why antis do the thing: being an anti with problematic canon
why do antis stay in fandoms where the canon material itself is problematic? Relatedly, why do antis stay in fandoms where the creators support - or fail to denounce, at least - bad ships and nasty shippers?
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Most antis seem to have a funny little disconnect between mass media creations and fandom creations. Despite insisting on purity in their fandom spaces, antis will consume mass media-created works that canonically contain terrible things that they regularly fight against: incest, adult/teen relationships (‘pedophilia’ in anti parlance), noncon/dubcon, etc.
How can they do this?
In my experience: Antis hold fandom to a higher standard than the mass media on which fandom is based.
Fandom tumblr and social justice tumblr heavily overlap because fandom is where many queer, marginalized people go for acceptance and refuge. Additionally, much of English-speaking fandom comes from regions where LGBT and women’s histories are very undertaught. The direct result is that many antis have received the large majority of their social justice education in fandom spaces.*
That makes it only natural that antis would expect fandom spaces to be better at things like maintaining safe spaces, prioritizing queer/LGBT stories, prioritizing PoC stories, etc. than the very media that caused a fandom to exist in the first place. In the eyes of an anti, fandom should be fixing the canon problems by cleansing fandom space of the canon problems and patching those problems with good fanon. Fandom certainly shouldn’t be taking the bad parts of canon and running with them to ship or create things that are less than wholesome and positive.
Fandom should, as a collective, know better.
Of course, reality is that fandom - like the media it’s based on - is made up of fallible humans who are steeped in the same culture as the media creators, and therefore fandom is generally just as prone to the same problems, both real (cultural misogyny and racism/bias towards white male characters, etc) and imagined (dark themes and fanworks, heavy focus on romance/sex, not always shipping the Most Correct ship, etc). This infuriates antis, who then set about fixing it by yelling at the bad parts of fandom until it shapes up, and often to the exclusion of creating or encouraging fan content that would meet their standards of correctness.
In contrast, mass media creators generally get a pass for reasons that are likely as varied as the antis that cut them the slack, but in general, mass media creators - particularly white, cis, male mass media creators - just aren’t expected to know as much about activism. Antis don’t bother to try to fix them because they won’t even understand what antis are getting up in arms about in the first place.
Other prominent reasons for cutting mass media creators relative slack:
- they don’t respond as strongly as fan creators do, if they respond at all, to anti pressure/harassment, and calling people out isn’t as interesting/doesn’t feel productive if the target doesn’t react
- antis, like all humans, are prone to double-standards, and mass media creators are put on a pedastal that fan creators are not
- antis feel that as long as they recognize the problems with the canon work and don’t interact with them in fandom it’s ‘safe’ to be in problematic fandoms
It is, however, worth noting that if a creator shows the slightest awareness of social justice issues but in some way falls short of anti-shipping purity standards, antis will frequently go after the creator as brutally as they go after fellow fans. Additionally, antishipping tends to be more prominent in mass media fandoms where the canon content is socially aware, like Steven Universe.
*in 2013-2014, social justice education on tumblr took a very hard, very sudden turn directly into REG territory. About the same time, anti-shipping culture sprang up. Coincidence? I think not.
What does REG stand for?
REGs = ‘Reactive Exclusionary Gatekeepers’. It’s people who believe that sexuality and gender identity have strict categories and that those categories should be strictly maintained.
In my observation, REGs got a foothold on tumblr during the extreme inclusivity era where ppl were doing such things as identifying as galaxies and comparing these sorts of identities to being trans* or nb. The backlash to this kind of over-inclusive gender identity gave those who wanted to regulate non-cis genders a chance to lay their groundwork. At the same time, asexuality awareness was on the rise. The ace awareness language was co-opted by radfems to regulate the expression of sexuality, particularly by non-male people, and the split-attraction model encouraged by asexual communities were turned into a weapon to prove non-straight sexualities and non-binary gender identities could still be ‘straight and cis’.
Like REGs, anti-shippers believe it is their job to regulate and define others by their perceived behavior, and to maintain strict standards and categories in fandom. Much of the language of REGs is co-opted by antis to attack shippers. Though their targets are (somewhat) different, they spring from the same kind of controlling mindset and share methods to an alarming degree.
Thank you!