I read a meta post that made me cry tonight

[amalthia]

...and then cried some more when I read some of the comments. (okay actually no mostly I just cringed that some people can be so blind but anyway...moving on)

I read heatherly's post about writing responsibly and it didn't sit right with me but I couldn't pinpoint why exactly and then I read xanphibian's post in response and she said everything I wish I knew how to say.

realism, fantasy, and why we write what we write



For the record, I'm a survivor of incest child sexual abuse, rape, and yeah I'm still dealing with it. and one of the ways I deal is through fiction, reading and writing, and trying to get my experiences/emotions out on paper to try and understand what I'm feeling. Though, the funny part is some of my favorite non-con/rape fics were written by authors that never went through the experience themselves but they capture the emotions in a way that worked for me. (maybe having some distance helps, or the writers I'm thinking of are just that good at writing) I don't want these stories to go away.

So for me, I get very defensive when people start saying I'm being irresponsible for writing stories that help me deal and yeah sometimes turn me on. I use cut tags and warnings and I assume most people on the net know how to use a back button. Not sure what else people expect writers to do to protect the potential reader's eyeballs from "offensive" content.

Trust me when people write deathfic in their warnings, I don't go crying to my friends and the author complaining that the author was irresponsible for writing something that scarred me for life. I just don't click on the story link and mosey on down to another fic that hits my happy buttons. (deathfic is just an example)

I think instead of writers writing responsibly, readers need to read responsibly, and parent's need to parent responsibly. Seriously, if I didn't want my kids on the computer reading porn while I'm at work, I'd take the mouse and keyboard with me to work so they couldn't play on the computer until I was home to supervise. But that's just how I'd do it. I don't actually have kids but I hate that people want everyone else to supervise their children for them and bend over backwards to make adult places kid friendly.

Comments

[tzi.livejournal.com]

For the record, I'm a survivor of incest child sexual abuse, rape, and yeah I'm still dealing with it. and one of the ways I deal is through fiction, reading and writing, and trying to get my experiences/emotions out on paper to try and understand what I'm feeling.

See, EXACTLY. Exactly, for God's sake. I'm a rape survivor and I think anyone who has the sheer BALLS it takes to talk to me about the poor innocent VICTIMS and how they would be SO TRAUMATIZED deserves a kick in the teeth. And a few other sensitive places. *growls*

Amen, sister. To all of that.

[amalthia]

lol, loved your reaction, probably because I feel the same way.

[divyambaradhara.livejournal.com]

I understand that survivors feel the desire to do reimagine the trauma in a less negative, sometimes erotic, way. I feel that desire myself. But following that desire has never done me any good, even sometimes when I thought it had, it had only sealed me behind more scar tissue and made me more likely to be victimized yet again. Now to speak more generally (and perhaps more rudely): in my opinion it never works and always hurts, not just for me but for everyone, it is a bad strategy, it might make you feel better but it will cost you your heart.

[amalthia]

I think with everyone having different experiences, what hurts one person doesn't have the same affect on someone else, and each person is responsible for figuring this out. I know for me it helped but I also realize for other people it's the worst possible thing for them to do to write about their experience through fiction. It's one of the reasons, I do use warnings and I don't tell anyone that my way is the right and only way to recover because it's not.

[wyrdfae.livejournal.com]

I have similar thoughts on this but a very different point of view. I feel like rambling about it and unfortunately, you are my captive audience. I apologize in advance for my bad writing and any possible wankery

A little about me.
I have had horrible experiences with men, but none are really clearly defined as "abuse" - more just me acting out my own insecurities and sexual confusion in really unhealthy ways.
Also, I am very much the kind of person who often understands but does not comprehend.
Also, I read dark/angsty stuff, but not as dark as they can get.

Everyone has heard about Luke and Laura. I was convinced that stories like this were invented by a man to convince women that its ok for men to have sex with women through manipulation or force and that we SHOULD (I hate "should's" and so should you :-) ) just shut up and like it. A friend and I were talking about romance novels and how I found it creepy that the guys always made presumptuous moves, like waking a woman up with sex, for instance. She had read some of her mom's that were very Luke and Laura (women who fall in love with their rapists). She said that it plays the sort of role of alien/robot/demon girls in anime who don't know what sex IS so its not their "fault" if they accidentally have sex and enjoy it. Kaylee from Firefly was sited as a version of the above mentioned "innocent anime girl" only in a more reclaimed way. It sounds like a plausible partial reason to me but not really being a survivor, I probably don't get a vote. It probably is more for the women who were always taught that sex was bad and wrong and women shouldn't enjoy it (yeah, that's me we are talking about here) more than abuse survivors. I know I found it somewhat healing of my issues to identify with Kaylee.
I had thought of the points made by the meta's author before. It seems pretty clear that there is more to this than most people's knee jerk reaction when you realize that most of the readers AND writers are female.

[perryvic.livejournal.com]

Kat and I use those themes on a reasonably regular basis and my one stipulation when we write is that it is not trivialised or written without consequences. I do genuinely believe that doing it THAT way helps rather than hinders. For example, one of our Smallville AU's, Superglue, dealt with child abuse and the longterm effects of it and it was interesting because we didn't get a huge amount of public feedback - but we did get private feedback all pretty much convinced it had happened to us as it struck a chord. I had several people write and say, 'but that's me, that's what I do, are those things I do really to do with what happened to me?"
And more poignantly, "Can there really be a happy ending for me too?"
At least one person was eventually convinced to seek professional help for the problem rather than continue on as they were. I'm hoping she went through with it, but even so my actual point is, they read the fic and there was meaning there, the possibility for a catalyst. In a FIC.

I often think people try to shut down this sort of thing because it means they won't have to admit the world is not always nice, and that bad things can happen to good people through no fault of their own.

[amalthia]

thanks for sharing this. I don't know what else to say except I agree with you.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I was very angry as I read heatherly's post. The first time, I skimmed and back-buttoned out of it, disgusted. Later I came back to read it.

I felt insulted as she detailed the obvious (rape is bad, good to know), treating everyone who writes rape/incest/etc. as if they must be ignorant.

Then she juxtaposed (my) stories alongside actual rape/incest/child abuse. When she decorated this with disclaimers that "oh, but I believe in free speech," I snorted, "Yeah, right, that's why you're trying to manipulate people into reacting against these stories." I noticed she reinterated her opinion over and over again, and I thought, "And there's your real point. You hate these stories." How many times did she say it? Five? Eight?

What really pissed me off was when she got to "outsiders will react badly." Taken by itself, it's an obvious point. But in the context of the recent journal deletions, I was horrified that she'd stoop to fear-mongering. This was nothing less than a calculated, manipulative push to use the recent paranoia to get rid of stories she didn't like.

Then came the cherry on top. First she wanted those detailed, "I'm a bad person to write this, forgive me for I have sinned" disclaimers (instead of warnings). It was stupid and never gonna happen, but she could ask. My jaw dropped when I read we should "write responsibly."

Of all the bullshit... yeah, sure. If it's self censorship brought on by fear, then it's still freedom of speech.

Like. Hell.

I hate manipulation and euphemisms with the kind of hatred and disgust most people reserve for -- things that deserve lots of hatred and disgust. I was outraged. I didn't reply because there was no possible way I could be civil, given I wanted to leave a smoking crater in the internet where that post once stood.

I was so tempted to write explicit chan non-con on the spot.

Health professionals are not pillars of mental health.

Often they go into the field because they themselves have been abused. They deal with so many messed up people that they begin to develop a sense of superiority. Because there's such a stark contrast between themselves and their clients they lose sight of how normal and like themselves most people are. I had a boyfriend who was a social worker, and he was an alcoholic, clinically depressed, who'd been sexually assaulted as a kid and it messed him up enough that he didn't have sex until he was thirty. He was also a great, dedicated, caring social worker. One day he offered to help me with my "problem" of "chattiness."

"I beg your pardon?" I said over lunch.

Yes, he was going to help me. Because it really bothered him and it probably stemmed from... at this point I tuned him out.

I told him, "I don't care if I'm chatty. In fact, I enjoy talking."

Yes, well, his mother was chatty and it drove him nuts and it stemmed from her deep-seated... I tuned him out again.

I said, "I think I'd probably get along great with your mom. She sounds great." He looked horrified. "And if you don't like either of us talking, that's your issue. Not mine. I have problems but that isn't one of them." I went back to eating my lunch.

This was the same guy who, after we broke up, emailed me nine weeks later. Apparently he was in therapy and I had said some pretty harsh things when we broke up and it would help his therapy if I apologized for... yeah, this is where I went back to rolling my eyes.

Now I had another friend who was a social worker for thirty-five years, and she was great. A little cynical sometimes. But she seemed to have the ability to not take it home.

Anyhow, it's late and I'm tired, but heatherly was a classic example of someone gifted with words making her problem our problem.

[amalthia]

Loved what you said here. :) and I was going to say more but we'd already talked about this in IM.