#homophobes like it's not realistic everyone is gay yeah maybe consider that's what makes reality booooring

[bigskydreaming]

I have a question. In one of your recent posts, you said that trigger warnings come from a place of obligation and not true caring. I agree with you that a lot of the time, that’s true. Which can be concerning. But my question is that at the end of the day, does the person’s reasoning matter? Maybe they’re an awful rude person but if they’ve tagged their stuff, made it easy to see what’s gonna be in the fic, doesn’t that still help? Even if coming from a rude place. The end result is good

Well sure, any time a trigger warning is a benefit to someone, it doesn’t really matter what the reasoning for making it was. Absolutely.

My point there was the problem is one of priorities, and approach. And bottom line, a person who is only tacking on expected trigger warnings out of a sense of covering their own ass, like......they’re not ever likely to be examining their own work with an eye towards the kinds of negative effects it could potentially have on people, because they’re too busy denying that there’s any possible negative impact it could have at all. Despite the fact that this is just willful obliviousness - if fic can have a positive effect on people and inspire or reinforce positive ideas, it has just as much power and likelihood to have a negative effect on people and inspire or reinforce negative ideas. Its not about a one to one correlation, like, its not like anything someone reads in fic they’re going to do, but as pieces of a larger fandom culture? That absolutely adds up and contributes to the normalization and perpetuation and spread of negative ideas and ideologies.

And this is the kind of self-scrutiny an over-reliance on trigger warnings gets in the way of....because its just accepted or taken as fact that trigger warnings ARE the solution....despite all the times and ways people speak up to say well there’s a problem here because this alleged solution is not working here and here and here and over here too. 

But someone who’s convinced they ALREADY did their due diligence by tacking on a couple trigger warnings is never going to be as receptive to being told they missed some, as someone who approaches things from a perspective of understanding that trigger warnings are not infallible, they’re only effective when an author has an HONEST view of their own work.

(And if fandom was truly engaging in a lot of this content honestly, as I’ve said, tags like dub-con and pseudo-incest and consensual underaged sex would not be as widely used as they are in the ways that they’re most often used.....ways that are categorically NOT what those things mean and advertise).

And most importantly, trigger warnings as they’re used by fandom now, like....have kinda become an excuse for authors to try and abdicate any responsibility for what they write. “Oh, I used trigger warnings, so any impact my fic has on someone has nothing to do with me past that point.....unless of course its a positive impact, in which case I’m still more than happy to soak up the praise.”

And that’s just not how it works. You know that thing I said in an earlier post about how all writing is just another form of communicating things - to ourselves in journals, to others in stories or emails or messages.....bottom line, writing has one purpose: to convey ideas, meanings, etc between the person writing and the person or people they’re writing TO or sharing that writing WITH.

In essence, a fic that you’ve written and then decided to POST, to publish, to put out in the world in some form and share with others.....at that point, it stops being a conversation with just yourself and becomes a conversation that’s being had with anyone and everyone who then reads that fic....even if it is a one-sided conversation for the most part, with others just listening to what ideas and thoughts and images and impressions you’re conveying via your writing.

And think of it in terms of like, literally ANY conversation you might have out loud.

If you say something offensive, is it anyone’s fault or responsibility other than yours, that you said something that was offensive?

If you say something you don’t actually believe, but don’t follow it up with anything that actually indicates out loud that this isn’t something you genuinely believe, is it realistic to pretend that people have no basis for listening to what you actually SAID and from that drawing conclusions about what you believe or support?

If you say something that’s in direct opposition to something you said earlier, is it any wonder if people question which you ACTUALLY meant or believe MORE, or just flat out don’t believe what you said earlier now?

If you say something insensitive or even cruel, do you have any right or reasonable expectation why anybody who hears you shouldn’t be within their rights to call you out for what you said and why it was fucked up?

If you choose NOT to say something, out of respect for someone you’re around, or because you know its insensitive or offensive or anything of the sort....are you being censored, or are you just choosing not to be a douchebag?

And so on and so on.

Writers have a tendency to kinda hide behind the logic “not everything we write has to be something we personally believe, we can write characters who have very different values than us” - and that’s absolutely true....but only up to a certain point.

Because you can absolutely write a CHARACTER who believes the opposite of stuff you actually believe or value.....but your NARRATIVE still has to refute that somewhere at some point in some way.....otherwise.....there is literally no reason why anyone reading that, ‘hearing’ what you spoke into the world, would think you DON’T actually believe that. You’ve communicated something toxic or ugly or even harmful or predatory....without accompanying it with ANY communicated idea as to why a reader SHOULDN’T just absorb those ideas as is.

Like.....if you write a rape fic that’s INTENDED to be received as sexy or hot, even if you’re not actually condoning rape within the fic, and even if you would never condone it in real life.....

If your fic still garners comments like “that’s so hot” or something like that, and this isn’t a problem for you because this is a reaction you expected or even a response you intended or were seeking?

You didn’t say or express that you would ever rape someone or say it was okay to rape someone.

But you still communicated, without any kind of self-contradiction: 

“Hey, here is a scenario in which rape is hot.”

And whether you’re talking about fiction or reality, why WOULDN’T that communicated idea be anything other than wildly insensitive and yes, even offensive and yes even DAMAGING to many rape survivors....even if you’re one yourself? 

Like.....another example, okay so I’ve literally been gaybashed, nobody’s likely to ever accuse me of being homophobic, its a pretty safe bet, right? But if I write a fic FOR WHATEVER REASON, in which a character is homophobic even though I’m not myself, but where a character expresses toxic, prejudicial, HARMFUL ideas about being gay....and then my fic nowhere at any point says or does anything to REFUTE or contest those harmful ideas......why would the fact that I don’t actually believe those things make ANY difference whatsoever in terms of whether those things were absorbed by readers in the exact way I communicated them....but without the benefit of any of the reasons I KNOW - but did not communicate in the fic - that they’re harmful and shouldn’t be paid attention to?

So yes, fiction absolutely can do harm, if its not treated with the appropriate responsibility. It can make people who’ve never met someone who’s Muslim decide all Muslim people are terrorists. It can convince people that destructive, harmful instances of incest are actually the outliers and most incest is harmless and between equals. It can normalize the idea that all bisexual people are slutty and promiscuous. It can do tons more beside all that.

And yes, fic absolutely can and often DOES, in fandom, communicate the idea that many of the exact same people who swear they support survivors and have nothing but sympathy for what they went through and all that....can in the right scenarios and circumstances still find the very IDEA of rape hot and exciting, can find the IMAGERY of a hot or sexy character being raped to be sexually stimulating and gratifying and DESIRED, and so on and so forth.

And why wouldn’t that communicated idea make someone question if you’re someone they can ever be comfortable being around, because one way or another, you still found and advertised, broadcast, invited others to join in enjoying.....a scenario in which something an awful lot like that someone’s trauma was hot or sexy to you just as long as it was projected on someone else - a distance which may not matter to them or make them feel any better about the fact that you’re still talking about one of the worst things to ever happen to them, but skewing it in a way where every thing actually being said isn’t about how its bad or wrong or nothing you’d ever condone....but hot and titillating and sexy? 

Why wouldn’t it bother someone or weird them out that you see no conflict of interest between having sympathy for them but then flipping a switch and happily consuming content that’s entirely and unilaterally just about characters going through the exact same kind of thing.....and the viewpoint you’re siding with in this particular instance is that of like....the actual attacker, the one going yes, this is good?

ALL OF THESE are the kinds of questions - and the kind of impact - that not only do trigger warnings just flat out not cover....but that the over-reliance on trigger warnings makes less and less likely to even pop up in a writer’s brain as something worth considering or weighing at all.

So again, like I said at the top - I mean yeah, if a trigger warning is actually helpful to someone, it doesn’t matter WHY it was added or put in place.

But if it wasn’t put in place out of a genuine self-examination of your work and a genuine desire to look out for readers’ comfort and take responsibility for the kind of heavy content you’re choosing to write and share.....

Chances are, the fact that one trigger warning did work for one person or however many, was just a stroke of luck and there’s likely to be a dozen other ways in which that writer failed to consider or even ask themselves....is there anything else I should recognize and acknowledge as potentially having a negative impact on people?

And please, if you read or write dark fic for any reason, you don’t owe me an explanation but you owe it to yourself to at least take a second and honestly ask yourself if you’ve EVER stopped to ask or examine any of the above questions or angles. And if not, why? Ask yourself if you’ve ever been encouraged or had it suggested by others in fandom to even just ask or wonder about these things. And if not, why?

Please examine - who benefits MOST in all of this, from encouraging more and more readers and writers to just NOT think about ANY of this stuff at all, and to instead just shut down any and all conversation about it or attempts to START conversations like this......

Other than people who like and enjoy this type of content and genuinely just do not care about the impact it might have on others....and so similarly, want as few other people as possible to care or even THINK about the impact it might have on others....and thus, maximize the number of people who absent those considerations, have no problem contributing to or enjoying that type of content?