![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Misc Interesting Links
Discussions about the ethics of problematic prompts at kink memes:
Dear Holmes/Watson Kink Meme participants asking for [Indian!Holmes and European!Watson]
(I highlighted this particular thread since I think it cuts to the heart of both sides of the argument, but the other comments are worth reading too)
conscientious kink?
I find this sort of topic really interesting, even though I tend to be squicked by most of the sort of border cases people bring up, so it would be very easy for me to blithely tell people to suck it up and not go around hurting other people with their fantasies (and this used to be my default position).
This isn't a topic I feel sure enough about to host a discussion about, really, go read the discussion that's already there.
Since It Looks Like the Post With This Comment Isn't Coming Back . . . About the difference between "Stop being mean to me" and "Don't tell me when I'm wrong". Why is "If I talk about this, people will criticise me" necessarily a bad thing? Not a new idea but this particular example appealed to me.
bratz dolls and appearance politics
And finally:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
liminal_boundaries
Dear Holmes/Watson Kink Meme participants asking for [Indian!Holmes and European!Watson]
(I highlighted this particular thread since I think it cuts to the heart of both sides of the argument, but the other comments are worth reading too)
conscientious kink?
I find this sort of topic really interesting, even though I tend to be squicked by most of the sort of border cases people bring up, so it would be very easy for me to blithely tell people to suck it up and not go around hurting other people with their fantasies (and this used to be my default position).
This isn't a topic I feel sure enough about to host a discussion about, really, go read the discussion that's already there.
Since It Looks Like the Post With This Comment Isn't Coming Back . . . About the difference between "Stop being mean to me" and "Don't tell me when I'm wrong". Why is "If I talk about this, people will criticise me" necessarily a bad thing? Not a new idea but this particular example appealed to me.
bratz dolls and appearance politics
And finally:
liminal_boundaries
no subject
I'll give a possibly TMI example: my kink is traditional gender roles (and looks), and in sex/fantasies I am all about the big manly man and the submissive woman. At the same time, outside of that one context, I am genuinely opposed to that model and find it insulting when I see it perpetuated as *the* model in media, storytelling, laws, what have you. I don't think this makes me a hypocrite, either; kinks are to me separate from everyday attitudes and opinions, and I find it more damaging when people insist that this is not so.
no subject
But there's a difference between "The usual rules of acceptable behaviour do not apply, and liking something in fiction isn't the same as liking it in real life" and "NO rules apply, and people should be able to ask for anything at all with no thought for the consequences what-so-ever". This prompt hurts people in a way other sorts of prompts don't, and I think it's at least worth discussing how much damage it does and asking people to think about it. And there's a big difference between a woman playing around with sexism and a white person playing around with colonialism. Beyond that I don't feel able to argue about this particular prompt since I'm neither Indian nor a kink meme participant.
no subject
Point taken, but it's still the question of playing in a sandbox that is outside one's everyday experience, which is the whole point of it being a kink.
I can be all hot for a domineering, dismissive man because that is not a reality that hurts me, but it's out there hurting countless women, physically and psychologically; do I have a right to play with this just because I share the "woman" bit with those who are actually suffering under the conditions that I find titillating? Being part of a group offers me no passport whatsoever to experiences that may be common to the group but are still not mine.
I maintain that it's impossible to determine which kinks are OK and which are not; either we can - and we can - argue that none are acceptable because their very nature is to be outside of agreed-upon societal mores and to be outside the person's normal experience, or we can accept that everything goes because one person's yay is another person's hell no and vice versa.
The problem I see in the original example here is the "community" aspect, ie. letting every passer-by see your kink, not just the select people whose consent or toleration you're sure of. I'm not against anon kink comms but I don't see them working without upsetting people. Perhaps there should be some way of lj-cutting and labelling requests so that people can choose which to look at? I don't know.
no subject
Oh yes, I think there's a big difference between "This kink is not ok to explore in a kink meme/other context" and "you are a bad person for having this kink". You can't help your kinks, no matter how disturbing (and this one certainly isn't the limit of disturbingness, as anyone who's been in fanfic fandom for long will agree) The issue is the effect it has on others.
no subject
Right, but here is where it should become a technical - locked comms, mailing lists, whatever - rather than a moral issue, because you cannot say "the issue is the effect it has on others" without putting at least a toe in the "you are a bad person" field.
no subject
Are you saying that if we agree that it just needs to be posted in the right place, and then it's merely a technical issue of where exactly, then it's not a moral issue? Because I think that doing something that would be totally moral in the right context in the wrong context can still be immoral, if you know that doing it in that wrong context will do harm.
no subject
What I meant with the previous comment is that in addressing the effect a kink may have on other people we should not consider it in terms of being right or wrong and thus encouraging self-censorship in expressions or investigations of sexuality, but rather thinking up ways in which said kinks can be exchanged without being encountered by people who'd find them insulting or demeaning.
no subject
I think we're coming at this from different angles or something.
I don't think you can apply morality to having a kink.
I think you can always apply morality to the way you express that kink, as you can apply morality to any action. *tries to think of non-fraught example* Like... a vegan might argue that expressing a kink by being covered in whipped cream is immoral because it hurts cows. But being covered in vegan whipped cream would be totally ok.
In this case, I think the only moral dimension is, I agree, thinking up ways in which said kinks can be exchanged without being encountered by people who'd find them insulting or demeaning. But putting them somewhere where they will insult people is immoral, not because the kink is inherently bad but because they person expressing it knew they'd be hurting someone by doing so.
no subject
I don't think you can apply morality to having a kink.
I think you can always apply morality to the way you express that kink
This, to me, edges into censorship and policing of sexuality more than makes me comfortable.
Kinks, to me, are a part of sexuality where if you have them you're probably perving over someone in a way they wouldn't appreciate at all, and somebody is probably doing the same with regards to something about you.
You either acknowledge this and carry on, or you have to censor everything, like what you propose - putting them somewhere where they will insult people is immoral - because who will determine which kink is "okay" and which is not? You? A panel of filtering moderators?
The only way to do so is to have people who are targeted by the kink and therefore the only holders of such authority come up to request posters and tell them how their kink is not okay - which, let's be honest, pretty much renders the kink repository pointless - or to have people ask themselves if their kink is really worth posting since the people it might target might be able to see it, which is again a strategy of "your sexuality is bad and you should feel bad" which... no. I don't think you want to go down that road.
Best never to initiate kink exchanges in the first place - not that that isn't censorship of its kind considering the "such thoughts can be okay, but expressing them isn't" attitude - because you can't have them in a way that won't offend. The whipped cream example is useless because we're talking about kinks over certain (groups of) people, not toys, and that's not something one can replace. (Besides, kinks are kinks precisely because they are specific; if they were nebulous and adjustable they'd never come up as a quirk of sexuality.)
And, well, like I said, we're simply not going to meet on this one so I'll respectfully exit this debate.
no subject
no subject
I tend to feel that the people who're going to be the most affected/hurt by things should be the arbiters of how those things are dealt with, at least in the case of setting etiquette rules. (Though I don't feel that rudeness or shaming should be resorted to as enforcement. At least not public displays thereof.) But I don't suppose anyone is asking me about these things.
*Mostly because I consider that part of me too personal for anyone except my husband. >_>
no subject
Agreed.