#And if you want an Anti variant of this it's Izzy-Antis in the OFMD fandom acting like hating Izzy is activism

[griseldagimpel]

300 Works on AO3 Check In

I now have 300 works up on AO3. The only harassment from Antis I've received is a hate Ask from an Izzy-Anti and a nasty comment from an anon really upset that I included a pit bull in my fic.

I've also gotten dogpiled, rude comments, and my works reported for talking about racism, but those people don't typically identify as "Antis".

For that matter, you get people who do identify as Antis but don't harass anyone. And most people in fandom have something they dislike but keep that to their own blogs rather than harassing anyone, even if they feel really strong about it. Like, in my current fandom (The Locked Tomb), a lot of the fandom really does not like John Gaius (my blorbo) or second cousin incest ship Camilla/Palamedes (my OTP), but I have not received any harassment for my fandom content here.

So let's talk about strawmen, exaggerated harm, and Making Up A Guy.

See, the reason I started doing these check ins is that I'd encounter breathless warnings about Antis harassing people across fandom. Don't leave comments turned on for your dark fic, the warnings would go, or you'll get harassed. You can't ship X without getting harassed, I was told.

And it just wasn't matching up with my experiences, even though I'm a prolific fic writer who writes a variety of content for a multitude of ships.

Oh, Antis who harass people exist. Like I said, I've encountered them. And I've seen the same happen with others. But I feel like the fear of Antis on a pan-fandom basis outstrips the actual threat. (It seems like some fandoms have a worse Anti harassment problem than others. Our Flag Means Death is bad, and I've heard horror stories about Voltron. But that's the thing: the warnings I see don't narrow their scope to a few specific fandoms; they treat it as if every fandom is as bad as Voltron.)

Now let's talk about Tiffany G. Last year, Tiffany G ran for the AO3 board. Now, like all candidates, she had to meet certain volunteer requirements; not just anyone can run for an AO3 board position.

Tiffany G made some comments about wanting to push back against misconceptions of AO3, and fandom lost its damn mind. She got accused, no lie, of being an infiltrator spy for the Chinese government. Hey, if you're ever wondering why the AO3 board isn't more diverse, it's because when a Chinese fan ran, fandom rallied together to slander her as a spy for the Chinese government. Fans openly celebrated when she lost. Which, you know, has to be a really shitty experience for a devoted AO3 volunteer.

And she was positioned as an Anti and a threat to fandom.

Fandom collectively Made Up A Guy. The phantom menace they'd made up didn't reflect who Tiffany G actually was or what she wanted. It was a caricature - a strawman for fandom to band together and destroy. But there was a real human person being targeted by all that ire.

So what's going on?

Well, out in meat space, there is a lot of censorship and repression, from the U.K. banning protests to the U.S. banning everything from books to gender affirming care to a thousand other shitty things happening all over the globe.

And that can make people feel genuinely powerless. Making Up A Guy to destroy is easy. It makes people feel like they've accomplished something.

But they haven't accomplished anything.

Well, except for probably making one dedicated AO3 volunteer (Tiffany G) feel like shit. Good job, everyone. You didn't stop fascism, but you hurt one random person.

And this is what all the warnings about Antis harassing people are about, why they're broad instead of narrow and why they tend to overstate the [real!] problem.

Because it's about Making Up A Guy that fans can feel so brave for opposing.

Because that's easier than actually doing something.