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noseforahtwo:
daedalus-harrumph:
daedalus-harrumph:
As a woman and a fic writer, i am so fucking tired of people painting all critique of writing and fic as misogynist and censorship. It’s not! Almost no one i see talking about Fic as Media, and the necessity of writers being willing to listen to reasonable feedback without calling it a witch hunt, is talking about policing women’s or fantasies. The Anti movement is about bullying and policing, but that’s not what ALL critique is. The Anti movement is not an excuse to derail every conversation about fic and unintended messages put forward therein.
Narrative writing displays a lot of our unconscious bigotry and ingrained assumptions. The key words here are ‘unconscious’ and ‘ingrained.’ Things you don’t know you’ve absorbed, and things you don’t realize you’re displaying. The fact that you’re not aware of it, or that you like it and find it satisfying doesn’t mean that, if someone comes to you saying ‘this sounds racist’ or ‘this lacks consent’ or ‘this treatment of this woman looks like something else’ and asks you to examine it, you can rightfully shut them down by shouting ‘censorship!’ and claiming some eternal moral high ground.
I can’t count the number of fics i’ve read that were subtly racist. Or subtly misogynist, or about punishing the female main character the fandom loves to hate. Or fics that were really well written up until the ‘sexy’ smut scenes were full of possessive manipulation and lack of/revoked consent, unwarned and written as hot. I can’t count the number of fics with disturbing content where the author clearly doesn’t realize that there’s anything off about it, and therefore didn’t and couldn’t warn and tag for it.
Even people who believe fic should never have any pushback ever can agree that fiction, especially genre fiction in decades past is full of sexism, racism and horrifying treatment of women within romantic relationships, and yes, romanticizing of that terrible treatment. So yes, obviously we’ve moved on. But we haven’t moved on all the way. And how did we start moving past that sexism and racism and abusive portrayals? Maybe by learning more about it? Maybe by reexamining what’s acceptable and what isn’t, what’s sexy and what’s creepy?
We are invariably products of our time, and our fiction reflects that, but that doesn’t mean that we or our fiction should stop trying to grow up. That doesn’t mean that we’re totally exempt from challenging our assumptions and weeding out biases that can trip us up.
And a lot of the talk I’ve seen lately about how any critique of fic is just policing women’s sexual interests reads a lot more like people trying to change the subject than a real explanation for why they think all respectful, polite discussion and feedback should be off the table. I think there’s a pretty good reason for that, actually.
and if you’re sitting here thinking ‘but you’re still targeting an arena dominated by women and criticising their habits, you just trying to hide your bias against women and their fantasies,’ i would like to say two things.
One; i and a lot of my fandom friends have spend a lot of time and effort in the thoughtful critique of many, many shows created and run by men. Spoken up about sexist biases in the writing. Spoken up about an incident of plagiarism on a network tv show, carefully, respectfully and without accusations. I and others have tried to respectfully, politely, without accusing raise concerns with show writers on twitter about a canonically mentally abusive and physically violent relationship that is still the canonical romance of the show. Tried to unpack the bias where we see it in the writing done by (largely) white men.
Fandom generally appreciates the (respectful) critique. Fandom generally participates in the critique, sometimes to the point where it’s not analysis at all, but a round robin diatribe of extreme frustration and viciousness.
It’s not like fic writers are being singled out. But fic writers are our peers, we’re actually here in fandom to listen. We’re actually here in fandom, in a place where we can learn from each other and grow as writers as a result of thoughtful discussion and concerns being raised to us.
Two; reasonable discussion isn’t about saying ‘you can’t do this’ or ‘you can’t like that,’ or even ‘you have to stop liking that because it’s flawed.’It’s not the same thing as the Anti movement, it’s actually worlds away. It’s perfectly okay to like and enjoy flawed things! No reasonable person is saying otherwise! It’s actually about leaving the door open for people who might have more experience with some subjects than you do to come to you and say, ‘hey, you may not know this, but this idea that you’re repeating often has this bias or implication. Just something to think about.”
“ It’s perfectly okay to like and enjoy flawed things! No reasonable person is saying otherwise! It’s actually about leaving the door open for people who might have more experience with some subjects than you do to come to you and say, ‘hey, you may not know this, but this idea that you’re repeating often has this bias or implication. Just something to think about.”
I often find the best way to react to issues in content is to comment ‘this fic has a lot of xxxx, could you tag for it please?’ That way either they realise there’s a lot of this issue in their fic and either change it, or just tag it and go on their merry way.
noseforahtwo:
daedalus-harrumph:
daedalus-harrumph:
As a woman and a fic writer, i am so fucking tired of people painting all critique of writing and fic as misogynist and censorship. It’s not! Almost no one i see talking about Fic as Media, and the necessity of writers being willing to listen to reasonable feedback without calling it a witch hunt, is talking about policing women’s or fantasies. The Anti movement is about bullying and policing, but that’s not what ALL critique is. The Anti movement is not an excuse to derail every conversation about fic and unintended messages put forward therein.
Narrative writing displays a lot of our unconscious bigotry and ingrained assumptions. The key words here are ‘unconscious’ and ‘ingrained.’ Things you don’t know you’ve absorbed, and things you don’t realize you’re displaying. The fact that you’re not aware of it, or that you like it and find it satisfying doesn’t mean that, if someone comes to you saying ‘this sounds racist’ or ‘this lacks consent’ or ‘this treatment of this woman looks like something else’ and asks you to examine it, you can rightfully shut them down by shouting ‘censorship!’ and claiming some eternal moral high ground.
I can’t count the number of fics i’ve read that were subtly racist. Or subtly misogynist, or about punishing the female main character the fandom loves to hate. Or fics that were really well written up until the ‘sexy’ smut scenes were full of possessive manipulation and lack of/revoked consent, unwarned and written as hot. I can’t count the number of fics with disturbing content where the author clearly doesn’t realize that there’s anything off about it, and therefore didn’t and couldn’t warn and tag for it.
Even people who believe fic should never have any pushback ever can agree that fiction, especially genre fiction in decades past is full of sexism, racism and horrifying treatment of women within romantic relationships, and yes, romanticizing of that terrible treatment. So yes, obviously we’ve moved on. But we haven’t moved on all the way. And how did we start moving past that sexism and racism and abusive portrayals? Maybe by learning more about it? Maybe by reexamining what’s acceptable and what isn’t, what’s sexy and what’s creepy?
We are invariably products of our time, and our fiction reflects that, but that doesn’t mean that we or our fiction should stop trying to grow up. That doesn’t mean that we’re totally exempt from challenging our assumptions and weeding out biases that can trip us up.
And a lot of the talk I’ve seen lately about how any critique of fic is just policing women’s sexual interests reads a lot more like people trying to change the subject than a real explanation for why they think all respectful, polite discussion and feedback should be off the table. I think there’s a pretty good reason for that, actually.
and if you’re sitting here thinking ‘but you’re still targeting an arena dominated by women and criticising their habits, you just trying to hide your bias against women and their fantasies,’ i would like to say two things.
One; i and a lot of my fandom friends have spend a lot of time and effort in the thoughtful critique of many, many shows created and run by men. Spoken up about sexist biases in the writing. Spoken up about an incident of plagiarism on a network tv show, carefully, respectfully and without accusations. I and others have tried to respectfully, politely, without accusing raise concerns with show writers on twitter about a canonically mentally abusive and physically violent relationship that is still the canonical romance of the show. Tried to unpack the bias where we see it in the writing done by (largely) white men.
Fandom generally appreciates the (respectful) critique. Fandom generally participates in the critique, sometimes to the point where it’s not analysis at all, but a round robin diatribe of extreme frustration and viciousness.
It’s not like fic writers are being singled out. But fic writers are our peers, we’re actually here in fandom to listen. We’re actually here in fandom, in a place where we can learn from each other and grow as writers as a result of thoughtful discussion and concerns being raised to us.
Two; reasonable discussion isn’t about saying ‘you can’t do this’ or ‘you can’t like that,’ or even ‘you have to stop liking that because it’s flawed.’It’s not the same thing as the Anti movement, it’s actually worlds away. It’s perfectly okay to like and enjoy flawed things! No reasonable person is saying otherwise! It’s actually about leaving the door open for people who might have more experience with some subjects than you do to come to you and say, ‘hey, you may not know this, but this idea that you’re repeating often has this bias or implication. Just something to think about.”
“ It’s perfectly okay to like and enjoy flawed things! No reasonable person is saying otherwise! It’s actually about leaving the door open for people who might have more experience with some subjects than you do to come to you and say, ‘hey, you may not know this, but this idea that you’re repeating often has this bias or implication. Just something to think about.”
I often find the best way to react to issues in content is to comment ‘this fic has a lot of xxxx, could you tag for it please?’ That way either they realise there’s a lot of this issue in their fic and either change it, or just tag it and go on their merry way.