some more examples of mine

I've been thinking about tumblr purity culture today and the whole uwu you can only write healthy relationship fic uwu attitudes and why it bothers me, because for a while I wondered if I really was just a hypocrite in calling out problematic m/f ships in canon when the kind of f/f ships I like are definitely not all that healthy. But I realized the issue comes down to two related things. 

1. most people who accuse femslash shippers of hypocrisy in this way (i.e. for shipping an unhealthy f/f relationship while criticizing the canon m/f relationship for being unhealthy) are often making a false equivalency. Usually the f/f relationships are unhealthy due to an interpersonal issue/personality clashes and/or personal insecurities. But the m/f relationships that are criticized are ALWAYS being criticized because their unhealthiness stems directly from the systemic oppression of women and misogyny. Unhealthiness on an interpersonal level can be rectified and often IS in the character development and the two characters learning how better to communicate and interact with each other. Whereas a misogynistic man oppressing his love interest is never going to be rectified without a much greater amount of work, change, and self reflection on his part, and by then that woman has no business being in a relationship with him because he has already done damage that will haunt the relationship. The crux is, no mainstream canon has done the work to ACTUALLY redeem a misogynist in a realistic way and actually call him out on his misogyny. That's not to say people IRL cannot learn and change, but that is not usually the journey that is shown. Usually, he will possibly alter his behavior in order to keep the girl with him (which means he hasn't actually learned especially if he still treats other women badly) or the girl will just learn to put up with her own oppression because "she loves him". It is also way more prevalent IRL for girls to believe they can change a misogynistic man and then end up in an abusive relationship than for the man to actually learn and change in this kind of situation. 2. Reading fanfiction that is portraying a type of unhealthy relationship that is unique and not normalized is very different than fanfiction or canon portraying an unhealthy relationship that has been so normalized by society that you could go out and find a hundred other books, movies, shows, etc, portraying that EXACT type of relationship. In the case of the first, readers will see "oh this is a unique/different/weirdly compelling fantasy I can read for the thrills," but in the second readers just see something so normalized that it resembles situations that exist in real life and have been pounded into our minds over and over again by the media. So that reader will either not recognize it as being unhealthy and oppressive because it is so normalized, or they will recognize it, but by consuming it will only add to their desensitization to that specific type of oppression making it harder for them in the future to react when they see it, either IRL or in fiction.

The point is, an unhealthy f/f relationship is not equivalent to an m/f relationship based in misogyny. In addition, it is nearly impossible to write a completely 100% healthy relationship, because tbh those just do not exist IRL either. Every relationship will have issues at some point. And while it is true that writing more healthy aspirational f/f fiction could be useful for expanding our imagination of what we as queer women want out of romance, it is also true that exploring complex and potentially unhealthy relationships also gives us tools to navigate more types of interpersonal situations and also give us more opportunity to pursue the kind of thrill and excitement that we wouldn't pursue IRL. In conclusion, it's good to have healthy ships in f/f fic, but it is also not SO HORRIBLE TERRIBLE KILLING SOCIETY to write problematic f/f fic either, and going around saying that people who write "problematic" f/f fic are horrible people is just so reductionist and pointless and tbh harmful.  Thanks for coming to my TED talk.