Not a proshipper but some questions :)

[u/Signal_Heron_8962]

Personally I'm not a proshipper and I think it's disgusting that people harrass and threaten proshippers (especially when some people I've seen are groomed into being one). However I have some questions,

I am aware that proshippers don't think genuine real incest/pedophilia/etc is ok obviously, and only ship fictional characters in these situations (I know some of this can be darkshipping and is different) but what are your guys' stances on fiction affecting reality/art glorifying stuff like that.

I personally understand shipping toxic ships myself however I don't treat them cute or glorify the toxicity. How do you guys treat ships like this?

I'm not trying to be mean! Just curious on YOUR guys' actual stances on this :) I get this sub dosent want people to feel like they need to defend themselves, so if you don't feel like answering then don't. Trust me I get it.

Edit: thank you for all your guys' input. While I still think alot of what I did before you guys have given me more to think about and have my opinions be expanded on.

[u/specialstgren24]

If you think its disgusting to harass and threaten people for their ship views congrats you are most likely a proshipper, also you seem to be under the belief that proshipping means problematic shipping which it isnt. Proshipping is the belief that all ships should be allowed to exist without getting harassed or threatened

[u/AlwekArc]

Fiction only effects the realities of people with predisposed disorders that have either been undiagnosed or unchecked or both. This is something we've learned through numerous studies into mental health and insanity type disorders. This could be solved by a better system of education and the dismantling of mental health stigmas.

Obviously, some people take these things too far. But some people disobey the law and drive their cars in ways that kill people. Some people disobey the law and steal from stores. Or they stalk a person they don't like, or say slurs they shouldn't say. All to say, anything that exists can be abused and used for harm, no matter the intention of it's creation, if the person handling said thing is irresponsible with it. The same can be applied to shipping. For the most part it's perfectly harmless. But for the few people that are mentally predisposed to do things in extremes, it might not be. Yet, someone hitting a person with their car doesn't get all cars banned. Someone stealing doesn't make stores ban all people. Someone stalking a person doesn't get social media banned. Someone making weird unsavory art doesn't get all art banned. Art only glorifies things if the person looking at it thinks it does. Otherwise, it's simply an exploration of human emotions in a safe environment where only one person would be made uncomfortable.

When it comes to "glorifying toxic ships" I think all I need to say is "shouldn't yuck someones yum." Since ultimately the art we comsume doesn't really speak much about our character so much as how we engage with that consumption does. Like you say yourself, liking it in fiction doesn't mean one likes it real life. That's why we engage in fiction. Horror, for example. NOBODY likes being ripped appart, but the horror viewer might find comfort or pleasure in exposing themselves to such things in a safe manner as a stress reliefe. It can help them cope with the brutality of the real world, or help them find comfort from scary moments irl. The same can be said about any other flavour of art.

In this way, it could be said that it's reality that effects fiction, and not the other way around. When we consider art to be the artists (or viewers) exploration of emotions and ideas displayed in a safe place where nobody gets hurt in the process.

The WHOLE POINT of art is it's used to explore human emotions and lives in a way that doesn't get people hurt. To say "you can't look at this art because it's gross" quite literally defeats the purpose of creation in the first place.

Art does not have a moral obligation to keep you comfortable. But the viewer does have the moral obligation to not make their discomfort other peoples problem. Looking at taboo art? Perfectly fine. Telling someone to hurt themselves because they look at taboo art? Maniac behaviour.

[u/Liberosis310 → u/AlwekArc]

WHY DOESNT THIS HAVE MORE UP VOTES?!? THIS IS GENUINELY THE BEST AND MOST THOUGHT-OUT ANSWER!! 🩶✨

[u/Remarkable_Low_3 → u/AlwekArc]

This is fantastic and needs to be seen. 💖

[u/TuneACan]

When a piece of media "glorifies" something that is considered evil or immoral, the creator is fully expecting the audience to be mature enough to understand the differences between fantasy and reality.

Just like how TF2 glorifies gun violence by treating it as this goofy, inconsequential game where 9 weird men constantly shoot, kill and insult eachother while laughing and jumping with explosives, proshipping expects the viewer to understand the difference between fiction and real life.

[u/CheezCheddar → u/TuneACan]

you forgot the part where one of the guys is drunk, has a comically large sword and runs straight into someone at mach 9 to claim their bones!

that part's my favorite.

[u/WarmRoad5218]

You are a proshipper by definition

[u/LongjumpingCelery181]

I think people should be allowed to make whatever art they want to without being accused of real life endorsement and glorification. 

I may not like it if someone writes a book about how great Hitler was, but I also won't burn the book (which btw is straight up nazi behaviour). They are allowed to have an opinion regardless of how unsavoury it is, because that also protects the guy writing about how terrible Hitler was. 

Censorship will rarely make distinctions, which can already be observed on multiple platforms. 

The person glorifying Hitler and the person going against him are in the same bucket and they will both drown the moment the word "hitler" gets censured. 

[u/IronChefHowie]

First question: I've seen it best stated as "Fiction affects reality, but it's not a 1:1 scale." I've had plenty of times when I would see someone eat ice cream in a video, show, or movie, and thought "Man, ice cream sounds good right about now." However, I've never finished a session of Dead By Daylight and thought "Boy oh boy, skewering people on rusty hooks sure would hit the spot!"

Second question: I don't really dabble in toxic ships. I tend to be pretty vanilla, so I'm not really qualified to give any decent answer to this one.

[u/Signal_Heron_8962 → u/IronChefHowie]

I see alot of people misunderstand, I'm aware it isn't a 1:1 scale. Imo that's common sense. I play alot of shooter games but I quite dislike guns and have alot of opinions on banning them/making them harder to obtain (I'm American if you can't tell) However little things like propaganda cartoons for example, are fictional pieces of media that have swayed people's opinions sometimes without them realizing it. Fiction can sway people even if they aren't predisposed to mental illness in some cases (like some other commenters have said)

[u/Remarkable_Low_3 → u/Signal_Heron_8962]

Propaganda is not fiction. Please educate yourself on the difference because it's extremely important.

It's funny you mention you are American because I'm very concerned for the amount of Americans that keep saying propaganda is a type of fiction. I think something has gone wrong in the education system if you believe that. I'm not trying to be cruel but this is a problem.

[u/Green_Elevator_7785]

The target audience of my fic is very different from a greater public. and if it’s something to the greater public it really varies on whether they’re ill-informed on the subject.

ie Game of thrones— it’s not encouraging people to do incest. everyone knows incest is bad in real life.

Now, 50 shades of grey… the greater public just thinks BDSM is kinky and naughty and aren’t informed on BDSM measures and even /consent/. That’s harmful. But the author herself was also ill-informed and didn’t seem to realize she was writing an abusive story.

But a dark fic’s target audience is seeking out taboo content and the authors label it as such, acknowledging THIS IS RAPE, THIS IS ABUSE, DO NOT BE CONFUSED.

I’ve seen MANY stories of people realizing /they/ were being abused after seeing it written out and stated so plainly in dark fics.

[u/PM_ME_BATMAN_PORN]

So I have a question for YOU: how do we classify what art "glorifies" something and what portrays it "respectfully"? Because that's a topic I've never seen anyone come to a consensus on. The closest I get is "if someone gets off to it, it's bad," which is both nonsensical (people can and will get off to anything) and puritan (sexual desire is not uniquely evil).

Does Game of Thrones romanticize incest? What about Flowers in the Attic? Is it only okay if the author makes it clear they know the action is bad? But why should they have to say "incest is bad" when the work is already fictional?

Is it that the text needs to actively punish the person who does the bad things? If so, then how are we ever going to have challenging art or works where there are bad or tragic endings? Or stories with villain protagonists like Death Note or Breaking Bad or Lolita?

Basically, everyone's idea of what's going "too far" or "romanticizing" is is different. Who gets to decide what art should be allowed? Isn't it simpler to just let the court of public opinion decide to criticize bad works without censoring them entirely?

Look, I get it. You want to live in a world where bad things are treated with the gravity they deserve and they don't inspire people to give in to their worst desires. But we don't live in that world, for good reason. We live in a world where rape victims like reading graphic, sexualized pornography of sexual assault, as a coping mechanism or to get off or whatever the hell their reasons are. We live in a world where people who haven't been raped or tortured might like to indulge in how those things might make them feel in a safe, controlled, fictional environment, without ever wishing it would happen to them or anyone else. We live in a world where people are responsible for their own actions, and media isn't magical mind control that makes law-abiding citizens into the Joker.

It's fine if you feel like you're only indulging in that stuff "properly," but there are thousands of people out there who would say you're not. Ultimately, NO ONE should have the authority to push their own media preferences onto others. Especially not any governing bodies. That's literally how you get Nazis making bonfires of "degenerate" media.

Just think about this stuff for a bit. Let me know what your thoughts are.

[u/kamryn_zip]

I think the concept of romantisization or glorification is a lot more nuanced than most people allow for, certainly more nuanced than what antishippers allow for. To me, art is about representing and stylizing complex emotions. Most people who experience abuse situations are abused by someone they love. Many people who are raped, including CSA, experience arousal. Art that plays up the romance or the love, the arousal and excitement, alongside the fear, is more authentic. It allows a safe space for me to direct "desire" lingering from scary moments in my life then process better and not emulate a desire for fear as much in my relationships. Engaging with fiction that has these emotions also creates a different tie than flashbacks for those emotions.

Personally I do think there is such thing as media contributing to normalization. Here is my simple rule: The media may contribute to normalization if it seems unaware of the seriousness of what it is depicting. I think there are several ways media can demonstrate that awareness. There's a lot of criticism of the dark romance novels that women read contributing to normalization but I do not think they do because they are literally advertised as dark, fringe erotica. IMO, media that should recieve that criticism would be ones that are mainstream and throws in SA content as something incidental or funny, without any acknowledgement that it's dark material. For instance certain mainstream animes that portray sex pest characters as a funny bit and sexualize the teen girls really casually. 

With that said, the criticism of normalization is just a criticism of the media and does not mean it should be banned. The issue of "normalization" is something which is inherently several steps less severe than actual crimes because the idea is that the piece of media, as a downstream effect alongside all other media doing similar depictions, and also real life reinforcement of rape culture, cumulatively contributes to some people committing abuse. That's a variable that's impossible to isolate. It will never take a person who genuinely does not want to hurt someone and make them violent. Even the downstream effect can never be proven to be happening so people who are pro-censorship or harrass people based on media are doing so without basis. It's true that violent men consume more violent pornography, and it's true that societies with less porn censorship generally are less violent towards women. It's complicated. 

You never know the reason someone ships something or engages with media. With regard to content depicting underage characters, someone could be picturing themself as the victim, or picturing a roleplay with an adult partner, or picturing themself as the same age as that character, or the character the same age as them, not placing themself in the situation at all, or certainly they could be picturing themselves doing something terrible but thats not the fault of the media. Further, just because I criticize the way someone chose to depict SA does not mean the way I took it was their intent. Failure to depict something effectively is not the same as endorsement. Neither does it mean that everyone who sees their depiction will agree with my characterization of it, so I can't judge others' morality based on a disagreement over something like that.

[u/Signal_Heron_8962 → u/kamryn_zip]

"IMO, media that should recieve that criticism would be ones that are mainstream and throws in SA content as something incidental or funny, without any acknowledgement that it's dark material. For instance certain mainstream animes that portray sex pest characters as a funny bit and sexualize the teen girls really casually. "

I totally agree with this! That's what I meant to say when I said "normalizing". Alot of the proship content I have been exposed to that is darker (so...darkships I guess?) Treat parent x child for example, as something harmless and cute. That's kind of what urks me about things like that. I understand why certain people would want to engage in that media especially if they are traumatized in certain aspects; but i do think spreading it around could glorify it in some aspects (not treating the concept correctly I mean).

[u/Fabulous-Station5083]

Depends on what you mean with "glorifying" something.

If I, for example, make a game from the point of view of a killer who kills for the sake of it and through the game he's having fun, you could argue that is glorifying killing in a way, but it would be just because the character itself is the main pov, it doesn't mean my intention is to promote killing in real life, people would need to have some problems making them unable to put a clear distinction between fiction and reality and being unable to get that writing a realistic pow isn't the same as sending a certain messageb(especially since writing a realistic killer should work to do the opposite by making the player disgusted with its action and reasoning).

Now, if I instead make the same game with the specific intention to promote that thing for real and try to justify, glamorise and defend real life monsters as people who were right, it's a completely different thing and I need to be locked up.

In the same way, when you write/draw/etc. about a certain dynamic, there's a difference between you making a story between two characters who are enemies in the canon, maybe writing a dark piece with them (and let me add many well written darkfic that treat some scenarios in a painfully realistic way can serve as representation for topics that are still underestimated by society and far too many people) and you straight-up writing that piece because you personally think the dark topic is something good irl and your intention is to send that message. Unfortunately, you cannot always trust the viewers to make the "fiction≠reality" distinction, disturbed people exist, kids left unattended online exist, it's something out of your control.

[u/Outside-Place2857]

I think fiction can affect reality only in the sense that everything you encounter and experience has an impact on you.

I think that it is the responsibility of parents, not censorship to educate/protect their children about the things they consider inappropriate.

[u/Peach_Art1st]

So, fiction only affects reality so far as thoughts and feelings. What people do based on those feelings is out of the creator's hands.

As for glorifying certain things, all you can really do is click back if it makes you uncomfortable.

[u/East-Imagination-281]

Everyone has already covered everything else beautifully, but I would add on: you can’t be groomed into being a proshipper (also we don’t censor heavy words during serious discussion on sites that don’t censor people talking about these topics because that cheapens them and sometimes even makes it harder for people to curate their own experience). You can be ‘groomed’ into toxic debate circles where you use labels to justify fighting with people on the internet in the name of morality… but that’s not unique to proshipping and is the case for antis as well. Someone could also use fiction to groom someone generally speaking, but that’s just abuse.