Thread by @dynamicsymmetry

Okay, since apparently this is a thing I’m thinking and talking about today, here’s the big problem with the “we’re not extreme/that bad, we’re Just After The Underage Stuff (a thing I heard today).

It’s almost never true. They may think it’s true, but it’s not.

It’s not true just *observably*; they’re after everything they consider a problem (and this stuff is almost always confined to sexual things, almost never to anything violent, which for Americans should be very unsurprising).

If they’re after “underage stuff”, they’re after rape, they’re after incest—those three are the big ones, although they do branch out beyond that. But even more, what they consider to fall under those labels tends to expand outward until it can encompass almost anything.

Which is how we get “pedophilia” in any ship that contains a height/size difference or any age gap at all no matter the ages of the characters involved.

They *say* they’re “just after the underage stuff”, they may even mean it, but the ethos that underpins it results in constantly moving goal posts, mostly because of two things.

1. The lack of distinction between fiction and reality.
2. The equation of pure thoughts w/actions.

Let’s take those point by point.

Number 1 is going back to what I said earlier: As far as they’re concerned, there is no meaningful ethical difference between NSFW art of underage characters and real CSEP.

(Please don’t use the phrase “child porn)

(It centers the perpetrators, whereas “Child Sexual Exploitation Material” centers the victims)

If there’s no meaningful distinction there, then all the roadblocks are pretty much gone right off the bat.

If what happens to a fictional character is just as bad as what happens to a real person, then there’s really nothing there to put the brakes on what you consider “problematic”. Any art or fiction that you deem cancel-worthy is cancel-worthy.

We very rightfully have intense concern for the safety and well-being of real people. We should not have the same concern for fictional characters, no matter how much you love them and identify with them. They do not belong to you. They are not real.

If you can’t make that distinction, then you need to look at getting help with that, because you’re setting yourself up for causing a lot of pain to yourself and others and doing far more harm than good.

Once you have that intense concern, though, and you’re placing just as much importance on the safety of fake people as real people, you become hypervigilant. If the only way to be a good person and protect real people too is to protect fake people, you’re in trouble.

Once you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. Add that to the conservative background a lot of antis come out of and the general histrionics around sexuality in American culture and you are in a *lot* of trouble.

“We’re just after the underage stuff”. Okay. So what’s “underage”? Are we talking just visuals? Just as an example, what if a character looks like a young teen/kid but is in fact like 4k years old?

Because when NSFW art of “underage” characters is just as bad as CSEP of real people, then *everything* is potentially a consideration. Are we talking emotional maturity? Mental maturity? Canon age?

What about underage canon characters aged-up? They’re still underage in canon.

One of my primary ships is a guy in his late 30s/mid-50s (depending on the specific game) paired with a 4k-year-old god who became a god when he was 15. So he looks like a teenager.

He looks more like 18 or 19, but leave that aside for a moment.

Is that underage?

Because in terms of what we would consider most important in the context of *real* people—in fact the primary reason age-of-consent laws exist at *all*—is whether this person can in fact consent. If they can’t, it’s abuse.

(There are of course also situations where a significantly older person trying to get involved with a much younger person is predatory and harmful without being technically child abuse, but leave that aside for the moment, anyway the point is that real people are complicated)

If fake people are as important as real people and what happens in art is as bad as what happens in reality, then all that stuff matters. But because anything is possible in fiction, you would *never* have to worry about this stuff with real people.

I don’t know how to tell you this, but there are not in fact as far as I know any 4k-year-old gods running around out there in the bodies of 15-year-olds. Pretty sure that’s not happening.

But in fiction it matters! If fiction is just as important as real life!

So again, I pose to you the question: is my ship “underage”? Is it “pedophilia”?

This question will tie you into awful knots if you feel like the stakes are really high.

So you start paring things finer and finer, and probably you default to “yeah it’s pedophilia” just to be safe.

Your goal posts are moving. They will not stop moving.

So how do you define pedophilia/underage now? How do you make absolutely sure that you’re a good person having good thoughts and going after all the right stuff? How do you navigate this? What considerations are important? What factors matter? How do we tell what’s bad?

Bodies matter... kids are shorter... height difference! That matters! Shorter people are minor-coded!

If maturity matters, then any age difference is going to be a problem! Better label it all bad just to be sure!

But wait. Wait. If fake people are just as important as real people, if there’s no ethical distinction, if it’s all Bad Thoughts and Bad Thoughts = Bad Deeds, then we also have to worry about things like incest. Which is also pedophilia!

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT INCEST IS

Blood relations, yeah, that’s bad, but also relationships matter! So what about a mentor relationship? That’s kind of like a parent! Uneven power dynamics! Double whammy!

Did these characters grow up as friends/knowing each other even if they’re not family? Uh-oh, that’s like a sibling relationship PLUS they knew each other as kids first so every time they look at each other the image of the other as children is in their heads.

So they’ll be thinking about that every time they have sex.

Yeah, better call that pedophilia and incest just to be sure.

Hang on, mental and emotional state/maturity determines whether consent can be given. Oh no, this character is mentally ill.

So can they consent? Being mentally ill is kind of like being drunk, right? I mean you aren’t thinking straight. Yeah, no, the notion that this mentally ill character can consent is Problematic and if the other character is not mentally ill that’s assault/predation.

From that you get to ALL INEQUAL POWER DYNAMICS ARE PROBLEMATIC, JUST CALL IT ALL PROBLEMATIC TO BE SAFE

It doesn’t. Stop.

Because—in part—you decided that content featuring fake people is as real/important as content featuring real people.

None of this is hyperbole. All of this is what antis actually go after.

I think there are people who parrot the “yeah I just want to get rid of the underage stuff” line without actually considering what underpins it and what it leads to.

And this is where we get into number 2, the equation of right thought with right action. Which, again, is so so so much coming out of a conservative Christian culture where sinful thoughts must be confessed to and policed just like sinful deeds.

Sinful fantasies that do not involve real people in any way, shape, or form are as sinful as doing the thing. Because the realm of the spirit is just as real as the realm of the flesh, PLUS having the sinful thoughts will always lead you to acting them out.

When you have a dirty little fantasy, you secretly in your sinner’s heart want to DO that thing. You must confess and repent and never have that fantasy again because it is wrong and bad and also DANGEROUS TO REAL PEOPLE

I’m somewhat theologically oversimplifying, I know.

I was raised Lutheran, I basically still am Lutheran, and I happen to believe that confession of sin can be incredibly healing and restorative if approached the right way.

But I also believe that what God really cares about is what you do.

And thoughts are not actions, because thoughts can’t hurt people and actions can.

I have violent intrusive thoughts. If thoughts are actions, I’m a mass fucking murderer.

All of this, all of it, comes back in a big way to the unwillingness or inability to make any meaningful distinction between content featuring real people, where real people were victimized to produce it, and content featuring an underage anime character.

Once you lose that distinction, the stakes go through the roof, everything matters, it becomes paramount to come up with a rubric for what’s okay and what’s not, the rubric creates intense anxiety which leads to the rubric becoming more and more detailed, and it does not stop.

And once again I do need to point out that antis are far more concerned with content that features fake people in sexual contexts than content that features fake people being tortured and brutally murdered.

I mean... yeah.

You are not “just after the underage stuff”. I know you think you are, but you are not. Sooner or later you’re after ships where one character is a foot taller than the other, or ships where the characters were palls when they were six.

I am not saying that there’s no relationship between fiction and reality. Proshippers are not saying that. I’m saying that fiction and reality do not enjoy a 1:1 relationship. I’m saying that fake people are not real people, and fake harm is not real harm.

I’m actually into having a nuanced conversation about whether X content is okay, but that involves talking about what “okay” means, whose wellbeing is of primary concern, and all the problems that arise once you start trying to figure out whether something is okay.

I’m also into having a nuanced conversation where defending X content or taking the position that maybe it’s okay does not result in me being called a pedophile/pedophile apologist.

Antis are almost uniformly not into having those conversations. It’s all just wrong and bad.

Because their first principles are that fake content is as important as real content, thoughts and fantasies are actions/lead to actions, and things are either Wrong and Bad or they aren’t. And thinking a Bad Thing makes you a Bad Person.

That doesn’t leave much room for talk.

You might as well try to have a conversation about sexual ethics with, well, a conservative Christian. It’ll go about the same.

It’ll also go the same because the anti preoccupation with fictional content as reality is rather like biblical literalism.

In that there is a semi-conscious realization that once you start questioning the first principles, the whole thing might come tumbling down.

My impression is that this is how some antis become ex-antis.

This crosses the line from anxious hypervigilance to abusive cult when the manichean morality leads to a culture where purity is brutally policed. Because the second someone questions the first principles, that threatens the entire group.

Plus you can’t question the first principles without being a Wrong Bad Pedo Apologist, because thoughts are actions and what you think/feel is what you want and do.

By the way, this leaves absolutely no room for fantasies about things you don’t want.

Fantasies about things you don’t want in reality is a literally incomprehensible notion in anti/fanpoldom. It’s not that they reject it, it’s that it makes no sense. Of course what you fantasize about is what you want to be real, because fantasy is reality.

You can’t fantasize about things you think are wrong and harmful in reality. You must secretly want them to be real.

There is *no room* for any other possibility because nothing else is comprehensible.

Imagine living that way. God.

So yeah. In conclusion, “we’re just after the underage stuff” sounds good but is a fallacy. Sorry.

Good fucking god.

https://twitter.com/jacquez45/status/1259559602103951360?s=21

https://twitter.com/jacquez45/status/1259559602103951360

Again, I’m not saying that people who are like “most of this is okay, I just want to get rid of the underage stuff” are going this far. I know they’d look at this and also think it’s ridiculous.

I’m saying that if you start with “NSFW art of an underage anime character is actual CSEP” and follow that principle where it necessarily leads you, you are going to end up at “killing fictional characters is actual murder”.

If it’s one crime, it’s the other crime. They’re both real crimes. If you accept that first principle. I’m sorry, there is no way around this.

Seriously, if someone can come up with a logical reason why drawing NSFW art of an underage anime character is making literal CSEP but killing that character isn’t murder, I would love to hear it.

Would also like to point out a thing I can’t stop thinking about, which is that antis regard fictional content as morally equivalent to reality and yet I never see them out there trying to get age-of-consent laws changed.

Oh, addendum, because the same person who said “we’re only after the underage stuff” said “these are people making CP calling anyone who doesn’t want to consume it with them an anti”:

Uh, no.

I mean maybe there are some fucked up people out there doing that, but they’re fucked up and wrong and also in the vast minority.

People want to make their stuff for other people who want to see it. That’s it.

Proshippers are not calling you an anti if you’re grossed out by it. I am viscerally grossed out by a lot of art of characters who are visually prepubescent.

Know what? I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I’ve seen it involuntarily.

Because for the most part people making this content ARE CAREFUL TO KEEP IT AWAY FROM PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO SEE IT.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT DISTURBS AND GROSSES PEOPLE OUT

THEY ARE TRYING TO PROTECT YOU, IDIOT

They sure as hell aren’t calling you an anti if you don’t like it. It is fine not to like it. They call you an anti if you go after them and don’t leave them alone to make their stuff in peace, because if you do those things, that’s the toxic ideology you’re buying into.

Wtf, I keep typing “CSEP” when I mean “CSEM”, sorry about that, what a weird brain fart