On the H/C drama
Grrraaarrrggghhhh!
I've spent far too long today catching up on the drama surrounding the criticisms of hc_bingo. As far as I can tell, the mods over there have handled the criticisms promptly and respectfully, which is the best anyone can ask of a brand-new comm. Considering that a lot of the criticism seems to consist of sweeping, hurtful, and inaccurate generalizations about hurt/comfort and the people who read and write it, they've done a lot better than I would have.
I hate anonymice. Always have, always will, but I actually came close to becoming one this afternoon, because there were a few things that I just could not let pass without remark. And I didn't want to sign my name, because I know that, right now, my anger-fueled adrenalin is pushing this post through, but I'm going to crash once it fades and I don't expect to have the resources to follow up on conversation later. In the end, I did sign my name to two comments, but left the most noxious one alone.
Just for the record:
NO, h/c is NOT all about an able-bodied person taking care of a disabled dependent with no agency of their own. Nor is it predominantly from the point of view of the story's caretaker, objectivifying the ill or traumatized person. Yes, some fic is from the comforter's POV. In my experience, far FAR more of it is from the comfortee's POV, because they're usually the one we're identifying with and whose vicarious comforting we want to experience.
NO, h/c is not about fixing things so that the hurt all goes away by the end of the story. YES, the magical healing cock abounds in the h/c genre. Guess what? Bad!fic abounds in EVERY genre.
NO, h/c fic that IS about the relationship between a person with a serious disability and their able-bodied caretaker, or between a trauma survivor and someone who cares about them, does NOT have to be about the needs of the disabled or survivor. YES, caretakers and allies can have perfectly valid problems of their own that are just as worthy of fic, and writing that fic is not disrespectful to anyone else.
YES, writing about triggery subjects without making a reasonable effort to understand the perspectives involved and handle the issues sensitively makes you a jerk. SO DOES making offhand generalizations about subsets of fandom that you have no real knowledge of.
You know what the first hurt/comfort story I remember ever reading was? It was in the seventies. I was 9ish. I spent a lot of time in the hospital lobby waiting for medication-monitoring bloodwork. There was a local church that put these little Christian proselytization pamphlets out in the waiting room. The "book" I remember was palm-size, perfect for a kid's hands, and was the cartoon story of a little boy. He was abused by his parents, until they finally just threw him away. He ended up wandering the streets, starving, freezing in the wind and rain, sleeping in a box. But none of that mattered in the end, because he'd found Jesus and he knew Jesus loved him, and the warmth of that love made up for everything else.
I must have read that pamphlet a dozen times on different hospital visits. I wasn't Christian and even at that age I could see what blatant propaganda it was, but it didn't matter, because just the thought that someone could experience that comfort made up for everything else. I didn't think it was any more realistic than starships and wizards, but since I dreamed about being a wizard on a starship too, I didn't see much difference. All three made life suck a little less.
Scratch that. That would have been the second h/c story I remember. The first would have been "The Little Match Girl". Same story really, just with better illustrations and more literary value to make up for the propaganda.
Yeah, it's obvious that all hurt/comfort is about magic healing sex and appropriating the experience of disability for the sake of porn. *rolls eyes*
For me, hurt/comfort has always been about the vicarious experience of comfort; there've been times in my life -- more often than not -- when that vicarious support was the only thing approaching support I had. That's part of why I was so pleased to see the birth of trauma_rec_fic and why I've moaned and whined so often in recent years about the dearth of good hurt/comfort fic these days and the proliferation of both angsty darkfic and fluffy sickfic trying to pass themselves off as hurt/comfort. No, I'm not disabled. No, I was never raped. Yes, I will take vicarious comfort from reading stories about a character being raped or becoming disabled and recovering with the help of a friend or lover.
I do it for the same reason that I used to read alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. Many of the issues we dealt with were similar, the people there were kind, and they understood that alt.abuse.recovery wasn't helpful because it was mostly unpopulated. I read disability and trauma recovery hurt/comfort fic because no one WRITES fic about my issues, so I find comfort where I can. If you know where to find fic that ISN'T about disability or trauma but does reflect all the months I spent in pain knowing there was no way to make it stop and no one who would take me seriously, the fear I still feel looking at a yard full of icy snow and knowing I might not be able to walk safely to work (which means not getting paid and potentially not having a roof over my head), the years I've spent wondering how much of what I'm feeling it's safe to reveal before people decide I'm a pathetic burden who ought to just pull herself up by her bootstraps -- if you can point me to THAT fic, THEN you can pass judgment on what I choose to read and take comfort from. Until then, you can shut the fuck up.
Oh, that most noxious comment of all? "Kink_bingo starts from real kinks, lived experiences, and opens out into fantasies. hc_bingo starts from fantasies which have a problematic relationship with reality". Because mind control, tentacle sex, and yiff are obviously reality-based, but no one's actually lived through rape, chronic pain, or alienation. Yeah. I... can't even begin to respond to that rationally.
I've spent far too long today catching up on the drama surrounding the criticisms of hc_bingo. As far as I can tell, the mods over there have handled the criticisms promptly and respectfully, which is the best anyone can ask of a brand-new comm. Considering that a lot of the criticism seems to consist of sweeping, hurtful, and inaccurate generalizations about hurt/comfort and the people who read and write it, they've done a lot better than I would have.
I hate anonymice. Always have, always will, but I actually came close to becoming one this afternoon, because there were a few things that I just could not let pass without remark. And I didn't want to sign my name, because I know that, right now, my anger-fueled adrenalin is pushing this post through, but I'm going to crash once it fades and I don't expect to have the resources to follow up on conversation later. In the end, I did sign my name to two comments, but left the most noxious one alone.
Just for the record:
NO, h/c is NOT all about an able-bodied person taking care of a disabled dependent with no agency of their own. Nor is it predominantly from the point of view of the story's caretaker, objectivifying the ill or traumatized person. Yes, some fic is from the comforter's POV. In my experience, far FAR more of it is from the comfortee's POV, because they're usually the one we're identifying with and whose vicarious comforting we want to experience.
NO, h/c is not about fixing things so that the hurt all goes away by the end of the story. YES, the magical healing cock abounds in the h/c genre. Guess what? Bad!fic abounds in EVERY genre.
NO, h/c fic that IS about the relationship between a person with a serious disability and their able-bodied caretaker, or between a trauma survivor and someone who cares about them, does NOT have to be about the needs of the disabled or survivor. YES, caretakers and allies can have perfectly valid problems of their own that are just as worthy of fic, and writing that fic is not disrespectful to anyone else.
YES, writing about triggery subjects without making a reasonable effort to understand the perspectives involved and handle the issues sensitively makes you a jerk. SO DOES making offhand generalizations about subsets of fandom that you have no real knowledge of.
You know what the first hurt/comfort story I remember ever reading was? It was in the seventies. I was 9ish. I spent a lot of time in the hospital lobby waiting for medication-monitoring bloodwork. There was a local church that put these little Christian proselytization pamphlets out in the waiting room. The "book" I remember was palm-size, perfect for a kid's hands, and was the cartoon story of a little boy. He was abused by his parents, until they finally just threw him away. He ended up wandering the streets, starving, freezing in the wind and rain, sleeping in a box. But none of that mattered in the end, because he'd found Jesus and he knew Jesus loved him, and the warmth of that love made up for everything else.
I must have read that pamphlet a dozen times on different hospital visits. I wasn't Christian and even at that age I could see what blatant propaganda it was, but it didn't matter, because just the thought that someone could experience that comfort made up for everything else. I didn't think it was any more realistic than starships and wizards, but since I dreamed about being a wizard on a starship too, I didn't see much difference. All three made life suck a little less.
Scratch that. That would have been the second h/c story I remember. The first would have been "The Little Match Girl". Same story really, just with better illustrations and more literary value to make up for the propaganda.
Yeah, it's obvious that all hurt/comfort is about magic healing sex and appropriating the experience of disability for the sake of porn. *rolls eyes*
For me, hurt/comfort has always been about the vicarious experience of comfort; there've been times in my life -- more often than not -- when that vicarious support was the only thing approaching support I had. That's part of why I was so pleased to see the birth of trauma_rec_fic and why I've moaned and whined so often in recent years about the dearth of good hurt/comfort fic these days and the proliferation of both angsty darkfic and fluffy sickfic trying to pass themselves off as hurt/comfort. No, I'm not disabled. No, I was never raped. Yes, I will take vicarious comfort from reading stories about a character being raped or becoming disabled and recovering with the help of a friend or lover.
I do it for the same reason that I used to read alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. Many of the issues we dealt with were similar, the people there were kind, and they understood that alt.abuse.recovery wasn't helpful because it was mostly unpopulated. I read disability and trauma recovery hurt/comfort fic because no one WRITES fic about my issues, so I find comfort where I can. If you know where to find fic that ISN'T about disability or trauma but does reflect all the months I spent in pain knowing there was no way to make it stop and no one who would take me seriously, the fear I still feel looking at a yard full of icy snow and knowing I might not be able to walk safely to work (which means not getting paid and potentially not having a roof over my head), the years I've spent wondering how much of what I'm feeling it's safe to reveal before people decide I'm a pathetic burden who ought to just pull herself up by her bootstraps -- if you can point me to THAT fic, THEN you can pass judgment on what I choose to read and take comfort from. Until then, you can shut the fuck up.
Oh, that most noxious comment of all? "Kink_bingo starts from real kinks, lived experiences, and opens out into fantasies. hc_bingo starts from fantasies which have a problematic relationship with reality". Because mind control, tentacle sex, and yiff are obviously reality-based, but no one's actually lived through rape, chronic pain, or alienation. Yeah. I... can't even begin to respond to that rationally.