again? we're having this debate again?
I made a post about warnings a while ago, and then locked it because it had some personal information on it; I'm unlocking it now, to save some time, and will be linking to some discussion threads from that post throughout this one. The original post is here. Both that post and this one contain some general discussion of rape and other triggers in relation to the warnings debate.
some other things I have to say about warnings, or feel like I have to say again:
how many times do we have to have the warnings debate before we all stop arguing for our privilege to intentionally hurt people? here is just one random comment that infuriates me - a comment by someone whose writing and personality I like, on the journal of someone else whose writing and personality I like, and it really upsets me. This post discusses one statement made in that comment, briefly, and then goes on to address (in the form of a numbered list because it's how I roll) several other arguments I've seen in multiple places over the last few days.
according to that comment, people who read stories when they're not sure if they have warnings are knowingly engaging in risky behaviour. And here I thought we'd just had a huuuuuge conversation that was in part about how women who knowingly walk through dark alleys wearing short skirts aren't doing anything wrong, and should be able to walk through dark alleys wearing whatever the hell they please. And here I thought that just because I'm queer and lots of queers get beaten and killed in the country where I live, I'm not responsible if someone beats me up. The thing is, adding warnings to stories isn't like stamping out masculine rape-culture, or preventing queer-phobic and trans-phobic violence. It's relatively simple. Saying that "that would be an ideal world, but since we can't have an ideal world, just deal with it" is not only dismissive, but wrong; community standards count for a lot in fandom, and it wouldn't take much to start shifting community standards towards more warnings. It certainly takes less effort for me, as a writer, to offer warnings (in a way that protects both survivors and spoilerphobes, even, as if the needs of those two groups should be considered equally), than it does for me, as a writer, to deal with my own privileges in relation to race, class, etc. (which is something else I am trying to do but that is much more difficult). Here are some things that need to be said:
1) I think that talk about character death warnings, or Blair-cuts-his-hair warnings, or a-kitten-dies warnings, are derailing. Those are ambiguous subjects, and if you're not warned for character death and then end up reading a different story than you wanted to read, well, that's less of a problem than survivors of rape or torture having violent flashbacks. Talk about "warnings creep" - the tendency for people to want warnings for more and more things - is derailing. To say that no one should get any warnings ever because one time someone told you they want kitten-death warnings is a way of brushing off other people's pain; as if it's as silly to be triggered by rape as it is to be upset by a story where Blair cuts his hair.
2) Warnings for noncon, dubcon, incest, and chan are almost always nonspoiling. On the rare occasions where one of those things forms the basis for the TWIST, an author can just say in the story header that they don't warn for noncon, dubcon, incest, or chan. A really interesting thing about the warnings debate is that it's talking about a very, very, VERY small percentage of stories: people say, "at least warn for noncon, dubon, incest, and chan" and people who never ever ever write any of those things jump in to say, "but what if underage noncon is the TWIST!" The stories that are "at stake" - the stories where being warned for one of those four things would spoil the ending or otherwise diminish the story - are very few. So there is something else at stake, something that we apparently care about very much. Personally, I think that it's about a certain defensiveness that is well-earned; that authors feel defensive because they are so used to being told that writing porn is wrong, or their rape-fantasies or incest-fantasies or whatever are wrong - and hey, they/we get told that all the time, so I get it, I do. But: see (6), further down. And, for more on the myth of the all-important twist ending, you may want to read this comment thread.
3) Saying that there's a huge "safe" part of fandom where warnings are required (like, they totally ask you to do it on this community I belong to) is misleading, and comes from a position of privilege. Plenty of authors ignore bits and pieces of community standards - this is in fact the problem that is being addressed. Spaces that pretend to be safe, or that think they are safe, but aren't. Telling someone to just "ask their friends" or "check delicious" if they don't see a warning on a story is demeaning and ablist and puts the burden on the survivor, which is so much bullshit I can't even tell you how much bullshit it is. What if my friends don't know my triggers, or no one's tagged it noncon on delicious, or I don't know anyone who's read it? What if I am exhausted by having to always be on my guard, because fic writers can't do me the small kindness of sometimes watching my back for me, and therefore give up on trying to find safe fic altogether? Anyone who spouts this "just ask your friends/check delicious" theory should try, for a week, asking five people and doing fifteen minutes of internet research for every story they read before they read it, and see how they feel, even without asking/researching topics that are personally disturbing to them. Perhaps it helps to put this ablist argument into an analogous relationship with another kind of ablism, though of course these things aren't exactly the same: "well, if the restaurant isn't wheelchair-accessible, why don't you just eat somewhere else?" or "If your school doesn't have support services for schizophrenic students, why did you go there knowing that?"
4) Pretending like someone saying "I want to be warned for noncon so that I don't have violent flashbacks or other serious mental health issues" is the same as saying "I want to craft a certain kind of fandom experience" is bullshit. The idea that this debate is about two different ways of conceptualizing fandom is HIGHLY problematic.
5) The author's right to have Artistic Vision is of less importance than making fandom a safe(r), more accessible place. Remember how we sometimes talked about this during the last couple of Racefails? That analogy is really problematic, I realise, but generally speaking: if Patricia Wrede doesn't get to cause people pain for the sake of her interesting megafauna, then why the hell do you get to cause people pain for the sake of your authorial control of extratextual elements? I mean, honestly. Authorial control! I am going to go back and read Elizabeth Bear's defense of Patricia Wrede, the bits where she talks about how SOME people think they're writing social propaganda and have political agendas and have given in to the will of the masses, but SHE'S writing art, and if I ever catch myself sounding like that I will shut up immediately. You may want to also read this previous thread on the problem of staging this debate in terms of entitled Authorial Vision.
6) Calming down a bit, okay, this is really important, guys. Asking for warnings is not the same as saying "the thing that gives you pleasure is wrong, bad, immoral, shouldn't be written, shameful, and hurts me by existing." Rather, it is the same as saying, "I would prefer not to read it for the sake of my health." It seems like, every time the warnings debate comes up, anyone defending warnings gets accused of being anti-pleasure, or of telling other people what to do or how to write or what's acceptable to write. This is not the case. No one is telling you to stop writing X, or that X is shameful, or that you should be ashamed of writing X or getting off on X. They're just saying, please stop causing people pain. Also: asking for warnings does not equal being anti-disturbing content. I actually quite like some dubcon, but I don't feel like I'm being publicly shamed or diminishing my own pleasure by warning others for it when I write it.
7) As
eruthros pointed out to me some time ago, warnings can be a way of shutting down readerly interpretation - i.e., the warning says "plays with consent, but is not rape," and then if I read it and think it was rape, well, I guess I'm wrong and my reaction wasn't valid. This is a problem. It doesn't mean we shouldn't all try, in good faith, to provide warnings anyway. And if we can bring ourselves to write "I think it's just potentially-dubcon, but could be interpreted as rape," or even the broader "contains sexual violence and consent issues," so much the better. here is a commenter explaining that nicely.
8) There are few problems with warnings that cannot be compromisingly solved by "click/highlight to read warnings" or even a warning that says "I don't warn for anything." So, as I said before, perhaps there is something else underlying this debate.
9) Offering warnings, or warning for the lack of warnings, may or may not be a responsibility, but it is at the least a kindness, a gift easily given. here is a thread where I try to explain that.
As a result of thinking about this, I've decided to put a general warnings-policy on my main fic page, and from now on I'm going to link to it with every story I write. That way, anyone reading can be instantly and easily reassured/warned away, and I don't have to type the whole policy out every time I write something. That was easy!
And, in case you're wondering, here's the official
kink_bingo policy on warnings.
eta: for those who want to do highlight-to-read warnings, but don't know how,
lim has done the work for you: check out this comment thread for the html you'll need.
This entry was originally posted at http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/64598.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
some other things I have to say about warnings, or feel like I have to say again:
how many times do we have to have the warnings debate before we all stop arguing for our privilege to intentionally hurt people? here is just one random comment that infuriates me - a comment by someone whose writing and personality I like, on the journal of someone else whose writing and personality I like, and it really upsets me. This post discusses one statement made in that comment, briefly, and then goes on to address (in the form of a numbered list because it's how I roll) several other arguments I've seen in multiple places over the last few days.
according to that comment, people who read stories when they're not sure if they have warnings are knowingly engaging in risky behaviour. And here I thought we'd just had a huuuuuge conversation that was in part about how women who knowingly walk through dark alleys wearing short skirts aren't doing anything wrong, and should be able to walk through dark alleys wearing whatever the hell they please. And here I thought that just because I'm queer and lots of queers get beaten and killed in the country where I live, I'm not responsible if someone beats me up. The thing is, adding warnings to stories isn't like stamping out masculine rape-culture, or preventing queer-phobic and trans-phobic violence. It's relatively simple. Saying that "that would be an ideal world, but since we can't have an ideal world, just deal with it" is not only dismissive, but wrong; community standards count for a lot in fandom, and it wouldn't take much to start shifting community standards towards more warnings. It certainly takes less effort for me, as a writer, to offer warnings (in a way that protects both survivors and spoilerphobes, even, as if the needs of those two groups should be considered equally), than it does for me, as a writer, to deal with my own privileges in relation to race, class, etc. (which is something else I am trying to do but that is much more difficult). Here are some things that need to be said:
1) I think that talk about character death warnings, or Blair-cuts-his-hair warnings, or a-kitten-dies warnings, are derailing. Those are ambiguous subjects, and if you're not warned for character death and then end up reading a different story than you wanted to read, well, that's less of a problem than survivors of rape or torture having violent flashbacks. Talk about "warnings creep" - the tendency for people to want warnings for more and more things - is derailing. To say that no one should get any warnings ever because one time someone told you they want kitten-death warnings is a way of brushing off other people's pain; as if it's as silly to be triggered by rape as it is to be upset by a story where Blair cuts his hair.
2) Warnings for noncon, dubcon, incest, and chan are almost always nonspoiling. On the rare occasions where one of those things forms the basis for the TWIST, an author can just say in the story header that they don't warn for noncon, dubcon, incest, or chan. A really interesting thing about the warnings debate is that it's talking about a very, very, VERY small percentage of stories: people say, "at least warn for noncon, dubon, incest, and chan" and people who never ever ever write any of those things jump in to say, "but what if underage noncon is the TWIST!" The stories that are "at stake" - the stories where being warned for one of those four things would spoil the ending or otherwise diminish the story - are very few. So there is something else at stake, something that we apparently care about very much. Personally, I think that it's about a certain defensiveness that is well-earned; that authors feel defensive because they are so used to being told that writing porn is wrong, or their rape-fantasies or incest-fantasies or whatever are wrong - and hey, they/we get told that all the time, so I get it, I do. But: see (6), further down. And, for more on the myth of the all-important twist ending, you may want to read this comment thread.
3) Saying that there's a huge "safe" part of fandom where warnings are required (like, they totally ask you to do it on this community I belong to) is misleading, and comes from a position of privilege. Plenty of authors ignore bits and pieces of community standards - this is in fact the problem that is being addressed. Spaces that pretend to be safe, or that think they are safe, but aren't. Telling someone to just "ask their friends" or "check delicious" if they don't see a warning on a story is demeaning and ablist and puts the burden on the survivor, which is so much bullshit I can't even tell you how much bullshit it is. What if my friends don't know my triggers, or no one's tagged it noncon on delicious, or I don't know anyone who's read it? What if I am exhausted by having to always be on my guard, because fic writers can't do me the small kindness of sometimes watching my back for me, and therefore give up on trying to find safe fic altogether? Anyone who spouts this "just ask your friends/check delicious" theory should try, for a week, asking five people and doing fifteen minutes of internet research for every story they read before they read it, and see how they feel, even without asking/researching topics that are personally disturbing to them. Perhaps it helps to put this ablist argument into an analogous relationship with another kind of ablism, though of course these things aren't exactly the same: "well, if the restaurant isn't wheelchair-accessible, why don't you just eat somewhere else?" or "If your school doesn't have support services for schizophrenic students, why did you go there knowing that?"
4) Pretending like someone saying "I want to be warned for noncon so that I don't have violent flashbacks or other serious mental health issues" is the same as saying "I want to craft a certain kind of fandom experience" is bullshit. The idea that this debate is about two different ways of conceptualizing fandom is HIGHLY problematic.
5) The author's right to have Artistic Vision is of less importance than making fandom a safe(r), more accessible place. Remember how we sometimes talked about this during the last couple of Racefails? That analogy is really problematic, I realise, but generally speaking: if Patricia Wrede doesn't get to cause people pain for the sake of her interesting megafauna, then why the hell do you get to cause people pain for the sake of your authorial control of extratextual elements? I mean, honestly. Authorial control! I am going to go back and read Elizabeth Bear's defense of Patricia Wrede, the bits where she talks about how SOME people think they're writing social propaganda and have political agendas and have given in to the will of the masses, but SHE'S writing art, and if I ever catch myself sounding like that I will shut up immediately. You may want to also read this previous thread on the problem of staging this debate in terms of entitled Authorial Vision.
6) Calming down a bit, okay, this is really important, guys. Asking for warnings is not the same as saying "the thing that gives you pleasure is wrong, bad, immoral, shouldn't be written, shameful, and hurts me by existing." Rather, it is the same as saying, "I would prefer not to read it for the sake of my health." It seems like, every time the warnings debate comes up, anyone defending warnings gets accused of being anti-pleasure, or of telling other people what to do or how to write or what's acceptable to write. This is not the case. No one is telling you to stop writing X, or that X is shameful, or that you should be ashamed of writing X or getting off on X. They're just saying, please stop causing people pain. Also: asking for warnings does not equal being anti-disturbing content. I actually quite like some dubcon, but I don't feel like I'm being publicly shamed or diminishing my own pleasure by warning others for it when I write it.
7) As
eruthros pointed out to me some time ago, warnings can be a way of shutting down readerly interpretation - i.e., the warning says "plays with consent, but is not rape," and then if I read it and think it was rape, well, I guess I'm wrong and my reaction wasn't valid. This is a problem. It doesn't mean we shouldn't all try, in good faith, to provide warnings anyway. And if we can bring ourselves to write "I think it's just potentially-dubcon, but could be interpreted as rape," or even the broader "contains sexual violence and consent issues," so much the better. here is a commenter explaining that nicely.
8) There are few problems with warnings that cannot be compromisingly solved by "click/highlight to read warnings" or even a warning that says "I don't warn for anything." So, as I said before, perhaps there is something else underlying this debate.
9) Offering warnings, or warning for the lack of warnings, may or may not be a responsibility, but it is at the least a kindness, a gift easily given. here is a thread where I try to explain that.
As a result of thinking about this, I've decided to put a general warnings-policy on my main fic page, and from now on I'm going to link to it with every story I write. That way, anyone reading can be instantly and easily reassured/warned away, and I don't have to type the whole policy out every time I write something. That was easy!
And, in case you're wondering, here's the official
kink_bingo policy on warnings.
eta: for those who want to do highlight-to-read warnings, but don't know how,
lim has done the work for you: check out this comment thread for the html you'll need.
This entry was originally posted at http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/64598.html. Please comment there using OpenID.