I thought about this ask a LOT while I was away from my computer today. A LOT. Because I have always tried to be calm and cool and answer your questions respectfully, and this bothered the shit out of me.
So I am not going to be calm, and I am not going to be cool. This is your only warning.
First off, cartoon porn has always existed. Google “Tijuana Bible” if you’re curious. You, too, can see Mickey Mouse fuck Olive Oyl in the ass while she sucks off Popeye and Goofy masturbates in the background. The art’s not as good as some of what we have these days, but hell, standards change. When I was in high school, I and a bunch of other kids in my art class had what we called the “porn sketchbook,” which was full of EXTREMELY explicit cartoon porn, showing lots of popular characters fucking each other’s brains out.
Guess what we didn’t show to six year olds? Gosh, you’re a good guesser. And guess what most six year olds don’t know? Terms like “safesearchwrapup.” The post that I reblogged, that you are now addressing me over, OPENLY EXPLAINED the search standards. That “safe search” was on. That the pictures showed up anyway. And that sometimes kids will get on the internet without supervision.
I have NO FUCKING PROBLEM with cartoon porn. I may find some of it to be in questionable taste, and I cheered when Princess Molestia was removed from the internet, but whatever. Your kink is your kink, and your kink is okay, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. When your kink literally pushes little girls out of their fandom, IT IS HURTING PEOPLE.
Let’s look at a word. The word “brony.”
I am a My Little Pony fan. I have been since I was four. My first ponies were Cotton Candy and Minty. I still have them, and more than two hundred others. I have the original cartoon on DVD. Some of my earliest works of fiction were stories in which I got to travel over the rainbow and live in Ponyland. I am not a newcomer to this fandom.
My Little Pony is a “girl toy,” so yeah, most of the fans I knew were girls. But there were boy fans. You know what we called them? FANS. We didn’t give them a special, gender-specific name that proved how cool they were for liking something that wasn’t made specifically to appeal to them. WE CALLED THEM FANS.
The very term “brony” is a statement of conquest. “This was made for girls, but we’re too cool to like it unless it’s on our masculine terms. Our bro-terms.” So we’re once again belittling men, because they can’t love a thing unless it’s somehow masculized. And we’re excluding girls, because seriously. We teach little girls FROM DAY ONE that boy things aren’t for them, and you don’t get more “this is for men” than a name that includes “bro.” (And no, saying I can be a “pegasister” doesn’t help. I AM NOT THE PROTAGONIST’S SISTER IN MY OWN FANDOM.)
Cartoon porn is fine in its place, but it should not be so prevalent and so poorly tagged that it takes over the search results for a children’s property. The way the brony community has said “MLP is for us, always us, us above all others, little girls don’t count, the intent of the brand doesn’t count, the people who have loved this property since 1982 will never love it like we do, because they don’t have a special name” feels like the fannish equivalent of that old Eddie Izzard sketch about “Do you have a flaaaaaaag?” I don’t need a flag. I LIVE HERE.
I always have.
