#the cool thing is when you meet ppl in real life and talk about sex/kinks is that literally NO ONE is like this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

freedom-of-fanfic · 7 years

Text

antishipping as the ‘cool new trend’

or: why are most antis under 25 years old? (posted June 2017)

I really think that antishipping is a movement that’s gaining ground with the younger & newer arrivals to fandom spaces; a kind of ‘cool trend’, so to speak. In aggregate, antishipping culture is beautifully constructed to be particularly appealing to teenage or college-age people in the late 2010′s - and especially American people - who are marginalized, oppressed, often social outcasts in real life and often under-educated about their own marginalized identity, and I kind of wanted to get into why.

EDIT (October 2018): this post is was originally put up in June 2017. I’ve tweaked it a bit to correct some stuff I now think is just patronizing/incorrect, but overall, I now think it’s overly reliant on adolescent growth stages when the best explanations are societal changes (fandom being on viral social media, fandom being conflated with social justice activism, and increasingly authoritarian trends in 21st century America.)

the other day I posted to talk a little about why I think antis tend to be young (and American). To sum up & simultaneously add a little more:

a brain still growing - until the age of 22-25, the frontal lobe of the brain does not finish development. the frontal lobe handles higher reasoning skills and complex problem-solving. Thus: the growing mind is particularly prone to incomplete reasoning, black and white thinking, and total empathy failure, making it hard for those under 25 to fully comprehend the impact of their actions, sympathize with others, or tackle social problems with nuance. Truly comprehending that others come from entirely different worldviews or have entirely different experiences and that being different doesn’t make them wrong and that most deep-seated problems need complex solutions that require nuance tends to come with this final brain growth. (Not always, of course. but often.) nah I’ve completely changed my mind on this. It’s true that physiological changes are still occurring in teens that make empathy harder, but they can respect the choices of others just as well as an adult can.

current American sex education being mostly scaremongering and abstinence-only + ready availability of sexual content, specifically pornographic material, online + hypersexual marketing = a deeply fucked cultural understanding of sex that adolescents are particularly unequipped to detangle

escaping religious/Christian fundamentalism but not black&white thinking or authoritarian ‘us vs them’ mindset: the moral/communal purity that organized Christianity often demands can take years to deprogram (and this is not to mention the gender essentialism, homophobia/queerphobia, and anti-sex/anti-kink messages, accompanied by a strong undercurrent of anti-intellectualism to discourage self-education on these subjects!) teens just breaking away from this toxicity are especially unequipped to untangle themselves. Young ppl tend to take the same worldview/us vs them/b&w thinking they grew up with to a more liberal cause instead (such as enforcing ‘social justice’ in shipping), with a side-order of internalized, unexamined anti-lgbt/sex/kink/etc rhetoric that dovetails rather neatly with exclusionist rhetoric.

exclusionary gatekeeping as baby’s first lgbt/queer culture lesson - transformative fandom is a frequent haven for marginalized people who don’t see themselves in the media they consume (so they change the media to meet their emotional, sexual, social, etc needs, you see?). because it’s not taught in schools here in the US, it’s not too uncommon for newcomers to get their first big dose of history and cultural education that’s not centered around straight white men in fandom. but what are they learning? here on tumblr, since about 2013, exclusionists have used the relative lack of education on queer history to build an false history, one where the gender binary is strongly enforced and sexualities can only exist on the binary axis: nb/queer/ace/pan and sometimes even bi and trans -identifying people are erased or ‘not oppressed enough’. this history is the one that young entrants into fandom are more likely to encounter first and have no knowledge with which to counter it. Antishipping derives its mode of operation and principle values from exclusionists. It dictates who can write or do what based on their sexual/gender identity (and sometimes race as well). Its definition of social justice is also heavily influenced by exclusionists because its members are mostly young people who learned all their queer history from exclusionists.

the particularly adolescent vulnerability to peer pressure (the need to belong & the fear of being ostracized): teens are particularly inclined to be influenced by friendships and maintaining social ties. [...] it’s easy to become an anti in order to keep your friends and almost impossible to quit without losing everything, and teens are especially vulnerable to this kind of social structure. I think this was a factor 18 months ago, but not so much now. both ‘sides’ of this argument are pretty well-known and people in fandom can have strong opinions on shipping or anti-shipping from very early on.

less focus on teaching critical thinking & self-government. Education in America has long been aimed towards adequate training to work an assembly line, but 21st century American parenting and education both have neglected teaching young people how to make decisions for themselves & how to engage in critical analysis of what they see and read. antishipping is a highly cohesive, insular culture with enforced rules of conduct, striking clear in/out lines and valuing loyalty and groupthink over originality and intellectualism. also: keeping the party line & persecution of outsiders is encouraged, further strengthening the need to conform.

having a just cause & a space to control: antishipping rests its laurels on a(n incomplete, corrupted) form of social justice/righting the wrongs of the privileged. being an anti feels like making a difference b/c your actions have visible impact on your immediate surroundings. (and having a space you feel you can control can be even more urgent with additional pressures like abusive home situations, past traumatic experiences, academic pressure, untreated/unrecognized mental illness, being forced into the closet b/c of queer/transphobia, etc.)

an American (and to a lesser degree, western European) post 9/11* cultural shift from prioritizing personal freedom to prioritizing communal safety; those under the age of 20 were 3 or younger or not yet born when the shift happened. antishipping prioritizes communal ‘safety’ (‘bad’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘inappropriate’ things must never be mentioned to protect people from hearing about them and being either corrupted or harmed) over personal freedom (allowing ‘bad’/’dangerous’ things to be discussed, and it is up to the individual to personally decide what content to avoid).

(*actually, this shift started in the US before 9/11. 9/11 just sped it up.)

of course, all of this is conjecture based on my own experiences and observations, and it’s not a set of rules - just circumstances that I believe absolutely encourage young fandom members to end up falling headfirst into antishipping and either never notice how hurtful it is or never get the courage to leave it behind. And I think there’s a lot more the popularity/prevalence of antishipping today, but this post is already longer than I meant it to be.

(I always go light on racism when i talk about antishipping because while antis frequently accuse shippers of racism, it’s disingenuous to class racism as the same kind of oppression as lgbt+-phobia & misogyny, particularly in America - they’re related, but not the same. Centering non-white (and especially black) voices does not get the same focus as centering lgbt and women’s voices in fandom, and I think it’s easy to dismiss legitimate charges of racism as ‘anti bullshit’ when we class all these types of marginalization together.)

#ever think about how white feminism seems like such a natural dovetail with radfems?#antishipping #anti culture #why antis do the thing #reg culture #christian fundamentalism #what is sex ed? we just don't know #an americentric post

4K notes · View notes

heartofheir · 7 years

Note

Psst. You know why I'm here. Do eeeeet. :3c

fcuk

1,2 3 and 10 are done! :D

4: Do you find it easy to trust others?not really lmao

5: What were you doing at 11PM last night?knitting and listening to the off topic podcast

6: You’re drunk and lost walking down the road; who is with you?my dogs and @themysteriousballetanon 7: What would you do if you found out you had been cheated on?lie down on the floor, cry and than kick their ass8: Are you close with your dad?kinda, we are both have the same kind of humour and personality which is p cool

9: I bet you kissed someone last night, right?ye i smooch my doggos when i got bk from work last night

11: You can only drink ONE liquid for the rest of your life - what is it?coffee, its got some water in it so ill be fine

12: Do you like hickeys?ye

13: What time do you go to bed?5:30am oops

14: Is there someone who continuously lets you down?ya

15: Can you text as quickly with one hand as you do both?nah im quicker with both hands ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

16: Do you always answer your texts?yea unless i forget or fall asleep

17: Do you hate the person you fell the hardest for?Y U P

18: When was the last time you talked to one of your best friends?yesterday; we all went to the beach it was top notch

19: Is there someone that makes you happy every time you see them?my dogs and my siblings even though they are all little shits

20: What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?probs something about being tired af

21: Is anyone else in the room with you?i hope not….

22: Do you believe what goes around comes around?i guess?

23: Were you happier four months ago than you are now?nope

24: Is there someone you wish you could fix things with?i think so

25: In the past week, have you cried?yea

26: What colour is the shirt you are wearing?maroon

27: Do people ever call you by your last name?yea a variation of it that i cant say cause i dont wanna give my last name out to the interwebs lmao

28: Is anyone ignoring you right now?possibly

29: Do you have a best friend?yea kinda

30: Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the last person you kissed?nope

31: Who was your last call/text message from?my manager telling me what time i start work tomorrow

32: Are you mad at anyone?i dont get mad i just get tired™

33: Have you ever kissed someone older than you?yea

34: How old will the last person you kissed be on his/her next birthday?21

35: How many more days until your birthday?im not doing math go away

36: Do you have any summer plans yet?nope just working alot r.i.p me

37: Do you have any good friends of the opposite sex?ye! :D

38: Are you keeping anything from your best friend(s) now?yup one of them doesnt even know im gay lmao

39: Do you have a secret that you’ve never told anyone?ye

40: Have you ever regretted kissing someone?kinda?

41: Do you think age matters in relationships?if theres a giant age gap than yea it does

42: Are you available?nope! :D

43: How many people have you had real, strong feelings for since high school ended?no idea my dude

44: If you had to get a piercing (not ears), what would you get?so many!! i wanna get an industrial, another helix ring, maybe my tongue, nipples lol, belly button and my second lot of normal ear piercings plus alot more ear ones

45: Do you believe exes can be friends?it can be awkward af but yea

46: Do you regret anything?lots of things lmao

47: Honestly, what’s on your mind right now?im running out of mango ice tea :(

48: Did you ever lose a best friend?yea

49: Was your last kiss a mistake?yes and no?

50: Why aren’t you pursuing the person you like?she already said yes! (miraculously)

51: Has the last person you kissed ever seen you cry?yep

52: Do you still talk with the person you LAST kissed?he was an ass to me last time we spoke so no

53: What was the last thing you ate?i got one of the chefs at work to make me gnocchi it was delicious

54: Did you get any compliments today?nope but one of my new coworkers last night said i was really good at my job!! :O

55: Where are you going on your next vacation?no where so far, but one of my friends wants to go to rottnest at some point though

56: Do you own anything from other countries?ye! my auntie went to france and brought me bk a really pretty kitty mask not a furry lol

57: Are most of your friend guys or girls?i guess its even but more so guys

58: Where have you lived most of your life?i use to travel around when i was younger but now ive been in the same spot for 10 years I NEED TO L E A V E

59: When was the last time you took a long drive?i wasnt the one driving but it was when i was a babby and we drove from my hometown to perth took us 5 hours

60: Have you ever played Spin the Bottle?nope

61: Have you ever TPd someone’s house?nah but our house was tomatoed once

62: Who do you text the most?it changes all the time

63: What was the last movie you saw?moana! i loved it!!

64: What’s preventing your current boyfriend/girlfriend from going back to their ex? i dont actually know

65: How many boyfriends/girlfriends did you have in 2011?none

66: Is the last person you kissed younger than you?nope

67: Do you curse around your parents?not on purpose it just slips out

68: Are you happy with where you live?nope

69: Picture of yourself?

70: Are you a monogamous person or do you believe in open-ended relationships?im a jealous hoe so just monogamous

71: Have you ever been dumped?no

72: What do you most like about making out?i dont think a guy being like a mcfucking vacumn cleaner counts as making out so i wouldnt know

73: Have you ever casually made out with someone who you weren’t seriously involved with?yes but again i dont think it counts as making out

74: When you kiss someone for the first time, is it usually you who initiates it or the other?i just go ‘fuck it' and do it (but only if i know they cool with it)

75: What part of a person’s body do you find most attractive?hands and backs, also necks

76: Who was the last person you talked to last night before you went to bed?a friend i use to go to school with

77: Had sex with someone you knew less than an hour?nah

78: Had sex with someone you didn’t know their name?nope

79: What makes your heart flutter and brings a big cheesy smile to your face?pickup lines im a sucker for them

80: Would you get involved with someone if they had a child already?ye! i loves kids

81: Has someone who had a crush on you ever confessed to you?yea

82: Do you tell a lot of people when you have a crush?nope

83: Do you miss your last sweetie?fuck no

84: Last time you slow danced with someone?MCFUCKING YR 9 there was this guy who liked me since yr 7 and me and him were both in dance class at school and OF COURSE the dance teacher put us together for the slow dance performance i left dance and moved to drama cause it just got way too uncomfortable

85: Have you ever ‘dated’ someone you’ve never met?ye! im dating a furry from the internet

86: How can I win your heart?you already have ;0

87: What is your astrological sign?cancer! karkat

88: What were you doing last night at 12 AM?the same thing i was doing at 11pm

89: Do you cook?ye but i tend to set things on fire

90: Have you ever gotten back in touch with an old flame after a time of more than 3 months of no communication?ye

91: If you’re single right now, do you wish you were in a relationship?i dont have to wish :D

92: Do you prefer to date various people or do you pretty much fall into monogamous relationships quickly?id prefer a monogamous relationship

93: What physical traits do you look for in a potential interest?not a clue my dude

94: Name four things that you wish you had!more garlic bread from work (we make the BEST gb), mango ice tea, unlimited wifi and a phone that can actually work

95: Are you a player?of games, yes; of people, no

96: Have you ever kissed 2 people in one day?nope

97: Are you a tease?ive been told i am but i dont mean to lmao

98: Ever meet anyone you met on Tumblr?i saw @miss--kiwi yesterday at work and than she was mean 2 me even after i gave her gb :

99: Have you ever been deeply in love with someone?what even is love

100: Anybody on Tumblr that you’d go on a date with?id date the FUCK outta @themysteriousballetanon

101: Hugs or Kisses?both! oxox

102: Are you too shy to ask someone out?normally yes but sometimes ill have a rare moment of bravery lmao

103: The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?height

104: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you babe?may or may not be a kink for me LMAO

105: If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was in relationship, would you go for it?fuck no

106: Do you flirt a lot?i have no idea how so sometimes ppl think im flirting when im being friendly, or think im being friendly when im flirting

107: Your last kiss?sometime in September in the back of a car with a VACUUM APPARENTLY

108: Have you kissed more than 5 people since the start of 2012?nope

109: Have you kissed anyone in the past month?only my doggos cause they deserve all the kisses

110: If you could kiss anyone who would it be?my girlfriend even though im not into kissing furries :3c

111: Do you know who you’ll kiss next?my dogs and hopefully teanii

112: Does someone like you currently?i would hope my gf does

113: Do you currently have feelings for anyone?ye!! :D

114: Do you like to be in serious relationships or just flings?flings really arent that great

115: Ever made out with just a friend?ye

116: Are you happier single or in a relationship?i thrive off affection so id prefer a relationship

117. you didnt give me a question to answer and ur asleep rn so imma use this spot to say ur a gotdamn cutie

#asks #this took me so long cause i had to leave for work lmao

1 note · View note

moidse · 5 years

Text

Rant time

So i am left with such an anxious feeling around them... lets list the reasons!!

1. I didnt tell the whole truth that I hung out with my ex on my birthday. (I didn't want to explain how that situation ended because it very much so was in me meeting them and i feel like thats too much to explain on the first hang out. Like, it doesnt have anyrhing to do with them personally and i also feel like it makes me look bad in the very exact ways they said they fear 2 b treated.) (Like me hanging and being lovey af with my ex for 3 days in a row then we are apart for 3 days and i have already fallen out of love and have moved on completely. They literally explained that fear and i couldnt help but think yeah i literally did that to someone like 2 weeks ago so... it made me nervous but also they said they see me as the love of their life and it was from that point on i knew we couldnt be doing anything together more.)

2. They never made a move to kiss or cuddle like hardcore. But they obviously like me, they always said yeah to kissing me and cuddling me and they did invite me over to their place so.. it just reminds me of the reverse of when me and o were first talking and they let their anxiety get to them and asked me if i liked them and was interested and stuff and i was like yeah im just holding back which is literally what my current boo said they do out of fear of someone dipping instantly which makes sense i usually hold back too but just not as much as them.

3. I've personally never have ever gone out of my way to ~court~ someone as much as i have with this person. But a big part of that is they live an hour away so i have to jump through hoops to find an excuse to go their and see them. Now that i think about it i was chasing ashley for a while and going to shows just cuz i knew she'd be there so i guess lets be real, ive def gone out of my way and chased ppl irl... i feel like my crush on ashley was the last time i did that tho and they were never even that into me lol. And lets be real this person now is a very similar flavor as ashley. God i have a strong kink for white crusty punks although this person is hella mot crusty lmao. Im more crusty than them which i honestly wasnt expecting. I know this specific anxiety point is me already feeling bad for myself for wasting my time driving an hour one way to see this person and it doesnt work well, and me making all the first moves which ive never done before, except with ashley wowy the parallels are strong (and we all know how that ended).

I am very interested in getting to know them more. I have a pretty big crush on them.

Things i want to keep in mind:

1. I do not have to change myself for anyone. Do not be afraid to be unapologetically yourself!! Any fear of them being ~too cool~ for you is a reflection of your own self-worth and not what's actually going on. We are both pretty cool and cute. We are very different in many ways but also have a lot in common which is exciting. I really feel like i can learn so much by hanging around them and their pals. They all are a lot more educated than myself when it comes to politics and ive always wanted to learn more and what better way then surrounding yourself with those types of people!

- - - -

Misc. Points i want to go into

- they are non-monog, which lets be real, did have me feeling mixed emotions because well the idea i couldve still been with o but idk no no i think dropping o was a good move. It would only show my new person that drama and stuff, and at that point i knew we had no future so why still be with them. The sex honestly was already getting less exciting for me anyways.

- i am totally open to practicing ethical non-monog. I just am not sure what my own boundaries are. I suppose I'd want to know if something is beginning to form with someone else. Like i dont wanna know every crush and shit like o, but if things start becoming real I'd wanna know. And also, we JUST started talking so i feel like it will be literally months until they get back that we would even set boundaries like that. I feel like you wouldnt even talk about that stuff unless you become officially partners or whatever... so i feel like i dont need to worry about it that much now tbh and i am open to it i just dont want it to be like o and I'll have to explain that to them. I know i dont want them to share intimate sexual details about me with others (partners) (o telling me the pegging) and i know whatever we both feel comfortable with it needs to be balanced and not them having more freedom than me. Honestly, if we get this far this would be a lovely time to communicate about how all that happened.

I think I may wanna re-listen to the book with the anxious chapter, and finish the book in generals

Writing my feelings is so helpful!

0 notes