Rayday's Proship & Paraphilia Information Carrd

• Definitions
• Common anti-proship arguments
• Common anti-paraphilia arguments
• Curating your online experience

• My Tumblr

Please note this carrd is a WIP, but feel free to provide constructive criticism, ideas, and arguments via my Tumblr inbox.

• Back to main page

Definitions

Proship - Anti-anti
The belief that your tastes in ships does not reflect your morality, and that you shouldn't be harassed for enjoying dark, taboo, or uncomfortable ships.
You do not have to enjoy mentioned ships to be proship.Comship
The belief that shipping discourse is complicated and has a lot of nuance that simply can't be tackled with "xyz bad/good" or other simple stances.Darkship
A term for a ship that is considered taboo or problematic in one way or another.
This includes, but is not limited to themes of, incest, large age-gaps, pedophilia, abuse, and shota/loli.Squicks
A topic that's considered a hard turn-off for a fan.
This can be due to intense feelings of uncomfortability with the topic, it being a trigger, or anything of that sort.Paraphilia
A paraphilia is an attraction to anything that is considered abnormal.
This attraction does not have to be acted on, wanted to act on, or condoned, for it to qualify you as a paraphile.Predator
While this usually refers to an animal that hunt other animals, in profiction and paraphilia discourse it usually refers to people who exploit, harm, or control others in one way or another.Groomer - Grooming
Grooming and groomer, similarly to "predator" also has multiple meanings.
Though in profiction and paraphilia discourse, it usually refers to when someone is building trust with another person to exploit, harm, or control them later on.
Children are often the ones who fall victims to this type of manipulation, but anyone can be groomed, no matter their age.

• Back to main page

Common anti-proship arguments

"Proship" stands for "problematic ship"
This just isn't true. If you take a look at the definitions section, you'll see at the top what "proship" actually means, alongside a link that leads to the definition of "anti-anti" that contains the history of both terms."Fiction does/doesn't affect reality."
Personally I feel this topic is complicated. It certainly isn't a 1:1 that fiction affects reality, so I'd say it's a case to case scenario. Either way, fiction affecting reality is inherently neutral.
You can cry your eyes out over a sad movie and come away from it loving said movie, or the exact opposite: hating the movie due to how much it upset you.Usually the topic people attempt to tackle when talking about if fiction does- or doesn't affect reality comes down to darkfiction, and how harmful it is. Though there's usually other underlying issues when it comes to darkfiction causing harm in real life, which I will discuss shortly."Darkfiction is harmful because it can trigger someone."
Obviously someone becoming triggered is horrible, and should be avoided if possible.
But this isn't the responsibility of the creator of the darkfiction. At most they need to tag their content properly, but that's it. Apart from that, there's nothing more they have to do.
Usually there's ways to curate your own experience online, like blocking tags, blocking people, not interacting, and so on.
If you'd like to learn more, please refer to the curating your online experience section.
There isn't much else there can be done in terms of avoiding being triggered, since these topics will come up even in the real world, too, at times.
I'd recommend finding ways to cope healthily when triggered, too. This could be, for example, removing yourself from the content, and taking a moment with something you enjoy to calm down."Darkfiction is harmful because it can normalize harmful behavior."
Obviously this is a risk that can happen when writing something that's taboo, harmful, or whatever else.Even so, this argument assumes that the person consuming the media doesn't have critical thinking skills, and/or that the person has no prior experience with the topics darkfiction often tackles.
The issue there isn't the fiction, but the lack of education of the person.
If anything, this only goes to show how important it is to teach about how abuse of any kind is harmful and horrible.There's also the concern about how consuming too much darkfiction can cause it to normalize the topics for someone.
Though the fiction isn't the problem in of itself there, either. The problem is the overconsumption, and simply comes down to moderation, and therefore doesn't land the responsibility on the fiction or the creator."Darkfiction can be used to groom people- be it children or other abuse victims."
Also a valid concern, but once again: The responsibility of that doesn't fall on the creator of the darkfiction.Predators and groomers will use anything to groom someone, be it darkfiction, candy, a child's favourite show, the trust of the predator being an authority figure, religion, or whatever else may come to mind.Not to mention saying that it's the darkfiction- or creator's fault for the grooming inherently takes away responsibility from the actual groomer.
The predator was the one who chose to groom someone, and they were the one who harmed someone.Don't blame the knife or the knifemaker; blame the person who was stabbing people."Children can be exposed to darkfiction and become traumatized and/or assume the harmful behavior in darkfiction is okay."
Darkfiction isn't- and shouldn't be for children.
They shouldn't be in dakfiction spaces, and them being there is a failing on their parents' part, since they clearly aren't aware of what their kid does online.
I highly doubt porn sites and/or hentai/porn/NSFW artists would be blamed for children seeing their content, similarly to how darkfiction spaces are."Mentally ill people can be affected by darkfiction + The Slenderman stabbing case is proof that fiction can affect reality."
I haven't seen anyone say this outright, but I have seen people reference the Slenderman stabbing when arguing about fiction affecting reality, and how it can be harmful.
And while these concerns are valid and completely founded, it, once again, doesn't end with the creator of the darkfiction being responsible for the harm that's committed.This comes down to mentally ill people needing- and deserving the proper support and treatment that they need.
If I remember correctly from the videos I've watched on the Slenderman stabbing case in specific, what happened was one girl having untreated schizophrenia, which lead her to believe that Slenderman was real.
This later got the other girl to believe it too, likely due to shared psychosis or something along those lines.Either way, support mentally ill people, and don't say anything that can cause their condition to worsen."The JAWS phenomenon caused people to fear sharks, and for people to hunt sharks with less mercy."
I've yet to see any actual proof of the JAWS movie causing mass fear of sharks, but for the sake of argument, I'll assume this has any founded proof.While, yes, sharks are relatively harmless towards us humans, there are reasons as to why we'd be inherently scared of them.
We have a survival instinct, where anything that looks like a predator that can eat us can make us scared.
This, combined with the fact information on sharks has been relatively scarce or not well-known up until recently, it wouldn't be odd for the movie to have made people afraid of sharks.Even despite all that, the problem with it isn't the movie itself.
The problem would be a lack of education, and how humans are often inherently scared of things that look like they can kill us."You inherently enjoy the taboo topics in real life that you read about."
Similarly to how true crime readers usually don't like murder, people who read darkfiction don't inherently like what they read about either.
Of course some do like it, but even then that's not necessarily a bad thing.
If they aren't harming anyone in real life, then what's so bad about the fiction, apart from it being "disgusting?""Darkfiction topic would be illegal if it happened in real life."
So would a lot of things in fiction. Speeding, war crimes, murder, torture, stalking, fraud, drugs, and more would all be illegal in real life, but is often portrayed in fiction anyway.Even so, the law isn't always a good way to determine what is right or wrong, since in some countries it's illegal to be gay and/or trans.
A better way to tell if something is bad or not, is to see if it actually harms another being.
If it doesn't, then it isn't bad. You can still be uncomfortable or disgusted with it personally, but don't yuck someone else's yum."Rape, pedophilia, and/or incest can't be compared to murder/violence."
Yes it can.
Both are illegal, both traumatize and harm at least one person, and both are horrible things to happen to someone.
This isn't the trauma Olympics, and it never will be. Just because one seems more real, disgusts you more, or has to do with sex, does not mean the other isn't horrible either.

This isn't a complete list, and more arguments and responses will be added over time.

• Back to main page

Common anti-paraphile arguments

"Pedophiles, zoophiles, necrophiles, and other harmful paraphiles are inherently bad/harmful people."
A paraphilia is defined as an attraction to something/someone unusual.
The attraction to kids, animals, dead bodies, and whatever else isn't what is harmful.
What is harmful, though, is actually sexually- or romantically abusing those subjects. Not to mention non-paraphiles can sexually- and romantically abuse children/animals/corpses/etc. as well.On top of that, once a paraphilia has developed, then they can't get rid of it whether they want to or not. At least not with modern medicine, but honestly, even if they could, they aren't ticking timebombs.
Just because you've wanted to punch someone- or yell at someone, doesn't mean you actually did it. And the chance of you snapping would go down in chance with proper support and coping mechanisms as well."Pedophiles, zoophiles, necrophiles, etc all deserve to be locked up and/or be killed."
I could just refer to my previous point, but I'll provide a different argument for the sake of it.Not only is this statement particularly cruel, especially considering not all paraphiles have done harmful things, but it's also serves the opposite of harmreduction.Paraphiles aren't going to reach out for help if the environment is hostile. They aren't going to say "hey, I struggle with sexual attraction to kids, and it's really affecting me," they aren't going to get help if they need it, and that can lead to some very dangerous places.Not only could it lead to them committing suicide, but it could also lead to them either have it ruminate so much that they struggle to not harm someone/something, or reach out to hidden paraphile communities that would then be less likely to be moderated and/or just be outright echochambers, and lead the person to hurt someone/something.Not to mention it's just a horrible thing to say to another person in general.
I don't care how horrid they are. If they're a real threat to society, then they need to be removed to a safe and humane environment where they can't harm anyone.

This isn't a complete list, and more arguments and responses will be added over time.

• Back

Curating your online experience

This really comes down to which social media you use, but I'll list some pointers.