The Discourse - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
Conservative groups - including people who label themselves as liberal or progressive or whatever else they think they are, even as they whole heartedly participate in efforts to censor and control the kind of things that other consenting adults can read/view/participate in/etc - will always try to find ways to make their demands seem reasonable every step of the way. Terminology matters, because accurate communication of the ideas that are actually being conveyed matters. In this case, the important pieces are:
CSAM explicitly involves harm to a child. By definition, it cannot be created without harming a child. By the time someone reaches the point of sharing it, they have already caused harm to a child. That's why it is already not allowed on ao3.
Ao3 hosts fictional content, which by definition is not causing harm in its creation - because it is fiction. Whether or not you personally agree with actions depicted in a fictional story does not make the story less fictional. Whether or not reading that story would make you personally uncomfortable does not make the story itself less fictional. The content does not cause harm just in the process of its creation. Comparing fictional depictions of underage characters engaging in sexual activity to actual CSAM is like comparing fictional depictions of violence or death to someone uploading a video of themselves stabbing another person to ao3. These are wildly different things.
Ao3 is also not making money off the content it hosts, and nor are its authors. It is an archive that survives primarily on donations, volunteer work, and the free work put in by a wildly diverse range of authors whose only barriers to uploading their work is access to an internet connection and an email to sign up to ao3 with. Therefore, arguments against any particular fictional content hosted on ao3 are claims that something which is harmless in its creation causes harm when it is accessible to other people - not forced on other people, just accessible. To do that, they have to focus on the idea that people can't properly curate their own reading experiences on ao3, and that it is the responsibility of ao3, an archive, to ensure that no one ever even accidentally has to see anything they might personally find icky or uncomfortable or unpleasant.
The issue with that last option is that once you accept that responsibility, the options for what might be icky or uncomfortable or unpleasant to any given rando from the internet start to get really broad.
I have been reading a bit on the OTW elections and the whole Tiffany G thing, but most of all, I've been reading comments from people supporting Tiffany saying that she just wants to clear AO3 from all the CP (child pornography) content and I don't know who needs to hear this but:
If someone comes to a predominantly QUEER space (like AO3) and tells you that censorship is necessary to eradicate CP... it's not actually CP they want to eradicate...
I've seen this type of discourse about Pride and about queer literature and queer movies and queer communities. It's a tried and true technique of the right and conservative movements.
First, they say there is a DANGER to the community through CP and they conflate the actual threat of CP in the community (we all know someone who thinks that writing a love story between two characters who are 16 is CP...), and make you believe that censorship is the only way to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. And since most people are (rightly) mind-bogled at having to explain that of course they don't support CP content, they bow down and accept the censorship for the greater good, without anyone actually trying to have a conversation about what qualifies as CP (which needs to, you know, actually involve real children and not fictional characters who are 17 and losing their virginity with their crush in a Mature-rated story about high school football and first love based on the author's own experience of losing their virginity at 17 to their crush in high school).
Then, they tell you that there are other forms of DISTURBING CONTENT, and what they really mean is porn that THEY find disturbing, for ex, (and I kid you not, I have seen comments like that) porn featuring disabled characters, which they consider to encourage the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, or BDSM porn (which supposedly encourages violence and lack of consent), or rough p*rn, or any kind of porn that isn't two (preferably white and skinny) able-bodied people doing it missionary style while lovingly gazing in each other's eyes. SO TO PROTECT VIEWERS, that needs to be banned as well.
And then, they tell you that even that sanitized version of porn is still porn and that people under 18 or under 21 or under whatever age they consider too young to view anything sexual regardless of the fact that not all countries have the same law about the age of maturity, should be free to surf the site without having to *gasp* filter out properly tagged works. So TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN, every explicit content is censored.
And then finally, when all that is left is a sanitized, white-washed, ableist, puritan type of content featuring General-Audience approved gay works of two nice men or two nice women holding hands and chastely kissing each other on the lips... Well guess what? :) CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE EXPOSED TO QUEER CONTENT SO WE NEED TO BAN THAT AS WELL, and since we've basically done purge after purge before and there are still a handful of people on the website, well surely they won't mind/care anymore, will they?
It's not just a slippery slope, it's something that has been done time and again, and that is why censorship on AO3 will never, never have a positive outcome.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
For those who could use a reminder: escapist fantasy fiction encompasses more than, like, purely happy and wholesome stories. If you use 'escapist fiction' to mean, 'things that never make anyone uncomfortable,' then you might want to reassess your terminology.
An (incomplete) list of fiction that typically features 'escapist' elements would include:
-Weird/dark/kinky porn -Horror fiction -Romance novels (and all the unhealthy possessive relationships and dubiously consensual sex that occurs in them for the fun and pleasure of the reader) -Fantasy worlds like Game of Thrones
So when you see things that claim it is people who only engage with 'escapist stories' or 'escapist fantasies' who cannot tell the difference between fiction and reality, that's a pretty clear and immediate signal that this person either: a) doesn't know what they're talking about, or b) is being deliberately disingenuous.
Enjoying escapist fiction is not the same thing as never wanting to engage with potentially uncomfortable stories, and a person's ability to tell the difference between fiction and reality is independent of their personal preference in what type of fiction they enjoy.
I don't consider "normal" a desirable or praiseworthy state, so the usage of the word to (ironically) describe unusual obsession tends to rub me the wrong way.
That said, I do think that the application of the term to a person's feelings about minorities is pointing at something real. Having strong and unusual emotions about people you interact with on the basis of their demographics is generally awkward, counterproductive, and destructive of empathy and solidarity, even if the emotions are positive.
Personally, I notice that when I have negative aliefs or inclinations related to a demographic group, they prevent me from perceiving that group as "normal" and "just people" -- I feel like I should "balance it out" with positive evaluations of the group, and end up thinking about whether I am being bigoted more than actually interacting with them as a person.
If you decide how to act towards someone based primarily on their demographics, that is the same mistake as bigots make, even if you treat members of othered minorities unusually well instead of unusually poorly. "Being normal about" a group can mean treating members of that group like normal people and interacting with them without having an unusually strong emotional reaction to their membership in a given demographic.
Hate how people talk about “being normal” about something. That only applies to like, being weirdly obsessed with something unusual. You can tell me to please be normal about riding a train, or watching an Anne Hathaway movie. Things that I KNOW I’m weird about.
If you’re using it to describe whether someone is a bigot or not, it’s completely incoherent. Bigotry is normal to bigots. When I hear someone say “I’m normal about X group” I don’t assume that means they share my beliefs. I assume that means they’re uncritical about their own.
Is there something I’m missing here??
I agree that the phrase "being normal about [group]" can be used to mean "behaving like a typical person (which is good) with respect to [group]", which I dislike. In fact, while writing the above reply, I was thinking of another common usage of the phrase as meaning "having the correct opinions about [group]", which bothers me even more.
If "normal" is being used to mean "correct, popular among people I respect, typical, admirable, common sense", that is a bad way to use words, because it conflates concepts which are important to distinguish.
However, in this particular context, "normal" can also be read as "everyday, chill, neutral, default, forgettable", which does not strike me as a pernicious usage. If you read it this way, then "being normal about [group]" points at an important aspect of tolerating and respecting the group in question.
This concept of "capable of neutral, casual interactions" is particularly useful when assessing a potential friend (or someone you might invite to a groupchat, or someone whose party you might attend, etc.). In that circumstance, it's usually less relevant what their political beliefs are, how much they know about [group], or how much they care about the welfare of [group] -- what you want to know is whether they can treat you like any other person in the friend group. It is awkward and uncomfortable when the prospective acquaintance has very strong positive feelings about your demographic group, or when they are very concerned about interacting with you respectfully, even though those things are probably good in an abstract sense.
To inquire about this by asking "are they normal about [group]?" is suboptimal because of the ambiguity with other meanings of "being normal about", but it is a way to express something that needs to be expressed, and as such I am sympathetic to it.
Hate how people talk about “being normal” about something. That only applies to like, being weirdly obsessed with something unusual. You can tell me to please be normal about riding a train, or watching an Anne Hathaway movie. Things that I KNOW I’m weird about.
If you’re using it to describe whether someone is a bigot or not, it’s completely incoherent. Bigotry is normal to bigots. When I hear someone say “I’m normal about X group” I don’t assume that means they share my beliefs. I assume that means they’re uncritical about their own.
Is there something I’m missing here??
Let's say there's an online community of people who all have Whatever Syndrome. They talk about all the difficulties and frustrations and issues etc related to Whatever Syndrome. They share advice, they vent, sometimes they just chat and enjoy talking to people who can relate to them properly. Sometimes they make fun relatable observational comedy-style memes about common Whatever Syndrome experiences.
Some of the experiences they make memes about will probably overlap to some extent with the experiences of people who are not on the WS spectrum at all. Let's stipulate (made-up, obviously meaningless numbers incoming) that 10% of the memes they make appeal to a non-WS audience in this way, but 90% are highly specific to the WS niche and won't really be appreciated by outsiders.
In this scenario, the 10% of universally relatable memes will, because they are universally relatable, likely spread far beyond the core WS community. The 90% of niche ones will not (why would they?). From the perspective of someone without WS who doesn't engage with the WS community directly, this will look like 100% of all WS memes seeming to be about things that are just universal human experiences being described as WS-specific experiences for no particular reason. This person might begin to suspect that WS is just a trendy diagnosis that arbitrarily groups completely normal personality traits as a medical issue and that the whole thing is maybe kind of fake. This person is not being unreasonable given the information they have, but for reasons that are hopefully obvious the information they have is very skewed.
On the other hand! If this sort of thing distorts the public perception of what WS is about strongly enough, some people are going to latch onto the relatable memes about it, relate to them (because they're relatable), and wonder if maybe that means they themselves might have WS. This person might do a bit of googling and discover that, in addition to all the relatable stuff they relate to, there are other symptoms that they don't really identify with as much... but then, no one really seems to talk about those things very often, you mostly see people talking about [relatable stuff] when WS comes up, so the latter must be like, the main part, right? So (they think) it can't be too important if the other stuff doesn't apply to me.
[also the whole medical establishment is nightmarishly hard to access and a lot of doctors suck and make diagnoses based on random whims and prejudices, blah blah blah you know all this, the point is that the most obvious solution to "how do I confirm whether I do or don't have a specific medical thing?" is often not reliable.]
Well now, given all of the above... stuff might get confusing huh!
Okay, okay, (you might say), that's all well and good as a toy model of things that might be underlying the discourse you're alluding to, but to what extent is this dynamic actually responsible for what's actually happening? Aha! I have no clue whatsoever, sorry. I'm just the ideas guy.
I’m gonna engage with discourse and give my hot take on Star Wars:
Knights of the old Republic 2: The Sith Lords is the best Star Wars game and one of the best computer RPGs full stop.
I know that the first is oft heralded as the best, but that is understandable. It is a good Star Wars game. It has good world building, a solid plot, but it is a BioWare-ass game. The dialogue is very Good option - Evil option - Questions. There really isn’t nuance. The game is kinda critical of the Jedi and gives the Sith a few justifications but there still is a clear good/evil dichotomy. Republic good, Sith Bad. Very Star Wars. But that I think is it’s greatest pitfall; It is do laughably safe. You’ve got redeeming an evil person, you’ve got shock twist about connection to dark side, a super weapon that must be destroyed, it is even a by the numbers hero journey - just like the original series. It is solid, but aggressively unoriginal. It has few original themes inherent to the broader story telling in Star Wars. Each planet you travel to there are personal conflicts and themes, but they are contained and they do not engage with the upheld status quo of the Star Wars universe: that the Republic, in all its capitalist glory is good and that the evil people are evil for choosing to be evil (broadly). I will admit that the game engages with this once with a dark Jedi who fell to the dark side out of a desire to do good, but had forgotten her purpose due to the dark side, but the game does not extrapolate this more broadly. I think the first game is so lauded because it is one of the more accessible and solid of the periods of BioWare RPGs, and also the twist towards the end, which I think is given to much praise, which is extrapolated to the rest of the game. This is not to say that people don’t enjoy it or shouldn’t enjoy or stop enjoying it. The reason I’m so harsh on the first game is that the second highlights how tame it is as a work derivative of the broader Star Wars universe.
Knights of The Old Republic 2 is very much the inverse of the first game. The Jedi are dead from internal conflict an the Sith are in the shadows. The game is also critical of the Jedi and Jedi practice, but it also has Jedi who have failed their oaths, fallen and are in denial, and acted without compassion. Of the surviving Jedi that the character is Searching for one fell to the dark side, one hid and did little to help an oppressed group of refugees, the only one who felt sympathetic to the player is dead, one is helping a monarch remain in power, and the final one is a pompous asshole. All of the living Jedi are critical of the player characters choice to fight in the mandalorian wars, even when the mandalorians were committing GENOCIDE. The player was exiled and cut off from the force as a result of them being to only Revanchist (the faction that fought) Jedi to return to face justice, even though there choice is the one morally superior to the Jedis’ who stayed. The Jedi in the game are far more flawed than in the first and you can be critical of them even while being a light side character. The Sith are better contextualized by the game as they are far less sympathetic (this will come up later). The game engages with the aftermath of war, how normal people are fucked over by larger conflict, and it shows a a republic that low key sucks and is teetering on the edge of collapse. It also highlights moral ambiguity of action and how even small ones can have rippling effects. The first game fully ascribes to Great Man Theory where one person can be responsible for all things rather than collective action, and while in the second the player character makes choices with big effect, they aren’t on the scale of directly saving the republic; by stabilizing the monarchy of a planet the republic is less likely to fall. One reclamation project is the straw that hold up the camel’s back, but while these things are locally important and the failure of one probably won’t signal the end of the Republic as a whole entity, they create ripples that would create domino effects over time. Another way that the game rebuffs the notion that the character is all important is that some things move around the character in a way that the character can’t effect. Political turmoil is not solvable by one person doing one thing.
The second games engagement with the force textually and metatextually is also excellent. Firstly the games perspective on the force is rather critical. The game points out how the force moves the trajectory of the galaxy beyond what people can do, often in spite of them trying to achieve balance, but always overcorrecting as if balance could be achieved broadly, then it would be easy for it to upset by a single act either way. This demonstrates the binary of the force, that one can’t be neither light nor dark, but that they must move in either direction(I’m not engaging with the Grey Jedi stuff, common understanding is misconstrued). This binary is encouraged by the game as bonuses are given when a force side is maxed out the player gets an attribute bonus. The game clarifies why the dark side is so damaging, as it makes explicit that once one falls, they only crave more power, which is expressed by the game best when during the confrontation with the Jedi masters, or lack there of as it is on dantooine, and Kreia asks why, all the options boil down to a quest for power. The player character is denied agency or choice because their character has fallen and cannot think beyond the quest for power. The game also provides an explanation for player leveling with the in game explanation being that the player character with their unique connection to the force draws strength from those around them influencing them, and gaining power when they kill others. This is also why their companions Chang by being in their company and why they join the player in the first place, the player has bonded to them in the force. This is expressed well in certain characters when playing the light, and others when playing dark. On the light, the character Mira joins the party, and she is a competent lethal character. When you talk to her, she says that before she met the character, she never killed. It is the players actions and influence that removed this agency from herself because of the way the force removes agency in everyone searching for balance. When playing dark, a companion Atton is driven into homicidal rage because the player is acting so evilly again with the force depriving agency. This power that the force has on agency is the impetuous for the mentor figure, Kreia to try to kill the force entirely, using the player characters connection to do it, and while I disagree with Kreia’s world view I agree with her on this.
All the characters are good too, but I still hate Canderous/Mandalore. Kreia is fascinating to engage with philosophically and all the other characters, even the more bland ones have insight to offer. All of them have insight to offer on the mandalorian wars and are just interesting people. I will concede that the opening of the game is too long and the ending too abrupt, or that some quests don’t work, but Obsidian was given like 14-16 months to fucking make this game and is so fucking good and no one had played it and I need more people to play please god. I’m flagging here some I’m going to finish. Can y’all tell this is like my biggest fixation ever? Just like everyone loves the first one and like the second is so much more interesting and philosophical and arcane and deep with better characters and dialogue and metatextual engagement and aughhggh…