Policing and woobiefication: two sides of the same coin

[ljwrites]

TL; DR: It's fine to enjoy "immoral" fiction and you're both being assholes

Fandom policing and villain woobiefication/apologia seem to be polar opposites, but at heart they agree on one thing: That your morality is defined by the wholesomeness of the content you make and consume.

They just go from that premise to different conclusions, with the fandom police (1) saying that some content is immoral and must be censored, and possibly its creators bullied as well, while the woobiefiers and apologists defend by saying shit like negging is true love actually and war crimes are fine.

Below I'm focusing on the woobiefiers/apologists because hopefully it's already clear how wrong the fandom police are.

So maybe I can be a smidge sympathetic toward the woobiefiers because theirs may be a defensive reaction, not to mention an internalization of the harmful ideas that the fandom police hold. That doesn't make the woobiefiers' arguments any less harmful, however. The fandom police are wrong in equating depiction with endorsement, but that's no reason to jump into actual, like literal, non-fictional endorsement of shitty and even criminal behavior.

If you truly disagree with the fandom police's premise, then actually disagree, and don't validate the flawed and harmful premise by spinelessly seeking a loophole for yourself like "Yeah people who like immoral shit and deserve to be mistreated/shamed, but I'm nothing like those immoral people because [horrible validation of real-life immorality]."

Also don't kid yourself that everything you like is moral because you're a moral person and therefore everything you like must be pure and faultless. Maybe space Nazis do turn you on and that's... fine? You don't have to write millions of words of meta on why your fave could never be a Nazi because your genitals are as ideologically pure as the rest of you and could never react favorably to Nazis?

Maybe the character who turns you on is an abuser and war criminal, and you don't have to make torturous logic pretzels trying to justify everything from negging to mass murder? Like, it's fine to acknowledge your messes and how problematic you can be. It is perfectly all right to like problematic things, but in trying to explain away how problematic something is in an attempt to remain unproblematic in your own eyes, you are justifying things that hurt real people in real life and speaking over a hell lot of people's pain.

1. Just to be clear what I'm talking about, by fandom policing I mean the idea that content dealing with immoral actions normalizes immorality on real life, and that such immoral content should not be created or put out in public. This can lead to bullying and harassment of the creators of such content as well, in which case I'll call people who engage in such actions "fandom policing bullies." The people who engage in this behavior are more popularly known as "antis," but I agree it's a good idea to move away from that term for a number of reasons (Tumblr link, long).

Comments

[redrikki]

You know, since you made some thinly-veiled Star Wars references, I'm going to go full on Star Wars. The entire premise of Luke's arc in RotJ is that it is okay to have Darkness inside of you, so long as you don't act on it. The Jedi ideal of denying every bad thought and emotion lest it make you Dark was what created Vader at least as much as Palpatine's grooming. Luke learns to accept that part of himself while simultaneously deciding to do and be better than his worst impulses. Current fandom thought/desire policing is just as toxic as Jedi philosophy in part because of it's reactionary, bullying bullshit, but also because it's essentially created fandom Sith with the apologists.

[ljwrites]

Holy shit that is an EXCELLENT analogy and so elegant, too!

[redrikki]

Thanks.

[lb_lee]

You know, I can't help but wonder if the sort of fandom purity politics (which seem to be mostly of a sexual nature) is at all related to more general sexual purity politics like I grew up with in the South, only wearing a left-wing hat?

Just instead of, "if you like this, you're impure in God's eyes," it's, "if you like this, you're impure in humanity's eyes."

And it's super weird seeing this topsy-turvy land? But it has the similar justifications--that your sexual actions are still "pure" as long as you give the correct tortured justification ("it as just anal!" or "it's really a good guy!") And the rules of what is pure or not similarly changes from group to group.

I don't know. This stuff is on my mind lately.

--Rogan

[minoanmiss]

A common statement on Tumblr is "purity wank is fundamentalist Christianity with a gay hat" which is merely the flip side of what you've said here. You and our hostess *waves* are totally right.

[ljwrites]

I'd say yeah, but with a caveat. The Tumblr I linked, freedom-of-fanfic, makes that very point and goes farther in saying it's post-9/11 valuing of safety over freedom and I guess those could be contributing, even major factors and certainly purity culture has influence outside of immediate Xtian fundamentalist circles. OTOH I have known fandom policers who are very much not Xtians and in fact are despised by the same circles that are central in purity culture (Muslims, Jewish people, all politically leftist) so I'm hesitant to make a generalization on this point. I think it's more accurate to say that authoritarianism exists on the left as well as the right and it's a mistake to pigeonhole all authoritarianism into one cause. Also I know that there's a lot of overlap between fandom policing and exclusionism, that is aphobia, which in its explicit exclusionary form is definitely seen more on the left.

[minoanmiss]

nod I took that statement as being intended to pull a curtain back: it's not that fandom policers are all fundamentalist Christians at all, but that they are participating in a concept that arose from (among other things) fundamentalist Christian ideas, and hopefully learning that will make those who don't want to promote fundamentalist Christianity rethink their adherence to the fandom policing concept.

[ljwrites]

It's kind of surreal to me that the same people who were told that they shouldn't exist because they don't fit a mold of heteronormativity, Christian normativity, etc., then turn around and become so censorious themselves. Maybe it's a way of regaining a sense of control, since they can't get rid of abuse and pedophilia in the real world but they can hound fanfic authors off the internet and pat themselves on the back while doing so.

[lb_lee]

I mean, also there's no hate like self-loathing turned outward. God knows I was an anti-slash boy probably in part because I was trying to avoid dealing with my own gayness! Might be similar at work.

(And I mean, I can even understand how it happens! There's one white supremacist dick-bag who is eye-candy to me, even though he's absolutely heinous. And I even caught myself starting to go down the route of thinking with my dick, and had to go, "Wait, no. He's NOT just in need of someone to hold his hand and have a conversation. He's a Nazi. Don't stick your metaphorical dick in Nazi." And I've had like a decade of practice coming to terms with my problematic naughtiness, and I STILL had to catch myself! I imagine it's a lot harder for someone younger and more earnest, who still deeply hopes they can create their socialist paradise in their heads and loins. Because if they can't even create it in themselves, WHAT HOPE IS THERE???)

--Rogan

[minoanmiss]

It's definitely that control thing. I saw a very good post about that recently... goes to rummage

[cloudsinvenice]

It reminds me of the way a lot of people's internet environmentalism is basically shaming disabled people for needing to use disposable plastics. They've been told repeatedly that straws are a minor part of the ocean plastics problem, but I suspect part of the reason they don't listen is that shaming someone online about the stuff they do is always easier than dealing with the huge structural problems that are keeping us all awake at night re: the environment. It's just more satisfying to tell someone off and get a quick hit of "I've done my bit!" than engage in the much more uncertain, frightening work of trying to persuade governments, which often feel remote, to shift huge corporations, which feel even more remote. The sheer wall of anti-women, anti-LGBTQ sentiment in the world at large is exhausting to even contemplate - but that one person in fandom doing a thing one disapproves of... they're reachable.

[lb_lee]

it's post-9/11 valuing of safety over freedom

That too, though... I dunno, it also feels like a slight stretch to equate "fictional characters kissing" with safety. Though I do agree that the "if you're not with us, you're against us!" rhetoric that became common in the wake of 9/11 seems more acceptable now among the young folks, perhaps because they don't remember life before it.

I didn't mean to say that left-wing folks can't be just as douchey. (I mean, I have run into quite a few people who I'm pretty sure would be happy Nazis, should Nazi-dom be associated with queerness, kink, and polyamory.)

[ljwrites]

It's a pretty U.S.-centric take, but then I'm told fandom policing is a pretty U.S.-centric phenomenon.

Oh God, nobody show them Nazi porn... XD

(Pictured in my icon: A couple who in the original history would be pedophilic by some fandom policers' metric because he was 20 and she was 28 with two children when they married “¯\_(ツ)_/¯“)

[lb_lee]

Yeah, the sentiment is very USA. And at least one artist I know left English language fandom because apparently the grump police were easier to avoid.

[loopy777]

Look, all I know is that Megatron is smexy. He's a bad, bad boy.

[ljwrites]

He certainly is, though I believe I am legally obligated to hurt you for using *cringe* "smexy."

[lb_lee]

I was going to link you a Youtube video of every time Beast Wars Megatron said, "YES" but... that was too many. Even in just three minutes.

[loopy777]

That's okay, I'll be seeing David Kaye at a convention in the Fall. I expect I'll be hearing a lot of YES's then.

[lb_lee]

Ha! Enjoy! That'll be a lot of joyous YES!

(Beast Wars is the only Transformers franchise I know, so I'm delighted to be able to at least somewhat contribute.)

[loopy777]

One of the nice things about the TF franchise constantly reusing names is that every generation has an Optimus and a Megatron, even if they're very different iterations. But it helps that they're all smexy, smexy robots.

[cloudsinvenice]

I'd never thought of the woobification comparison before but I think you're absolutely right.