again? we're having this debate again?

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Title:	again? we're having this debate again?
Creator:	thingswithwings
Date(s):	June 22, 2009
Medium:	online
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External Links:	again? we're having this debate again?
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again? we're having this debate again? is a 2009 essay by thingswithwings made during Trigger Warning Debate (2009).

Some Topics Discussed

• warnings
• triggers

Some Excerpts

some other things I have to say about warnings, or feel like I have to say again:

how many times do we have to have the warnings debate before we all stop arguing for our privilege to intentionally hurt people? here is just one random comment that infuriates me - a comment by someone whose writing and personality I like, on the journal of someone else whose writing and personality I like, and it really upsets me. This post discusses one statement made in that comment, briefly, and then goes on to address (in the form of a numbered list because it's how I roll) several other arguments I've seen in multiple places over the last few days.

according to that comment, people who read stories when they're not sure if they have warnings are knowingly engaging in risky behaviour. And here I thought we'd just had a huuuuuge conversation that was in part about how women who knowingly walk through dark alleys wearing short skirts aren't doing anything wrong, and should be able to walk through dark alleys wearing whatever the hell they please. And here I thought that just because I'm queer and lots of queers get beaten and killed in the country where I live, I'm not responsible if someone beats me up. The thing is, adding warnings to stories isn't like stamping out masculine rape-culture, or preventing queer-phobic and trans-phobic violence. It's relatively simple. Saying that "that would be an ideal world, but since we can't have an ideal world, just deal with it" is not only dismissive, but wrong; community standards count for a lot in fandom, and it wouldn't take much to start shifting community standards towards more warnings. It certainly takes less effort for me, as a writer, to offer warnings (in a way that protects both survivors and spoilerphobes, even, as if the needs of those two groups should be considered equally), than it does for me, as a writer, to deal with my own privileges in relation to race, class, etc. (which is something else I am trying to do but that is much more difficult). Here are some things that need to be said:

1) I think that talk about character death warnings, or Blair-cuts-his-hair warnings, or a-kitten-dies warnings, are derailing. [snipped]

2) Warnings for noncon, dubcon, incest, and chan are almost always nonspoiling. [snipped]

3) Saying that there's a huge "safe" part of fandom where warnings are required (like, they totally ask you to do it on this community I belong to) is misleading, and comes from a position of privilege. [snipped]

4) Pretending like someone saying "I want to be warned for noncon so that I don't have violent flashbacks or other serious mental health issues" is the same as saying "I want to craft a certain kind of fandom experience" is bullshit. [snipped]

5) The author's right to have Artistic Vision is of less importance than making fandom a safe(r), more accessible place. Remember how we sometimes talked about this during the last couple of Racefails? [snipped]

6) Calming down a bit, okay, this is really important, guys. Asking for warnings is not the same as saying "the thing that gives you pleasure is wrong, bad, immoral, shouldn't be written, shameful, and hurts me by existing." Rather, it is the same as saying, "I would prefer not to read it for the sake of my health." [snipped]

7) As eruthros pointed out to me some time ago, warnings can be a way of shutting down readerly interpretation - i.e., the warning says "plays with consent, but is not rape," and then if I read it and think it was rape, well, I guess I'm wrong and my reaction wasn't valid. [snipped]

8) There are few problems with warnings that cannot be compromisingly solved by "click/highlight to read warnings" or even a warning that says "I don't warn for anything." [snipped]

9) Offering warnings, or warning for the lack of warnings, may or may not be a responsibility, but it is at the least a kindness, a gift easily given. [snipped]

As a result of thinking about this, I've decided to put a general warnings-policy on my main fic page, and from now on I'm going to link to it with every story I write. That way, anyone reading can be instantly and easily reassured/warned away, and I don't have to type the whole policy out every time I write something. That was easy!

Some Comments at the Post

June 23

[umbo]
You know, I thought very seriously about commenting somewhere making the same comparison you did here:

[…]

Because, seriously, the whole "stay where you're safe and don't venture outside that safe place unless you want to get hurt" thing is making my head explode. […]

So, yes. I agree with pretty much every single thing you said. Great post.

[liviapenn]
I feel like I have definitely committed Fail at a lot of points in that discussion.

Anyone that knows me knows I have a serious problem with "can't stop arguing," and in this case I have, no doubt about it, argued to the point where I have hurt people, including people that I care about and people that I admire, and I am sorry about that.

There are things in your post I would argue with, but I'm not going to.

[darkrose]
I think that talk about character death warnings, or Blair-cuts-his-hair warnings, or a-kitten-dies warnings, are derailing. Those are ambiguous subjects, and if you're not warned for character death and then end up reading a different story than you wanted to read, well, that's less of a problem than survivors of rape or torture having violent flashbacks.

I disagree. Character death is almost always on the list of "things you have to warn for." I've seen people complain about a lack of warnings for partner betrayal, because for them, it's a real trigger. Self-injury and suicide are also on the list--that never would have occurred to me before today.

The thing is that I do warn, but I feel like I'm being told I'm a horrible bitch if I don't warn for something that other people think is self-evident.

Asking for warnings is not the same as saying "the thing that gives you pleasure is wrong, bad, immoral, shouldn't be written, shameful, and hurts me by existing."

I'm a little raw right now, but for me--yeah, sometimes it is the same. When you're telling me that I have to warn for BDSM -- and I have been told that I do in some fandoms -- I go back to the place where I'm arguing with my therapist and trying to convince her that my sexuality is not inherently pathological despite what the DSM says.

About the only thing that seems unambiguous to me is rape, coerced consent and other forms of abuse. I don't mind warning for that. What I mind is feeling like I have to detail every possible element of my story that could conceivably be a trigger -- and that if I don't, then it's obviously intentional. It's not about trying not to hurt people for me, but about the assumption of bad faith if I do.

[thingswithwings]
Yes, I forgot about self-injury and suicide, because I don't write or read that genre pretty much at all in fandom, but you're right that I ought to think about them more.

Character death and partner betrayal are, I think, the ambiguous categories where people often get hung up in the warnings debate, because each one is potentially triggery, but are also traditionally disliked genres in fanfiction, so the issue gets confused. But I think discussion of them can be derailing when folks want to establish a "look, can we at least agree to warn for noncon?" baseline. I didn't see any posts, though, where character death or partner betrayal were discussed as triggers in the mental-health sense of the word; more often, I saw them portrayed as things the poster didn't want to read for genre preference reasons. Is there a post you saw that discussed them as triggers? I'd like to think about that more.

[…]

What I mind is feeling like I have to detail every possible element of my story that could conceivably be a trigger -- and that if I don't, then it's obviously intentional. It's not about trying not to hurt people for me, but about the assumption of bad faith if I do.

I agree that the assumption of bad faith is demoralizing, and that sometimes accusations can get out of hand, or move from accusations of triggering to accusations of squicking (and drown out other voices). I wasn't aiming my post at people who try to warn and sometimes someone triggers anyway, but rather the people who argue vehemently that no one deserves any warnings for anything and it's their own fault if something happens. I understand your exhaustion at trying to be responsible, but not wanting to betray the pleasures you've worked for. Thank you very much for your comment. I'm sorry I've rambled on at you, and if you're tired of this talk please feel free not to reply to it.

[luthien]
FWIW, I've known several people during the eleven years I've been in fandom for whom character death warnings were a very big deal, not because of personal preference/dislike but because those sorts of stories triggered episodes of clinical depression. One friend of mine who is no longer active in fandom used to get me, and others, to read stories before she tried them and tell her if there was anything in them that was likely to be a trigger for her.

[quiet1]
Mostly from the pov of supplying a data point:

I am legitimately triggered by certain types of character death. (I have diagnosed-by-a-specialist PTSD, so I'm not just saying 'oh, it makes me feel bad, that must be a trigger.')

I fully understand the argument about putting a character death warning in the headers without some kind of spoiler protection, and am fine with that - but it is a legitimate trigger for me, and for other people I've encountered during this whole thing.

[lerah99]
I personally have always be pro warning, simply because I don't want to read stories where one of the people in the main pairing dies.

This is linked to when I first got into fandom and a friend emailed me a story which emotionally wreaked me for weeks. On the author's website there are clear warnings, but in my friend's email that line hadn't been included.

The sad thing is, even if the warning had been there that time, I would have still read the story. I was so new to fandom, I didn't even realize it would be an issue for me.

Ever since then, I always glance at the warning line. Non-con, dub con, violence, torture... those are all fine for me. But main character death, I know to pass it on by. I'm not even sure why it is such a huge issue for me, I just know that it leads to weeks of crying jags and I'm not willing to go through that, no matter how beautifully written the story may be.

I understand main character death is one of those warnings that some authors HATE to add because it gives away such a crucial piece of the story.

This is why I am all for hidden warnings or warnings at the end of the story. There's no reason to spoil everyone, but I appreciate the opportunity to make sure I'm not lurking in a place that for me may contain monsters.

[feanna]
I've though about warnings before and about the absence of them in professional fiction and how I hate it when the text on the back of a book I want to read gives away major plot twists or when trailers for a movie give all the awesome scenes away.

You've made me think again about how reasons for reading published fiction and fanfiction differ and how my expectations going in also differ and the point you make that in published fiction the reader is put into a much more passive position rings very true to me and also gave me the idea what WOULD it be like to have warnings in published fiction (possibly on a page in the back, so that they're skippable)?...

I think for me it ends with: Do you really want to be responsible for triggering somebody? Not for making your average reader/watcher think about something that makes them feel uncomfortable (and there's another discussion to be had over this: Whether the reader should know about the kind of feeling the story will evoke because it's their right to choose, which I do find limiting in some instanced, but can also understand when you just want "comfort food" for example) but to truly and decisively ruin somebody's day. Somebody who probably already has more than their share of hard days.

In that instance I truly feel that it IS our responsibility as human beings to step up and say: I care about the people I share this world with and that includes NOT making them miserable.

[sholio]
As a reader, I love surprises and hate to be spoiled, and as a writer, I don't really like putting warnings on my stories. But I always try to do so, because in my opinion, my dislike for spoilers is well and truly trumped by someone else's right to enjoy fandom without suffering emotional damage because of it. And the compromises are so very easy. Warnings that are hidden by a cut, or linked on another page, or a blanket "no warnings, read at own risk" policy that is prominently displayed on all stories -- that's all you have to do! I am fortunate and privileged enough that I don't really have triggers as such, so I prefer to enjoy my fic spoiler-free as much as possible. But I try to be aware that it *is* a form of privilege, and I try very hard not to let my privilege in that area cause me to make fandom less safe or less pleasant for people who don't have that benefit.

Saying "This causes me great pain when I stumble upon it unexpectedly; please warn for it" isn't the same thing as asking someone to warn for haircuts, for god's sake....

I keep thinking about the food allergy metaphor, which I know is being dismissed in some quarters as overly flip, and maybe it is. But I keep thinking about my workplace, where we have several people with allergies to various common foods, and, at the same time, lots of people bringing in homemade baked goods all the time. And how do we handle it? We warn. By default. You always see little handwritten cards saying "Contains walnuts!" or someone will take the time to go by Mary's desk and say, "Hey, Mary, don't eat the macaroni salad, there's shrimp in it!" When I had someone in my department who was allergic to chocolate (woe!), if I brought a chocolate treat, I'd always try to bring another thing that she could eat too -- cookies with chocolate chips *and* gingersnaps, say -- so she wouldn't have to be the only one not indulging.

Sure, not everywhere is like that. But that's the kind of place *I* want to be, where if you know there will be people coming to your bake sale with nut allergies, you make sure to let them know that they shouldn't eat the coffee cake. It doesn't mean you can't bring nuts or that nuts are immoral, just that, to be courteous, you'd take the extra five seconds to make sure people know there are nuts in it. I know that the metaphor doesn't map over perfectly in a lot of ways, but whenever someone brings up food allergies as an example of "caveat emptor", I wonder: Is it really? Because, yeah, you have to protect yourself, but it's not at all unreasonable for the people around you, having been informed of the problem, to take that extra bit of time to make sure you don't have to avoid the whole table of baked goods because you don't know what's in any of them.

[nextian]
Posted with my responses, which are basically whole-hearted agreement. The thing that is upsetting me is how basically easy it is to make up a warnings policy that is clear and concise, even one that says in big bold letters "I don't warn." Or to put it into a cut-text, where such a warning traditionally goes. Or to put it into the fic description. Or in hovertext. Or in tags. Or in gray. It's just not difficult and as such is hard to understand why it's not standard.

[catechism]
Wow, thank you for this. I have been waiting for someone to say SOMETHING I understand, and you have! I especially agree with the point on plot twists and warnings as spoilers; as someone who used to write mainly stories with consent issues, I never wrote one where the non-con chan was the SECRET SURPRISE ENDING. And if I ever do, I hope my betas tell me it sucks, because it almost certainly will. ...anyway. Basically: yes, and thank you.

[iamtheenemy]
In terms of #2, I think you'll notice in this particular wank that there's a lot of discussion of the surprise factor, because that was the issue with the original fic.

(This is a description of the fic, which may be triggery)

The fic (which was written a year and a half ago when bandom first had this wank, and got drudged up again) was a frat AU where the main character, an awkward, nervous freshman with no friends, pledged a fraternity and was made to feel welcome before, as part of his hazing, he gets drugged, kidnapped and anally raped by two other characters. The rape was neither warned for in the header or foreshadowed in the text, aside from a character commenting on how difficult hell week would be.

The author, even after she was asked politely, refused to warn for noncon, saying (yes, actually saying) that the whole point is for the reader to feel the same way as Brendon when he got raped. Eventually she posted something like, "This story has warnings. Have a friend read it if you're concerned." So bandom at large is responding to this incident which is, I think, an extreme example of an author being thoughtless.

As for the rest, I agree with all of your points. You explained things much more eloquently than I could have.

[distractionary]
A friend of mine read that story, back when it was fairly new, and was very disturbed by it. She showed it to me, told me to read the summary only, and asked me what I thought a surprise twist might be.

I said, "It involves hazing? He's going to get raped, isn't he. :("

She was surprised that that was what I guessed; on the other hand, being prompted to know that there was a really awful surprise ending, reading the summary and knowing it involved fraternities, which I've seldom had good experiences with anyway – yeah, I could guess that. And I had absolutely no interest in reading it, and probably wouldn't have had any interest in reading it even if it didn't have a surprise hazing-related rape.

I believe my friend left a polite comment on the post, saying that she was very surprised and hurt by the sudden surprise rape, and was told that the author was glad she had such a strong reaction and no, warnings were not going to be given to anyone.

Was it as bad as actually being raped? Probably not, at least not for someone who never had been, but – part of the problem was probably the scale of it; for all their terror and horror and gruesomeness, rape usually is confined to single or small numbers of victims in any particular act, and this story was read by hundreds of people at least – and every one of them had the same sucker-punch of horror, of empathizing with Brendon and feeling just as brutalized as he was.

I didn't even read it, and I still felt sick from the whole thing.

[saraht]
if Patricia Wrede doesn't get to cause people pain for the sake of her interesting megafauna, then why the hell do you get to cause people pain for the sake of your authorial control of extratextual elements? I mean, honestly.

I don't want to get too deeply into what is looking to develop into a huge brawl, but these are not the same thing. Patricia Wrede's story appears to be perpetuating hurtful ideas--that is, the very existence of the story seems to be harmful. I don't understand you to be arguing that, say, rape stories shouldn't exist, that the very existence of rape stories is harmful (though honestly I think you don't quite appreciate the historical ways in which the warnings debate has been used to police anything outside the safe cozy middle-class narrative in fandom). Rather, what you object to is people with triggers encountering this material without advance notice.

This is a very real harm and not one I wish to minimize. However, it is also a harm that does not require the elimination of stories without warnings to be avoided. In fact, it can be avoided in more than one way. It can be avoided by everyone using warnings. It can also be avoided by people with such sensitivities not reading stories that don't have warnings in them (or that aren't in communities that have explicit rules mandating warnings).

Viewed in this way, rather than as one group claiming the right to inflict harm on another--because I don't see anyone here demanding that people read their stories regardless of their triggers--I do not think it is so obvious that the pro-warnings side must prevail. The argument pits two goods against each other: people with pronounced sensitivities being able to enjoy the maximum availability of fic in fandom that is consonant with their avoiding their triggers and people working in their own space being able to present their own works of art the way they choose to.

These are both valuable things. But in the end, we are talking about hedonic preferences. Let me make this very explicit. I am not saying that the desire to avoid being triggered is just a matter of leisure and pleasure. But the desire to be able to read every fanfic it's at all possible to without having to take any precautions and not run the risk of being triggered is. The anti-mandatory-warnings crowd are not asking people to subject themselves to triggering, which would be wrong and cruel. They are saying that they do not get the privilege of assuming that fandom will order itself so that every story without a label is safe for them. Conversely, the right to present your story in the way that you think will make it most effective is something quite valuable to me personally, but not one of the ultimate liberties I would get shot defending. It's an aesthetic refinement, and I take my aesthetic pleasures seriously, but when I am looking at what norms I would like to have in my community, I do not think they should be enshrined as the absolute highest good.

Really, neither of these values is so compelling as to obviously trump the other. Not being able to read any story you please in fandom without doing some research first is not a fundamental liberty. It is not the equivalent of being able to go into a bar, wear a short skirt, or walk down a dark alley without the threat of sexual violence. It is not the equivalent of being able to physically transport yourself into a government building or perform your job. I really don't feel comparing it to either of those scenarios does it any justice. Neither is not being able to dispense with warnings as an author the same as being in Soviet Russia or being asked to assume your readers are children.

Ultimately, the pro-warnings crowd is asking at least some people to sacrifice something of value to them and to curtail their own liberty to give those with pronounced sensitivities some more potential enjoyment in fandom. I don't think it's inappropriate to make that request. It's part of the process of trying to live together, as it were. But casting it as an intensely vulnerable group being deliberately tortured by the lazy and heartless is just wrong. No one ever has to be hurt by another person's story, because no one ever has to read a story without a warning label. Once that is accepted, this becomes not about a right to hurt, but about sometimes-competing preferences for enjoyment in fandom, and that doesn't require one side to be fragile entitled flowers or the other to be cruel and inhuman.

[reddwarfer]
Yanno. This really clicked with me...especially with number seven. I was in a exchange fest and specifically stated that I didn't want non-con. I stated it as one of my squicks. When I received by gift, there was a scene in which one character was basically functioning as a embodiment of the Id (therefore, could not give/receive consent) and the other character was not willing. Apparently, at least in the beginning. I couldn't finish it. (though, I was assured that it eventually turned into consent later)

When I contacted the mod, she argued with me. Told me I was wrong. That it wasn't non-con at all. That I was misreading it. It triggered me. I had nightmares. But I was totally disregarded. It turned out the mod and writer were friends. And it turned into a very nasty experience for me.

The warnings said "skirted dub-con" and we obviously have a different pov . Though, apparently, mine didn't matter.

[lamardeuse]
But haven't you heard? You're infringing on people's rights if you ask them to be kind to one another. You're stifling creativity and encouraging the spread of athlete's foot. Seriously, though, how g.d. hard is it to put a warning at the end of a story and direct those who want warnings to go there? Or put the warning in white text so that anyone who wants warnings can read by highlighting and those who don't can skip it? THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, PEOPLE.

[ldybastet]
Like someone said in comments, it would be bad though if people thought that their kink is not okay, because it's been labelled as a "warning". But using "content" instead makes that line in the header work both as warnings and enticement/advertising depending on the reader. I've always "warned" for things in my stories, including specifying the kinks in them, but perhaps "content" is what I'll use in the future.

June 24th

[vehemently]
The only difference I know of between the author's own metadata and the metadata provided by delicious is that delicious users have no compunction about spoiling all manner of plot elements (including the unlikely-to-be-triggery). She said, bitterly.

I think I first participated in a warnings debate 10 years ago, and that makes me feel old. On the other hand, 10 years ago, the terms of the debate were much different: I got embroiled in a fight over not warning for slash, once. (Boring, nonexplicit slash! In a bed, even!) But even the refusal to warn was couched in explicit terms, as a "Keywords: Not Telling" and never as a silence. Silence is hard to notice, and has too many possible meanings; but the spoken refusal to explain at least provides the intelligence that there's something to be explained about.

I don't have a good bead on how or why the terms of debate shifted so much: was the (happy) destruction of the slash taboo a signal that all sexual taboos should be overthrown? Is it the predominance of porn as a pan-fannish language and social glue (and even, in strikethrough moments, social cause)? I don't know. I find it bothersome, though, how many people are surprised that harm, and reduction of harm, need to be part of the discussion.

[briarwood]
Are you familiar with the background to the "Blair cuts his hair" thing? I know, it's awful the way it's constantly brought up. I guess I'm guilty of that myself, but it is actually relevant. It was one of the earliest debates about warnings in fandom, and it came about because of the exact issue we're all discussing: triggers from experience of sexual violence.

Sentinel fandom is kinda fetishistic about Blair and his hair; partly because there's (a small amount of) canon to support it. So the haircut thing isn't something you'd expect to see in a fic. Or wasn't, back in the height of the fandom. Blair is also the very stereotype of the abuse-magnet character; physically smaller than his butch partner, some "feminine" characteristics, intellectual and let's not forget attractive. So extreme hurt-fic involving Blair being abused was - and still is - very common in the fandom.

The fan who originally requested the haircut warning enjoyed hurt/comfort fics, but was herself a survivor of an abusive relationship. The haircut thing in a specific story triggered her, massively, in a way that descriptions of fictional rape and abuse never had. I heard the details of the incident she flashed back on second hand, so I won't repeat them, but it makes perfect sense of her request.

But, of course, if you just say "you've got to warn everyone if Blair gets a haircut" it sounds ridiculous. It's certainly true that no one, least of all the writer, could have anticipated a warning like that being needed, and I'm not advocating warning for every little thing. But far from derailing I think understanding the original incident serves as an example of why warnings are so necessary.

June 26th

[anonymous]
Warnings are a constant reminder of vulnerability. Warnings never let us forget that we can be raped, or raped again. When you scroll down a fic comm and see five out of 20 stories with a warning header, that's like five voices yelling NO ONE IS SAFE and YOU HAVE TO ALWAYS BE CAREFUL and MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU'LL HAVE PTSD. If every story has a warning header, even if it's just followed by "no warnings applicable" or "chooses not to warn", that's 20 voices yelling about how fragile you are. That's can be good, when it shakes up people who are oblivious (and may be hurtful in their obliviousness). That can be bad, when it fucks with assault survivors who have worked very hard to see themselves as strong, capable people again. Not everyone handles trauma the same way, and for some survivors, a culture of universal mandatory warning is really, really not helpful. In comms & lists, we need to balance out different needs and then stick to the rules we've agreed to, but people use their personal journals in personal ways, and sometimes fic warnings aren't a part of that. It doesn't necessarily mean that people are uncaring, ignorant, or artistic prima donnas.

June 28th

[chaser]
I just wanted to say that I agree with _Everything_ you've written here. Everything.

I also run a large and active fandom comm on LJ in which fic gets posted a lot, and I am currently thinking about how to draft a more complete warnings policy. I don't get triggered by depictions of rape or molestation, but I know what it's like to be triggered, and it sucks.

The ablist and psychophobic privilege of the anti-warning crowd just sickens and saddens me.

[green knight]
Good post. Particularly the bit about 'if you don't want to get hurt, you should not engage with the world' as if the world (which consists of all of us) has a right to hurt people who don't defend themselves "adequately" to whatever definition of 'adequate' one might trot out.

What any one person creates inside their own heads - even if they write it down, for their own eyes only - is their thing and their thing alone. It does not matter if it's hurtful to anyone else (though I feel that I still owe to the world to examine why I have those thoughts)- but that's nobody's business. The moment you share it, it becomes a social undertaking. If you share it with people who self-select as being willing to read it - whatever it is - that's also fine. Labelling/tagging your own fic and putting it behind a cut is a way of doing that. But if you put it in a public space and entice people to read it, then it becomes a social interaction.

And everybody needs to decide what kind of interactions they want to have. We all fuck up often enough and hurt people we didn't mean to hurt; and we have to deal with that anyway. That does not give me a right to say 'I can hurt whoever I like' (or set out to upset others because I can/because I enjoy it - I've seen people do both). Sure, I _could_ - but I'd expect it to colour my interactions with the world.

I think it's common courtesy that if there is something I can do that takes only a little effort and a little of my time (such as tagging fics) and which is likely to prevent a) deep hurt in some readers or b) discomfort in a lot of readers or c) both, that I should do it. It's quicker for me to add tags once than to write back to even one person explaining what's in the story and what they may or may not be triggered with. And you could set up a form reply, of course, but if you do that... why not tag already?