oh!! im sorry, you sent this ask ages ago and i never saw it appear in my inbox. i’m still going to answer but i am really sorry that i never got around to it until now.
essentially, i grew up on tumblr in an intersection of progressive spaces and cartoon fandom spaces. at some point these two things meshed together and i became interested in looking at fandom through a lens of media criticism. i was a young teenager at the time. at some point i entered the gravity falls fandom and read many, many posts about the dangers of proshipping due to the existence of certain ships within the fandom, and being a young, impressionable teenager, i fell for it hook line and sinker. it was the Right way to think, it was the Virtuous way to think. otherwise, could i really call myself progressive while defending something that appeared harm marginalized groups?
(at the time i had undiagnosed ocd which definitely impacted my opinions and fear of thought crimes)
for a time i used anti rhetoric to police myself and others. but… honestly, much of the rhetoric didnt ring true to me even at the time. and as much as i hate to admit it, i wanted to use it as a method of control, which i am not proud of. i cut off real life friends because of it and i still mourn those losses. i ended up angry and isolated except for other bitter, neurotic antis
later on as an adult, i started listening to people in proship spaces (especially people who had been victims of callouts that had ruined their lives and jobs in the animation industry), at first out of curiosity, but then things started clicking into place for me. why IS it that the people being called out for shipping and “bad” kinks are always queer people who have done nothing else to garner that level of hatred? why IS it that engaging in and creating transgressive art is seen as a valid coping mechanism by therapists? it made more sense than any arguments i’d listened to that were written by antis.
so to sum it up, i just… changed my opinion due to finding evidence that contradicted my beliefs and weighing my options. being proship won out in the end. and i had a lot of help from my partner as well, because they’re also proship. they helped me work through a hell of a lot of moral ocd and to unpack the reasons why i had fallen for anti rhetoric in the past. honestly they’ve been a life saver in this matter
thanks for the ask and again, sorry for the insanely late response. i dont use social media often anymore and this slipped into my inbox unnoticed.. ^^;
“How nice it must be to not have to care about things that don’t directly affect you” yeah it is actually, it’s called preserving my mental health and not doom-scrolling. I can be a much more effective voice for change by speaking on topics I have personal experience with and boosting other’s voices for experiences I don’t have. Of course awareness and basic compassion for human beings is important but so is me living my life. I’m just as important.
