tanannariva:

Antis use both words a lot in reference to the consequences that they think shipping has on the general public. As most people who are not antis know, they are using these words wrong, out of context, or both.

Romanticization is defined as: “to think about or describe something as being better or more attractive or interesting than it really is : to show, describe, or think about something in a romantic way.” 

In reference to pairings with abusive dynamics, antis use this to shame shippers by conflating writing about something with condoning something in practice. “If you write abuse with a romantic or positive bent, you must be okay with its practice, otherwise you would be decrying it.” This of course is not true.

 An attendant untruth that antis preach is ‘the consumption of something problematic means you condone the behavior in real life.’ This, again, is not true. Fiction has an effect on reality only inasmuch as it emotionally affects people. People consume the content, it evokes emotion, and then the people act on the evoked emotion. BUT, for the majority of people the evoked action is simply putting the content down if they do not like to read it. People of normal mental state and reasoning capabilities do not mimic fiction they read or art they see, it just doesn’t happen without some sort of mental illness or other distortion in the thought processes.

Which brings me to the next point, normalization. Normalization is defined as “to bring (someone or something) back to a usual or expected state or condition.” Again, this carries the implication in a societal context that in this case pedophilia will become normal and expected. Because of my previous points- fiction evokes emotion but only you are responsible for your actions in response to the emotion, combined with the fact that people do not see something violent like child abuse and then think it’s a good idea- mean that shipping cannot normalize pedophila in first world societies. That would mean society condones pedophilia, and that will not happen without a serious regression in moral standards and emotion.

When people tell you that by consuming fan content with abusive dynamics, you are romanticizing abuse and normalizing pedophilia, please know this is not true. You can ship whatever you please.