 | quillori (![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) quillori) wrote,
@ 2009-06-26 12:15 pm UTC |
I think there are at least two arguments going around, which unfortunately keep getting conflated.
- people who are browsing about, clicking on this link and that, searching for people with matching interests, whatever, may come across a story with no warnings, assume the lack of warnings means it's safe for them to read and then find, too late, that it isn't. Therefore, lack of warning leads directly to people being triggered and is thus wrong.
- One problem with this is that it only works if it is, in fact, reasonable to assume a story without warnings is story containing nothing to warn about. We none of us have the right to demand other people save us from the consequences of making unreasonable assumptions, nor can we justly hold them responsible for such consequences. Now, if we ask whether it is reasonable to make this assumption the answer is obvious. (Whether it would be desirable to be able to make such an assumption is a separate question.)
Firstly, and most importantly, there is, as a matter of observable fact, no pan-fandom consensus as to what should be warned for. Different fandoms, and sometimes different groups within a fandom, have quite different norms. (It might also strike the prudent reader that an unknown poster you have found through random browsing may be new to fandom or only on the very margin and not know the consensus, even if one were to come into being. Then there is the risk the poster might have carelessly forgotten to put up the warning line (they were trying to figure out the right warning, meant to come back to it later, forgot they hadn't and posted the story / were playing around with the formatting and accidentally deleted a line without noticing / whatever). These are minor points, and not all that likely, but probably still relevant if the prospective harm is great.)
The poster may also not have realised something fell within what should be warned for, which is often not as obvious as it might seem, even for supposedly ‘obvious' warnings like rape. (If the warning is to be read not as a statement that the fic contains a rape, but that it contains something that might trigger rape victims, this could include attempted rape, a fraught period in which it seems as if there may be going to be an attempted rape, a fraught period in which it might seem to the reader as though there might be a rape even if that wasn't the author's intent, consensual play acting... I've seen it argued that one character waking up another with a morning blow-job should get a rape warning, because sexually touching someone who is asleep is a trigger and counts as not consensual, even if it is clearly written in the context of a happy, non abusive relationship, in which the characters concerned think it's a lovely way to start the morning, which would seem to suggest that an entirely fluffy, happy story about a successful relationship may sometimes require a rape warning: it is really not reasonable to assume that that is going to occur to everyone.)
- As an aside, I notice some people have likened this argument to efforts to combat racism. Look, they say, here is this thing that hurts people. It isn't relevant you're doing it in your own space: racist speech is never acceptable anywhere, and you wouldn't say we shouldn't condemn it just because it only in your own journal, so why should you say it about this other hurtful thing? The two things are, however, not at all the same. We condemn racist comments because we believe racism itself is wrong, not because we are worried some POC might stumble across it and feel hurt. No one is arguing (I certainly hope no one is arguing) that writing about traumatic subjects is in any way wrong, and surely no one thinks racism would be fine if only it were warned for so you could avoid reading it.
A different argument relies not on any harm done to those who read stories without warnings, but instead on the restrictions lack of warnings place on those who avoid such stories. Fandom, goes this argument, should be particularly welcoming to survivors of assault, and careful not to make them feel excluded, and therefore everyone should warn everywhere, because otherwise survivors will have fewer stories to read, owing to missing out on those without warnings. And no, they can't just ask a friend to read them first, because it isn't welcoming and supportive to expect them to go to the trouble.
- I will admit I find this line of argument disturbing. After all, there are many things we might do that would limit the number of stories available to survivors (not least, spending our time writing the sort of stories that require warnings, rather than those that don't), and many things that might seem to exclude them (are you excluded or not made especially welcome if your corner of fandom is all abuzz about a story you can't read? If popular authors never seem to post anything safe for you? Should reccers make sure they don't recommend too many stories with a given warning?) To be honest, if you'd come up to me a month ago and said you thought fandom should go out of its way to be welcoming to survivors, my first thought would not have been that we should therefore never post any fic anywhere without warnings. Indeed, I think I would have got to ‘you must post a link to your fic in an appropriate comm requiring warnings' well before I got to ‘you mustn't post your fic anywhere at all ever without warnings'.
If I agree I have a particular duty to make fandom welcoming and safe for a given group, how far does that duty extend? What else may I be agreeing to do? If I'm not agreeing to do anything apart from this one thing, well, why not? Being welcoming and safe clearly applies to other matters than just whether I may ever post anywhere without warnings, and, let's face it, if you are told you must take specific care of a given group, but it turns out only on one particular point, not in any of the other ways you might expect to take care of their interests, it is hard to avoid the feeling that those making the demand may be motivated as much by a desire to mandate that one form of behaviour as by a desire to protect others.
The impulse to control works dealing with fraught subjects, of which sex is a prime example, and often the one most explicitly addressed, seems to be a common human trait, found across all periods (and all political views). It seems intuitively obvious to many people that there's something different about such topics, that they should be controlled, that the individual discomfort and disapproval they raise is a mark of something dangerous. Consider the current debate: trauma has many causes, of which sexual assault and abuse is just one. Potentially common triggers therefore extend far beyond rape or incest, and yet in all the concern expressed for survivors, all the insistence that they merit special treatment and consideration, no one has even bothered to mention those traumatised by, say, accidents or medical intervention. Charitably, perhaps it was felt if no one spoke up demanding such consideration it wasn't needed, but surely it's at least as possible those affected thought saying ‘you are morally obligated to warn me for falling, or drowning, or car chases, or hospitals' would merely invite ridicule. I'm quite sure everyone is acting with the best of intentions, but then those who desire to control how art confronts taboo issues generally are: I see no reason to suppose any of the commonly raised arguments to mental or spiritual harm are deliberately insincere. Surely we must all be particularly careful to examine our own prejudices and initial intuitions to be sure our judgement is not being unduly coloured: why is it intuitively obvious we should protect assault victims by warning for even dubious consent, but not that we should protect those who survive bad car wrecks by warning for a grippingly described car chase?
There are a few other broad points that occur to me. For one, a number of people have suggested that if anyone tells you something would trigger them you must at once warn for it. This has met with wide agreement, at least among the pre-warning lobby. But consider: supposing someone tells you they're triggered by gay sex? Or suppose they were abused as a child and find scenes of male couples hanging out together, going to the park or the movies or what have you remind them unbearably of being groomed. Are these things you would warn for? What if the victim of a female paedophile can't cope with depictions of dominant or sexually assertive women? But if you think there are warnings that are unacceptable, who is to be the judge? Apparently not, after all, the person asking for the warning. But if it is to be the writer, then you accept that it's possible to object to a warning on moral grounds, and it becomes much harder to insist that all writers must accept an arbitrary list of warnings as a matter of course, because you can no longer claim what you're demanding is so trivial no one could possibly have any reasonable objection.
Perhaps this comes down to a simple disagreement: I am just not convinced that arguing you are only permitted to write about certain subjects if you agree to label your work in a certain way is as trivial and unexceptionable as its proponents suggest.
