“Proship Rhetoric”
A Battle for Meaning in a Post-Truth Internet
Post-Truth: Relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. - Oxford Dictionaries
Before we can delve into the concept of “Proship Rhetoric” and how it relates to fandom’s moral battleground, we have to acknowledge where the term “proship” originated and what purpose the term has for people who use it to describe themselves and the conflicting purpose the term has for people who use it to describe others. It is a common saying on Twitter and Tumblr that “words have meanings” which is a way of saying “you cannot redefine a word for your own purposes.” While hopeful, it’s not exactly true. Words alter meaning all the time, our lexicons altering based on the whim of public perception. Several common words with negative connotations now have etymologies which began innocently (“villain” comes to mind), the morphing of meaning based on the purposes that people had for using them (usually the denigration of people based on economic status, belief systems, or gender).
So where did “proship” come from originally? For that we have to look to the beginning of the root word: “ship.” “Ship” should actually be spelled “ ‘ship” to denote that it is a truncation of the word “relationship.” It has its roots in fandom back in the early 1990s when X Files was airing and the fandom was split over whether or not Mulder and Scully should be an established couple within the canon. Those who were rooting for them getting together were “shippers.” Later on in fandom, Deviant Art saw the first widespread usage of the word “anti-shipper” which was usually specified by a portmanteau of the characters’ names whose ‘ship individuals did not wish to be romantic. For example, someone who did not wish to see Zuko and Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender become a romantic couple would use the term “anti-Zutara.”
On Deviant Art and Tumblr in the early 00’s, anti-shippers were fairly quiet, taking their time to create art they wanted to see to get engagement. Slowly, as fandom progressed, so did anti-shipping. Soon anti-shipping was getting louder. Shipping the “wrong” thing could get a fan ostracized from a friend group, othered, and shunned by their online social grouping. The social behavior of anti-shippers began to cause grandstanding—the inclination for anti-shippers to “prove” to each other their right to be within that social group. Grandstanding often included ostracizing another member: giving anti-shipper social groups the dubious reputation of being “snake pits” and driving a very specific type of wedge between fandom groups. Because these “call-outs” became so prevalent and the subsequent “dogpiles” became so large, opposing social groups formed with the goal of providing a united front against what they considered to be the “toxicity” of fandom. If anti-shippers were anti-shipping, then these groups were logically dubbed: pro-shippers.
Over the course of several years, the term “proship” has undergone a curious bit of evolution based not on the actual meaning but upon the purpose of the speaker. All words are used within the context of a person’s purpose and anti-shippers have taken the term “proship” and altered it drastically from the established meaning utilized by those who use the term to describe themselves. The difference between the definitions is utterly staggering but only one of them remains close to context of the term’s origin.
How a proshipper defines “Proship:” A term denoting an ideology based on mutual disassociation of fans within a fandom whose aesthetic tastes do not align.
How an anti-shipper defines “Proship:” A term denoting an ideology based on the acceptance and perpetuation of pedophilia, incest, and zoophilia by the creation of fictional fanworks depicting these acts.
Hopefully these two conflicting definitions highlight the impact of “post-truth” upon fandom spaces. The usage and meaning of the term “proship” is entirely dependent on the agenda in use by the speaker. If the speaker wishes to appeal to a visceral disgust and the moral sensibilities of their audience, they will define “proship” in a manner that benefits their cause—that is, they will use the most disturbing definition possible due to the original definition’s inclusivity. Many times this has predictably silly results including instances in which an anti-shipper ascribes to the first definition but denies their association to proshippers by their rejection of the second, leading proshippers to tell them that they are, in all actuality, proshippers themselves.
“Proship Rhetoric?”
To ask an anti-shipper what “Proship Rhetoric” entails is a bit of a nonstarter. Instances in which the phrase “proship rhetoric” has been used have been brow-raising: phrases like “I don’t think we should harass this person” and “how about we don’t burn books” have been described as “proship” by anti-shippers who have advocated for wide-spread harassment and censorship. Popular posts in which the poster states that it is inappropriate to send “kill yourself” messages to people have been described as “proship rhetoric” and it has been suggested that anti-bullying statements are in some way problematic in and of themselves. Joking statements that equate anti-shipper mentality with the mentality that violence in videogames or other media causes violence in reality or is indicative of moral degeneracy has also been dubbed “proship rhetoric.”
Some individuals have gone so far as to state that proship rhetoric has been “used to groom children” but they do not offer a solid definition for what they believe that specific rhetoric is and they have not addressed that if this were the case then any rhetoric should have the capacity for grooming children as long as children are present in the social groups and there is leverage with which to manipulate them. They also do not provide any examples of instances in which a child was groomed. There is, of current, no evidence to support that “proship rhetoric” (whatever that might be) has been successfully used by a predator in taking advantage of a child. The instances of grooming overall would likely be statistically lower than incidents within other online communities simply due to the smaller percentage overall of minors in proship spaces, as they are not often welcome. Proship spaces are usually adult-only in nature though there have been some more open spaces as proship does not preclude wholesome, safe-for-work content.
In many ways it is alarmingly damning when antis themselves seem to come out in favor of harassment, censorship, and suicide baiting. Despite their ability to alter the meaning of “proship,” they can’t quite get a handle on making “proship rhetoric” sound worse than simple human compassion and logical reasoning. Some antis try to claim that they are against harassment, insisting to their fellow antis that harassment is not mutually beneficial to anyone. Eventually it is likely they too will be accused of promoting “proship rhetoric” and the grandstanding will continue with their cancelation among their social group as “don’t harass people” seems inextricably linked to proshipper ideology no matter which definition one utilizes.
Though proshippers are able to cite plenty of studies and research papers to back up their justifications for why artists and writers should not be encouraged to kill themselves based on their fictional creations, anti-shippers have the advantage of appealing to the emotions evoked by the suggestion that their enemies are involved with unforgivable transgressions such as pedophilia. This is one of the reasons why the lie spreads that “proshipping” stands for “problematic shipping.” A hilariously inane fabrication which ignores the relationship between the prefixes “anti” and “pro,” it serves to villify all proshippers by suggesting that every single one of them is involved in the creation and propagation of content anti-shippers believe should be destroyed for a specific kind of moral good (whether that be due to pedophilia, racism, homosexuality, etc.). This is post-truth fandom at work.
The complication with post-truth fandom is that inciting reactionaryism via the usage of high emotion works. It is, as was evidenced by Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, an effective way of swaying public opinion against an otherwise stable and logical ideology. This is what makes it dangerous. Once a set of people can manipulate the emotions of large swathes of followers and alter their behavior based on fabricated definitions and obvious (often silly) lies, it becomes easier for them to take advantage of and oppress the marginalized people within their scope of influence. Due to rampant distrust sown by bad actors in fandom spaces against reliable sources such as FanLore, antis are more likely to repeat lies told to them by malicious or ill-informed members of their in-group not unlike the way QAnon spreads its theories through word-of-mouth, urging that they hold the monopoly on truth in a time of “Fake News.” The same tactics were utilized by Frederic Wertham when he successfully campaigned to censor the comic book industry based on its affect on children, an important historical mirror antis will eventually come closer and closer to looking into should they continue their campaigns.