a lot of young people say that fanfic made them think abuse was okay, and I think it’s disingenuous to say they’re all lying. but why is this suddenly a problem? this is my theory as to why it’s no longer an understood thing that fandom is about fiction & fantasy.
really good stuff
I’ve said it before– if young people are getting their primary education on consent and sexual relationships from fandom they have already been failed.
And I say this as someone who got my primary education on consent and sexual relationships from fandom, and for whom it worked out pretty well. I mined a ton of good stuff out of fandom and discussions around fandom. But the fact that there was a void of education in my life that I had to fill on my own is not on fandom. That’s on society and rape culture and our puritanical education system.
[First post is screenshots of a twitter thread; here’s the text of it.]
something I think about a lot is how fandom talks to each other.
i suppose that’s obvious, but not just the antagonistic vitriol. the hyper-ramps of joy feedback can produce similarly hyperbolic language.
almost a year ago I got a multi-comment ask from an anti who told me that ‘bad ships’ almost led them into some real life abusive situations in her dating life. I didn’t respond because I wanted to think about it. and while the framework of my feelings was formed 1 month later–
–I’ve been fleshing that out ever since. because she’s not alone in saying this happened – she read smutfic and later felt her impressions were screwed up by them – but why? why is this suddenly a complaint?
and i think it has a lot to do with evolving internet culture interacting poorly with fandom culture and young people looking for easy answers to complicated questions. for instance:
-young women&/or afab people grow up with specific toxic messages targeted at them about sex/purity
a lot of shit mixes together & it’s not weird for afab people to be disgusted by their body &/or come away with dark sex/violence mishmashes brewing in the hindbrain. may or may not be kinks later, but like. USians, think about how sex & violence (towards afab/women) is tied together.
(transphobia adding a WHOLE NEW FUN LEVEL to this, too. trans (&nb) people 10,000% included in this, in case it’s not clear to anyone.) -all the taboo around expressing sexual ideas, esp if you’re not a cis man, makes it hard to express yourself. -then fandom: mostly afab, full of kink
-majority afab and/or women, kink-friendly fandom functions like a release valve for a lot of people. & though it was never explicitly said by anyone I remember, there was always a kind of understanding this was the case: a safe place for women/afab people to be crass and sexual–
–objectifying fictional characters instead of being objectified, exploring sexual fantasies in safe spaces, etc etc. people in fandom would express filthy ideas & wants! it was afab people &/or women being as frank & open about their fantasy lives as cis men could be everywhere else.
but it was also understood that everything in fandom was fictional. like: of course rape is bad, nobody wants rape to happen, but fantasies are fantasies. live it out on a fictional character who can’t be hurt! good way to blow off some steam.
& because this was understood, people talked about kinks – some really taboo, some things that would be very harmful or abusive or illegal irl – without restraint or qualifications. they weren’t needed! fandom was for fiction. say the gross thing, nobody’s judging!
and that was all well and good as long as we were all working off the same context: fandom is for fiction. this is where we put stuff that’s not safe irl. but.
but.
tumblr.
tumblr is a viral sharing platform. every post you make can be boosted independent of its original context. & when you remove all this frank, salacious, unqualified talk about fictional characters from the context of ‘it’s fiction’ and ‘it’s not for rl for good reason’: well.
fandom got visible on tumblr in a new way. tumblr dropped the barriers to entering fandom. and starting in 2012/2013, tumblr entrants had grown up in a world where the internet had been around *their whole lives*. 9/11 happened when they were a /fetus/.
and 2011-2013 fandom tumblr is an unholy, indistinct mix of real life activism, awareness, and …. posts about how sexy Dave Strider is. in exactly the same kinds of tones we used on lj, in fandom-only – fiction-only – spaces.
I can see how baby fans got the wrong idea.
without necessarily knowing it was happening, fandom – in moving to tumblr – went from a delineated safe space for non-cis-male sexual fantasy indulgence to being – for newcomers at least – indistinguishable from the sexual noise they grew up with, except probably more appealing.
losing shared context by being diluted on tumblr means young people could encounter fandom fantasy content independent of the ‘we let it hang out here b/c we’re not allowed to otherwise’ subtext. Mixed well with the much nastier toxic messages of rl & mass media & get a nasty mess.
i don’t want to spoil the punchline, but the reason non-cis-men are more in need of a safe space retreat than cis men is b/c of misogyny. so you’ll never guess what happened when fandom’s version of that space got diluted into pop culture!
(radfems! also misogyny.)
2012/13 tumblr gets a 1-2 punch: structural patriarchy: women who openly like sex are dirty sluts! they raise & teach kids how to be good adults! they’re pure! radfems: women who openly like kinks are feeding into female oppression! women teach women to be good adults! they’re pure!
2012/12 tumblr recognizes the structural punch, kinda, but disguised as Girl Power, they don’t see the second one coming. Bam! fandom – mostly made up of afab people and/or women – is suddenly awful for letting itself be sexually expressive! it abandoned the teaching post!
softened up by structural oppression of non-cis-(straight-white)-male sexuality, young fandom went down like a stone to the idea that women should be teaching other women how to be good women and Good Women Don’t Do Kinks Or Men (add heaping tablespoons of transphobia/racism/etc)
this got out of hand like always, god. but long story short: young fandom didn’t – doesn’t – see how society sets them up for abusive relationships, sexual disasters, and toxic predation. so they look back at fandom – in dialogue with all that grossness – and conclude:
‘the people in fandom failed me.’ – fandom was supposed to teach them how to be safe – society tells them that’s the job of ‘women’. but fandom wasn’t being a mom, and therefore if they weren’t safe it was fandom’s fault.
these people who were abused using fandom as a tool, or feel like they were vulnerable because of fanworks: fanfic didn’t make them that way. it just feels natural to blame it because it’s hard to see the power structure you live in, and it’s hard to admit to being helpless.
the fanworks are easy to point to and blame because they’re fiction. It’s the same reason video games were easy to blame for violence. it feels so clean and straightforward, and it doesn’t require dismantling a whole power system – a whole culture – to get rid of.
but it’s not the fiction.
(here’s the hard part.)
if fandom contributed to the toxic messages about sexuality absorbed by younger members, it’s because of continuing to talk about fictional characters like we were in those old, delineated ‘fantasy only/it’s just fiction’ spaces–
– after the shift to tumblr. and frankly, tumblr is not that kind of delineated space: it’s also an activist space (or was one), and an awareness space.
non-cis-male sexual fantasies about fictional characters & rl social activism/awareness do not mix well, as we’ve seen.
and that contribution was a small, small part, probably: fandom is so queer, so non-cis, so non-straight, so disabled and neurodivergent that our influence on everything but tumblr is really small.
but because we’re not a power structure, we’re easy to point to & tear down.
and we’ve been trained by society to blame our troubles on those we can get at and hurt instead of blaming the very way our cultures are built. hurting other vulnerable people is easy. dismantling the earth under our feet is hard. (why do u think radfems focus on fixing women?)
to wrap up: fandom isn’t perfect by a long shot, and one thing we can do to protect ourselves from harm is assume the best of others and try to put things we see into context.
we can also fuck up white cis male patriarchy instead of each other. (screw the system.) /end
The current set of Pride Flag candles are now up at geekstudio.ca. You can pick up one of these delicious vanilla scented beauties in rainbow, pansexual, bisexual, transgender, or asexual.
If you have requests for more flags let me know! If there is enough interest I will expand the line with more flags and more scents.
And here are some obligatory bright and colourful photos!
I know this is such a little thing but its something i see on a regular ass basis. Theres no lesbian pride flag? You guys always will bend over backwards to include ace people but not lesbians who are actually lgbt.
Then get off your entitled ass and source all the necessary lipstick shades in wax from a single vendor for them to use for the 2-year-old rebranded lipstick lesbian pride flag.
I’m sure it’s a piece of cake, so they must have just felt like excluding you. 🙂
I understand that it’s hard to source those colours but please do not call lesbians entitled, especially not just for asking why there’s no lesbian flag. Lesbians are the first letter in the acronym and historically (and modernly) some of the most important people in our community, they have every right to be upset and many people don’t know about the difficulty creators have producing things with the lesbian flag
Tl;dr stop calling lesbians entitled.
You understand this is not the same as saying, “Lesbians are entitled.” Correct?
It is not a default response for lesbians to condescendingly shit on the inclusion of the ace flag as if it’s a direct insult to their identity.
I 100% do not have a problem with the question, “Why is *any pride flag* not included?”
Regardless of if they were complaining about aces, you shouldn’t do this. And you know what if anything they are literally entitled to want be included because they are a Lesbian and yknow what even some inclusionist Lesbians are upset that they are almost never included in this stuff.
Lesbians aren’t being “entitled”, they’re upset and you, a non-lesbian, shouldn’t be arguing with them about this
Did you really just turn around with, “But is it really so bad to be entitled to other people’s labor?”
I am not the one who chose, two years ago, to try and turn the lipstick lesbian pride flag into the defacto lesbian pride flag. Like, I’m sorry that this is a consequence that has already been seen with the pride hoodies, and will continue to be seen with other physical merchandise. It’s much easier to find items like markers and paints in multiple shades.
And, again, I 100% do not have a problem with the question, “Why is *any pride flag* not included?”
Do not fucking say “regardless of if my identity is being shat upon.” That’s not a thing. People do not get to randomly throw out that they hate that aspecs are included as a justification for feeling entitled to someone else’s labor.
I’m ace and an inclusionist and even I could see you were out of line, and that doesn’t mean I think what they said was justified, of course I don’t like what they said but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re being a dick
Oh, cool, so then you also responded to all the REGs on this post to say a-specs absolutely 100% belong in this community and that they’re all out-of-line and being dicks?
Dude exclusionists very rarely listen to what we say, telling every single reg on this post that aces are lgbt+ would be a waste of my time and energy. I was however hoping you would listen, it’s seems I was wrong.
If you already know that, why would you start shit over a sarcastic and petty response to a REG acting like if I wasn’t being sarcastic they would have taken me seriously?
Your first response didn’t even acknowledge that it was blatantly acephobic.
This is so ridiculous. It is absolutely entitled for anyone to be offended that someone would include one lgbtqia+ identity in a post but not theirs and demand that they be included INSTEAD OF that other identity, which happens almost any time a creator of some sort makes a product using the ace pride flag.
The issue isn’t that they want a lesbian flag. The issue is that they think they can just demand someone make the lesbian flag and blame their inclusion of aces for the fact the lesbian flag isn’t there.
A lot of creators have trouble with the lesbian flag because there are so many shades of pink on it. That doesn’t mean they intentionally leave it out, but it means it might take a while to get the materials for it.
Others don’t know it exists, because the flag is so new.
Like, of course you should want to see yourself represented. But there are lots of other flags missing from this too; you don’t hear me screaming at the person for not including the enby flag or genderqueer flag or saying how dare he include someone else before including me, do you? Because that isn’t the way to approach it.
Plus, Tumblr has a 10 photo limit on posts. The person might very well have all of those flags, but just couldn’t show us in this one post.
Long story short, it was the first commenter who was out of line. @christopherokamoto shouldn’t be punished for pointing that out.
For the record, THIS is how you ask for the lesbian flag:
Not with some rude ass bullshit attacking aces.
Not to mention someone in the comments pointed out that the original post is old and @geekstudio is already promising to put out a lesbian flag version, so there is no need to be having this conversation anyway.
I’m… pretty sure people were just protesting to someone saying that the lesbian flag should be included instead of the ace flag, not that someone wanted to see the lesbian flag?
The repurposing of the lipstick lesbian flag to be the general lesbian flag is pretty recent, probably just within the past couple of years. There are a lot of content creators that don’t even realize it’s happened yet. Those content creators often include the rainbow flag as a way of including gay men and lesbian women.
Also, you have no way of knowing that these are the only flags the content creator has done or is going to do. Just because these are the ones they’re showing within a post doesn’t mean they’re the only ones.
Politely requesting a flag you don’t see represented is fine. Attacking the content creator on the assumption that they don’t intend to or haven’t done that flag and that that’s out of intentional exclusion and not ignorance is not okay. And suggesting that that flag should replace another flag already represented is doubly not okay.
Also…
Lesbians are the first letter in the acronym and historically (and modernly) some of the most important people in our community
I can’t be the only one who is really uncomfortable with the idea that some people in the community are more important than others…?
Right??? All people in the community are important.
Plus, the L being first has not always been the case, so using that as a reason why it’s okay to be angry that the ace flag was included and to feel that lesbians should be included before aces makes no sense.
And again, as said before, many lesbians use the rainbow flag for themselves. Many creators use the rainbow flag for both gays and lesbians. Many people use the rainbow flag for literally all of us! Let’s not assume that the OP is doing this to spite lesbians.
@im-glad-i-crashed-the-wedding is absolutely way off in their assessment, and I’m surprised to see that coming from an ace inclusionist.
No one here has a problem with lesbians. It’s @angryautisticaesthetic’s rudeness, aggressiveness, and ace exclusionary bullshit that is the issue.
❄💙 Bella 💙❄
Here’s the thing though:
When I first started putting up my Pride Animal shirts, I made SURE to post every single one in the lesbian Pride flag (as well as the queer chevron flag which @officialqueer & I dreamed up like … what, 2y avo? 18mo?). I made a big deal about them being available. I sourced the thread to make patches, too.
They didn’t sell. None of them sold. Not in the lesbian flag. I’ve sold exactly 3 of the pink lesbian Pride items, patches and shirts, in the 9mo. I’ve sold more women’s tank tops (just tank tops, not including anything else) with the word NO on it in the ace flag in the past 2 weeks than I have ever sold anything with the lesbian flag on it. I’ve sold more Bi Pride “the moon is my girlfriend” shirts than lesbian Pride shirts, and the bi Pride version was a custom request!
So clearly the items aren’t the problem. It’s that no one is buying the lesbian Pride versions.
Now.
I had something like 600 Pride shirts. It is impossible to set up Etsy listings with more than 2 variations. What that means is you can pick SIZE and SHIRT COLOR but not flag. I have to have a separate listing for each Pride flag.
Every time a listing renews every 3 months without selling? It costs me money. Not a lot of money, but enough that it adds up when you have six hundred fucking listings.
So, see, I did go all in on representation, and I bought the thread and I put up the listings and I’m still in the negative on those items, not even counting the labor and time to make those designs, upload them, tag the entries on Etsy properly, update all the attributes… just designing fewer than 20 items and updating all that tonight took something like 8, 9 hours.
My market rate for design is $25/h for community stuff. So on top of being in the hole on thread and listing fees, I’m way, way in the hole on time, and every hour I spend uploading things that don’t sell is an hour I’m not doing work I get paid to do from clients, or writing for clients or my Patreon, or designing stuff that sells.
Now, I have a line at the top of every shirt listing that says “send a request if you would like a different shirt cut or flag and i’ll list it.” And I do, and fast. Ask anyone who has gotten a custom from me. And a lot of people do ask for customs and get them.
But, frankly, I’m not going to default to posting that particular Pride flag, the same way I don’t default to posting the Queer chevron flag or NB flag either, and the latter 2 are MY identity. It just doesn’t sell enough. If you see either one of them in my shop currently, either it was a custom that someone bought and the purchase paid for the renewal of the listing or it just hasn’t timed out from the last auto renewal since I decided to stop bleeding money on listing fees for stuff that never sold.
All of that is just economics. Ace, Bi, Rainbow and Trans stuff sells, and sells well, so I list those 4 as my main flags. I have a mortgage to pay, a teenager to feed, 3 dogs to pay vet bills on… asking me to pay money to list things that don’t sell so that I don’t get harassed by people who feel entitled to my time and energy but don’t want to apparently purchase those listings is pretty much bullshit.
And boy am I starting to get real fucking weary of seeing artists get harassed like this, over the same exact subgroup, and protesting that the exact same other subgroup is getting included by default. Over and over again it’s “how DARE you make an ace one and not a lesbian one? I can’t BELIEVE it you are THE WOOOORST.” Over and over.
Well, idk about anyone else but in my case it’s simply proven that a given design in the ace flag is likely to get viewed hundreds of times and sell ten times while the lesbian version of the same shirt will get looked at half a dozen times and never sell. And I’m not getting harassed over not posting the NB or demisexual or Queer flag by default.
Demanding that small business owners/artists spend money and put up versions of their art that you don’t intend to buy is shitty behavior. Harassing creators and telling them they’re terrible, that they’re lesbophobes, etc, bc they’re not posting a difficult to make color combo that doesn’t sell is also shitty behavior. Unfortunately it’s become such a trend of late that if I didn’t know at least a good chunk of these blogs were legit I would think it was some sort of elaborate Russian “split the community” thing, or artists getting trolled.
tl;dr – if you intend to buy it, ask for it nicely and you’ll probably get it. Small business owners like selling things! It’s kind of what we do! If you don’t intend to buy it you’re literally asking someone do labor and spend money to make you feel good while giving them nothing in return, and that’s not okay. And harassment of creators is NEVER ok.
I cannot stress enough that the same pride animals and pride designs that sell in bi, ace, trans, queer, nonbinary etc DO NOT SELL in the lipstick-lesbian-made-lesbian flag. I have sold ONE lesbian pride patch ever, and sourcing the threads was expensive and not easy.
So, yeah.
Honestly this bit of knowledge makes the anger of the random exclusionists on this post even more ridiculous to me.
I 100% support everyone being represented, but not at the cost of content creators’ mental health, safety, emotion health, and income. No one deserves this.
This is just unbelievable.
❄💙 Bella 💙❄
I want to make it totally clear that I will, and do, set up any freaking flag someone wants. I got thread to make a leather pride patch, made an agender leaf patch… all you gotta do is ask nicely. Every small business owner wants to sell shit.
But this repetitive BUT WHERE IS THE LIPSTICK LESBIAN FLAG THAT BEGAN IN 2015 YOU HATE LESBIANS (that shit is NOT an exaggeration, I just went through the notes and there were multiple notes talking about how the OP hates and is excluding lesbians and how ppl trying to explain stuff and saying ‘stop being rude, y’all, you’re not entitled to someone’s labor’ is lesbophobic) is just NOT ok. Especially when it’s accompanied by not… buying the thing??
also i resent the implication that being in a certain spot in the acronym makes you more or less important than other members of our community…
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 