#where people fundamentally misunderstand it and misuse it

[emofrog69]

religious trauma is real it quite literally gave me OCD lmfao

[aplpaca]

Honestly while I 100% agree with the pushback against the misuse/misunderstanding/watering-down of "intrusive thoughts" as a term, i think on some level it's also misrepresentative when the only kind of counter to "lol I had an intrusive thought to jump on the table" is stuff like "real intrusive thoughts are terrible and involve stuff that's gory or morally repulsive like 'you should stab your mom' and are things no one would ever ever talk about"

Cause like, gory and morally repulsive thoughts like that are definitely examples of forms intrusive thoughts can take, but a lot of times it seems like the implication/vocal consensus of a lot of these counter-posts is that intrusive thoughts are things that are all Objectively horrible/terrifying/gruesome/immoral, when that's not actually the case

Like, the core thing about intrusive thoughts is that they're thoughts/images/"urges"/ideas that are unwanted and distressing to the person having them, and are generally repetitive/reoccurring. So while repeated thoughts of "what if I want to kill my mom" that cause distress to the person having them are definitely intrusive thoughts, basically any theme of worry can be the focus of intrusive thoughts, as long as the thoughts are distressing.

Stuff like "what if I don't actually believe in God", "what if I'm not actually an atheist", "what if I'm actually gay/straight/bi/etc", "what if i left the oven on", "what if I'm living in an alternate reality", "what if I forgot to submit my assignments", etc are all themes that intrusive thoughts can have that aren't Objectively Horrible or Immoral, and many are stuff that a lot of people wouldn't consider an Issue. But like even stuff like "I keep counting things in my head" can be an example of intrusive thoughts if the counting is causing distress.

And like idk it just seems like boiling down intrusive thoughts to "horrible things you could never talk about to other people and that fundamentally go against your own morality" does a disservice to a lot of people with different "themes", and can lead to dismissing the distress of those who have more "speakable" intrusive thoughts, or with these people not recognizing their thoughts as intrusive ones bc it doesn't fit what they've seen talked about.

Plus like off the top of my head, I've personally seen the idea that intrusive thoughts are always about things that are Morally Repugnant to the person experiencing them end up in someone being dog-piled on a reddit thread, when a poster (a straight guy) talked about having intrusive thoughts that he was "actually gay" and was met with people accusing him of being homophobic for "being disgusted by the idea of gay people" (and also with people telling him he was repressed and in the closet, which is also definitely not something that would help with said intrusive thoughts)

And just I don't super know where I'm going with this or how to wrap it up nicely but I think in the pushback against the misuse and infantilization of "intrusive thoughts" I think there should also be effort to make sure that we're not just replacing one misunderstanding with another

[pronoun-fucker]

(Open letter linked below)

“More than 130 people, including Gloria Steinem, and organizations in the field of women’s rights advocacy and domestic violence and sexual assault awareness have signed an open letter to support Amber Heard, who lost a defamation suit this year brought by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, for an op-ed in which she said she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The letter, which was exclusively shared with NBC News ahead of its public release Wednesday, was signed by groups like the National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Law Center, Equality Now and the Women’s March Foundation. It was written by a group of people who identify as domestic violence survivors and supporters of Heard.

Heard filed a brief last month laying the groundwork to appeal a seven-person jury’s decision in Virginia’s Fairfax County Circuit Court to award Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages in June. Heard, who had countersued, was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages but nothing in punitive damages.

Although The Washington Post essay never mentioned Depp by name, Depp’s attorneys said it indirectly referred to allegations Heard made against him during their 2016 divorce. During the trial, she testified in graphic terms about a sexual assault she alleged, as well as allegations of incidents of physical abuse. Depp denied all allegations of abuse.

The letter, which denounces the “rising misuse” of defamation lawsuits to silence people who report domestic and sexual abuse, is one of the biggest public shows of support for Heard after months of silence from many groups after the verdict.

Representatives for both Depp and Heard declined to comment.

The jury’s decision was a legal vindication for Depp, who lost a libel case in the United Kingdom two years ago over claims that he had physically abused Heard. Justice Andrew Nicol ruled against Depp in 2020, saying a British tabloid had presented substantial evidence to show that Depp was violent against Heard on at least 12 of 14 occasions.

After the June verdict, activists called out other groups, like Time’s Up, asking why an organization that had championed victims at the height of the #MeToo movement was now silent. Many who did speak out in support of Heard, including the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, were met with ferocious backlash from Depp’s supporters online.

A spokesperson for the group behind the letter, who asked to remain anonymous because of the online harassment she has faced for posting in support of Heard, said she believes that after the trial “individuals were afraid to speak out because they saw what was happening to the few who had.”

The letter says the “ongoing online harassment” of Heard and her supporters was “fueled by disinformation, misogyny, biphobia, and a monetized social media environment where a woman’s allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault were mocked for entertainment.”

The vilification and harassment of Heard and her supporters were “unprecedented in both vitriol and scale,” the letter says.

Kathy Spillar, the executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said her organization signed the letter after it observed what she called a “growing backlash” against women who speak out against perpetrators of sexual assault, domestic violence and intimate partner violence.

“If this can happen to Amber Heard, it will discourage other women from speaking up and even filing reports about domestic violence and sexual assault,” Spillar said.

The letter says the verdict and the online response to Heard “indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of intimate partner and sexual violence and how survivors respond to it.”

In addition to two dozen feminist organizations, more than 90 domestic violence experts and survivors’ advocates from around the world signed the letter to “condemn the public shaming of Amber Heard and join in support of her.” They include doctors, lawyers, professors, authors and activists.

Others who signed the letter echoed their concerns that reaction to the trial on social media was harmful to everyday victims of domestic violence.

“They see the environment that this has created, and they feel even less safe than before to come forward and speak out about the abuse they suffered,” said Elizabeth Tang, the senior counsel for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.

Tang said abusers can use defamation suits to “silence their victims” or as retaliation against their victims for speaking out.

Tang said that among the “reasons we felt it was very important to join this letter” are that “when courts do not dismiss these defamation suits in early stages, it creates a lot of trauma for victims to have to go through a very long, drawn-out and invasive process just to prove that the things they said are true or that they did not defame the person they reported.”

Christian F. Nunes, the national president of the National Organization for Women, said she hopes the letter is a reminder that the court system should never be used to strong-arm victims to recant statements about their abuse.

“We cannot silence victims by using courts and lawsuits as a way to retraumatize them, because this is what’s happening,” Nunes said. She said she hopes the letter raises awareness of new tactics some abusers use against their victims, such as social media campaigns.

Since the trial, there has been more public support for Heard on social media, the spokesperson for the group behind the letter said. She and other anonymous Heard supporters had been “working to combat disinformation for months” when they joined for the open letter initiative.

Experts said they had a unanimous message they hoped to send to survivors who read the letter.

“It is also a way to speak to all survivors and tell them, ‘You are not alone,’” Tang said.”

Article Link | Archived Article Link

Open Letter Link | Archived Open Letter Link

[jaskierx]

people fundamentally misunderstanding what abuse even is all for the sake of arguing about fictional characters and being an abuse apologiser kind of actually drives me crazy like. real people get abused. and these idiots who do this are going to end up repeating violent rhetoric that will be harmful and actively put people in danger by normalising something like "you can't be abused if you fight back against your abuser because that's also abuse" or "abuse is when someone physically larger physically hurts someone who is smaller" or something. ("abuse is when the scary brown man hurts the defenseless small white man")

like 😭? ed holds a certain degree of authority over izzy as his captain and someone izzy projects his own fantasies onto, but izzy holds an IMMENSE amount of power over ed, and has for a while and maybe even ALWAYS has been building it up, and that fantasy plays into it. abuse occurs when someone holds power over another person and misuses that power and causes them harm, even if that person is "unaware" they're doing it... it's not complex and it's nothing to do with what's "typical", a parent can abuse their offspring, an adult child can abuse their parent. it's about the power dynamic. their relationship is incredibly imbalanced and it's always been in IZZY'S favour, his role is LITERALLY meant to liken to like an evil advisor whispering in ed's ear – an imbalanced, toxic dynamic where ed is the victim with false control over the situation, because the entire point is izzy wants him to be The Best He Can Be (a ruthless pirate).

izzy eventually getting hurt physically in retaliation isn't ABUSE because ed isn't enacting what little authority he does have over izzy (who allows him to have it as izzy finds perverse joy in SEEING ed use that authority against him and Be the fantasy he wants ed to be), he's just fucking retaliating to being taunted by someone who hates him. izzy got physically hurt, sure, but he was not ever scared of or threatened by ed, ed did not hold any further power over him other than the fear in any man's mind who knew they fucked around and found out and got fucking shot for it.

when ed severed their connection with that bullet he severed izzy's hold over him to a vast degree, but that still doesn't mean he then held an equal amount of power over izzy in his place. and ed even had the insane heart to actually feel bad about hurting him and forgive him for everything else 😭. izzy literally acknowledges this IN THE SHOW. it's actually concerning the lengths people will go to defend an aspect of a character that is written in the damn script (izzy is a toxic manipulative cunt who wants to control everything ed does who eventually stops doing that because he knows he went too far).

anyway. sorry for that. good morning ^_^

good morning anon you are correct and you should say it

it absolutely baffles me like how the fuck are you going to be so committed to banging a drum for your shitty fave that you end up posting stuff with real world implications about who can and cannot be a victim of abuse

like even without the nonsense the take was full of headcanon and weird analogies anyway (like it's useless to compare being a pirate captain to owning a house. those are fundamentally different things. turns out piracy doesn't neatly map onto 'normal' life today. who knew!)

but the lengths that people will go to to declare that izzy did nothing wrong after the show has looked them in the eyes and said 'the narrative is telling you that izzy was wrong'??

i'm so glad they killed him off bc i cannot cope with another season of shit like this. i patiently await their exit from the fandom tbh

[bananonbinary]

regarding 'dehumanizing' etc, i think the confusion is coming from thinking about tasks/abilities/actions on the part of the person being dehumanized (i.e. your example about watching children.) when people talk about being dehumanized, they're talking about being denied things like autonomy and compassion and dignity. things most of us would call essential human rights. so a slave isn't 'treated like an animal' in the sense that they're necessarily given the same tasks as livestock, but that they can't decide when to eat or sleep or have children. somebody else is making those decisions and then forcing them to comply.

similarly, objectification isn't about literally treating someone like an inanimate object. rather it refers to a relationship between a 'subject' and an 'object', or an active party and a passive party. if you studied subject/object grammar rules in school, that's more along the lines of what people are referring to. it's a complicated topic, but the short version is that objectifying someone is denying their 'subjectivity', or their inner desires, motivations, etc. treating them as if they're fundamentally 'acted upon' vs 'acting'. we see it a lot in discussions of sex in media because historically (white) women were expected to take a passive role in sex, and this is reflected in movies etc when the love interest is a passive 'object' to be acted upon and denied her own desires & autonomy. in slavery, the slave is objectified in the sense that their own desires and motivations are given little to no consideration, and they're treated on the assumption that they have none - or that those desires are somehow 'lesser' than the master's desire for free labor.

as for how this all relates to peta, is somewhat outside of my wheelhouse. that said, i hope this ask clarified a bit.

okay i'll accept the objectifying clarification here, i hadn't considered subject/object. that's a very good point.

but as for the first bit, i KNOW that's what people mean when they say it. i'm saying that i don't like that these are the words used to refer to that concept. which might be the autism (lack of clarity makes my brain feel bad), but i suspect it's not just that, because there are two routes of people (perhaps intentionally) misusing these ideas that inspired these musings:

fiction, especially sci-fi, which tends to portray "like an animal" treatment of non-human races as an allegory for real world racism. this often has the problem of passivity that i brought up in the original post, where the slaveholder seems to genuinely believe their slaves are animals, as if this is all just a big misunderstanding. (specifically i was thinking about how the unas are treated in stargate sg1, but its hardly a problem unique to them).

the aforementioned PETA issue. PETA very frequently compares real world animal abuse (and also...not real world abuse that they made up) to slavery with very disturbing graphics and slogans, and occasionally actual court cases. this is...extremely offensive for i think obvious reasons, but that's sort of the point of the original post, trying to reason out why these comparisons don't actually fit at all.

[freebiblestudyhub]

Why Does the World Hate Jesus and Christians?

The question of why Jesus and Christians face opposition is one deeply rooted in history and theology. Throughout the centuries, followers of Jesus have experienced various forms of hatred and persecution. This article aims to explore the reasons behind this animosity, examining both historical and contemporary perspectives. Understanding these reasons helps shed light on the broader spiritual and social dynamics at play.

Historical Context of Opposition to Jesus

The Life of Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth lived over 2,000 years ago in a time of intense political and religious conflict. His teachings and actions challenged the existing religious authorities and the Roman Empire. Jesus preached love, forgiveness, and a new kingdom of God, which threatened the power structures of both Jewish leaders and Roman rulers.

Religious Authorities’ Reaction

The Jewish religious leaders saw Jesus as a threat to their authority and traditions. His reinterpretation of Jewish laws and his growing influence among the people posed a direct challenge to their control. This led to plots to discredit and ultimately crucify Him.

Roman Opposition

From the Roman perspective, Jesus was seen as a potential revolutionary who could incite rebellion against Roman rule. The Roman authorities were concerned about maintaining order and were quick to eliminate any figure that could disturb the peace.

Theological Reasons for Hatred

The Concept of Sin and Redemption

Jesus’ message included the concept of sin and the need for redemption through Him. This idea is contrary to the belief that individuals can achieve righteousness through their own efforts. Many find this notion challenging because it implies a fundamental inadequacy in human efforts and a need for divine intervention.

Exclusive Claims

Jesus made exclusive claims about being the only way to God. In John 14:6, Jesus states, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Such claims can be divisive, especially in a pluralistic society that values inclusivity and diverse beliefs.

Contemporary Reasons for Opposition

Moral Teachings

Christian moral teachings often clash with modern secular values. Issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and the sanctity of life are areas where Christian views can conflict with prevailing societal norms. These differences can lead to criticism and animosity towards Christians.

Perceived Intolerance

Christians are sometimes perceived as intolerant because of their adherence to certain moral standards. This perception can arise when Christian beliefs are seen as judgmental or restrictive, especially in a society that values freedom and diversity.

Historical Misuse of Christianity

Throughout history, some individuals and groups have misused Christianity to justify actions that are contrary to its teachings, such as colonialism and inquisitions. These historical abuses contribute to negative perceptions of Christianity and its followers.

Social and Cultural Factors

Cultural Shifts

As societies become more secular, religious beliefs, including Christianity, are often marginalized. In increasingly secular cultures, traditional religious values may be viewed as outdated or irrelevant, leading to a decrease in tolerance for religious perspectives.

Media Influence

The media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion. Negative portrayals of Christians and Christian beliefs can influence people’s perceptions and contribute to broader societal disdain. Media sensationalism and selective reporting can exacerbate misunderstandings and biases.

Personal and Spiritual Dynamics

Spiritual Warfare

From a Christian perspective, opposition to Jesus and Christians is not just a matter of social or political conflict but is also seen as spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:12 states, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” This view holds that spiritual forces are at work behind the hostility towards Christians.

Witness and Testimony

Christians are called to be witnesses of their faith, which sometimes involves standing firm in their beliefs despite opposition. The manner in which Christians respond to hostility—whether with grace and love or with defensiveness and anger—can also affect public perception of Christianity.

Conclusion

The reasons behind the hatred of Jesus and Christians are multifaceted, involving historical, theological, social, and personal factors. Understanding these reasons requires a nuanced approach that considers both the spiritual and practical dimensions of the issue. By exploring these aspects, we can better appreciate the challenges faced by Christians and the broader context in which they live out their faith. While opposition and hatred are painful realities, they also provide opportunities for Christians to demonstrate their commitment to their beliefs and to respond with compassion and understanding.

This exploration highlights the complex interplay between faith, culture, and history, and underscores the importance of empathy and dialogue in addressing conflicts and fostering mutual respect.

[onewomancitadel]

I took an online quiz (as you do) and discovered through this quiz about fanfic that apparently fandom parlance has changed over the past couple of years for 'crackship' to mean 'rarepair', and this explains why people call Knightfall a crackship and I don't get it.

A crackship actually specifically refers to an absurd pairing, per Fanlore:

A crack ship is a ship that is highly ridiculous, bizarre, disturbing, and/or unlikely to ever become canon. The characters don't have any chemistry, never interact, are in different canons or timelines, are different species, one is an inanimate object, etc.

Knightfall is not absurd. In the most generous interpretation, you might argue because Cinder is his enemy it's impossible, but you're also ignoring enemies-to-lovers literature. So, maybe the misuse of crackship here is occurring because of a usage shift, or maybe there's just a broadened understanding of romance needed.

A rarepair just means it doesn't have much in the way of a fandom, which may be because they don't interact very much. In this case, I think Knightfall is a rarepair for reasons beyond lack of substantial interaction, and if I had to lay those out:

Traditional enemies-to-lovers dynamic enjoyed or expected is male villain/female heroine or male villain/male hero. Female villain/female heroine is a bit rarer but did recently crop up with Catra/Adora, otherwise female villain/male hero is typically not written very well or of much interest because it's the classic model of male character rewarded with female character, which is hardly romance in the true sense

For that matter, Cinder and Jaune's archetypes are gender inversions and many people don't Get Them. If there is a fanbase for one it is often in opposition to the other, e.g. Cinder is a female baddie and more interesting than a (seemingly) boring goodie, or Jaune should fulfill the power fantasy of killing Cinder because you fundamentally misunderstand his character and Semblance, is that it

Both Jaune and Cinder are polarising characters, excepting cases where Jaune is a self-insert and features in a lot of fanfiction (not a value judgement of self-inserting itself)

Numerous competing ships for Jaune take fandom precedence, including passive ships which are taken for granted as canon because reasons

Enemies-to-lovers is more of a popular trope with female fans but has grown into a polarising (understatement of the year) trope due to the shift in fandom discourse and perception liking apparently bad things = makes you a bad person, most prominently post-The Force Awakens (late 2015 and onwards) and with the case of Reylo. Volume 5, with the big Knightfall moment, came out late 2017. This may altogether stymie interpretation or interest

For that matter, just given the size of something like R/WBY fandom and the ships that would outnumber/outdo Knightfall, you're automatically going to have a smaller ship compared to, say, jugggernaut fandoms.

There are probably more I can think of, but it's kind of a perfect storm of circumstance. I do think that compared to other R/WBY ships which sustain themselves on fumes and countertextual interpretation there is actually a lot of substance to Knightfall, despite its reputation as an apparent crackship (definitionally wrong, but maybe vernacular is shifting) and, obviously, its status as a rarepair. I'm certainly not claiming to be the captain of the Knightfall ship, I'm more like a vagrant that snuck aboard without a ticket, but to my knowledge the fandom was not particularly active. On that note, R/WBY fandom is a bit distinct in that there's a lot of fanfic written for a variety of multishipped pairings, more than any I've seen before.

But obviously Knightfall is the best pairing of all time.

[stellocchia]

okay saw i was allowed to rant, so: my horrible time on twitter. listen. people didn't seem to understand the difference between c!Dream's torture and c!Tommy's exile. c!Dream isn't a good person. I don't condone torture, but at least at the beginning I could see where people could draw satisfaction from, right? But... where was that vengeance in exile? There was none. there was no "revenge" in exile because what happened in exile CAN'T be justified! hell, same can be said about c!tommy's death*

*continuation: because the takes i've seen on why c!Dream taking c!Tommy's final life could all be boiled down to like three things: he took something c!dream cared about (the cat. which i mean if he REALLY cared about he could revive it. it was also tommy's cat.) or just... plain victim blaming. just plain old "he provoked him." or just... "c!Tommy is annoying." and just... ugh. (i have so many more stories if you want to listen to that) - sincerely, a c!tommy apologist on twitter.

.

God honestly I don't envy you for braving Twitter, that place is a hellsite!

Also yes I do get why some people find satisfaction from c!Dream's treatment and I don't blame them for it. Honestly personally at the moment I'm more frustrated by the obvious misuse of torture as a narrative device then anything else about it.

And yeah, the excuses I see for Tommy's exile are always just 100% victim blaming or some people fundamentally misunderstanding what exile was about. Like people saying "Tommy could have been done with the probation" without understanding that: 1) the probation was unfair as well and 2) the fact that it was NEVER about punishment it was always about isolating Tommy to control him.

And death wise I honestly get genuinely uncomfortable whenever someone tries to justify why an abuse victim deserved to be beat to death by their abuser ngl... like any and all arguments are always filled with victim blaming and hypocritical double standards (because c!Tommy apparently deserves to be beat to death when he kills an animal by accident, but every single other member of the server who killed them with the intent to hurt is perfectly fine apparently)

It sucks honestly...

[milkboydotnet]

“The members of For The People – PDX declare our complete and unflinching solidarity with all who have fallen victim to male chauvinism, transmisogyny and abuse within the Party for Socialism and Liberation. We call upon all PSL members who seek liberation for all oppressed people living in the so-called United States to formally leave the organization. No proletarian feminist can remain in an organization with a consistent record of unaccountable abuse.

That being said, PSL never had the potential to be a revolutionary organization. PSL is a fundamentally reactionary organization where principled struggle is not possible. As Mao wrote in On Practice, “to lead the revolution to victory, a political party must depend on the correctness of its own political line and the solidity of its own organization.” Rectification is impossible in PSL not only because of bureaucratic centralism, but ultimately because of the party’s revisionist Marcyite lines, which distorts historical and global contradictions to ultimately serve the aims of imperialism. All these things that PSL lacks, misuses, or misunderstands—proletarian feminism, clandestineness, criticism/self-criticism, even anti-imperialism—are not just useful in communist organizing but necessary strategic imperatives for uniting communist nuclei with the masses on a principled basis for the preparation of people’s war. There is one option for principled communists in PSL: resign and struggle with your comrades to do the same.

We also call revolutionary organizations and organizers to break any tactical unity with PSL, and for PSL to be isolated in all organizing efforts, including coalitions, and given no platforms at demonstrations.”

[bingleycharles]

First off, I don’t spend a lot of time on tumblr any more, and this blog was mainly meant to be a reference blog for wuxia/xianxia genre, which has been my favorite genre for a long time. My main intention was to provide some information that might be helpful (I think MDZS becoming so popular so quickly due to the tv drama came a bit unexpected to us who have loved the novel for a long time) and not really engage much beyond that. But, the more time I spend here, the more I feel that some things need to be said.

There’s been a lot of talk about the MDZS novel dubcon/noncon elements and I definitely had no intention of engaging with that to any extent, but the mentality of this particular group of people (and I use that term generously because it’s mainly the mentality of extremely sheltered children) on tumblr is so unbelievably wild that someone needs to say something, and I guess that’s going to be me. I am going to warn people in advance, that I am going to make no attempts to be nice about this, because after some of the discussions I’ve seen recently, even if niceness was deserved, I certainly am no longer capable of it.

Now that the disclaimer is in place, let’s talk a bit about where this hatred for mxtx and her sex scenes comes from.

1. People who believe that nothing problematic should exist in fiction, because nothing problematic should exist in the world.

Sometimes, this is based on a simple inability to recognize how fiction and real world are not, in fact, the same thing, and this inability can be more commonly found among those too young to understand complex subjects (see great majority of the above children, who have already caused a great deal of damage to vulnerable communities by misusing and misrepresenting terms like pedophilia, incest, etc, etc). More often however, it is based on the inability to understand how real word and fiction are actually related, an inability that is unfortunately found among many people who should be considered adults. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of both, rooted in a belief that real world problems exist because they are normalized in fiction (but not all world problems because no one is trying to get rid of murder mysteries, just the icky problems they don’t actually wanna think about or do anything to solve, but would still like to never see again. All this while simultaneously getting to say “well, I’m against incest in fiction so that’s my contribution to the issue,” so they can then feel good about themselves).

This belief, by the way, that real world problems exist because they are normalized in fiction, has been proven as a false narrative many times, but like “Bible says all gay people are evil” or “climate change isn’t real” doctrines, it refuses to die even when faced with facts. “Fiction does not exist in a vacuum” they keep saying, as if those capable of critical thinking have not addressed this subject so many times, that you could practically walk your way across the Pacific Ocean on their responses alone. The real world problems do not exist because someone once wrote them down in a piece of fiction, and that should be abundantly clear to us all. Instead, problematic subjects exist in fiction precisely because they existed in the real world first, and we, the human beings, find writing things down to be one of the many ways we process information, problematic or otherwise.

There is also an insistence on seeing every piece of fiction as an instruction manual for “bad things,” and honestly, I don’t know what happens in these people’s heads, nor do I want to. Again, according to them, any underage fiction is an instructional manual for a possible pedophile, but tens of thousands of murder mysteries are just entertainment. If you read/write underage fiction, you must be a pedophile, but by the same logic, if you read/write bloody murder mysteries, this logic either doesn’t apply, or murder is just fine. So inevitably we go back to the fact that a lot of these issues are only raised by people who just don’t think anything they personally find “icky” should exist, and that’s rooted mostly in white privilege (and we’ll get to the white minority individuals later) and ethnocentricity (and we’ll get to that in a minute too). Basically, when I hear “people will learn that rape is okay from fiction,” I automatically think you’re either extremely immature or extremely ignorant, or both. Please take a psychology/sociology class or seven, throw in Moral Development 101 in the mix, and get back to me in like ten years, when we can both try and have an adult conversation. In the meantime, arguing against this is like arguing with climate change deniers. More likely to make me dumber than them smarter.  

In short, you will never be able to get rid of problematic fiction, because you will never make the world not problematic, nor will stopping the people who choose to reflect their problematic world in writing fiction accomplish absolutely anything, except them having no way to process their reality, and you being considered an immature child (which most people who think like this already are, so no news there, let’s move on).

2. They believe things are problematic because they believe that their particular experiences are common to everyone else. If they see it as problematic, then everyone else should to see it that way too.

This should be self-explanatory, and a thousand of these discussions have been held in the past, by people more eloquent than myself, about every subject from rape fantasies and bondage (go back a few years to 50 shades), to experiences that are unique to specific minority groups, like trans individuals, refugees, rape survivors, those with disabilities, multi-national and multi-racial individuals, and so on and so forth. Even among the hundreds and hundreds of these vulnerable groups of individuals, there are hundreds of different subgroups, whose experiences are all wildly different, wildly subjective, and all completely valid to them, regardless of how they differ.

None of us have the ability to understand each and every one of those unique experiences. At best, we may be able to somewhat understand a few people who have had similar experiences, but our opinions on a variety of subjects have been shaped by the smallest differences in those experiences, and are likely to never be exactly the same.

What I’m saying is this: the little white girl from Iowa, regardless of her minority status as disabled/lesbian/bi/queer female, will never understand what drives a young/disabled/queer/multiracial/2nd gen. immigrant girl, to write 55k of rape fantasy fiction between two multiracial men, and she doesn’t have to understand it. Neither her disability nor her queerness should give her a single iota of moral high ground over the other individual, or vice versa. Her personal understanding of what is morally right or wrong in fiction does not give her the right (nor should it ever) to pass judgment on anyone else’s experiences, or their method for processing those experiences. There is no sensitive way I can say this, so I’m not even gonna try. You don’t get to be automatically right because you’re gay, disabled, or a minority of any kind. Like, I know this is uncomfortable to hear, but people around here often use their status to invalidate others and to get them not to engage in any type of discussion that would prove their opinions wrong. I’m literally watching children on tumblr going, “I don’t need to know about oppression, I’m gay,” like holy shit. The only oppression you know is your own. That’s it. Please tone down the arrogance and realize you’re not alone in the world, minority or not.

I get that if you were raped, you may never want to see rape in fiction. But in the same vein, there exist people who were raped, and want to see rape in fiction. I get that you’re gay and offended by certain type of fiction, but there are also people who are gay and prefer the same type of fiction you find offensive. This is exactly when words like “pedophile” and “incest” get thrown around a lot, for things that in no way meet the definition. Because there is no factual or valid argument that exists here, and people are browbeating other people by saying “Well, I’m gay and oppressed and I just don’t like it so it has to be wrong.” But when the dissenter is also gay and oppressed, and you have to admit that based on the status you’ve used to validate yourself, you also have to admit that their opinion is as valid as yours, then the only fallback is to point a finger and say that there must be something wrong with them. “Well, your opinion is not valid because you read underage fiction so you’re a pedophile,” and this is literally what keeps happening over and over again.

At the root of all this is a twisted, sick belief, that those who process their issues and their problematic environments in the morally pure and acceptable way are the only valid voices in every community, and that everyone else’s experiences are immediately invalidated by default. It’s a pretty fucking gross rhetoric, and it’s been going on here on tumblr for a very long time now, but it’s only gotten worse, and it’s especially prevalent among the new influx of mdzs “fans.”

3. They believe things are problematic because their culture considers them problematic, and they have no concept of the fact that theirs is not the only culture in the world.

This is particularly nasty proclivity, commonly found in Western consumers of fiction. The Western audiences like to think themselves enlightened, despite the fact that most Eastern cultures have carpets in their government buildings older than the entire Western culture, system of law, morality codes, or their Constitutions. This is mostly true of U.S. in particular because their ethnocentrism keeps self-validating itself through ignorance, poor education, and other evils of capitalism. But it’s also true of other white European consumers of fiction, who have a long history of colonialism to thank for their continuous insistence that their morality is more enlightened than everyone else’s (oh, the irony of that). But not to go too far from the subject at hand, if I had a dollar every time a white girl from United States said “Ew, this rape scene this Chinese author wrote is really gross and I find it to be offensive to my entire existence,” I could pretty much overthrow the entire capitalist system that produced this ethnocentric fucking nonsense in the first place.

In short, there are many individuals in the West, who might be minorities in their general community, but have no concept or understanding of other cultures, other minority communities, or other individuals that have life experiences drastically different from their own, so they judge everything they see from their own perspective, because it is the only perspective they have, and unfortunately, it’s a pretty narrow one. There is an important lesson to be learned here, and it’s the one I’ve already mentioned above:

Being queer, or being any kind of a minority, does not automatically save you from being ignorant, being ethnocentric, being unable to understand other people’s experiences (minority or otherwise), and it most certainly does not mean that your queer culture is the only right queer culture in the world. If you doubt my words, I highly suggest consulting some native-Chinese male queer individuals, who have also read that rape scene by that Chinese author who has upset you so much that you can’t stop crying about it (although it wasn’t written for you, and you were under no obligation to read it), and maybe ask them what they think, since their opinion is the only one even close to being relevant to this particular conversation. I guarantee that their answers will shock and amaze you, and you may even learn a thing or two along the way.

(And if you immediate answer isn’t that their opinions will all be wildly different as well because them all being native-Chinese male queer individuals still doesn’t mean they’re all the same fucking person [because hello? China has 56 ethnic groups alone] and that each and every one of them is a unique individual with a unique perspective based on their particular upbringing, social environment, sexuality, etc, etc, then you’re fucking missing the point, please go back up to the beginning and try again).

In the end, the answer to never having to see anything that upsets you is pretty simple and straight forward. If it’s bothersome, do not engage. If you don’t understand something, if it seems alien to your experience, if your very existence feels utterly repulsed by it, consider the fact that it was probably not written for you in the first place, and simply remove yourself from its presence.

Do not assume that you know why it was written, do not assume it is a personal attack against your existence, do not assume that you understand (or ever could) the culture that gave it birth, the history that formed it, or the shared experiences of those who happen to like it. Do not assume that you are the authority on problematic when it comes to anyone else’s work except your own, because you are a unique individual, your moral beliefs and expectations are your own, and no one else is required to share them. The world does not have a common morality, and if it did, it certainly wouldn’t be a common morality of a white girl on fucking tumblr who isn’t gonna take an intercultural competence class unless she’s in her fourth year of college, and even then, the exact privilege that allowed her to take that class is gonna make it pretty unlikely that she’ll understand it. It’s a tough life I know, but you’ll get over it tolerably well I’m sure.

In the simplest words possible, please try and turn a mirror towards your own propensity to think that your viewpoint is superior to all others, quit making excuses that amount to your particular minority status somehow making you immune to rampant cultural ignorance, because it’s literally been centuries of this bullshit from white colonialists countries for the rest of the world, and everyone is pretty fucking sick of it.

People are simply asking you not to be a dick to other unique individuals on the sole basis of the fact that you are incapable of processing their world, their culture, or their experiences, in the same exact way that they have, and frankly, it’s really not a lot to ask.

[brendanelliswilliams]

Misappropriated Language and Outmoded Ideology in the Church, and How We Might Move Beyond Them

A good friend and fellow priest posted this past Sunday on his Facebook page that he had been frustrated in trying to write a sermon, feeling that so much of the language he would normally use had been coopted and tainted by right-wing Evangelical white nationalists. The following was my reply to him (with a few minor points of clarification added here):

‘Fr. Karl Rahner once said that he thought the Church should fast from using the word “God” for at least fifty years, until we can all get clear about what we’re actually doing and saying with a term like that, and get deeply rooted and serious enough in our theological speculations to warrant its use. (Fr. Richard Rohr suggested we take the same approach with the name “Jesus”, and I concur; in fact, I think we are much more in need of fasting from this latter name than from the former.) It seems to me that there’s a great deal of wisdom in this approach. What you point out here is the principal reason why the “Jesus Movement” language so ubiquitous in the Episcopal Church today feels misplaced to me, and in fact really chafes every time I hear it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Presiding Bishop and the basic elements of his vision, but I find this sort of language to be hitting the wrong chord. To me it feels ill matched with where the Church is at now, and where it should be going—and with where the world is at with regard to the Church. It partakes of precisely the same sorts of dissonances you’re highlighting. In the Western Church today we are always in danger of simply repeating platitudes, or unwittingly furthering falsities by allowing ourselves to remain stuck with misappropriated and imprecise language. Most peoples’ “Christology” in the West (if you can even call it that—maybe we should say “Jesusology” instead) is, in my humble opinion, really lacking the deep roots of the tradition. And that leaves us with a rather small and limited vision. This is one reason (among several) why I almost exclusively use “Christ” in religious discourse, or “Christ-Sophia”. I think we need that sort of lens again, which is both broader and more nuanced, and which, if we’re intelligent about it (rather than merely reactionary or political) can liberate us from all the heinous misunderstanding and misuse that has colored Christianity in the West for so long, and afford us a much more effectual set of linguistic and imagistic tools for legitimate transformation. Rahner also said, “Christians of the future will be mystics or they won’t exist at all.” In my view, that’s where we’re headed now from this particular crossroads, if we have the depth and courage to claim the calling of real religiosity. As I perceive it, that’s the divine invitation. And it can most definitely take us into a truer, more authentic, and more rooted place, away from all the baggage of the language and imagery you’re rightly lamenting.’

I saw a photo today from the Capitol riot on January 6th. In the background of the photo was one of what appears to have been many ‘Jesus Saves’ or similar signs present at that event. No doubt those folks also consider themselves to be part of the (‘true’) ‘Jesus Movement’. To be sure, their coopting of Jesus as a figure who supports their insane fundamentalism, egoic delusions, and desire for power is corrupt and evil, but I wonder how ours really differs, structurally speaking. The (white) progressive Jesus is ‘nicer’, but is our understanding of what such a figure really means and invites us into that much deeper than their reactionary, fundamentalist version of the same? Both expressions are drawn in essence from the same literal-historical trends in hermeneutics; it’s just that they emphasize different elements of received texts and interpretations. Granted, I strongly affirm that the emphases of right-wing Evangelicalism (and Evangelicalism at large, in fact) are objectively destructive and immoral, but fundamentally both interpretations play the same sorts of hermeneutical games: they operate in the same playing field, not only culturally (in a homogeneous container), but also religiously.

In other words, all Christians in the West are at some level responsible for this cancerous appropriation of Christian values. Even in progressive circles, in spite of our best intentions, we partake of the language, the dominator cultural styles and structures that have birthed and perpetuated all this toxicity. Until we face that head-on, how can we go about the real work of healing or ‘wholing’ ourselves into a mode of religiosity that is finally supportive of the values of Life, of Nature, of Divinity, rather than blatantly contrary to them?

One of the many problems we face now as people in the Church who want desperately to lead it in a direction of Life—rather than death, ignominy, political coopting, immorality, and corrosion—is that most Western Christians have a rather surface-level view of Jesus, and of Christ more broadly. So the toolkit we’ve been given to work with to articulate a better vision for ourselves is extremely limited. In the United States particularly, it should now be abundantly clear how tied up with right-wing nationalism, racism, and dominator values this theologically underdeveloped mode of Christian language has become. This means—obviously, I hope—that we need to expand and deepen our toolkit, drawing from the deepest and most life giving roots of the tradition.

The lack of adequate Christological understanding is not the fault of ordinary Christian folk; it’s what has been fed to them by their clergy, and it’s what was taught to most of those clergy in seminary for the last two or three generations. It’s what I call the ‘social Gospel, historical Jesus’ trend, and, in my view, this is a trend that has utterly crippled mainline and progressive Christian denominations, and in many cases created a notion of Christian religiosity as (essentially) little more than social justice work with a veneer of religious language. Of course, the work of justice is crucial, but what happens when we scrub away the Mystery, the experiential, inward transformation that is actually required to give rise to authentic justice, the richness of myth and symbology, leaving only this ‘social Gospel, historical Jesus’ layer of ideation? Well, as I’ve been saying for many years now: I think it is perfectly plain to see what happens in that case, as we now see it playing out all around us: the Church is collapsing, and (ironically) has almost no socio-cultural clout, which is the only thing it seems to have really desired for the last five or six decades.

I pray that people will finally be ready to move beyond all this, into something with real transformative capacity. But, alas, I suspect many, if not most, will not. So many Western Christians, of whatever stripe, seem absolutely determined to cling to all manner of outmoded and unhealthful aspects of Christian religious expression, language, and dogma, simply for the sake of safety, comfort, and security in the ‘known quantity’. And that, we can be sure, will lead us nowhere, both individually and collectively.

Might we not attempt to root our religion in actual religion? In other words, can we not learn once more to base our religious affiliation and practice on a legitimate and appropriately comparative understanding of myth, religious narrative, the ‘perennial philosophy’, and the actual aims of religiosity—namely, the science of spiritual transformation through initiatory, ascetical, liturgical, sacramental, and other modes of productive individual and communal sacred work? Haven’t we had enough of basing our religion on socio-cultural and academic trends in lieu of what actually transforms? Are the disastrous results of that finally clear enough for all to see? Of course, we must evolve with the times—I am by no stretch of the imagination a reactionary, and I am stringently anti-fundamentalist in every possible way—but this current disaster we now inhabit is what happens when, in the rush and distraction of that process of cultural evolution, we lose touch with the real root and purpose of the whole operation in the first place; that is, when we lose our memory and understanding of what religion is actually for and what it’s meant to accomplish in the human person.

I won’t enter here into the many additional issues related to male dominator language and the rest of the attendant cancerous threads that have long plagued Abrahamic religious expression, or their effects on Church and society; if you’re interested in all that, you might find some food for reflection in my book, Seeds from the Wild Verge. But here’s an idea: Let’s focus on the Blessed Mother for a while—very deeply: not just linguistically and imagistically, but theologically and practically as well, in a nuanced and committed fashion, not for purposes of political correctness but out of profound theological curiosity and a spirit of expansive internal exploration. God knows all you Protestant types out there could use a serious (and indefinite) dose of the Mother.

I was reflecting recently on what a truly sad circumstance it is that I often feel I can much more readily find depth and theological nuance in contemporary Hindu discourse on Christ, the Blessed Mother, etc., than I can in contemporary Christian discourse on the same. A terrible irony. It often feels to me as if we need to restore Christianity with inspiration from non-Christian sources—something I’ve done in my work with native Celtic traditions, but which could (and perhaps should) be done with inspiration from other arenas as well; for instance, from Vedanta, which has not only unequivocally maintained a far more refined and mature view of religion and its aims than most Christians have, but in fact often seems to possess a more mature view of Christianity than most Christians presently do.

Writing in 1963, Swami Prabhavananda astutely observed: ‘Of course there are millions of Christians today who attend churches regularly…but of those who do, few seek perfection in God. Most people are satisfied with living a more or less ethical life on earth in hope of being rewarded in an afterlife for any good deeds they may have done. Christ’s ideal of perfection is generally either forgotten or misunderstood. True, many people read the Sermon on the Mount, but few try to live its teachings.’

Now, almost sixty years later, that statement proves to be even more radically true than it was then. We have much work to do, friends, if we wish to restore the Church to something that truly transforms, which is truly relevant in a perennial way, and which is positioned not only to survive but to once more contribute something of inestimable value to the world. This will involve us, should we have the courage take up the task, in reclaiming the profound Mystery in Christian tradition, its ancient spiritual practices, and its expansively symbolic depth. May we set out with open hearts on that next adventure—and may we do so quickly.

Peace and every blessing,

Fr. Brendan+

[solacefruit]

Hello! Been reflecting on the feedback you gave and there’s something that struck my mind. In regards to what you mentioned about over-using epithets, I was wondering about how to strike a better balance; I feel like constantly using just names and he/she/etc would get too repetitive for my liking, but how do I avoid leaning on epithets too much? What even is too much? I know you might not have a real answer, but I thought I should ask anyway just in case. Also, thank you for the feedback!

Hello there! Firstly, you’re very welcome, and secondly, good news: I do actually have an answer for this issue of epithets. Epithets themselves aren’t actually good or bad, but–like anything–over-use or misuse of them can spoil writing. What makes the difference is almost always context. 

The mistake that fandom writers often make is that they slap just any old epithet any-old-where, thinking it’s better than repeating a name too many times, which is how you get “the taller man,” “the blonde boy.” These writers fundamentally misunderstand what an epithet can (and should) do, which is describe character. That’s not the same as telling you their height or appearance. I literally mean you should strive to reveal meaningful characterisation with your choices. Otherwise, you’re better served just using a pronoun or name. 

So, things to consider when figuring out whether to use epithets or not:

Point-of-view: I bring this up first because it’ll impact everything else. If you are writing in third-person limited, epithets can be great friends to you, because whenever you use them, you are telling your reader what your focal character thinks of the person they are describing. It does not need to be accurate or true! In fact, in third-person limited, everything you write is told through the perspective of the character who is seeing and thinking about the world, so everything is biased on account of being seen through their lens. Because of that, using an epithet can be a great way to reveal your focal character’s perspective and personality by how they think of other people.

For example, “Oakheart prowled over” versus “the handsome warrior prowled over.” This second example tells you what a third-person limited narrator thinks of the character, and the first one doesn’t. As you can imagine, this is a lot of power! Use it wisely. (More on this later).

By comparison, third-person omniscient narration is told by an unseen, usually unknown and unnamed disembodied voice who is describing the protagonist and the rest of the world equally. The narrator can know and see things the protagonist cannot, including the protagonist! That means you can use epithets for anyone, protagonist included–but it’s a good idea to figure out how honest your narrator is first. Do they see the world the way it is, and report it “truthfully”? 

If so, you need to be careful about subjectivity: “the handsome warrior” is going to make the reader think of what they think of as handsome, and if that doesn’t line up with what your narrator later describes physically, your narrator–or worse, you, which some readers conflate with narrator–is going to seem biased or opinionated and that’s going to have ramifications. I can advise sticking to objective facts when using epithets in this narration style, and keep in mind that the epithets you choose to apply to any character is going to reflect your narrator’s implicit thoughts and opinions. This can be used to fantastic effect when your narrator does have a strong voice and set of opinions (essentially, when they are a character in their own right), such as in A Series of Unfortunate Events or Pride and Prejudice. But if you’re trying to keep your narrator invisible to the reader, proceed with caution when using epithets. 

Unfamiliarity: epithets are most commonly used before people get to know each other, before learning names. That’s when it’s appropriate to describe someone by their looks, because often that’s all there is to go on: “the dark-haired man,” “the sharp-eyed woman,” “the boy in the blue cloak.” However, once a name is known, these kinds of epithets tend to lose their usefulness, because (see above: third-person limited) why would your focal character keep thinking of them like this once they know their name? Do you think of your friends by their name, or their hair colour? Would you think “the tall person” when thinking of a partner, instead of their name? Probably not! Your characters are the same.

Social distance, respect, and/or role: epithets include titles, such as Her Majesty or the emperor, and often it is not appropriate to call the king just “George,” even in private narration. Because of that, characters who are royal, divine, or otherwise upper class in some significant way often are referred to primarily by epithets. 

This can also be true of characters performing a business role, such as a postal worker or shopkeeper, or a parental one, like mum or dad. “The mailman dropped off the package, wished her a good day, and continued down the road” is a perfectly reasonable use of an epithet. You can even do something like: “George!” she said, waving down the mailman. And what that tells you is that the mailman is named George, and clearly the focal character knows him pretty well. That’s a lot of information in one sentence! 

Defamiliarisation: similar to above, you can use epithets specifically to obfuscate a name or to imply that a person (or creature) does not have one. In that context, a repeated epithet (or collection of epithets) essentially becomes a name in the mind of the reader and serves the same function. Perhaps the most famous (or infamous?) example of this is Frankenstein’s monster. It is often referred to as the creature, wretch, demon, fiend, being, and so on, because it was never given a name and the absence of a name is significant. These epithets tell you a lot about the characters of both the creature and the creator. 

Revealing character detail: this is the one that a lot of people slip on, as I mentioned before, because it’s not always immediately clear when an epithet adds or detracts to an interaction. My rule of thumb is to ask yourself when unsure, “in this moment, what does this reveal?” or “in this moment, what does this highlight?” If a satisfactory answer springs to mind, it’s probably fine. So, for example:

“I told you not to take the patrol past the forest,” said Nightstar. “You disobeyed me.” Mousetail looked away in shame. 

There’s nothing wrong with this passage! However, you can also do this:

“I told you not to take the patrol past the forest,” said Nightstar. “You disobeyed me.” The deputy looked away in shame.

What does this highlight? By using this epithet, the reader is reminded of the relationship between these two characters, which in this moment is heavily laden with emotion and tension. You would not achieve that same result with only names. You would also not receive the same result with:

“I told you not to take the patrol past the forest,” said Nightstar. “You disobeyed me.” The brown cat looked away in shame.

You don’t get anything from the use of this epithet, because being a brown cat is totally irrelevant to this exchange. It doesn’t change anything about the dynamic, or the emotional tone, or the dialogue. It’s empty words, thrown in just to avoid saying a name. That is not a choice that serves your story well and when people say using epithets is bad, this is almost invariably the kind of thing they’re referring to. 

For the thrill of it: sometimes epithets are fun! Sometimes it’s fun to throw in an unusual description detail, or a particularly choice combination of words in a more poetic style. Sometimes it just sounds good. However, it can be risky–for all the above reasons. Weigh them all up carefully before you throw in your “the moonlight-eyed cat” or “the boy with sun-soaked hair” type thing, but don’t not put these sorts of things in if you feel your story needs it!

I hope this helps! When it doubt, interrogate your choice and see if it is actually adding to what you’re trying to achieve. If it’s not, cut it and replace it with a name or pronoun. There’s no formula to what’s too much or not enough, so you’ve got to judge it on a case-by-case basis. Good luck with your writing!

[cotyledonal]

I think for some ppl bi lesbian means split romantic/sexual attraction? But bi is not always binary, so its not always involving men. I know someone who uses the label to account for their attraction to nb people who may be masculine but are not men. Idk, as a lesbian i can see why other lesbians dont approve of it but i also want to support any wlw identities. Sorry if im not explaining myself clearly here im not very good at that

yup, I know they’re using the split attraction model, and all of the bi lesbians I’ve read posts by ARE attracted to men. they’re homoromantic/bisexual (attracted to men sexually) or biromantic/homosexual (attracted to men romantically), which is not very lesbian of them. if they’re not attracted to men, but only women and nbs, then:

you can be a lesbian and attracted to non-binary people. I used “woman-aligned” to say that, but honestly gender is Weird and you don’t have to only be attracted to people who identify as “demigirl” to be a lesbian sjhjsdhf. if the non-binary people they’re attracted to reject “woman-aligned” and see it as misgendering, then they’re not only attracted to women/women-aligned people, and are not lesbians

I’m Very wary of anyone that tries to say that nbs aren’t included in lesbian identity/attraction. lots of lesbians identify as non-binary themselves, aka a lot of he/him or they/them lesbians. “my gender is lesbian” pops up a lot, bc for a lot of lesbians, the only connection they feel to their gender is their lesbian identity. I kinda get the vibe from people who say this that they’re either trying to exclude nbs, or have a fundamental misunderstanding of the lesbian community

and yeah,,, I want to support wlw identites too, which is where I’m so conflicted. I’ve seen terfs and exclusionists chase people out of our community and tell them that we all see them as disgusting, and accidentally falling into that myself kinda haunts me now

I guess the difference is that I don’t think that “bi lesbians” aren’t wlw, I just think they’re misusing labels. I’m also not trying to claim “stolen valor” (they’re obv not malicious). I’d never cut them off from support or chase them out, and anyone who does so isn’t welcome here

[misscrawfords]

7 and 8!

7. Are most of your ships “pure” or “problematic”?

Congratulations, you got me on a pet peeve! What is up with things being “pure” or “problematic”? Is it this stupid American puritanical culture thing that is taking over everywhere? I refuse to categorise my interests like this.

Calling a ship “pure” is nonsensical. Does it mean literally virginal with not a whiff of that naughty sexual chemistry? Because sex is bad, guys! Is that it? 

Or does it mean that the characters have no flaws and never hurt each other or do anything wrong ever in themselves or their relationships? Because that’s… not very realistic. Has the person advocating this ever, you know, had a relationship of any kind with anyone ever? Also, why would anyone be interested in something so excruciatingly dull as flawless people being virtuous and happy and successful all the time?

Do people ship things for Christian moral validation or something? Because that is weird.

Or perhaps a “pure” ship is simply one that is not “problematic”. Because people who ship “problematic” ships are evil and support abuse in fiction AND real life and so a person who ships a “pure” ship can feel morally superior to someone who ships something “problematic” and we do all love feeling morally virtuous and superior, don’t we?

But what is a “problematic” ship? Does it mean a ship involving incest or paedophilia or rape or something equally unpalatable to many people? Well, perhaps. Certainly incest is quite popular at the moment thanks to GoT but hey, in various cultures incest has always been a thing. And what counts as incest anyway? Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park are first cousins which squicks out some people and not others. I guess Oedipus/Jocasta is a genuinely problematic ship… And there are certainly some ships that involve actual rape. YMMV when it comes to varying levels of sexual coercion and what is something that can be rectified within the text and what is a line that cannot be crossed. But surely that’s a matter for individual taste and there isn’t an actual rule about it. Astonishingly, the real police don’t care whether you ship Spuffy or not. And surely it also depends on your definition of shipping. Is a ship something you aspire to in your own personal relationships? Or is it a dynamic you find interesting and compelling for some reason? People have lots and lots of reasons for why they ship something.

Shipping doesn’t mean condoning the relationship or the characters involved in it.

But the majority of ships that are so-called “problematic” that I’ve seen aren’t even a rape fantasy of paedophilic incest. They’re just ships between people who aren’t always very nice… people who do bad things… or treat other people badly sometimes… And what constitutes “bad” or “not nice” varies greatly depending on the fandom. In epic fantasy, murdering 50 people might just be all in a day’s work, but in a high school AU is a bit more difficult to justify. Equally, in a high school AU cheating in an exam and punching the quarterback might be absolutely scandalous bad boy behaviour but would make the epic fantasy mercenary confused that this is supposed to be the pinnacle of evil.

Two things stand out.

Firstly, that fiction is interesting when people make mistakes. Most human beings do at some point. Fiction allows us an opportunity to explore the darker aspects of human nature in a safe and often non-judgemental way. I don’t know why people would be surprised by this or condemn it. This is literally what fiction is about. Go read some Greek epic or tragedy. So it’s hardly surprising that many people are drawn to ships that contain elements that are dark or difficult or not admirable either in the characters themselves or in the representation of their relationship. I mean, go read The Aeneid. Or Wuthering Heights. Dido and Aeneas - so respectful, such great communication, such excellent role-models! Heathcliffe and Cathy - so healthy, so virtuous! This is… not exactly a new phenomenon, ya know? 

Secondly, people are jumping on literally anything! I got anon hate for shipping Richard/Mary because Richard kissing her at Haxby was “sexual assault”. I’m just… Stop trivialising real world assault by slapping it unthinkingly onto fiction! Was Mary happy that her actual fiance in 1918 kissed her when she didn’t love him and their power dynamic was screwed up? Yes, almost certainly. But there’s something really bothersome about misusing these terms in this way. It divorces circumstances from context and context is really bloody important! Different countries, different cultures, different periods of history, different fictional universes have different cultural norms and not all of them can be described helpfully using the vocabulary and value systems of the 21st century “liberal” USA. It becomes like the boy who cried wolf. If everything becomes “abuse” or “assault” then I worry that the nuances that do exist in real relationships will get lost. 

That doesn’t mean, incidentally, that these things should be brushed over in the name of shipping. I certainly don’t intend to trivialise real world problems in real life. Or to suggest that people’s individual reasons for particular ships not appealing to them on a personal level aren’t valid. Everyone has their squicks and their NOTPs.

But I don’t think, most of the time, that shippers do trivialise the bad things that characters do in their ships. The most intelligent discussions of relationships and characters that I’ve come across have been from shippers of “problematic” pairings who don’t shy away from the challenging aspects of those relationships. The best fanfictions are the ones that engage with them on a far, far deeper level usually than the original source, teasing open every flaw and red light and giving characters depth and development that they are often denied in canon. 

You can do a lot in a 200,000 word fanfiction written by an intelligent, self-aware young woman that you’re not going to get for a secondary character in a TV show written by a middle-aged man.

Finally, it seems that this dichotomy between “pure” and “problematic” ships has arisen very recently and it’s all being pushed by the “pure” shippers, who have a real problem with what other people ship. Whereas the people who ship these “problematic” ships really don’t care what other people ship and often love those characters and relationships too.

When I was a teenager I was mainly a Harry/Hermione shipper but I also read plenty of Dramione fic and even Snape/Hermione fic (mainly because a friend recommended me some awesome fic for that ship) and nobody judged at all. Shipping wars have always been a thing but there was never any kind of moral judgement, at least not that I can recall. Canon or non-canon, healthy or deeply messed up… it was all just shipping, you know? And nobody was trying to claim that the fact I spent a weekend reading a NC-17 rated Snape/Hermione teacher/student dubcon fic at the age of 15 made me a terrible person who supported abusive relationships… It doesn’t, of course. (Though, looking back, I do wonder a little at my RL friend who told me I should read that fic. I mean…) Just as the fact that I think Medea is awesome doesn’t mean I think killing one’s children is a great idea.

But these days, it seems to me that a lot of people who advocate for “pure” ships are the biggest bullies in fandom and the least capable of a nuanced reading of fiction and the most judgemental both of fictional characters and of the people who think differently to them.

And again I’m forced to return to comparisons with a certain kind of puritanical, dogmatical Christianity which preaches peace and love while being deeply bigoted and narrow-minded. So much for being “liberal” and “caring”.

So, to conclude, I guess most of my ships are problematic. In that I like exploring relationships that have a bit of bite to them. Not that I get off on incredibly squicky things. And I like seeing what happens when the least likely people discover common ground and come together in whatever way. It’s fun! So then I can put them in a coffee shop AU where nothing bad ever happens. :P

But I would rather just destroy this entire concept of “pure” and “problematic” ships. I think it is deeply, deeply toxic and expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of what fiction is about.

8. Who is the most shippable person you can think of?

Mary Crawley lbr. I ship her with:

Matthew

Richard

Charles

Mabel

Tom

[scripttorture]

I want to write characters suffering, and being hurt in ways that aren't just accidents, but I don't want to write torture apologia. If a character gets stuck in an automated alien "hospital" or "spa", where everything was designed to be beneficial and/or pleasant (but to non-human physicality), would that avoid those unfortunate implications? I love doing fantasy/sci-fi worldbuilding, so that bit would be an added benefit for me.

Idon’t see a problem with that concept.

Aquick look at the biodiversity on earth shows just how much thecomfortable norm varies between species. I mean we have humboldtsquid and naked mole rats and bearded vultures. The temperature,humidity and pressure differences in their preferred environments arepretty extreme and we’re not even getting into the reallyweird life like those snails living in high salinity conditions orthe invertebrates that can survive being frozen solid.

It’sperfectly possible for an environment built and designed for one formof life to be extremely uncomfortable for another. And this wouldresult in injuries and discomfort that isn’t necessarilyintentionally inflicted.

Evenenvironments where we cancomfortably survive can be extremely painful or distressing if theindividual involved isn’t used to them.

Sofor instance- the city I grew up in had temperatures that were around30-45C (86-113F) most of the year, with humidity ranging from 30-75%.We’d also periodically get really strong winds and a lot of dust. Ispent quite a bit of time outside every day and was perfectlycomfortable.

Nowthe first time I had to play sports outside in an English winter is….Not something I’ve ever forgiven that teacher for.

Butmy class mates were perfectly comfortable that day and probably wouldhave been in a lot of pain in the conditions I considered ‘normal’.

Gettingback to the main question- I think this avoids the stereotype of hightech torture because it’s not intended as torture. Or at least thedevices and environment weren’t made to torture.

Inmuch the same way if you wanted to set an abusive scene in anaquarium and a character was thrown into a low temperature tank Iwouldn’t interpret it as a fictional use of high tech torture.Because while the tank is high tech the torturers had nothing to dowith the design, building or installation of this thing. They’recoming along later and misusing it with minimal effort.

Ithink that’s the main thing to consider when you’re trying towork out whether a scenario crosses that line: how much effort is it?Remembering that if something was made specifically to torture thenthe effort involved in the device’s creation is part of thatoverall effort.

Tortureis fundamentally lazy.

Ifyour sci fi scenario already has a way to dial up the gravity onevery space ship then it may not be much effort on the torturer’spart to fiddle with a dial and subject a victim to higher G forces.It’s building such a device specifically for torture that’s aproblematic trope.

There’snothing wrong with world building or making your setting unique anddistinct. I certainly don’t want to discourage fantasy and sci fiworld building.

ButI do want people to think about what they’re implying when theybuild their world.

We’vebecome more accustomed to doing this around issues of race, genderand sexuality. I think we should do it around violence and abuse aswell.

Becausewhat we write is rarely neutral.

Evenif we’re writing something that’s nominally set in this world assoon as we pick up the proverbial pen we start defining things. Wedefine good and bad, beautiful and ugly. We define what a supportivefamily looks like and what a healthy romantic relationship is.

Andin the case of torture what we often get is…. people who have noclear idea what torture is or what it does attempting to define it.

Iknow that most of the time this isn’t maliciously intended. It’shard to find accurate information on this subject and we’re notused to talking honestly about violence.

Partof what I’m trying to say here is that just because your story issci fi (or fantasy) you don’t have to avoidusing torture. If you’re building a world that’s completelydifferent from ours then using more unusual tortures or even tryingto make up some unique ones makes sense. Things that might not bephysically possible here might be possible in your world. I don’tsee anything wrong with exploring that.

Thetrick is to try and go into this particular bit of world buildingwith a basic understanding of what torture is like. In much the sameway that you might look up a little bit about how geography effectsclimate before you draw or fantasy map. Or how space travel works nowbefore designing your own space craft.

Offthe top of my head the main things that crop up for sci fi are thatin reality:

Torture for information does not work

Even if complex wounds can be healed the damage torture causes is long lasting

Victims are not made placid or obedient when tortured

Torture is neither complicated nor scientific.

The vast majority of the time it isn’t high tech

Torture actually takes quite a bit of time

Non-scarring tortures still cause long term damage to victims and are still torture

Torturers are lazy, the more complicated a form of abuse is the less likely it is to happen

There’salso a whole host of tropes relating to unethical experimentation orsome sort of pseudo-scientific torture. Which often seem tomisunderstand how medical testing works as well as misunderstandingtorture.

Reallythe key thing here is to get into the habit of thinking through theimplications of what you write.

Ifyou make a sci fi world with a high tech device that ‘forces’people to tell the truth by inflicting pain- then yesthat’s torture apologia because it’s suggesting that pain can‘make’ people tell the truth. Which is a real world justificationfor torture.

Ifyour fantasy world has an obedience spell that inflicts pain and alsomagically forces someone to change sides and work for the casterwillingly- that’s probably alsotorture apologia because again, it’s suggesting pain ‘makes’victims change their minds. Which is another real world justificationfor torture.

Ittakes time to get into the habit of thinking these things through andspotting the stereotypes.

It’snormal to make mistakes along the way. And it’s OK. (Believe me youdo notwant to see some of my early attempts at tackling dark themes.)

Thinkabout your story. Read about the real world issues. Practice. Ipromise you you will get better and you’ll feel more confidentabout handling these issues as you go forward.

Ihope that helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[umangsehgal93]

Building products that track Women?

           Suppose you wake up one morning to find yourself barricaded in a hotel room in the Bangkok airport to avoid being returned to your family. That is when you had slipped away from your family during a holiday in Kuwait and boarded a plane for Thailand, but were stopped in the airport because your “male guardian” received a text message on his phone about your escape notified by the app Absher. Such was the case of Rahaf Alqunun who amongst many other women had the app impede her attempt to flee from an abusive home environment.

             What alarms human rights activists, is how male guardians can use the app to specify when and where women may travel, for how long and which airports they're allowed to go to. Alerts get triggered if a woman leaves a certain area and Absher notifies male guardians while fleeing women is arrested. It is this access to private data and location which can have women face death at the hands of their family.

             Within this controversy against the tech giants hosting this app on their respective app-stores, there’s also a famous opposition form the critics. A lot of women who want to run away have been able to use it to run away by sneaking the phone away from their guardians, and accessing the grant permissions in the app. While this is a temporary solution, one can’t ignore the Saudi monarchy’s restriction and repression on women and diverge from the kind of data being produced, what can be done with that data and where can this data be used to harm lives of abused (or innocent) women.

           While we argue that one’s privacy is a matter of context and that privacy is lost when information flows in ways that violate understood or context-based norms. The app defines privacy on a continuum, defining how it helps Saudi women understand and navigate their social lives. This difference in context-based privacy is vastly different across different countries that smudges the boundary between guardianship and gender apartheid. Despite the app not violating any rules of the respective app-stores, what becomes difficult is these definitions of government enabled apps in promoting abuse through access to data and mobility enforcement through it.

             So, what? We know that the culture there promotes Saudi men to take control of their women even without the existence of the app. Campaigns defending Saudis have detailed that the app is inextricably bound up with other features of the app like checking mail, registering vehicles, and applying for visas. It is important to realize that these power structures that are pre-built and the data being shared by the app takes it for granted that controlling women mobility is for intrinsic good.

  As the technologies integrate and interrelate, search data and social network analysis could make it even further impossible for women to be able to escape such brutality. The current perspectives from which the app is allowed to be hosted assumes that most of those people can only control mobility when a passport is scanned at the borders, which is an oversimplification of how this technology adoption can open avenue to a multitude of ways to track women both directly and indirectly.

 Rahaf Alqunun represented a very common approach to the gaming the app and planning an escape. Her escape and the adoption of this app by the two tech giants open so many avenues to challenge the state of personal privacy and challenge the surveillance model created by the government. So far, the world has debated privacy cases where people do stuff that generates data and it usually means that those who come to possess that data should be able to do whatever they want with it, but with Absher, the data is neither being generated at will and nor is it being shared at will.

 It isn’t just about regulating the information available to the “male guardians” but it’s also about how this data is made actionable at places like Airports. It’s also about how the government and authorities react or respond to certain kind of information and which brings us to the fact that privacy isn’t solely a matter of individual responsibility or preference. Rightly said, privacy is a set of conditions enacted in practice, propped up by any combination of history, laws, social norms, physical or digital structures, context, individual behavior, and happenstance. Limiting data privacy to just one of these forces (like the airport border scan) risks misunderstanding it entirely.

 When we evaluate this with reference to human rights and a desire to minimize intervention into people’s lives, another question that naturally crops up is how do we move away from just such individual-based concerns and foreground social and structural impacts that are at the root of gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia. The question extends, how do we achieve a state where we think and create more careful conditions to tackle ethical problems being empowered through these data-intensive applications?

 Finally, what is it that we as everyday programmers can learn and pay attention to from this? How do we ensure that there are algorithms in place to check for ethicality of an action before it is reported and becomes a popular media issue. In many ways, this trap is unavoidable. We as programmers are particularly skilled at one thing: optimization. But optimization alone can't tell us anything about the morality of what we are optimizing for. As the data about these women grows, the more difficult would it be to rule out cases that identify misuse of data and powers attached to it.

 Though extreme, this example proves a key point: locational tracking data alone doesn't contain the potential needed to assess the fairness or justness of a given system. In order for the tech companies to understand the misuse of this data would be by not limiting their thinking about fairness and justice to internal logic of a given system, without reference to broader social or political realities.

 According to Kranzberg’s fourth law, “Technologically ‘sweet’ solutions do not always triumph over political and social forces.” While empowering citizens with quick access to services, the app will be upholding the society’s weakness of keeping women in check.  Finally, software that is so inherently directed at the suppression of fundamental rights, such as the right to travel, must have the organizations treat it as a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While tech is neither good nor bad, its non-neutrality indicates that the problems with data originate from political dogmas.