involved in the Les Mis fandom during one of its revivals, the closest I’ve ever come to participating in a megafandom apart from some brief interactions with a BNF(?) in the Sherlock fandom. During that time I was on the periphery of a growing ship war between one M/M pairing and one M/F pairing, with some of the participants resorting to cries of misogyny over the former and queer erasure over the latter. Rather pointless given what these characters’ relationships (or lack thereof) are in canon, but nonetheless it was a quick education in how fans could appropriate the language of social justice for the sake of gaining some kind of moral high ground in ship wars – more progressive rhetoric than that of my earliest online fan culture days in the Harry Potter fandom in its heyday, but just about as prone to being disingenuous. Which, fine, use whatever tactics you see fit if it makes you feels like you’re winning an argument with little to no real stakes; amoral as I am I’ve little right to complain.

I can’t say that I’ve ever felt individually and directly attacked in fandom spaces. I’ve had a laugh or two over anons on other sites accusing my blog of being pretentious, or the culture from which I come and for which I occasionally speak of being unrelatable, or me of being misogynistic

– apparently because I’ve been known to side-eye some portrayals of M/M sex and relationships produced by women – and getting a pass for it because I’m a cis gay man, but no substantive and credible attacks have ever been actually directed at me. I therefore feel a little like I just ought to roll my eyes and move on whenever I see someone confusing ephebophilia with pedophilia (or even more ludicrous, age gaps between legal adults with pedophilia), expressing sweeping generalizations about what is and is not a healthy relationship because of X dynamic, or quibbling pointlessly over who does and doesn’t belong in the queer community or, indeed, if the word “queer” is even appropriate or if it should be discarded as a slur. Hell, I’m turning 30 later this year and have spent the last four years in something that could be called a mutually exploitative relationship with a man in his mid 60s, while unbeknownst to him taking other sexual partners on the side according to my pleasure and practical needs. I am unapologetically problematic in all manner of ways, and I’d like to think that that’s kept me from having to deal with personal attacks on something as comparatively trivial as my shipping preferences.

But the moralizing….It’s hard to fathom that so much of the prudish vitriol spewing from fandom spaces these days is coming from people younger than me. Even if I can believe that a fair number of these people do not actually care about the causes they claim to support so long as they can appear to be in the right, does this mean that we’re going to have to look forward to even more of this in the future? I’m accustomed to pushing back against the opinions of the fanatical Protestants that persist on the edges of New Orleans society, spiritual descendants of the Puritans themselves whose conservatism especially with regards to anything involving sex is entirely expected and is for them practically a cultural mandate. But on Tumblr, an allegedly progressive online space frequently concerned with men (and less often women) fucking each other in various configurations that seems to eschew all theology-based morality and that of Christianity in particular? Where is it coming from, and why would anyone want to introduce such a thing in defiance of what ought to be an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere for fan content and community? It’s certainly not helping any ship arguments as far as I’m concerned, as I’ll take textual analysis and my personal sexual and romantic preferences over shipping something because the alternative is “problematic” any day. Unusual and unconventional dynamics make for better stories and better fan content in general, which now that I think of it was a big reason why slash became so disproportionately popular in online fandoms to begin with. Fandom trends come and go, and this is one I’ll personally be happy to see go sooner rather than later…though I somewhat doubt it’ll come as quickly as I would like.

agoddamn:

I’m still beside myself at that post from days ago that claimed that Voltron shipping was literally the reason that gay men got murdered.

Imagine being THAT self-important. Imagine looking at Matthew Shepard’s obituary and being like “so many lives ruined by Shiro/paladins”.

(The argument, incidentally, was that gay age gap shipping reinforces the predatory homosexual stereotype that heterosexual men are so afraid of, and by reinforcing it with gifsets and headcanon blogs on tumblr more gay men will be beaten to death in real life. As we all know, violent heterosexual men are the largest known consumers of Voltron slashfic.)

I’m not sure I could find it in myself to ask for a link to that…eesh. Predatory older gay men seducing (virginal and therefore presumed heterosexual) teenage boys – that beloved canard of fundamentalist sorts – I can at least see as a logical misreading of age gaps in M/M relationships, but gay bashing by straight men? What.

I find it both amusing and disturbing that the “pedophilia” arguments surrounding around the new Voltron has stuck with me more than anything on the actual show has. Why does no one apparently know the difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia? Why does no one point out that pseudo-ephebophilia (i.e. twinks, and the men who are into them) has always existed as a type of relationship dynamic between gay men both in media and occasionally in real life? Why does puritanical moralizing continue to be a thing in shipping wars?