such_heights | a little warning would be nice

Today, half of my flist is full of discussion on warnings and triggers. And some of the comments from the anti-warnings side are really making my head spin.

Fannish culture has a lot of rules and codes of conduct that develop in response to the needs of fans and are subsequently enforced - cutting picspams for dial-up users, marking content as 'not safe for work', warning for spoilers. And we all agree that those are good, considerate things to do, and when someone messes up you can usually guarantee that the first few comments they get are along the lines of 'dude, lj-cut, use it!' or 'a little warning for graphic content would have been appreciated, I'm checking my flist with the kids in the room!', etc. We consider all of that to be common courtesy, and most people abide by it.

So I'm trying to get my head around the idea that there's a big difference between saying 'hey, this uncut post is super spoilery for people who haven't seen last night's episode yet, you should cut it' and 'hey, this story might be very triggery for survivors of sexual violence, you should warn for that'. Adding the warnings is about the same amount of effort in both cases, and wow, the second kind of sounds like the one more worth avoiding.

For discussion of what, exactly, triggers are like, see the below, which outlines what exactly we're talking about when we're talking about triggers, for people like myself who are fortunate and don't have them.

impertinence: Sexual Assault, Triggering, and Warnings: An Essay "Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery."

Being triggered is not like being spoiled, or being embarrassed because you opened up adult fanart in a public place. It's also not like being squicked or being made uncomfortable by a theme. We all have things we don't like to read about, and that's what the back button's for if we discover the story is going to go along those lines. That's very different from being triggered in the way that

impertinence describes. People with triggers also aren't asking for everything ever that could possibly trigger a specific person to be marked; rather, the basic few, the stories that do feature sexual violence and consent issues. It's that baseline and that level of triggering that's under dispute here. Apparently, warning for noncon in order to ensure people who'll be triggered by that requires too much sacrifice of artistic integrity. Which, wait, what?

Unless I've missed something, headers are meant to do one thing: provide the reader with information. The vast majority of the time some of that header information does spoil elements of the story - the rating tells you whether there'll be sex scenes or not, the characters and pairings give you some details. Unless all you mark it as is 'title, teaser line, character a/character b, nc-17' and the story starts with said characters having sex, you'll probably have told your readers something about what's going to happen.

If a specific warning really is going to spoil your story (which is far from always the case), then you can create some sort of spoiler cut/whiteout for it, or you can have a blanket policy, clearly visible/linked to on every story you post that outlines what exactly you do and don't do with warnings. There are a lot of options here, and I am sure there is a solution for every writer -- also worth noting, where 'warning' may imply something negative about those who like to read stories with those themes, which I understand, 'contains' seems to work nicely.

Otherwise, if there's widespread disagreement about this, then I don't see how people with triggers can navigate fannish space very well, if at all -- all they'd be able to read would be stories that say 'warnings: none' on them (and when was the last time you saw that? the last time you put that in your header? I never do) or communities like some fic exchanges where stories won't be posted if they have content that isn't warned for. Or else, they'd have to research/check with a friend for every single story, no matter innocuous the title and summary might sound, however well you think you know the author, because if you don't know their warnings policy, it's your own fault if you get yourself triggered!

I really can't get my head around why anyone would want fandom to be like that. It's never going to be 100%, obviously, but I don't understand why it's a fannish faux pas to spoil somebody for an episode of a TV show, but it isn't one of similar universality to decide not to let potential readers know that your story could induce violent flashbacks in abuse survivors.

Posts by others that I've appreciated (again, content in the entries and their comments may be triggering):

again? we're having this debate again? by

thingswithwings
The warnings thing by

giandujakiss
This wasn't the post I intended to make today by

annaalmode

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You can read my posts and comments, both here and on DW, but I'd like to elaborate.

AS a survivor of a whole variety of abuse and abandonment in my early teen years, and some abuse stemming back to early childhood, and don't even get me started on the sexual coercion and abuse, AND

as someone who has wrestled with the mental health fallout from these issues for decades,

I have a certain compassion about trauma.

AND.

If someone is experiencing 'violent flashbacks' when reading, I will tell you that life in general is not going well for them in a freaking huge way.

That merits way more gravitas than any discussion of warnings in fanfiction, which, I agree, are a nice thing to have.

So, two things:
One:

Let's start by having a discussion about what real and true support, other than fanfiction warnings, a community of friends needs to be offering someone who is experiencing violent flashbacks.

Because that is only the tip of the iceberg, and anyone who claims that their only issue is the flashback caused by fanfiction is lacking necessary insight or is being somewhat less than (understandably) transparent about their suffering.

Two:

I am darn uncomfortable with people equating lack of warnings with causing the original trauma. It may be impolite. It may be crass. It may be what the 'mean girls' do. But it is not rape, abuse, racism, ableism or antifeminism.

I prefer warnings, in general.

Thank you for this - I'm in increasing agreement that there's some very problematic language being thrown around, which I'm reading some different perspectives on now and hoping to avoid myself in the future. And of course, comparing a piece of fiction to an instance of assault is both inappropriate and unnecessary, and wish that we (general, well-meaning but screwing up 'we') would stop doing that.

As far as I can tell, the flow of the discussion (both in this case and in previous incarnations) goes 'why should I warn?' --> 'here's the most compelling reason why'. Of course, the circumstances of the people who are going to be most affected by this issue go far beyond fandom, but hopefully this latest round of conversation will mean it's an act of decency more people will take it upon themselves to do.

Here's where we are going to disagree.

I just can't get into the issue of not warning as an act of indecency.

I think there are plenty of things that belong firmly in the realm of morality, but I don't like trying to turn this into one of them.

"It only take an extra second to be polite,"--sure, I can get behind that.

Right - what I mean is, decency in the sense of human kindness and community spirit and all of those things, which don't necessarily need to be couched in a sense of absolute morality, because I see where you're coming from there.

anyone who claims that their only issue is the flashback caused by fanfiction is lacking necessary insight or is being somewhat less than (understandably) transparent about their suffering.

A trigger is not necessarily a flashback.

I don't think anyone is saying that fanfiction is their only issue. I believe people are only talking about fanfiction here because adding warnings to their fic is one way (and in some cases, the only way) that fandom writers can help other fandom readers who have triggers.

Triggers are a mental health issue and a disability. Not putting warnings on fic is not rape, but it is ableism, and experiencing sexual assault unwarned for is likely to throw someone who has experienced sexual assault back into the mindset of when they were assaulted, as

impertinence discusses very eloquently in her essay.

Hi. Thanks for commenting.

Much of my reaction comes from my commitment to issues of mental health accessibility and my background in mental health liberation.

I discuss why contextualizing this issue in terms of MH disability/access is in error, and what the most pressing issues are in terms of access for the MH disability community, in my latest lj and DW posts.

I invite you to take a look, and look forward to discussing this with you further.

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