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the thing about antis and their culture/cult that i think people don’t realize is that it isn’t as fringe as it sounds. it’s actually infected online communities more than u know & their rhetoric is specifically hard to spot because it’s so manipulative (long thread)
i’m not quite a fandom old but i’m 24 so i grew up on tumblr in the heyday of fandom culture (peak superwholock, i was in the hp fandom + social justice side of tumblr). it was like everyone found out that things they loved were actually problematic all at the same time
this is problematic by some completely arbitrary mostly random and highly biased set of rules, mind you. this was when your fave is problematic was created and it wasn’t uncommon to have someone add “he’s super problematic though :/“ to your innocent post
so you had a bunch of teenagers on a website with a very poor structure for curating content and most of them were lgbt, neurodivergent, interested in things their irl friends weren’t, outcast in some way. and it became a toxic cesspool. so toxic that that’s what it’s KNOWN for
and you know what did the most damage to me as a teenager? it wasn’t the fiction i was consuming or the art or the fanfic. it was the other teenagers who had me convinced that i was a bad person. so convinced that i spent years well into adulthood denying myself joy.
and i’m not even into anything “bad” or “problematic” by any stretch of the imagination. even mild kink or reading mlm fic or enemies to lovers was anti feminist, rape, abuse, fetishization. it was all combined to force me to behave differently. these people are thought police.
this cultural evolution into anti shipping communities is actually the least bizarre thing in the world to me. i have watched it grow since i was 16. they are so expert at brainwashing that they’ve convinced people that censorship is a good thing. complete regression.
(TW CSA) i was a csa victim long before i was involved in fandom/online communities. nothing in the world could have prevented that from happening to me. not fiction. not my own actions. not my moral purity, nor my tastes in romantic pairings. nothing.
nothing could have prevented it the second time or the third. but the way i’ve been treated, the forcible removal of my agency, the complete disregard for my humanity and complexity by antis/their culture has repeatedly traumatized me well into my adult life.
i was never an active anti but i was closely involved in their circles until they found out i was a reylo. i felt like i was keeping a secret and the bizarre thing is that feeling was not unlike the way i felt hiding my sexuality from my christian parents. over fucking reylo.
(TW RAPE) i can’t describe how painful it is to hear someone call a jedi mind trick “mind rape” as a victim. the sheer audacity to compare the worst thing that’s ever happened to me to something in a star wars movie and to even question if maybe they were RIGHT
if maybe i WAS fetishizing my own abuse. if maybe i WASN’T normal. if maybe there was something wrong with me because i had interests that lay outside of theirs. if maybe i had in fact become just like the people who hurt me in the first place because of what i liked fictionally
i know that isn’t true now and i know it entirely because of the problematics and pro shippers i engage with who are the kindest people i have ever met. i had not accepted the darker, more difficult parts of myself until i freed myself from the anti community and joined this one
of course there is room to talk about harmful ideas in fiction and the ways they affect reality but that has never been the concern of the anti community. they are concerned only with hunting down and punishing those who are deviant and who fall out of line
they are concerned with purity and with control, nothing more. they are imagining a utopia that doesn’t and can’t exist. they are not imagining people as people or they would not tell us it was our fault we were hurt, abused, raped because we like the wrong fiction
and god forbid anyone who has been traumatized end up even a little bit fucked up. the years i spent beating myself up with religion feel no different to beating myself up with faux woke morality. it is absolutely christian conservatism disguised as liberalism
in a way i feel bad for them because they’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed but my empathy only goes so far knowing all the hurt they’ve inflicted on me and others in my community. the truth is, i never really believed what they were saying. it always felt wrong
make no mistake: antis have no care for your wellbeing. if they find out you have stepped out of line, they will hurt you just as easily as they hurt others. they will ostracize you and shame you because they do not care about you. they care more about fictional morality
here’s the truth: exploring ideas/feelings/experiences in fiction as a way to have them play out in a space where they cannot hurt you is both normal and healthy. there is nothing wrong with you if you aren’t hurting real people. you aren’t bad. you’re good. you’re fine.
if you’re involved in anti circles i hope one day you’re brave enough to get out. if you need help, i will help you and i will accept you with open arms. the reylo & pro shipping communities have been a balm for my soul. i enjoy things again. it’s brighter over here.
