The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" of Proship
Not All Love is Unconditional
I know proshippers don’t want to hear this. I know it goes against everything they think they’re about. I know that some of them are going to go “no true Scotsman” on me when I tell them this. But proshipping has an unspoken “policy” when it comes to certain types of kinks. Just as groups of antis don’t always agree with each other on what is acceptable in fiction, proshippers have the same dilemmas merely on a far flung side of the scale. As much as proshippers want to insist that their space is the safe space for adults who want to express and explore their kinks through fiction, most of those spaces have a line that you do not cross despite that the interest and kink is still firmly within a fictional context.
There are plenty of artists and writers and creatives who are leery of the term “proship” (including myself) and their reasoning is fairly simple. To ally yourself within a group identity is to subject yourself to the boundaries of that identity and the social taboos and mores that come with the cultural landscape of that identity. All of a sudden you are a part of the in-group which means you are not of the out-group which means you are expected suddenly to…conform. Unfortunately the conformity is based on the individual sub-community you’ve found yourself within. A proship space which prides itself on its inclusion of monster-fucking, insect kink, and centipede porn might place limits elsewhere and often for the same reasons that antis give—to mitigate the potential for harm among users who may accidentally run across content they did not wish to see. I can hear the “that doesn’t happen”s ringing out across proship Twitter but in fact, I’ve seen it plenty myself. One Discord server which centers almost solely on art of rape, insect-fucking, amputees, and torture, came to a consensus when probed that they were to forbid uniform kink as it had the potential for harm beyond that which was already present (if any) from their own pornography.
Though the production of boundaries within proship spaces isn’t exactly new or strange in the least, the issue stems from when those boundaries intercede on the ability for some proshippers to peacefully indulge in their kink. That is to say when the personal safety of those with kinks outside the community’s boundaries of acceptability is at risk within those proship spaces. What kinds of fictional kinks would produce this kind of reaction in proships? If not lolis, incest, monsters, furries, rape, gore, amputation, hypnotism…if not all of these then…what? Unsurprisingly the kinks that normally get proshippers ousted from (and even sometimes threatened or harassed by) their own communities are those involving taboos that some folks simply cannot wrap their minds around. Much like antis can’t wrap their minds around DadSon and PedoBait, many progressives online can’t wrap their minds around things like Uniform Kink, Race Play, “U.S.A.” Kink, “Fash” Fetish, and Real Person Fiction.
In fact, there are so many proship spaces that have a limit on these kinds of kinks (and the deep, compassionate discussions that accompany them) that there are “underground” communities of artists and creators who are leery of just about any community label, choosing to make sure that their spaces are bereft of a brand so that they might not fall into the pit of an exclusionary mindset. Their boundaries are essentially that they require their members to cultivate and function on the assumption that not everything is about your comfort and some art and writing is explicitly meant to center your discomfort. Being able to parse through and vivisect your own reactions to uncomfortable works and accept them as valid with artistic and sexual merit is at the center of these types of underground communities which are partially or wholly comprised of individuals who have faced rejection in spaces where they were fairly confident they would not—that is, places which often hold the brand of “proship.”
“Proship” does not necessarily mean “good people” and proship spaces are not devoid of ostracism based on kink materials even if that kink remains centered firmly in a fictional environment. Some proshippers, even prominent ones, have betrayed themselves as particularly unsafe among the whisper networks whereas others have been privy to the wink and the nudge from those underground that they’re welcome if they ever get ousted (“canceled”?) by their own. One does not, after all, have to be into everything to be considered safe. One simply must be able to practice what they preach—something that seems to be a bit too much to ask for some proships. Whether or not an individual believes that something is moral is a moot point as kink and fetish is beyond morality just as it is beyond ideology, a mantra that is common in many proship spaces even if they don’t actually believe that when their own comfort levels are threatened by someone else’s fictional fetish.
This, unsurprisingly, results in a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in which proships who have peculiar kinks will often mask them with other, more socially acceptable outlets among proship communities. Nazi kinksters might focus on Zemo from The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and Daniel Brühl’s other works in which he is in a particular uniform. Real Person Fiction enjoyers might utilize the character names of Edward Teach and Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death but then go ahead and cast them in “Modern AUs” in order to get around the fact that it would simply be easier to admit that they’re shipping Taika and Rhys but “RPF” is frowned upon in their circles. The kinksters who’re uncertain about the extent as to their compatriot’s boundaries will often hint at their meaning or use coded language to express their desires, trying to find a sub-community within a community that might openly threaten them if they were revealed. And for those who claim that proships would never openly threaten anyone, we all know that’s a very noble thought but unfortunately untrue as was evidenced by the brief but vitriolic rise of the proship off-shoot called “FAIA” which saw the usage of open threats and glorification of violence against proships they determined to be degenerates to their own standards.
So is “proship” a safe space for everyone? No. Does it have to be? Also no. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with having boundaries for certain spaces and that’s certainly not what proshippers claim to be against—but sometimes proshippers forget that their mantra of “non-harassment” includes the third-rail kind of kinks. It’s fine to place little boundaries in your own space against things like that (“Hey, RPF is a personal squick so I don’t allow it in the rec folder on my Discord, thank you for respecting my wishes!”) but if you’re really gonna go all-in on “proship” you need to be able to handle withholding unnecessary negative commentary and harassment on kinks that personally disgust you. And no, you don’t get to decide what’s a kink.