Arrant Nonsense

Yeah...I went and read a bunch of what you linked to, and there aren't a lot of things I find literally jaw-dropping, but that was definitely one of them. I mean...seriously? What is so frelling difficult about putting a quick warning for dub-con, non-con, or even "possible triggery situations" on your fic header? It does absolutely nothing to your oh-so-precious "artistic integrity" (one wonders why this is so much more important than other kinds of integrity, like the kind that maybe would balk a little bit at hurting other people), it takes 5 seconds to do, and it involves nothing more than some basic human decency and consideration. I honestly cannot understand how people are so butthurt over the idea that it's a good idea to warn for this stuff. Especially the whining about "oh but my readers like being surprised! I want to be a good enough writer to shock people, and they enjoy the surprise!" Whatever. People who like dub-con and non-con tend to already know that, and people who don't probably won't like it just because they got "surprised" by it--and labeling it as such, especially the vague label of "may be triggery"--is not going to ruin the frakking surprise. I mean seriously what the crap.

The people setting up their asinine straw-man arguments about "but warning for rape is a slippery slope that will end with writers being forced to warn for everything! We can't possibly know what random object might trigger you!"? Please. You're not being asked to do that! The only thing that's expected is to warn for things that any reasonable person might identify as triggery. (There is a legal wording here that would be useful and that I am completely blanking on--not for this situation precisely, but that...something is only considered...libel, maybe? Or something? If a reasonable person would see it as such, or...something...I think it involves media law...I can't remember.)

This icon has never been more appropriate...

Also, the most interesting thing to me about trigger_fence is that most of the (very few, so far) authors "blacklisted" are ones who explicitly say they don't warn and who are actually fairly reasonably about it in that they just as explicitly say their non-warning is a warning itself. And nobody seems to have much problem with that; anyone who identifies as non-warning shouldn't mind being listed as such, especially since it's entirely possible someone could come across their fic without having seen their non-warnings and trigger_fence is just an added layer of protection against that. (Uh, wow, long sentence is long?) So I'm not even sure why the people getting butthurt about trigger_fence are getting butthurt.

I mean, as the comm grows and maybe extends to "these writers don't explicitly say that they don't warn, but based on past fics, we know that this is true" I can see how people could be upset, even if I'm still very much on the pro-warning side. But right now? Really, what are y'all whining about?

I've heard about this thoroughly second hand and I think I'm going to stay fray adjacent. There's just too much going on and tempers are high being pushed higher by a few agitators.

It does make me want to go back through my stories and see if there is anything potentially triggering that I should warn for.

'Brit, 'Brit, 'Brit--don't you know that as a Republican, you're not supposed to give a shit about rape victims? At least, that's what they tell me, whoever "they" are.

Seriously, though, warning for "graphic sex and violence" is *so* not a specific warning for rape. Hell, a few of my fics could be labeled as such. The violence is completely separate from the sex, which is perfectly consensual, but both are present. It's not even a fine distinction, that, and I can't believe someone is whining that that's all the warning anyone should need. I don't even think of rape as sex. Sex is sex and rape is rape. There's only a superficial resemblance.