haedonists:

golbatgender:

Making it culturally acceptable to be mean to people because of what they draw or write causes a lot more trauma than a few people accidentally reading a kinky fic.

(And don’t tell me “uwu but what if someone uses it to groom someone!!!” That’s extremely rare—certainly much rarer than trauma caused by creator harassment and the anti movement—and the fault is on the abuser who chose to groom and what they used that grooming to do, not the misused tool. If the fic itself were the problem, accidentally reading one would have to cause the same trauma as real-life rape!)

The greatest irony? We actually have consistent, concrete and direct points of evidence for trauma caused by creator harassment and the actions of the anti movement. Numerous points of evidence, ranging from people admitting to living in a constant state of fear to being pushed a hair’s width away from suicide, with ruinous effects on everything from their income to their mental health. Here is just a short sampling, gathered over only ten minutes of searching, which should tell us quite a bit about how miserably pervasive this whole thing is, in both fandom and in would-be-progressive spaces. The fact that pretty much everyone quoted here is marginalized on some way (female, queer) makes the actions of those behind this cult of fear that much harder to forgive.

On Fandom Trauma

Just over a year ago, I found myself in an abusive relationship. It
wasn’t an abusive relationship with a specific person, but with many
people. Until today, I had never considered the possibility that fandom
as a whole could be an abuser. Even when the pieces started to click
into place, months later, after finding myself bewildered, confused and
desperately afraid, in counselling specifically intended to safeguard me
against suicide, even then, I resisted the idea that I was a victim of
abuse. Had I received abusive messages? Of course. Many. So many. One of
them made me fear for my life, and my job, and everything that I loved.
Another made me fear for a friend’s life. I believed that it was my
fault. I believed that I deserved this.

PSA: Callout Culture

i’ve also seen callout culture used by truly abusive, manipulative
people to cause irreparable psychological harm to others. i’ve had
pedophilia accusations thrown at me over something that i probably ship
due to lasting psychological repercussions from having been raped as a
teenager; i’ve had people tell me “it’s okay that you ship it but you
just have to tell me what happened.” i’ve suffered serious, lasting
trauma from that – horrible depression, flashbacks, a complete inability
to have consensual sex and fear of being touched without panicking –
and i don’t see an end in sight to it.

I am unfathomably afraid of every single one of you

Each and every one of you has the ability to singlehandedly destroy
my entire career and take away my entire income overnight. And after all
that i’ve been through and worked for to make my goals happen for
myself, that’s scarier to me than absolutely anything.

It’s
gotten to a point where i’m afraid to publicly express even the most
benign approval of any artist or individual for fear that they may have
done something problematic that I never knew about, and that a post will
be made about how i support someone who is evil, and my income will
suffer because of it.

I am afraid even to allow myself to form any sort of emotional connection to any artist’s work.

I’m
afraid to form any sort of close friendships with other artists and
even most of my own fans for fear that someday they’ll do something bad
and then i’ll get called out by association for being friends with them,
and my income will suffer because of it.

I’m scared to exist online right now

ok: I’m scared to exist online right now, even in what we should be able to consider safe spaces for queer folks. i’m scared bc we are all watching continually as more and more of us are violently picked off and destroyed by other queer folks and by people who claim to be sympathetic to us, utilizing the same rhetoric that should be helping and empowering us. the word ‘discourse’, at this point, is only ever used sarcastically and with a kind of quiet dread by my friends. we joke about being problematic, but me, my peers and maybe you too, live in a state of constant low anxiety over the fact that we don’t get second chances to make mistakes, if you’re a queer person of any kind of visibility, it’s one and done. the well of patience and compassion runs deep for our cis/straight allies and we reserve NOTHING for ourselves. this is assuming you even make a mistake. we target each other for complete bullshit just as often. weeks ago i was chased off twitter for using the word ‘queer’, before that i was getting death-threats over fabricated purity politics. friends of mine have been targeted with callout posts over things they didn’t do or for weird fandom drama with zero material impact. [transcript by me]

i’m so tired of suffering in silence

i really don’t want to get into it. but! here i go anyway, because
i’m so tired of keeping quiet, i’m so tired of suffering in silence for
fear if stirring shit back up, so here the fuck goes anyway. multiple
times now i’ve had all my hard work ruined by ridiculously fucking false
accusations that i’m supposedly a pedophile despite NO proof of it.
i’ve had my shit wrecked by “guilt by association” situations, too,
where i was supposedly responsible for the mistakes of a friend, shit i
wasn’t even AWARE of. all it took was a small loud group of people who
decided they wanted to destroy me, and they absolutely accomplished
that.

being accused of being dangerous to my fanbase, or even my baby nephew
and having people believe it without question (because so many folks
take callout posts at face value without fact checking), crushed my
fucking soul. i lost 75% of my monthly income and had to go back to
relying on my parents for financial support. i’ll be straight up honest.
when i took down all my social media last winter, it was because i
deadass almost killed myself. i had a plan and everything. cops showed
up. it got ugly.

i’m back from that brink, i have a wonderful support system, therapy and medication, but i never fully bounced back after that.

On the Subject of Noncon Fanworks: Thoughts of a Reader, Writer, Survivor

In the first few hours after the panel, when I felt like a group of
fellow fans whose respect and understanding I wanted had attacked me for
the kind of fic I read and write, I wanted to articulate how noncon
fanworks have changed my life, how they have been a source of deep
friendships and personal healing. I wanted to convince those people that
I wasn’t a bad person, or a bad feminist; that I had thought long and
hard about rape culture and my possible contributions to it, and decided
in the end that it was more important to try to engage with rape myths,
to digest and transform them, than to eject that part of our collective
psyche.

And then, as people began to speak to me privately and
share their own stories of being bullied by this same group of people, I
realized that what had happened at 221b Con wasn’t actually about
noncon fanworks or people’s reactions to them. What happened at 221b Con
was that a clique used young fans and CSA and rape survivors as a
shield to hide behind while they bullied my fellow panelist for shipping
the fandom OTP in the wrong way.