Sometime reasonable wins...

[maygra]

If you have not tripped over heatherly's essay elsewhere, I encourage you to read it.

You know, if that's the sort of thing you like to read.

I say this in full admission of fact that I disagree, or rather, approach differently a couple of points in the second half of her essay -- primarily from a ideological and practical POV as opposed to disagreeing with her en toto of a writer's responsibility. I'm pretty sure I'll have additional thoughts on that in a bit, if I can get my thoughts organized in such a way as to present them as less contention than perspective.

Comments

[drlense.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely right in terms of not enforcing that responsibility from the outside- it can't be done, and I don't think I would want it to be done. But we do self police about certain issues- why not others? Why is the incest/chan/pedophilia story different than a story about racism? Or one that insinuates women are less than men?

I think I'm seeing the issue differently than a lot of people- and I understand that. As a community, fandom is very quick to jump on stories that appear to have gender, racial, or homophobic bias. There was a huge kerfuffle in SGA fandom over non-intentional racial bias in a particular story. I'm pretty sure that if I wrote a story where Sam and Dean (to use SPN) called Gordon the n word, or insinuated that he wasn't as good as them because of his race, I'm pretty sure I'd be shunned and defriended- and what's more- because this is the root of the issue for me- I'm sure that if I got TOSsed for a story that was overtly racist or sexist, there'd be few people wanting to leave Livejournal because of it, or go to the media to protest the injustice.

I sort of see it as 2 sides of the same coin. People I respect, like yourself, are saying that we can't impose a moral standard on the community- but I think in some ways we kind of already do.

Please don't get me wrong- I know it probably sounds that way, but I'm not trying to hold others to a moral standard. And I realize that it's a very slippery slope, to a degree. I'm sure that there are others who would use my argument against any slash fic, or or RPS, or fic that deals with adult incest stories, or anything they don't like. And I am perfectly content (and have been) to live and let live- I can't claim that I don't silently judge people, because that would be a big lie- but I have never ever said to someone's face "your kink is not okay". I leave them alone, I hit the back button and go somewhere else.

What really bothered me about fandom's response to strikethrough was the way it was expected that since I was also a member of fandom that I should be outraged and be prepared to take action- that not only was I expected to condone stuff that I was personally really squicked by- but I should also defend it. And that really bothered me, because I do feel that some of the stuff that was being so vigorously defended is right up against the line.

I'm sorry- I've gotten really verbose here, and I'm probably still not explaining myself well. I just want people to understand where I (and maybe a few others) are coming from. I don't think we're trying to be censors, or tell people what they can and cannot do. (Although maybe I'm being naive about that, and we are.) Thank you for the space.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

RE: The SGA Race discussion (which I admittedly, only caught the edge of) plays differently for one reason and one reason only: it didn't come from outside.

The thing is, I'm not saying people don't have the right to form moral judgments on people because of what they write. I think a good many of those judgments are either specious or outright stupid, but people can certainly make them. Those disagreements came down to "hey this is behavior I think might be construed as being racists and maybe you should look at what you're doing" and yes, people got angry and said some pretty vicious things on both sides, lines were drawn, flists were realigned, pros and cons were hashed and rehashed.

And true, you might, if you wrote a racist story, find the reaction so uncomfortable that you left. But this I'm sure that if I got TOSsed for a story that was overtly racist or sexist, there'd be few people wanting to leave Livejournal because of it, or go to the media to protest the injustice. is, iMO, a strawman argument, because as far as I know, no one threatened anyone with an abuse complaint for racism, no one tried or even threated to have journals shut down for promoting racism via fictional works. There is a a big difference, to me at least, between telling someone they might be showing an unconscious racial bias in a work or even concluding that a particular fan is a racist and accusing someone of actively promoting pedophilia in a fictional work or accusing someone of being a pedophiliac and threatening to report them to LJ or other "authorative" agencies if they don't stop writing what they are writing.

I think people are having a hard time separating content from context. I don't think any one asked or would expect you to defend specific fans or stories that have content you might dislike or find absolutely abhorrent. What people were asking (and yes expecting) no matter how badly phrased was the idea that merely writing something -- no matter how horrible or offensive to you or any other individual -- does not automatically make the writer a horrible person. It does not, in fact, convey any authorative weight at all about that person's actual moral or ethical stance on the existence or real life repercussions of child abuse or pedophilia.

(continued next post)

[maygra.livejournal.com]

Real life pedophilia and child abuse causes actual, quantifiable harm to identifiable (and arguably vulnerable) members of our society -- children. Discussions and stories written about it may cause actual, quantifiable distress in some people, but distress is not in an of itself harmful. It is uncomfortable, it is something most people can and will avoid at all costs. The line is not, "pedophilia is defensible" because I think most people would seriously agree that it's not.

The line is that thoughts and words do not equate to actions. I don't think the writers of movies like "Ocean's 11" 12 & 13, are promoting either theft con games as healthy societal values. What they are fascinated with is the personalities that are drawn to and commit such crimes. I don't think JK Rowling is promoting witchcraft in her Harry Potter Novels -- I do think she is fascinated by the scope and breath of magic and what would draw people to it, and what kind of people actually want to learn and practice it (Regardless of whether she believes it exists in any form in Real Life or not). I don't think the people who wrote "OZ" think prison rape is a good thing -- but I do think they are fascinated by the whole concept of a closed society within a society and how that changes people.

I don't think an writers who write about incest, or child abuse, or rape, are promoting those as good things in and of themselves. I don't deny that some people get off on it -- I think writing in general is the *best* place in the world to explore and examine and even *change* the way we look at things, be they what we fear or what we desire.

And I don't think, in any but a very few isolated incidents, that such writing have an impact on the larger world *Except* as a spring broad for we as a society discussing them and yes, drawing ad redrawing lines. The magic in Harry Potter did not suddenly increase or make possible magic in the real world. Incest written by fans in SPN or Numb3rs did not suddenly make it okay for fans to make sexual overtures to the siblings, or suddenly increase the likelihood that they would.

I personally, don't think moral standards should be hoisted on anyone but ourselves. My moral standards dictate that I treat certain subjects in a certain way. Your moral standards may differ greatly from mine. Saying, "You shouldn't write about that and I'm going to stop you" is no different than saying, "You should write about that and I'm going to make you."

The difference here is persuasion, through discussion which is mostly what's happening and coercion by threats which is happening in fewer places but has, in many ways, (as do all threats) more impact.

In my mind the actual "harm" alluded to in fictional accounts of fictional characters is far less than the actual "harm" done in the name of Moral Standards when it really has more to do with people being averse to being uncomfortable.

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

I think you should put these two comments up in their own post, the section on Ocean's [inser number], Rowling and Oz in particular just hit me exactly right.