freedom-of-fanfic - Tumblr blog

freedom-of-fanfic · 9 months

Text

wow, 85,636 votes! nice.

Just for fun, I decided to crunch some numbers so I could see the following:

actual (rough) numbers of voters for each category

what the percentages look like if you remove the 'other/prefer not to tell/see the results' votes*

recombinations: how many queer ppl? how many cis ppl? etc

putting it all under a cut.

actual (rough) numbers of voters for each category.

Three caveats:

a. the percentages are only given to the tenth of a percent, which isn't very accurate

b. related to (a): if even one person selects an option, the poll must reflect a number bigger than 0.0%. Since the smallest option is 0.1%, that is the number that will appear. Therefore, these numbers reflect the rough maximum number of trans het women that voted.

c. there's no way to know if anyone voted more than once using multiple tumblr accounts.

With that out of the way: How many people (roughly speaking) actually selected each of the options?

cis het woman: 8,135 votes

cis queer woman: 25,177 votes

trans het woman: 86 votes

trans queer woman: 2,141 votes

nonbinary person: 19,354 votes

cis het man: 1,028 votes

cis queer man: 1,456 votes

trans het man: 257 votes

trans queer man: 8,564 votes

other/prefer not to tell/see the results: 19,438 votes

The actual numbers help show how big even the smallest percentages are. the tumblr fic writer population is a bit more diverse in gender/orientation than I expected!

what the percentages look like if you remove the 'other/prefer not to tell/see the results' votes

I wondered what the percentages look like if you assume that 22.7% of the votes are purely curiosity-to-see-results votes.*

(*when I drop these numbers, I'm certainly excluding a number of people who either (a) have a gender/orientation that fits so poorly into the categories offered that they chose 'other', or (b) didn't want to share for whatever reason. However, there's no way to separate those people from those who only wanted to see the results.)

Removing the 'other/prefer not to tell/see results' votes leaves 66,198 total votes, split as follows:

cis het woman: 12.30%

cis queer woman: 30.03%

trans het woman: 0.13%

trans queer woman: 3.23%

nonbinary person: 29.24%

cis het man: 1.55%

cis queer man: 2.2%

trans het man: 0.39%

trans queer man: 12.94%

if you assume those 19,438 votes were all just to see the results, cis queer women fic writers top the charts at about 30%, with nonbinary fic writers a close second at 29.24%. The third largest group, trans queer men who write fic, trails distantly at about 13%, with cis het women right on their heels at 12.3%.

recombinations

Let's break down these categories into different combinations for fun.

Assuming that everyone who responded 'other/prefer not to tell/see results' meant 'other'*:

nonbinary/other: 45.3%, or 38,792 responses (!)

In this scenario, 45.3% of respondents are somewhere off the cis/trans/het/queer scale. That's a lot of respondents!

(*ie they were expressing that they do write/have written fic, but their gender/orientation doesn't fit into the offered categories: for example, being non-cis but not trans or nonbinary, and/or LGBTAP+ but not queer (or het.))

Separating gender and orientation:

cis: 35,796 responses

trans: 11,048 responses

trans/nonbinary: 30,402 responses

het: 9,506 responses

queer: 37,338 responses

woman: 35,539 responses

man: 11,305 responses

I also turned these numbers into percentages.

'inclusive' means 'including the 19,438 responses of 'other/prefer not to tell/see results' in the total'

'exclusive' means 'excluding the 19,438 responses of 'other/prefer not to tell/see results' in the total'

expressed in percentages:

cis: 41.8% (inclusive) / 54.08% (exclusive)

trans: 12.9% (inclusive) / 16.69% (exclusive)

trans/nonbinary: 35.5% (inclusive) / 45.93% (exclusive)

het: 11.1% (inclusive) / 14.37% (exclusive)

queer: 43.6% (inclusive) / 56.4% (exclusive)

woman: 41.5% (inclusive) / 53.69% (exclusive)

man: 13.2% (inclusive) / 17.08% (exclusive)

taken as individual categories, queer people (cis & trans) made up the largest number of responses. the number of cis respondents (het & queer) was just slightly larger than the number of women respondents (cis & trans). These categories don't perfectly overlap with one another, but it's no surprise that these are the top three broken-down categories given that the most common response to the poll was 'cis queer woman'.

(trans/nonbinary as a combined category make up a not-so-distant 4th. There's a lot of non-cis fic writers on tumblr, and I love it.)

Cross-combining categories in various breakdowns:

cis het: 9,163 responses

cis queer: 26,633 responses

trans het: 343 responses

trans queer: 10,705 responses

cis woman: 33,312 responses

cis man: 2,484 responses

trans woman: 2,227 responses

trans man: 8,821 responses

het woman: 8,221 responses

het man: 1,285 responses

queer woman: 27,318 responses

queer man: 10,020 responses

I also turned these numbers into percentages.

'inclusive' means 'including the 19,438 responses of 'other/prefer not to tell/see results' in the total'

'exclusive' means 'excluding the 19,438 responses of 'other/prefer not to tell/see results' in the total'

expressed in percentages:

cis het: 10.7% (inclusive) / 13.85% (exclusive)

cis queer: 31.1% (inclusive) / 40.23% (exclusive)

trans het: 0.4% (inclusive) / 0.52% (exclusive)

trans queer: 12.5% (inclusive) / 16.17% (exclusive)

cis woman: 38.9% (inclusive) / 50.33% (exclusive)

cis man: 2.9% (inclusive) / 3.75% (exclusive)

trans woman: 2.6% (inclusive) / 3.36% (exclusive)

trans man: 10.3% (inclusive) / 13.33% (exclusive)

het woman: 9.6% (inclusive) / 12.43% (exclusive)

het man: 1.5% (inclusive) / 1.94% (exclusive)

queer woman: 31.9% (inclusive) / 41.26% (exclusive)

queer man: 11.7% (inclusive) / 15.14% (exclusive)

analysis:

Crunching these numbers took longer than expected (of course - always does, lol).

as an informal poll on tumblr, these results are (maybe) indicative of the fannish fic-writing population on tumblr only. They can't be verified and we can't be sure of the reach. Did this reach enough people across tumblr, or did it recirculate in a limited circle of tumblr users and limited fandoms? We just don't know.

by its language, this poll also will necessarily exclude anyone who is hostile to terminology such as 'cis', 'trans', 'nonbinary', and/or 'queer': ie trans-exclusionary radfems (TERFS) / other transphobes, 'gender critical' people (GCs), anyone who believes 'queer' is a slur that cannot be reclaimed by anyone, etc. (It also may exclude people who dislike using the word 'queer' to identify themselves even though they aren't straight/shunt them into a category that includes ppl who just want to see the results.)

I bring this up because this may skew the poll results towards queer & trans fandom, excluding the portion of fandom that wouldn't take this poll b/c they're trans- &/or queerphobic.

That said: this poll suggests that fic-writers on tumblr are

overwhelmingly queer compared to het (43.6% queer, 11.1% het)

considerably nonbinary/trans (41.8% of respondents identified as cis: not much more than the 35.5% identified as trans or nonbinary)

majority-minority women (41.5% women, 22.6% nonbinary, 13.2% men)

only 10.7% identified themselves as cishet; 9.5% as cishet women specifically. so much for the mythical straight cis woman majority fandom - at least here on tumblr.

while cis women make up a large majority of the women who replied to this poll, more than 2,000 trans women also responded! Considering how hostile the heavy radfem influence has made tumblr to trans women in particular, I'm not surprised the number is comparatively small. wishing a very radfem-free tumblr experience for every trans respondent (including me), but especially trans women.

the majority of men who responded to this poll are trans men, but over 2,000 cis men responded to the poll. Still, men made up only 13.2% of respondents. I'd love to know why men are comparatively underrepresented in fic-writing, at least here on tumblr. the numbers alone can't tell me that.

tl;dr if this poll is even sort-of in line with tumblr's fic-writing population, it's exactly as you'd expect: very queer and very women, majority-minority cis but with a loooot of trans/nonbinary presence as well.

it's just fun to see some actual numbers that quantify my impressions.

I just had a discussion with my friend about fanfiction and how we tend to assume that women are the writers without any actual proof. Then I said, hey, I know fanfiction written by gay and trans dudes. But then I remembered, wait, I think I know one writer who just must be cis het based on his work. Anyway, all writers, be honest, who are you?

Please reblog if you're interested in the results.

#fandom polls #tumblr polls #fandom meta #not very scientific science #radfems again

25K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 9 months

Text

Oh please answer this poll, it might be semi-representative if the number of responses is high enough

Please reblog if you're interested in the results.

#fandom polls #good words

25K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 9 months

Text

KOSA made it out of committee, so now is the time to contact your senator and tell them to vote no on KOSA.

& if your rep is Dem: Remind them, please, that LGBTQ+ content - heck, SEX ED content - is considered obscene by the GOP membership, & maybe consider that keeping kids & teens from accessing either of these things is one reason your GOP colleagues are so eager to collaborate on this bill??

if your rep is GOP: Remind them that realistically, sites that host ‘adult’ content will likely have to collect & keep records of legal IDs, & data breaches happen *on the regular*? Do they know anybody who’s had their identity stolen? How excited are they for the day their *own* browsing habits are exposed by a data breach?

Remind them all that they might trust their opposite-party colleagues, but they *don’t* trust the opposite party any further than they could throw them, and think about every possible bad-faith interpretation of the bill before voting ‘yes’, for fuck’s sake??

I’m tired & deeply worried. The internet has been a relatively safe space for queer ppl the world over. If KOSA passes, it’s a big step towards waving goodbye to that world.

“KOSA wont pass, it got rejected the last two times!”

It wasn’t passed because people spoke out against it. People called and emailed their senators. So, CALL / EMAIL YOUR SENATORS. MAKE IT KNOWN THAT WE DO NOT WANT THIS BILL TO PASS!

“But its unconstitutional-“ There’ve been multiple bills passed before that are unconstitutional. This will not be any different to them, they do not care.

STOP KOSA!!!

#stop kosa #kosa #kids online safety act #fuck kosa #good words #this is a us centric post

37K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 1 year

Text

The thing with dogwhistles is that they are extremely effective at both communicating to the intended audience of bigots and at driving those outside of the audience utterly up the wall. It’s like an inversion of gaslighting and sealioning combined.

See, if some musician comes out and says, point blank, “I like Hitler”, there’s no ambiguity. There’s no shield of deniability. His defenders have to stretch to try to ascribe his actions to his mental state or other issues, because there’s no defending those words.

But an effective dogwhistle? So long as there’s the barest veneer of ambiguity, it’s completely deniable and dismissable to anyone who is looking for a reason.

Trump-era ICE posts a 14 word mission statement and gives statistics in counts of 88? Oh, they’re not Nazis, you’re just being paranoid!

Someone goes on a tear about “Reptilians running our government” isn’t being antisemitic, no! They’re just dehumanizing the elites out of frustration, stop being paranoid and seeing things where they aren’t!

A major streaming service puts a movie poster with a Jewish character with horns behind his head? Oh, that’s just the bull from Wall Street, they’re not making an allusion to an ancient and famous piece of antisemitic belief! You’re just seeing things!

“Reject modernity, embrace tradition” is just a meme, it’s not a fascist slogan! Stop trying to ruin people’s fun and police their language! You’re just looking for things to be offended by!

That stage was just arranged that way by accident, and the resemblance to a Nazi rune is just a coincidence. Trump has done enough bad shit that you don’t need to go grasping at straws to try to make him look worse.

…and so forth. And if you know how white supremacists, fascists, and other authoritarians communicate to each other, with that sort of coded language, if you know that they do this on purpose… it is enough to drive you to tears out of frustration at how people don’t care, and don’t want to listen.

But they use them because if they were open about their beliefs, like Kanye, they would get the same response.

And that gives them a hell of an incentive to hide it, don’t you think?

#good words #antisemitism #dogwhistles #they know their dogwhistle look silly and juvenile #that’s the joke #you think ‘what a dumb joke’ and meanwhile the nazis have found one another #’why do you care about that?’#because that’s how nazis broadcast to both each other and their victims that they have infiltrated places of power

8K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 1 year

Text

An excellent post breaking down why people become Protestants in a Gay Hat.

tools not rules: the importance of critical thinking

More than once, I’ve talked about the negative implications of Evangelical/purity culture logic being uncritically replicated in fandom spaces and left-wing discourse, and have also referenced specific examples of logical overlap this produces re, in particular, the policing of sexuality. What I don’t think I’ve done before is explain how this happens: how even a well-intentioned person who’s trying to unlearn the toxic systems they grew up with can end up replicating those systems. Even if you didn’t grow up specifically in an Evangelical/purity context, if your home, school, work and/or other social environments have never encouraged or taught you to think critically, then it’s easy to fall into similar traps - so here, hopefully, is a quick explainer on how that works, and (hopefully) how to avoid it in the future.

Put simply: within Evangelism, purity culture and other strict, hierarchical social contexts, an enormous value is placed on rules, and specifically hard rules. There might be a little wiggle-room in some instances, but overwhelmingly, the rules are fixed: once you get taught that something is bad, you’re expected never to question it. Understanding the rules is secondary to obeying them, and oftentimes, asking for a more thorough explanation - no matter how innocently, even if all you’re trying to do is learn - is framed as challenging those rules, and therefore cast as disobedience. And where obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a sin. If someone breaks the rules, it doesn’t matter why they did it, only that they did. Their explanations or justifications don’t matter, and nor does the context: a rule is a rule, and rulebreakers are Bad.

In this kind of environment, therefore, you absorb three main lessons: one, to obey a rule from the moment you learn it; two, that it’s more important to follow the rules than to understand them; and three, that enforcing the rules means castigating anyone who breaks them. And these lessons go deep: they’re hard to unlearn, especially when you grow up with them through your formative years, because the consequences of breaking them - or even being seen to break them - can be socially catastrophic.

But outside these sorts of strict environments - and, honestly, even within them - that much rigidity isn’t healthy. Life is frequently far more complex and nuanced than hard rules really allow for, particularly when it comes to human psychology and behaviour - and this is where critical thinking comes in. Critical thinking allows us to evaluate the world around us on an ongoing basis: to weigh the merits of different positions; to challenge established rules if we feel they no longer serve us; to decide which new ones to institute in their place; to acknowledge that sometimes, there are no easy answers; to show the working behind our positions, and to assess the logic with which other arguments are presented to us. Critical thinking is how we graduate from a simplistic, black-and-white view of morality to a more nuanced perception of the world - but this is a very hard lesson to learn if, instead of critical thinking, we’re taught instead to put our faith in rules alone.

So: what does it actually look like, when rule-based logic is applied in left-wing spaces? I’ll give you an example:

Sally is new to both social justice and fandom. She grew up in a household that punished her for asking questions, and where she was expected to unquestioningly follow specific hard rules. Now, though, Sally has started to learn a bit more about the world outside her immediate bubble, and is realising not only that the rules she grew up with were toxic, but that she’s absorbed a lot of biases she doesn’t want to have. Sally is keen to improve herself. She wants to be a good person! So Sally joins some internet communities and starts to read up on things. Sally is well-intentioned, but she’s also never learned how to evaluate information before, and she’s certainly never had to consider that two contrasting opinions could be equally valid - how could she have, when she wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and when she was always told there was a singular Right Answer to everything? Her whole framework for learning is to Look For The Rules And Follow Them, and now that she’s learned the old rules were Bad, that means she has to figure out what the Good Rules are.

Sally isn’t aware she’s thinking of it in these terms, but subconsciously, this is how she’s learned to think. So when Sally reads a post explaining how sex work and pornography are inherently misogynistic and demeaning to women, Sally doesn’t consider this as one side of an ongoing argument, but uncritically absorbs this information as a new Rule. She reads about how it’s always bad and appropriative for someone from one culture to wear clothes from another culture, and even though she’s not quite sure of all the ways in which it applies, this becomes a Rule, too. Whatever argument she encounters first that seems reasonable becomes a Rule, and once she has the Rules, there’s no need to challenge them or research them or flesh out her understanding, because that’s never been how Rules work - and because she’s grown up in a context where the foremost way to show that you’re aware of and obeying the Rules is to shame people for breaking them, even though she’s not well-versed in these subjects, Sally begins to weigh in on debates by harshly disagreeing with anyone who offers up counter-opinions. Sometimes her disagreements are couched in borrowed terms, parroting back the logic of the Rules she’s learned, but other times, they’re simply ad hominem attacks, because at home, breaking a Rule makes you a bad person, and as such, Sally has never learned to differentiate between attacking the idea and attacking the person.

And of course, because Sally doesn’t understand the Rules in-depth, it’s harder to explain them to or debate with rulebreakers who’ve come armed with arguments she hasn’t heard before, which makes it easier and less frustrating to just insult them and point out that they ARE rulebreakers - especially if she doesn’t want to admit her confusion or the limitations of her knowledge. Most crucially of all, Sally doesn’t have a viable framework for admitting to fault or ignorance beyond a total groveling apology that doubles as a concession to having been Morally Bad, because that’s what it’s always meant to her to admit you broke a Rule. She has no template for saying, “huh, I hadn’t considered that,” or “I don’t know enough to contribute here,” or even “I was wrong; thanks for explaining!”

So instead, when challenged, Sally remains defensive: she feels guilty about the prospect of being Bad, because she absolutely doesn’t want to be a Bad Person, but she also doesn’t know how to conceptualise goodness outside of obedience. It makes her nervous and unsettled to think that strangers could think of her as a Bad Person when she’s following the Rules, and so she becomes even more aggressive when challenged to compensate, clinging all the more tightly to anyone who agrees with her, yet inevitably ending up hurt when it turns out this person or that who she thought agreed on What The Rules Were suddenly develops a different opinion, or asks a question, or does something else unsettling.

Pushed to this sort of breaking point, some people in Sally’s position go back to the fundamentalism they were raised with, not because they still agree with it, but because the lack of uniform agreement about What The Rules Are makes them feel constantly anxious and attacked, and at least before, they knew how to behave to ensure that everyone around them knew they were Good. Others turn to increasingly niche communities and social groups, constantly on paranoid alert for Deviance From The Rules. But other people eventually have the freeing realisation that the fixation on Rules and Goodness is what’s hurting them, not strangers with different opinions, and they steadily start to do what they wanted to do all along: become happier, kinder and better-informed people who can admit to human failings - including their own - without melting down about it.

THIS is what we mean when we talk about puritan logic being present in fandom and left-wing spaces: the refusal to engage with critical thinking while sticking doggedly to a single, fixed interpretation of How To Be Good. It’s not always about sexuality; it’s just that sexuality, and especially queerness, are topics we’re used to seeing conservatives talk about a certain way, and when those same rhetorical tricks show up in our fandom spaces, we know why they look familiar.

So: how do you break out of rule-based thinking? By being aware of it as a behavioural pattern. By making a conscious effort to accept that differing perspectives can sometimes have equal value, or that, even if a given argument isn’t completely sound, it might still contain a nugget of truth. By trying to be less reactive and more reflective when encountering positions different to your own. By accepting that not every argument is automatically tied to or indicative of a higher moral position: sometimes, we’re just talking about stuff! By remembering that you’re allowed to change your position, or challenge someone else’s, or ask for clarification. By understanding that having a moral code and personal principles isn’t at odds with asking questions, and that it’s possible - even desirable - to update your beliefs when you come to learn more than you did before.

This can be a scary and disquieting process to engage in, and it’s important to be aware of that, because one of the main appeals of rule-based thinking - if not the key appeal - is the comfort of moral certainty it engenders. If the rules are simple and clear, and following them is what makes you a good person, then it’s easy to know if you’re doing the right thing according to that system. It’s much, much harder and frequently more uncomfortable to be uncertain about things: to doubt, not only yourself, but the way you’ve been taught to think. And especially online, where we encounter so many more opinions and people than we might elsewhere, and where we can get dogpiled on by strangers or go viral without meaning to despite our best intentions? The prospect of being deemed Bad is genuinely terrifying. Of course we want to follow the Rules. But that’s the point of critical thinking: to try and understand that rules exist in the first place, not to be immutable and unchanging, but as tools to help us be better - and if a tool becomes defunct or broken, it only makes sense to repair it.

Rigid thinking teaches us to view the world through the lens of rules: to obey first and understand later. Critical thinking teaches us to use ideas, questions, contexts and other bits of information as analytic tools: to put understanding ahead of obedience. So if you want to break out of puritan thinking, whenever you encounter a new piece of information, ask yourself: are you absorbing it as a rule, or as a tool?

#why antis do the thing #anti culture is purity culture #nuance is everything #nuance is important #critical thinking #fandom discourse #good words

10K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 1 year

Note

EXTREMELY well said.

I’m not trying to attack you, but do you know that proshipper means someone who supports and romanticizes pedophilia, incest, and abuse? Your reblog on that post seems to read that you think antis just hate on people for having ships they don’t like. But it’s completely different than that. Just looking on the proshipper side of Tumblr and the internet and you can see people happily shipping children and adults and making nsfw content of such things.

i appreciate that you're not being outright hostile, but i have to say, that on its own put you above basically every anti i've interacted with.

i understand where antis are coming from, i really do. there are a lot of things on the internet that make me deeply uncomfortable, including the minor/adult ships that you mention. i don't want to anything to do with those kinds of ships and i would be happiest if i never saw them again. which is why i'm proship.

nine times out of ten, if i see that kind of ship brought up on my dash, it's because i was following an anti without realizing it, and they brought it up unprompted and untagged, to talk about how bad it is that they exist. they are the ones putting that kind of content in front of my face and making it harder to avoid.

the thing about people who ship those ships is that they're generally very aware that not everyone wants to see that kind of content, and so they tag it. they make sideblogs to talk about it. they don't go out of their way to shove it in people's faces. that means i, and everyone else who doesn't like it, can avoid it.

what antis want is for it to not exist at all. they want the tags to be purged and blocked, and for anyone who uses those tags to have their accounts deleted. and sure, that might get rid of some of it, but do you know what would happen to the rest? it would stop being tagged. people who don't want to see it wouldn't have the tools to avoid it. this isn't just a hypothetical, that's what's happened any time a fan space has tried to do that.

that's not even getting into the rabbit hole of what should be banned and what shouldn't. obviously any content that depicts real children or real life abuse shouldn't exist and shouldn't be allowed to be posted, but basically any platform that people use already enforces those policies, and there's not much of a slippery slope to go down there. if it involves real living breathing people being abused, it's bad. end of discussion.

but the same can't be said for fiction. ask ten antis for a specific list of all the content that should be banned, and you'll get ten different answers. what about kink? what about roleplay? what about horror and murder and anything that involves fictional characters being graphically tortured? what about people using art to process terrible things that have happened to them? what about art that uses dark themes as a horror element? if you just want to ban anything questionable to anyone, that's the line of thinking that gets any mention of lgbt existence banned. and again, this isn't just a hypothetical, this has happened before, and that's generally where it leads.

i know, from personal experience, that antis do, in fact, send harassment to people just for shipping things they don't like. i've gotten accused of absolutely vile shit for shipping two fictional characters who were both consenting adults. i've seen ship wars turn into moral battlegrounds, over ships that an average person wouldn't bat an eye at.

the thing about "romanticization" is a whole other can of worms. the anti logic goes like this: if someone sees something (even if it's very obviously fictional) in a positive light enough times, they will start thinking it's okay in real life, and go on to hurt real people. the problem with that is that it's just. blatantly untrue.

if it were true every horror movie fan would be a serial killer, every person that studies dark media would be an unhinged psychopath, and everyone who is into ddlg would be a pedophile. but they're not. they just aren't. people have directed movies just as fucked up as the darkest shit on ao3, and are still capable of being normal human beings who know right from wrong in real life.

even if someone is that impressionable, scrubbing away the existence of every piece of questionable content isn't going to solve their problem, because they're still going to be vulnerable to con men, scams, and cultists. the only thing that would actually materially help someone like that is developing their own morals and critical thinking.

children are also more impressionable, and there's a lot of content that's not suitable for them, but that doesn't mean that content shouldn't exist. it just means that they should stick to spaces designed for them (which most social media sites, tumblr included, are not) or, if they're old enough to be responsible for their experience online, they, or a trusted adult in their lives, should block and filter out things that they aren't comfortable with.

which is what everyone on the internet should be doing. it's what i do, and it's made the internet a much more pleasant place to be. and it's why i sometimes worry for antis mental health, especially teenagers, because they're being told it's right and moral to seek out content that makes them uncomfortable and to engage with the people making it. and that's just. really bad. it's not good for the creators that they're harassing obviously, but it's also really bad for them! it's not healthy to seek out things that make you feel bad, and it's a terrible internet safety lesson to teach minors that it's okay for them to seek out and engage with people making adult content.

individual harassment and crusading is never going to succeed at removing dark content from the internet. it just isn't. at best you might get a small percentage of people who create that content to stop sharing it, at worst you're just going to make people stop tagging it, and either way, you're exposing yourself to things that make you feel bad, when you don't have to.

if you want to materially change the type of content you see, you can. the block button is your friend, use it liberally. same with content filtering and tag blocking.

#good words #anti shipping is abusive #in defense of tagging #in defense of freedom to fandom #fantis are being abused by each other too #the whole ‘share things that upset you so they can also be upset by it’ thing #is not healthy

15K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 2 years

Note

Why the did you ignore my ask? And don’t give me some retarded ass excuse like waaahh getting asks is overwhelming fuck off don’t want asks then turn them off

Thank you for the reminder I can turn off asks, anon! I’ve done exactly that because I’m tired of you, specifically.

& don’t you ever, EVER come at ANYONE with the word ‘retarded’ in your mouth ever again.

#as if ive answered any asks at all on this tumblr in ages #trust me anon you are not special for going without a reply #i am not doing this just to spite you #I am genuinely sorry to the many people who have sent me excellent asks #I think about your questions but writing a reply has been beyond me for a long time #I think I burned out #but I also think I’m slowly recovering #anyway please check out my faq #hopefully it will answer most of your questions #most of you are not this asshole #but also it’s not a bad idea to close asks until I’m actually able to answer them again

113 notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 2 years

Text

It appears that Cloudflare has made it so anything using their services in relation to KF will direct you to this blog post instead of the site. Until KF drops CF’s services, their site will be inaccessible: once they do, they won’t have DDoS protection. (If I’m understanding this correctly.)

They *blocked access to KF*. This is great news!

Look, I said if before & I’ll say it again: of course sites like this will come back. Someone will always be willing to host & protect them, especially as fascism accelerates its power & spread.

But that’s not a reason to make it *easy* for them to exist. Force them to move. Make them vulnerable to DDoS attacks over and over. Make it financially miserable to try to keep the site up & running. Make them work for their hate site, so anyone less than 1000% committed to it falls away.

holy shit y'all holy shit

look, they can and probably will find some other services, but like... this is a big fucking deal.

#good news everyone #nonviolent resistance

2K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 2 years

Note

There’s certainly solid reasons why some Chinese AO3 users are concerned about Tiffany G ( here’s some of them ), but I find this post the most helpful in addressing what’s exaggeration & what’s actually at stake. (I also get the impression that Tiffany G’s first language isn’t English, & that some of what she said came across poorly as a result - literally, it didn’t translate well.)

Also the last paragraph cracks me up.

Hii!

I don’t understand what’s going on with AO3 and the election? I’ve been using it for about a year so this is all new to me! Is Tiffany getting elected actually bad?

I hate censorship, so seeing posts about them censoring stuff is concerning but idk how much truth to it there is 😳

I just want to be informed, and understand!

Hi! Welcome to AO3:)

since I'm not sure how much you know already, the background (background as interpreted by me: I am not speaking on behalf of the OTW) is: Ao3 is run by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that also runs Fanlore and publishes Transformative Works & Cultures. Anyone who has donated $10 to the OTW in the last year, and chooses "yes I want to be a member" at checkout is an OTW member. (This is not the same as having an ao3 account.) Every year, there is an election to fill 3 seats on the Board of Directors. OTW Members (i.e. people who donated between 7/1/21 and 6/30/22, in this case) get to vote on this.

Most of the time, this election is only really followed by people on fail_fandomanon. Sometimes, it isn't.

Things the Board of Directors does: writes posts to send out to the general public when Things Are Happening (the recent csam attacks, the requests for more antiracism measures.) Writes posts to send to volunteers when Things Are Happening (see prev.) Keeps track of what all the committees are doing and how it ties in with whatever the strategic plan says they should be doing. Deals with the IRS/US laws. Approves large funding requests. Deals with emails that someone else has deemed outside their own wheelhouse. Herds cats. Proposes priorities. Points at something shiny, pats the org on the flank, and says "walk that way, walk that way!! Come on buddy, you can do it!!". etc etc etc.

Things the Board of Directors doesn't do: unilaterally determine ao3 content policy. Let us use the word "porn" on ao3 drive merch. Make decisions that are going greatly affect other volunteers' work without input and some level of agreement from said volunteers.

Anyway. This year, one of the five candidates for the three open board seats is Tiffany G. (More information about all the candidates and their platforms is at https://elections.transformativeworks.org)

Tiffany is a tag wrangler from an unspecified country that is, from context, assumed to be China. The candidate Q&A can be read here. Her answers were a little bit confusing, but she said she wanted to update the ToS policies on 'pedophilic and illegal content' because, quote, "people think we host child porn content and such things... It might... be helpful to clarify that to the public." Further down she said:

a) I support 100% “maximum inclusiveness of content”, yet there is always a boundary to everything. Since OTW is already an influential org, we need to protect our image and hold a better image to the public. I want the public to think of us as an inclusive and socially responsible community. So in general, we have to do something to change. Things like making the rating system more specific and obvious to users will be what I want to do. b) Not really restricting the content being posted. I hope it is like more warnings and ratings for posting work so people know what to expect. And all of these are not surprising to people who do not wish to see this.

I took this to mean "she wants to clarify to outsiders that ao3 does not host csam, is not only for erotica, and update the ratings and warnings system." I don't think that those things are necessary or should be a focus of the org, which is part of why I didn't vote for her.

Other people took it to mean "Tiffany is against pornographic or underage works and wants them to be banned." Some people took this, combined with her nationality, to the conclusion of "Tiffany is a secret plant of the Chinese Communist Party who wants to join the board, get all the ao3 user data, and then have the users from mainland China arrested" (despite the fact that this is not information the board would have access to, if for no other reason than ao3 is blocked in China so anyone trying to view the site from mainland china has to use a VPN anyway.) Some people are upset that the OTW elections committee "allowed" her to run in the first place, because they think that not letting anyone with opinions the current board or elections committee didn't like is an absolutely great precedent to set.

There are a bunch of comments in comments on tw.org, and some in fail_fandomanon, that give more context to her comments in terms of Chinese fandom (though most posters still disagree with her position.)

This got... longer than planned. But to the question "Is tiffany getting elected actually bad" - If my interpretation of her statements are correct, I think it would be annoying, because she does not have the experience I think that being on the Board requires, and focuses on priorities I disagree with. Which isn't to say she'd never have a valuable perspective or ideas about something, but there are four other candidates that I think are much better suited to it at this point in time. If the people who think she is an antishipper bent on censorship are correct, she could probably make life very annoying for the rest of the board-- but considering the rest of them are not pro-censorship, I can't see how she'd have much influence in that direction in the org as a whole.

If the people who think she's doing espionage on behalf of the CCP are correct, then... look, I can't even finish that sentence because I find the idea of the CCP deciding that a) they need to get ao3 user data and b) the way to do that is to run a clearly unqualified candidate in a public board election absurd.

the tl;dr of this tl;dr is that there's a lot of fearmongering going around, and a lot of accusations and hate directed her way. I don't know her, so I don't know what her "real" opinions are, but regardless of who wins the board election, ao3 is not going to be censored any time soon.

if for no other reason than if the Abuse team was told on top of all their other work, they now had to assess and remove fics reported for being "problematic", they would say "we'd prefer not to" and then proceed to not do it.

It's awesome that people are realizing the board elections and OTW membership are a thing now, though. We kept talking about how to encourage membership, and "running a very dramatic and wanky election" did not occur to us. In retrospect, I don't know why.

#good words #otw elections #anti censorship #fandom racism

2K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 2 years

Text

Please, please, please. Wear a mask to protect others. It’s the kind thing to do.

Hello, pause for a sec.

Many places are removing masking requirements. And I’m here to ask, if you are young and able-bodied, please keep wearing a mask anyways. We’ve known for two years that masks protect others more than they protect yourself, and that masks work when most people are wearing them. If only at-risk individuals are masking, they’re more at risk.

Protect others. Help disabled people exist safely in public. Wear a mask.

#covid #covid-19 #good words #real life

68K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 2 years

Text

Go to my pinned to see how to fight this

#yupppp #good words #earn it act

28K notes · View notes

freedom-of-fanfic · 2 years

Text

👆👆👆

URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 tumblr's nsfw ban hitting the entire internet this spring 2022

February 1, 2022

I’m so so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

WHAT IS THE EARN IT ACT?

The EARN IT Act has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country. This is a bill that will make children less safe, undermine online safety and security, and trample free expression, because it carves out another exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), which the ACLU describes as “foundational to modern online communications.” This has been the law that has let the internet grow into what it is today, we’ve had this law since the 90s. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of this law because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship. Platforms will be incentivized to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSEM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

If this bill passes, we're going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms, for fear of the liability that could come with ever accidentally hosting CSAM, as well as the erasure of end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms.

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal's EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please, (Right now, right wing organizers are catgorizing books about racism as ‘porn’ to ban them from schools) which is a cherished goal of organizations that seek to reintroduce obscenity prosecutions for content now protected by Free Speech jurisprudence. This will 1000000% be used to eradicate anything LGBT online.

What this bill says it does on the surface is make platforms liable for their users’ activity if that activity involves sex and minors. However, because of 230, platforms are not liable at all about their users' activity. This has allowed platforms to grow and thrive and many niches online to as well. The bill also creates an unelected commission to create “best practices” to combat online child sexual exploitation. While these recommendations are nominally voluntary (so Americans have no decision on who gets to be on it), platforms that refuse to comply will be liable for criminal prosecutions and lawsuits should the government decide any of their users is engaging in online child sexual exploitation.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of "protecting kids" to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids.

The entire EARN IT act is based on *multiple* misunderstandings of the law and reality. It's a really really really bad policy that will do serious harm. But because Senator Blumenthal wants headlines, he'll pretend that it "helps protect the children." It won't. It'll do real damage. It will make CSEM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works -- without fear of liability for any "failure." Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on "obscenity" as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

NCOSE, the far right anti-LGBT hate group behind the global anti-sex legislations, is pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill?

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) along with a coalition of 26 civil society organizations urged the United States Senate to reject the EARN IT Act. Groups on the left and right, including the ACLU, Fight for the Future, EFF, and Hacking // Hustling oppose it. Because it threatens free expression online and will threaten marginalized people’s safety while being totally unnecessary and failing to fix the problem it claims to address. The EARN IT Act empowers states to give law enforcement access to users’ private conversations and force companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement. This is totally unnecessary. Platforms are already handing over CSAM to the federal government. It’s actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don't know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the "make child pornography worse" bill, but here we are.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

EARN IT Act was introduced yesterday! And it’s already scheduled to get marked up, which is the first step post-introduction. Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. IF YOU LIVE IN THESE STATES (IL, VT, CA, RI, MN, DE, CT, HI, NJ, and GA), CONTACT YOUR SENATOR AND HOUSE MEMBERS NOW. THIS IS URGENT. This is who gets first crack, and folks in all have Senators who are on the Judiciary committee.

I'm guessing this month or March is when the bill would be passed if there is no opposition 😭 The bill was re-introduced yesterday, already set for markup this Thursday. This feels like an attempt to fast track it this month. Additionally the current makeup of Congress favors those who want it passed. Back in 2020 it was mostly Senate republicans and democrats who are basically republicans (just like now, check the sponsors) pushing it with Ron Wyden using the filibuster to stop their efforts. The house dems didn't want to give Trump a win and needed to appear as pro-privacy/free speech for the 2020 election. Now the dems have the presidency, both chambers of Congress and if you've noticed have spent a few years repeatedly demanding social media censorship and desperately want to give Biden victories. biden isn't like obama who opposed sopa/pipa to appeal to younger voters. This is similar to how FOSTA passed with the group who made it happen last time back again. Far as I'm aware Wyden hasn't spoken about new earn it yet but even if he does oppose it, it's very possible there will be enough Senate democrats to join the republicans in passing it beating a filibuster. Then pelosi's band of house idiots pass it and we have to choose between breaking the law because they can't stop us from using encryption or being obedient sheep to a group who consider themselves above laws.

It already has a fifth of the Senate cosponsoring it. There is a very very very real chance this bill becomes law. This is an uphill battle that's going to happen fast and quick. PLEASE, FIGHT NOW.

202-224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.