the other part of it's for you
Jun. 22nd, 2009 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reflectedeveI've been home and on the internet for about half an hour as of starting this post, and I already feel as though my head is going to explode from rage. The warnings wank seems to have expanded its borders to include more general areas of fandom, and the ugliness is greatly increased for me by virtue of the fact that it's now coming from people I've always had the greatest respect for.
Sadly, I am not one of the more eloquent, articulate people addressing this subject, and I'm not feeling particularly diplomatic either. I just really need to vent.
People are saying a lot of things. They are behaving as though someone was attempting to attack and censor them, and lashing out accordingly. They are saying that protecting oneself from debilitating mental/emotional harm is solely one's own responsibility. (I'll get to this in a minute.) They are following these statements up by refusing to take even a tiny step towards helping to make their community a safer, more comfortable place for a large number of its members. They are comparing triggers from sexual abuse to food allergies.
I find most of this to be, quite honestly, insane. Yes, it is true that fandom is a broad, loose set of communities that have no absolute ruling standard. This hardly means that we can't suggest and advocate for a standard, as much as possible. Like a lot of people on the pro-warnings side, I completely fail to see how asking someone to place warnings on their fic for the most obvious and broad triggers (such as various levels of consent issues, child abuse, suicide and self-harm) is so oppressive that it's not absolutely worth saving people enormous amounts of pain. People who have been subjected to so much pain already!
Why the fuck would you not err on the side of kindness, particularly when it is so deeply deserved?
I like to think that being part of a community means actively taking steps to take care of each other, to some degree. I also like to think that fandom, much as I'm sure we're all invested in individual and creative freedoms, leans towards this idea of supportive, compassionate community. There's a gender angle in play as well: we are, as people constantly point out, a largely female space. Statistically, women are frighteningly likely to have experienced some kind of sexual abuse in their lives. If there were ever an area in which we should support and care for each other, it is this one.
I am particularly astounded to see people who frequently discuss racial and gendered privilege, who advocate for change on a cultural level, dismissing the advocacy for warnings as unrealistic or unfair to fanfiction writers. Their arguments remind me uncomfortably of the painfully privileged arguments they have so frequently (and rightfully) criticized.
Obviously, we will never be able to enforce a warnings standard on fandom. Standards and awareness vary widely, and some people just don't care. This seems to me a pretty poor reason not to ask for that standard, as much as possible, and it certainly is no justification for trying to SHUT SURVIVORS DOWN.
Above all, I'd appreciate it if people would stop acting as though survivors are attempting to oppress them into submission, here. They don't have that kind of power over you. They aren't censoring you. They are asking you to be decent to them, and it just makes you look like a shitty excuse for a human being when you get so fucking defensive about it.
I may update this post with links to people who are making what I consider to be good points on the subject. I should probably make dinner first.
[ETA:] Okay, I'm kind of failing at hunting up all the fantastic posts I've seen, but in brief: one of the first posts I saw on the subject was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iamtheenemy's, here (it's excellent, if a few days out of date by now). ficbyzee says I would never want any story that I write to cause someone to relive a traumatic experience. (It's a brief post, but it's exactly the attitude I hope ficcers will have.) wistfuljane has a roundup here and a follow-up here. And most importantly (to reiterate a link from yesterday), there is impertinence's important post about triggers (what they are, how they work, why they are not like squicks): Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery.
There has been so much more, and so many people are making fantastic arguments in the comments of other posts that I don't want to go back to right now. I need to start winding my emotions down for bed; ugh, I got nothing I wanted to do done this evening.
[ETA 2:]sinsense just linked to a great post by untappedbeauty that calls out the use of fallacious analogies and says something I keep forgetting to say, though I was getting more and more irritated about it earlier: I wish they could just pretend it's not about them. Because it's not. [...] It's about extending a courtesy to our fannish community, not trying to stifle authors.
Sadly, I am not one of the more eloquent, articulate people addressing this subject, and I'm not feeling particularly diplomatic either. I just really need to vent.
People are saying a lot of things. They are behaving as though someone was attempting to attack and censor them, and lashing out accordingly. They are saying that protecting oneself from debilitating mental/emotional harm is solely one's own responsibility. (I'll get to this in a minute.) They are following these statements up by refusing to take even a tiny step towards helping to make their community a safer, more comfortable place for a large number of its members. They are comparing triggers from sexual abuse to food allergies.
I find most of this to be, quite honestly, insane. Yes, it is true that fandom is a broad, loose set of communities that have no absolute ruling standard. This hardly means that we can't suggest and advocate for a standard, as much as possible. Like a lot of people on the pro-warnings side, I completely fail to see how asking someone to place warnings on their fic for the most obvious and broad triggers (such as various levels of consent issues, child abuse, suicide and self-harm) is so oppressive that it's not absolutely worth saving people enormous amounts of pain. People who have been subjected to so much pain already!
Why the fuck would you not err on the side of kindness, particularly when it is so deeply deserved?
I like to think that being part of a community means actively taking steps to take care of each other, to some degree. I also like to think that fandom, much as I'm sure we're all invested in individual and creative freedoms, leans towards this idea of supportive, compassionate community. There's a gender angle in play as well: we are, as people constantly point out, a largely female space. Statistically, women are frighteningly likely to have experienced some kind of sexual abuse in their lives. If there were ever an area in which we should support and care for each other, it is this one.
I am particularly astounded to see people who frequently discuss racial and gendered privilege, who advocate for change on a cultural level, dismissing the advocacy for warnings as unrealistic or unfair to fanfiction writers. Their arguments remind me uncomfortably of the painfully privileged arguments they have so frequently (and rightfully) criticized.
Obviously, we will never be able to enforce a warnings standard on fandom. Standards and awareness vary widely, and some people just don't care. This seems to me a pretty poor reason not to ask for that standard, as much as possible, and it certainly is no justification for trying to SHUT SURVIVORS DOWN.
Above all, I'd appreciate it if people would stop acting as though survivors are attempting to oppress them into submission, here. They don't have that kind of power over you. They aren't censoring you. They are asking you to be decent to them, and it just makes you look like a shitty excuse for a human being when you get so fucking defensive about it.
I may update this post with links to people who are making what I consider to be good points on the subject. I should probably make dinner first.
[ETA:] Okay, I'm kind of failing at hunting up all the fantastic posts I've seen, but in brief: one of the first posts I saw on the subject was
iamtheenemy's, here (it's excellent, if a few days out of date by now). ficbyzee says I would never want any story that I write to cause someone to relive a traumatic experience. (It's a brief post, but it's exactly the attitude I hope ficcers will have.) wistfuljane has a roundup here and a follow-up here. And most importantly (to reiterate a link from yesterday), there is impertinence's important post about triggers (what they are, how they work, why they are not like squicks): Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery.There has been so much more, and so many people are making fantastic arguments in the comments of other posts that I don't want to go back to right now. I need to start winding my emotions down for bed; ugh, I got nothing I wanted to do done this evening.
[ETA 2:]
sinsense just linked to a great post by untappedbeauty that calls out the use of fallacious analogies and says something I keep forgetting to say, though I was getting more and more irritated about it earlier: I wish they could just pretend it's not about them. Because it's not. [...] It's about extending a courtesy to our fannish community, not trying to stifle authors.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 08:48 am (UTC)I just -- I am the first person in almost any situation to fight censorship. Censorship is always wrong. I do believe in authorial integrity, even -- maybe especially, given the nature of the complicated genre -- in fandom and fanfiction. But this is not about censorship, and it isn't actually about authorial integrity, it's about courtesy and community and being a good community member, and seriously, one of these days I really am going to have to write that fucking post about being a village elder. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I seriously do not even see where the anti-warnings people are coming from.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 02:00 pm (UTC)Thank you for the recs, I will check them out!
The idea that this is censorship is just so fucking insane. Nobody's standing over anyone's keyboard with a club, ffs, there's no authority figure to rail against. Reading some of this, I get the really strong feeling that we're holding two slightly but significantly different arguments side-by-side, and the anti-warnings people are just incapable of recognizing that. GRAH.