Dear Fandom: Keep it up. I don't even mean that ironically.

[cimorene]

A nice thing about fandom is that when a new meta debate comes up, the odds are quite good that if I wait a day and a half someone else will say what I wanted to say, and frequently better than I would have. Like this time, fairestcat with I Don't Care About Blair Sandburg's Hair:

I particularly don't want to hear about Blair Sandburg's hair (or whatever other past warnings gremlin is being dredged up) as illustration of the dangerous slippery slope that will inevitably result from any attempt to educate fandom on the need to use warnings for common, potentially triggering story elements.

First of all, I can't believe people are sincerely making the slippery slope argument. Really, fandom? Really??

Secondly, so what??? If the price of avoiding causing severe pain to survivors of abuse, assault and self-injury is that I might, at some point in the future, have to fend off some crazy reader who wants me to warn for the color orange, I'm more than happy to pay it.

The other part that I wanted to post was a point-by-point explication of ableism, which is rampant and rampantly denied by its perpetrators in this debate. It's occurred to me that many seem to be (ironically?) completely blind to this ableism, and that it might help to show an extended metaphor using my daily experiences travelling, shopping, eating, walking, and generally living with my physically disabled wheelchair-bound Dad. However, today is largely set aside for baking; so it may be that I discover, before I have the chance to write this, that someone else has already done so. The odds are good.

I definitely believe that there is value in recurring fandom debates, however they may seem to anyone with a bit of BOFQ under their belt to be nth verse same as the first: they're ongoing negotiations of social norms which both a) serve to inculcate newcomers in the subculture and b) do sometimes make cumulative progress.

Comments

[copracat]

If this current round furthers awareness of ableism in fandom, I say how can I make it go on longer?

[ciderpress]

... really?

I've seen personal attacks, people having to explicitly reveal their experiences because they otherwise get heard and abled-bodied people playing gotcha and setting up straw-man arguments. Today, I read an exchange where someone attacked a rape survivor and told the survivor she had "privilege of the victim".

I'm pretty sure the hurt and damage that might and *has* caused survivors, especially the context of how rape can be treated in societies, is not worth it at all. People can unlearn their deliberate ignorance elsewhere without the most vulnerable paying for it.

(eta: edited take out a word because I'm actually not mad at you, V. I'm upset by what's been going on the past couple of days.)

[copracat]

I'm very sorry. I posted that comment before I knew of the appalling attacks on survivors of abuse that some commenters had made. There are certainly many things happening I would wish not to go on or happen at all.

[ciderpress]

I appreciate you clarifying this -- and of course, not everyone operates on the same time and has the same amount of time to follow discussions or even follows the same discussion. I'm just... heartsick at some of the appalling ass-showing some people have been indulging in and who really suffers when that happens.

[isilya]

Yeah, and it's astonishing, after having just gone through thirty rounds of The Tone Argument Bingo Racism Education 101, people all over the place are saying things like "I agree with warnings, but you don't have to be rude about it!"

[noracharles]

I agree with warnings, but you don't have to cruelly mock people's phobias of haircuts, the color orange or calculus.

I have not read all of the discussions about warnings, but I have read the discussion in Zvi's journal. As far as I could tell, there were no anti-warning people there, (though the pro-warning people tried to paint the warning-choice people as anti-warning,) and some pro-warning people repeatedly dismissed other people's pain as irrelevant, not real pain, not painful enough, a strawman, a slippery slope argument, derailing...

From what people have said about other discussions, some warning-choice and anti-warning people have also dismissed people's pain. But what I personally read was pro-warning people being dismissive, and even crowing about hurting someone participating in the discussion.

If I were on a mailing list where I knew, because she had told us, that one of the other members had a particular phobia, I would warn for mentions of that phobia in fic posted to that list. But I would probably not warn in fic written for other fandoms or venues. Discussing that practical warning policy and where my personal cut-off point is, is not making a slippery slope argument, and I am hurt and offended that other fans, especially fans who claim to be pro-warning, who claim that warning is a moral question, would mock the phobic person and call her "some crazy reader", or say that her pain is not "enough" to take seriously.

(Edited to fix typo)

[fairestcat]

If that "some crazy reader" refers to the wording in my post, I apologize, I never intended to be dismissive of people with uncommon triggers or suggest that they are "crazy". I have reworded my post accordingly.

The reference to the color orange came specifically out of a discussion in which anti-warnings writers were mocking uncommon triggers, but feeling that my example came out of a bad faith discussion, does not excuse my mocking of it.

[noracharles]

Thank you ^_^

[thefourthvine]

I definitely believe that there is value in recurring fandom debates, however they may seem to anyone with a bit of BOFQ under their belt to be nth verse same as the first: they're ongoing negotiations of social norms which both a) serve to inculcate newcomers in the subculture and b) do sometimes make cumulative progress.

Thank you. This. Precisely. (I have been waiting for someone to say it, and lo! My patience was rewarded.)

OT Ellen Kushner needs a Finnish translation

[mecurtin]

Help Ellen Kushner figure out what the Finnish reviewer meant, that TranslateGoogle said was Kushner language is successful transformation of the various persons blowjob, which is not a minor achievement ... " -- especially given that the book in question does not include any blowjobs ...