#what is tone policing

[tales-from-sysblr]

Tales from sysblr? Oh boy, do I ever.

I got in a vicious fight with someone over communication issues and they said I was tone policing when asking for tone tags. (bitch I was just confused)

A few of my posts have been popular in endo spaces, so it's whiplash every time I see the notifications.

I've rarely actually had an altercation with an endo, but I have a feeling that a friend's girlfriend made me block them because I am anti-endo and they're toxic as fuck.

Syscourse blogs are the ones circulating the most drama. If you've ever thought "what the fuck" in terms of sysblr drama, it's syscourse blogs getting into spats. Most of us just eat popcorn and watch for the tea. So if you ever want to be free, never use the tag ever again. All the drama is relatively contained around the same 15-20 people.

I don't have too many tales. Bad memory and all.

Help what the fuck is tone policing

I can only imagine the whiplash.. we tag most our posts anti endo for that reason lmao.

[ditzybat]

I see a lot in fanon of Jason being Tim’s fav robin - and I’m guilty of enjoying it and posting content in that same vein - but honestly we need to sit down and think critically for a second… Tim’s favorite robin is definitely Dick - after all he did sorta bring start everything for Tim as he is a pillar in his orgin story. But like we all write the Jason and Tim brother relationship all sweet and reconciliation (which, in current canon is sorta true, if apprehensive) when in reality Tim actively makes fun of Jason during titans tower when he’s getting his shit handed to him, would call him a flop to his face, and probably barely tolerated his Robin in comparison to Dick’s out of respect for the name. And Jason is just the definition of Cain instinct mixed in with imposter syndrome, and really doesn’t gaf all too much about Tim besides baseline animosity shown in the beginning of their relationship (as it seems that we’ve all collectively decided to stop recognizing any comic after 2010 apparently- which… is fair to be honest 😭) - BUT ANYWAY I just thought it was very silly haha to find that we’ve all somehow interpreted their relationship one way when it’s really written a completely different way, I just love the extravagant game of telephone we all play when making fandom content/spaces.

[omg-snakes]

Real Science II: The Cookening

Our players:

Meet the Experiment group, aka the Hot Lunch Bunch

And the Control group, who are also technically receiving a hot lunch but it's not quite as hot I guess.

I've taken initial measurements for all participants and logged baseline weight and length, and the majority of these kiddos have already started eating their meals!

An early pitfall: my hypothesis that cooked prey would be more readily accepted seems to have been correct. A few of the Control group haven't taken meals yet while all of the Experiment group are taking meals with gusto.

If the Control kiddos don't get with the program they're going to skew my data. >:(

[aurorangen]

Your entire family has made a difference in the world! It’s time for you to make your own mark. You decide to take your ambition to the big city, San Myshuno. But first, you need connections and want an education. You meet your crush and a lot of other interesting people at university. You major in History but change to Psychology after learning of the disappearance of someone who means a lot to you. After graduating with a degree, you join the Detective career in San Myshuno. With your connections, you are hoping to find and reunite with them again...but that's easier said than done isn't it?

When you see Renee, all seems well with her life. She has top grades, supportive friends, loving parents - it's evident to say her life is perfect. However, beneath everything hides a troubled girl. Pressure with academics, insecurity about her love life, a difficult relationship with her brother...

Renee is determined to chase all her troubles away and start fresh in the big city. She's going to study history (which she loves) and she'll definitely meet with new people: then all her problems should be solved, shouldn't they? But mystery never escapes from Renee. From encountering the supernatural to having an uncle who works as a detective, what else is there? No, who else is there?

[chuplayswithfire]

Nuance is something that can be soooo hard for online spaces to hold onto. Hell, offline spaces too, for that matter. Today I'm thinking about kink and the concept of kinkshaming, when I think about nuance: that people should be allowed to enjoy and engage with kink, especially in fictional and fandom spaces where even bad kink etiquette can't actually harm anyone should be a given. Personally, as long as someone is tagging correctly and creating with self awareness, anything goes in a fictional space, you do you, your content deserves to exist online. I have personally created a variety of kinky works, both publicly available and not, and would really not have a leg to stand on trying to declare otherwise. In a time where people are cracking down heavily on kink and trying to decry it as deviance that shouldn't exist, being kink positive can be a very important, good thing.

At the same time though, the people have squicks, and when it comes to kink and a good culture towards sex in general, people have to be allowed to have squicks. If anyone's hearing the term for the first time, a squick is essentially a concept that just grosses you right out, you do not want to see it, you do not want to learn more, maybe it even distresses you to see it, but not to the extent that you would consider ot triggering content. A couple of common tend to bodily excrement: piss and shit, alongside guro (extensive bodily mutilation combined with sexual imagery). A squick doesn't have to be extreme, it doesn't have to be unusual, it's just something that grosses an individual out, and they don't want to see it. (And because this is tumblr and it must be said: no, racism is not a squick.)

Sometimes, we lean so heavily into the negative that we refuse to allow positivity. Sometimes, we get so into positivity, that we refuse to acknowledge negatives. People are allowed to talk about their squicks. If people see something that grosses them out, they don't have to shut up about it just because it's someone else's kink. Kinkshaming, the idea that someone would go up to someone else and tell them they're gross for their kink, is something people shouldn't do in general. But expressing disgust and distaste for a kink in general isn't kinkshaming - that's just talking about your squick.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That's Okay is about not hating on other people or demanding their works not exist because you hate the kink, not pretending that you find every kink, fetish, or sexual concept totally wonderful and would never react with disgust towards one. This idea in fandom that if you don't like something you should never say anything publicly because what if someone does like that thing, and is upset that you publicly don't like that thing, is ridiculous, and it has been for a while. Negative emotions have a place in fandom, especially in regard to sexual content. You shouldn't harass people who share a kink (especially when their content is tagged this is why everyone should read the tags) - but you also shouldn't go around saying people aren't allowed to use their own online space to process their disgust.

I've been seeing a lot of people lately saying anyone discussing how much they dislike a kink concept is just a kinkshamer, an anti, the purity police, and it's getting beyond ridiculous. We have the right to engage in kink, to write about kink, to make kinky art, create audio for it, and to in general delight in all kinds of kinky works. We also have the responsibility to make sure we're tagging correctly. Others have the right to dislike kink, including our own kinks, and to talk about how much they dislike those kinks. They have the responsibility to make sure they're curating correctly, that they're reading the tags and warnings on a work, and that they work out their negative responses in their own space.

Multiple things can be true: kink is a great way to explore sexuality and desire and a wide range of topics. people deserve to share their interest in kink without harassment or being belittled. one person's joy can be another person's squick. people deserve to share their squick without harassment or being belittled.

[jesncin]

Absolutely wild to me that someone can think being told something they said is racist is rude. You know what's more rude? Being racist.

they always say rude! Why engage with someone's points when you can criticize their tone after all. I've spoken with the most essay dry PR talk in the past from fear of being considered aggressive but it never works. I try to let that go, I'm tired of tone policing myself and not being heard any way.

[froggydelicious]

i am so sick and tired of the tone policing that constantly happens when existing with "female" (transmasc) autism. everyone always tells me my tone is wrong, my body language is wrong, my voice is wrong. that i sound like a bitch. this! is! just! my! voice!

[presiding]

hey what if someone made a fic that explored emily's monsterhood and also, billie lurk's monsterhood in how she views herself? wouldnt that be fucked. haha

[caparrucia]

You can't talk about disability and do disability advocacy work without being aware and prepared to navigate competing needs.

Distrust anyone who wants to give you categorical, universal guidelines for what is and isn't ableist, because that person is more concerned with appearing to be good than actively creating accommodating spaces.

Competing needs exist and choosing one over the other is a matter of nuance. Have you not learned that building rigid, unbending structures to classify people only serve to marginalize and harm us?

People being disabled in ways that directly contradict your disability experience are not trying to minimize or dismiss your disability just by existing. This shit is complicated and I really need able people to not be fucking lazy and looking for cheat solutions that let them check out of conversations and get on with their lives with as minimal an effort as possible.

Competing needs exist. It's impossible to accommodate everyone all the time, but that doesn't mean you should give up and refuse to accommodate anyone ever. Talk to the people in your spaces, ask for guidance on what they need. You're not anyone's savior, stop framing conversations around what a good person you are and focus on how you can make someone else's experience in your spaces better.

And (abled folk) stop arguing about what is and isn't ableist. Figuring out the perfect dictionary definition for ableism is so far down the priority list of things you can do to support disability advocacy work, it's almost funny if it weren't so sad how fixated some of you are on it.

[almostfini]

Guess I'm not going to Pride again 2024

I've been out as some kind of queer since late 2016 and I've never been to a Pride event due to inaccessibility/covid/working nights for years. This year I kinda wanted to go now that I have my powerchair so I went to my city's official Pride Fest website.

They didn't even have an accessibility section on the website, even after getting called out for inaccessibility and then the organizers bragging that they Fixed It this year. For the last 3 years. So I gritted my teeth and looked up the venue's website (which had a very detailed accessibility tab to their credit) and it turns out they only have gendered, multi-stall toilets. I went back to Pride Fest's site to double check if they had mentioned the toilet situation at least (they didn't).

But then I scrolled down and saw it explicitly stated that all banners and signs are forbidden at the festival.

[boyfridged]

Do you agree that Jason, as written by Winnick in UTRH and Lost Days, acts out of character post-resurrection if we take into account his post-crisis robin days? If yes, how would you have him act/react to stuff after he comes back from the dead?

tldr: i definitely agree. moreover, classism plays a huge role in it, and i don’t think that at this point the storyline could lose these implications, which makes trying to conceive what an “in character” (for robin jay) version of these events would be quite difficult. 

let’s just start from saying that i don't think it's a secret that i don't really like winick in general. despite his work being mad interesting on a conceptual level (and style-wise, genuinely well written!), he has no love for the characters he writes about. 

imo utrh shouldn't even ever make it into the mainstream batman timeline. i am aware that this is a radical opinion, but my take is that it would do best as an elseworld story (and in this version too it would need some tweaks here and there), because it made damage both to the mythos of batman and jason's legacy that can never be undone. the very premise of the story is so deeply disconnected from jay's original place in the narrative, and so classist at its roots, that there's not much room to truly fix it. 

(i want to say, preemptively, that i am aware that there are people who read utrh as a story of a revolutionary and a victim – and they have the right to do so, but ngl, my view has always been that it was never written as that. utrh reinforces so many stereotypes that it overshadows the revenge tragedy spirit of it all.) 

another disclaimer is that, to be honest, jay doesn't have a very consistent characterization even in his 80s run, and it also has some classist implications that ideally should be either erased or addressed in the text (that winick instead exaggerated and put at the very front of his storytelling.) starlin's writing is, at the end of the day and very much ironically, more sympathetic and gentler in evaluating jay (simply because at the time he would not get away with changes too blatant) but details such as jay saying that "all life is game" and his random nonchalant behaviour that has its origin in the very beginning of starlin’s run are already signs of it. some readers will trace jason's arrogance prevalent in his red hood era to these issues and say that his actions post-res are therefore a logical extension of his robin days, but i don't buy it. even if you want to lean into starlin-esque characterisation, if you consider the core problem of the garzonas plotline – which is power, jay shouldn’t look into the solution of anything in climbing to the top. and if he did, it would have to be written as a “becoming what you feared/hated most” kind of story, which i can see a certain appeal in (and which would at least acknowledge that it was not his initial personality), but which would go back to its classist assumption of cycles of violence and doomed fates.

so – how to make his post-res era more accurate to his post-crisis robin days (and least classist in the process)?

if we were to follow my fav iterations of his characterisation (barr’s detective comics and the ntt appearances) tbh I don’t think a lot would happen, because his personality is quite mild, and just so hopeful there that i wouldn’t expect any extreme actions from him – but then again, the circumstances that he finds himself in post-res, the trauma, and his sensitivity do warrant grief that should become a driving force in his life from now on. the question is, what to do with this grief as a plot device?

i know that plenty of jason fans hate this take but I actually think the concept of jason trying to be detached and cruel but being bad at it might be one of the least offensive to his 80s characterisation. it’s def not accurate to pre-52 canon (apart from countdown perhaps) but imo for jay to be authentic and nuanced he should be conflicted about his own actions. his overconfident behaviour should be a pose – just as his frantic acts in his origin story as robin were. (again, something that many readers don't take notice of – but reading the rest of collins' writing wherein jay quickly settles into being easy-going and even a bit shy is proof of it.)

these two points lead to the “no good deed” narrative that I often talk about - the reading that jason saw his intuitive and self-sacrificial kind tendencies as something that brought him pain and that never was quite efficient, and that post-res he intentionally tried training himself out of. there are some flashes of it here and there throughout the years of the red hood publishing history, but it never got a true spotlight. and if i were to write lost days, jason flinching at his own violence would be a focal point of the story. 

moving on to utrh; i have spoken about it at length before but I think if he were written 1. with more political sensitivity 2. to have retained the same maturity re: the social order 3. to have the same idea of morality, he should have followed more of actual revolutionary tracks and the whole “drug lord” authoritarian figure schtick along with the idiotic idea of “controlling crime” would have to be thrown out of the window. 

and, later on, forgiveness should play a big role in his story. he's so quick to forgive and justify everyone in his robin run – this is also why i reckon his team up with harvey in tfz was a wasted opportunity.

so, in conclusion – perhaps not that much would have to change re: his actions but definitely a lot should change regarding his emotional journey and his position. i would def throw out a lot of mindless violence and power posturing out of it though. and perhaps make him a bit more polite just for the sake of more consistency (this is not me taking a moral stance btw nor tone policing a fictional character. i just think it would be more faithful to his 80s writing unless you want to make him explicitly scared. and it would be funnier tbh.)

[zo1nkss]

CJ literally called Ed a slur multiple times on-screen to his face, so if you're really going to get upset at BIPOC for feeling vindicated that the white man who's still alive is actually learning to treat Ed like a person, but you don't say shit to ppl who are casual CJ enjoyers about his racism and how he has not unlearned a single lick of it because he died instead, you can actually fuck all the way off.

[thelostgirl21]

Seriously, I wish people would stop reading into my tone so much, and trust my words when I communicate.

If I say I'm not being dismissive of your thoughts and ideas, I'm not being dismissive of your thoughts and ideas.

If I say I'm fine with you holding and sharing views that differ from mine, then I'm fine with you holding and sharing views that differ from mine.

If I seem to struggle with understanding a concept and I say it makes no sense, it's always it makes no sense TO ME (how in the world could I ever know how it makes sense to others?! I'm not in their brains, and can only speak for myself!!! It makes no sense *TO ME* that I could ever be saying that what you say makes no sense to anyone else but myself!!!)!

If I ask "how else can this be understood?" or "how else am I supposed to understand this?", I'M NOT ACCUSING YOU OF BEING UNCLEAR, FOR FRAK'S SAKE!

I'm genuinely asking you to explain your own interpretation, so I can conceptualize where you are coming from, and how you are perceiving things!

It means I really, sincerely, don't understand what you are trying to say to me, am asking for a pause and for some clarification, and will likely continue to ask the same question over and over again until you either frame that explanation in a way that makes sense *TO ME*, or I can see we utterly fail to connect on that subject, and should simply move on.

"You sound like you're trying to dismiss...", "It seems like you think..."

I have no idea how to properly convey tone in written forms of conversation, and am usually more comfortable communicating while phrasing things in a way that I've been told "sounds academic".

That's literally just how I talk and how my brain works. I'm not attempting to "sound pretentious" or anything. I speak that way.

And while I interpret informations and draw conclusions based on whatever data and information I've got available, I will readily change and modify it in light of any new information that comes my way.

I make tons of connections between information all of the time and get fascinated by them, and see the world as a bunch of ideas and concepts.

Please don't mistake my enthusiasm or assertiveness when speaking about any subject I'm passionate about with stubbornness or rigidity.

On the contrary, my thoughts and ideas remain extremely fluid and flexible, and I'm not scared in the least of being wrong and of making mistakes. I have no ego in that sense.

I'll be the first to embrace being mistaken as mistakes are an absolutely fantastic learning tool.

How else would I be expected to grow?

I can't easily change my tone, but I can clearly state my intent using words.

So, if I say "that's not what I meant", and especially "that's not how I meant it", can you at least give me the frakking benefit of the doubt, and give me time to clarify my thoughts and find a way of phrasing them that will hopefully allow you to understand the message I'm sending, before assuming you know what I intended to say better than I do basing that assumption on how I sound?

And perhaps, conceive of the thought that there's a huge difference between thinking you may be right and knowing you're right with absolute certainty.

Other P.O.V. being valid does not mean I remotely have to agree with them, or say they are right, either. Simply respect that people see things differently than I do.

And I do.

I may be wrong and you may be right. Or I may be right and you may be wrong.

Hopefully, you think you're right; otherwise I see absolutely (I SEE... my opinion / perception / interpretation... Look, I'm not taking any chances anymore by this point!) no point in you arguing something that you believe to be deeply wrong.

Do people do that outside of playing devil's advocate? Or listing possibilities they've yet to make up their minds about?

How does this even work?!

Ah, for me?! Or to me?!

Look, I'm wondering how does this even work, but without denying the possibility that it may make sense and work for others...

Ah...

What I'm trying to say is "I'm basically confused about why we're supposed to feel self-conscious or "bad" about thinking or hoping we've got the right interpretation, until we detect a flaw in our logic and then come up with a new one in light of new information we've gathered, or being exposed to/gaining some novel perspective on a subject..."

Does that make any sense?

But yeah, I am utterly unable to tell if people are bored or upset with a subject when I'm talking or arguing with them in person...

So how can I be expected to read into what kind of emotions my arguments are going to inspire in others, or what part of my phrasing might upset them, if no one is telling me how to rephrase thing?

Especially when it's just words on a screen with no clear tone indicator.

"When you say this, it makes me feel this, perhaps you could phrase it like that instead?" would be extremely helpful!

Rather than "you sound like this" or "you're making it sound like that..."

I can't figure it out by myself. I don't hear that "sound". It's a very abstract notion, the idea that my arguments might "sound" like anything.

I need clear rules and systems to properly communicate. That's just how I'm wired, and no amount of wishful thinking or good will on my part is going to magically make me be able to hear those subjective sounds coming off my words.

[unintent]

Why did we let the "tone policing" thing pave a way for it to be considered actually bigoted to expect a certain level of politeness and courtesy and patience when speaking to human beings... I'm glad some people are gay and not having children cause oh my God can you imagine these people as parents of someone brand new in the world 😟

[realmermaid333]

People online will really make the vaguest comment ever then get mad at you for not understanding what they mean. Or act like they just said the most academic statement ever when it was really just two sentences with zero nuance.

[kiwisandpearls]

man, a lot of you guys on tumblr make really great points…

unfortunately a lot of you guys phrase your points so aggressively that it leads me to want to do nothing more than to ignore you and maybe block you