lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

lines-and-edges:

wetwareproblem:

fiction-is-not-reality:

xenoqueer:

ms-demeanor:

fierceawakening:

xenoqueer:

The shortest possible version of events is thus:

4chan raiders decided to fracture the tumblr queer community by making up an imaginary gender for child molesters, “clovergender.”

Because people on this website are godforsaken, they bought into that, and believed quite genuinely that there was a secret, massive conspiracy of child molesters on this website seeking to rape various underage users.

In the context of this conspiracy nonsense, antisexual radical feminists stepped in to advance their own goals, by suggesting that anyone who engages in certain forms of kink or reads certain types of fiction is one of these child-rapists-in-waiting.

Simultaneous to this development, the popularization of “stimboards” as an evolution of moodboards/aesthetic boards and “so satisfying” gifs occurred.

Stimboards were highly popular with two major groups (often overlapping): fandoms, and tumblr’s LGBTQIAPN+ population. 

Because those were the two groups that were also targetted by the antisexual radical feminists and by 4chan’s nonsense, stimboard makers were convinced that their art would be used to groom and rape children unless they “made sure” that it “couldn’t be” by putting up those banners.

However, because radical feminists had convinced these artists that the “real” child molesters were adults engaging in consensual relationships and/or “shippers,” the “preventative banners” mostly targetted those groups.

The irony that these people genuinely believe that the only thing between a rapist and their victim is a 15x500px banner is hilarious and deeply, deeply depressing.

oh, is THAT what that was? i was so confused by the whole “x don’t interact” thing

To be totally, 100% fair there are some people who do the “kinksters don’t interact” thing because DD/LG folks might reblog moodboards and tag them with things like “daddy’s little slut” or “how cummies feel” or whatever and I do get people who want to keep tags like “pink” “princess” and “kitten” free of kink gifs.

So, while I understand and abide by people not wanting kink put on their posts, that can be resolved by saying things like, “ask to tag,” or “this post is sfw.”

It’s also worth remembering that the majority of kink blogs aren’t going to be tits deep in stimboards, they’ll be posting their own content and sharing between themselves.

It’s a very rare problem, and the reaction has not been to block perpetrators or request boundaries be respected.

Instead it has been feeding into this notion that all fandoms and queer spaces are positively crawling with child molesters, which is shitty for a number of reasons, as well as claiming that autistic people (the nominal target audience of stim boards) can never be involved in kink or shipping, or rather, that being involved in either is proof that you’re lying about being autistic.

In effect, autistic people have been declared acceptable casualties in a fight against an enemy that does not exist.

Which wouldn’t be okay even if the phantom horror were real, but since it’s entirely fictional, it’s basically just an enormous fuck you to any autistic who isn’t “innocent” or “pure” enough.

As for keeping tags clear: safe mode.

Blogs that include explicit sexuality are Nate nsfw. If you don’t want to see NSFW content, out on safe mode. If you’re underage, you can’t even turn safe mode off without lying.

On a semi-unrelated note, as much as 4chan is often found at the head of such disasters, I can’t find myself feeling resentment toward it: instead the mass of people who blindly believe anything they read and jump from one troll to the other seemingly unaware of being used as volleyball…oh, those I can get behind being pissed off at. 

Like. Everyone knows 4chan is terrible, and suddenly there’s this ridiculous “gender for child molesters” bullshit (and if that convinced you for even a hot second wow you really fucking hate trans people) and it LITERALLY USED 4CHAN GRAPHICS, and y’all still drank the kool-aid.

I’d say I’m disappointed, but this is exactly what I’ve come to expect from this hellsite.

Hot take: kink is often literally just emotional and sexual stimming, special interest hyperfocus, and/or the result of sensory processing differences in how people experience sexuality.

Autistic self-hate/internalized ableism therefore likely plays a huge role in the social popularity of extreme, performative anti-kink sentiment in this community and overlapping communities.

Some autistic folks internalize the messages telling us we’re creeps for existing socially with other people (pervasively, but especially around sexuality), and wind up in a pit of puritanical scrupulosity trying desperately to pretend that the things that make us tick aren’t important in our sexual lives.

We would fall for this shit less often if we weren’t pervasively culturally gaslighted about our worth as people.

Agree.

I also feel, as a physically disabled person, that anti-kink is ableist against people with unusual bodies as well. I’ve known a lot of people who have been interested in impact play/painplay because, say, nervous system issues mean they can’t feel or can only partially feel “standard” sexual stimulation.

Telling those people they are disrespecting themselves by, like, getting their backs whipped instead just makes me go ??? WHAT WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS YOU ARE NOSY MEAN AND DUMB

As someone both autistic and with physical nerve damage in a few places due to both injuries and genetic structural issues… yeah, don’t assume everyone experiences the same stimulus the same way. 

Nerve damage comes in different flavors. There’s the “everything hurts” kind, the “can’t feel much in general” kind, the “randomly itchy or tingly” kind and also the “certain kinds of touches tickle or itch or sting when they ‘shouldn’t’ but other kinds are extra nice” (and that’s just for sensory-nerve damage; motor-nerve damage gives its own weirdnesses, like “sudden cramping for no reason” or “one very specific muscle out of this whole area doesn’t work right” – and on that last one, you don’t realize how much some of the weird tiny muscles that you might not even know you have are essential for normal functioning until that weird tiny muscle stops working). It depends on which specific nerves are damaged and in what way. There may be more kinds than I’ve described but I’ve personally experienced ALL those things as a direct result of physically damaged nerves.

And then there are differences in sensory processing. I have synesthesia and other sensory-processing differences. I perceive sounds as having colors and textures and as producing physical sensations in my body, among other overlaps of sensory input -> perceptions not generally associated with that specific input. This doesn’t impair my ability to determine reality, it’s not hallucinatory. You won’t make me believe I’m physically seeing a red square that’s suddenly appeared in front of me if you play a sound that translates as a red square on my visual overlap, I’ll be aware that the red square is the sound and not something that physically exists in my visual field. But it does mean that some sensory inputs are more or less pleasant to me because of how they translate across other senses than the one originally stimulated. The smell of sulfur is a rather lovely dark purple shade, so I’m less averse to smelling sulfur (it still stinks but the color’s pretty nice so it’s overall kinda ok). Fluorescent red is the color of the pain of a headache, so I’m not a big fan of looking at actual fluorescent red thanks to associative aversion, even though it doesn’t actually cause me pain to look at (the sensory translation is one-way).  

It’s fair to not want sexual stuff added on to your stimboard posts. But the fact that some people find some “stim” stuff sexually stimulating doesn’t automatically make them bad people.