As a rape victim, I’ve now been informed I favor abuse over love for liking fictional couples. https://twitter.com/ysgawen/status/1252670246198050817

See this is why I get upset about fandom policing. Ultimately, you’re saying a person’s romantic fiction preferences determines if they’re a person “deserving” of abuse.

It’s like folx that say kinksters deserve abuse for enjoying consensual kink in safe spaces. This inability to separate reality from fiction means a person that consents to fiction has somehow consented to real life abuse.

Every argument I’ve seen used against fans of consensual yet problematic ships is somethjng I also saw used against kinksters. And they’re all arguments that lead to a lot of hate towards real abuse survivors in both communities.

Once you start saying abuse victims deserves or are asking for abuse based on fictional preferences, it’s amazing how quickly communities become unsafe for *all* victims in *all* circumstances.

The person screaming the quoted tweet above is a TERF. It’s easy to dismiss her b/c she’s a TERF. But “fictional preferences make you worthy of abuse” was a core feminist talking point against kink & sex work until rather recently.

It’s amazing how quickly the goals shift here, too. Like I’ve seen folx say that consensual age play is pedophilia. Ok. I don’t agree, but I get it. Then they saw “looking/acting young” is pedophelia. Suddenly, wearing pigtails or baby talk in kink is pedophilia.

When goal posts around consensual sexual interests of practices shift, what’s really the problem here is some folx want to call all non-normative sexual practices abusive, & that will be used most strongly against marginalized folx.

Everyone has a problematic sexual kink or interest. Every. One. Does. Almost no one engages strictly in vanilla missionary sex w/ an opposite gender person of the exact same age. Which means all of us can be labeled abusive. And it’s fucked.

My marriage to my husband has been used as proof I approve of abusive situations b/c there’s an age gap. My being submissive has been used as proof.

Anything, any consensual kink or problematic fictional interest, can be used as proof you “approve of abuse”. That’s the entirely the point, to police sexuality so it’s potential ammunition at all times.

By blurring the lines between fiction & not, it’s easy to police anyone that performs sexuality outside the hard boundaries of cisheteronormative sexuality. It’s also hard to call out *real* abuse b/c no ones listening if they’re being policies by chicken littles.

When I was raped in a kink community, no one listened, b/c the community was tired of being labeled abusive for sexual practices, so it was easy to dismiss my actual experience as puritanical nonsense.

Honestly I don’t even blame my kink community for not backing me up. When you’re already under attack for consensual abusive practices, it becomes harder to see where negotiating consent breaks down in nuanced situations like BDSM.

Note that I’m not saying all sexual & consensual fictional situations or kinks are safe. Some are bad. Some are illegal. Some are totally fucked up. We need to call those out.

But we can’t talk about the complicated world of sexual fiction (whether that’s written or role play) if we’re under attack from outside the damn communities we play in.

We need to all agree on a few things here:
1) No one’s sexual proclivities mean they are encouraging, excusing, or deserving of abuse
2) Fiction & kinks can be problematic w/o being abusive
3) Bad faith attacks make sexual spaces unsafe
4) Disliking something doesn’t make it bad

Practice saying “it’s not my kink but that doesn’t make it abusive.” And then actually say it, loudly, & often, to the goalpost-shifting sexuality police.

End rant. Have a puppy.