The thing I find really upsetting about the Fandom Purity Discourse is that the moral crusaders go around telling people that *every single thread* decrying their crusade is about nothing but defending child pornography, which is an article of faith that is self-fulfilling.
Because when the defense of child pornography does not appear... why, that just shows that the person making the thread knows they will lose the argument if they mention te *real* topic, so the "cloak" it in a bunch of "vague language".
"But if you're not talking about child pornography when you insist that people should be allowed their kinks and their problematic fiction habits, why won't you say what you ARE talking about?"
Yeah, no. People aren't going to tell your Fannish Inquisition what they're into.
Yeah, no. People aren't going to tell your Fannish Inquisition what they're into.
If you've already decided everybody who disagrees with you about fanfic is a pedophile, don't expect people to air outand catalogue their kinks, their tastes, their preferences, etc., for your blessing. It's not going to happen.
At the point you're trying to goad people into airing stuff in public that they normally post under locks or in properly tagged fics on AO3 or whatever so you can swarm them for posting triggery stuff, with the alternative being you call them a "pedo" anyway? Take a breath.
I know the rush of absolute moral certitude when you find something where you're 100% sure you're 100% right and someone else is 100% monstrous. I know the way this endorphin rush can interact when you're spiraling. It's addictive. It's compelling. It's powerful, heady stuff.
But it's not healthy, it's not right, and it doesn't lead you anywhere good. "We have to tell everybody these are actually coded references to pedophilila" is the current of anti discourse.
It's not far off from PizzaGate.
It's not far off from PizzaGate.
I think most of the people participating on the "anti" side, the "purity" side, are motivated by good faith. But I don't think all the people driving it are. Some of them are bitter over ships. Some of the are bullies or abusers themselves looking for a community to exploit.
The easiest way to bind a community together in a way that makes people let their guard down and trust you is to create an us vs. them dynamic, especially one centered around moral rectitude.
"Here, among the antis, we are pure and safe and good. No abusers here."
"Here, among the antis, we are pure and safe and good. No abusers here."
As others have pointed out: grooming victims for abuse can happen in any community. A shared interest, a shared worldview... a regimented community built around discourse with rules that are easy to learn and easy to exploit is *ripe* for that kind of thing.
And that, as Hippocrates said, is all I have to say about that.
