The New Garage Chronicles

I tried posting this to Tumblr where it's more relevant (and it's even more relevant to Twitter than Tumblr) but since embeds are broken, but



I think a lot of the conversations about the outrage market are too abstract and rely on the listener already being 110% on their labour theory (this is a problem I have with a lot of... "breadtube") but I think this video gets at why it's so easy to fall into it while being completely intellectually checked out about the situation.

Reposting some comment I made in the notest of this post about how construing all shipping is amatonormative is not very good because I feel like I'm onto something.

To wit: As things are, the word “shipping” is commonly used to mean (at least) three different things:

1. Constructing a narrative (often but not always an aspirational one) and vicariously experiencing through it what a relationship like that can be like
2. Wanting to see the characters that appeal to you have sex/receive affection/experience emotional catharsis for your gratification
3. The study and analysis of the text of a relationship, just like you’d explore the text of someone’s characterisation or the text of the plot of a story

And to be clear, when people say they “ship” something, it can be any combination of the above. (Arguably the concept of an OTP exists as shorthand for a ship where the speaker experiences it as sitting right in the middle of that triangle.)

This is what leads to the problem of critical analysis becoming impossible in a framework like this. Essentially, both cases 1 and 2 involve some kind of a value judgement – whether something works within the narrative or whether something appeals to the creator – and as such conforming to preference and principle is kind of the entire point, but analysis done in a way that is meant to conform to a preference or a principle… is poorly argued at best, and openly dishonest at worst.

If you point out erotic tension in the text between two characters, that is not actually the same as imagining or enjoying the idea of those characters having sex. If you point out emotional tension from things like miscommunication and how that colours a relationship, that is just pointing out an element of the text, and doesn’t mean the fic you wanna write will deal with that issue. But over and over, simply trying to critically examine the text is labeled as “shipping”, which… well, it does kind of make sense, because we live in a culture that considers “critique” something objective and removed and aimed to “improve” the “product” instead of a form of creative self-expression, but a lot of times it ascribes motivations to the person doing the analysis that they might not have.

As for amatonormativity... I can sort of see where people are coming with it, really? The narrative structures we’ve grown up with insist on amatonormative “love”, no analysis of text is free of cultural baggage, and frankly for a lot of alloromantic people, romance is gratifying. That being said, the criticism that shipping itself is amatonormative because it’s predicated on “needing” to put characters in monogamous pairs only applies to the first of my personal three cases, and even only then if it’s treated as an aspirational fantasy.

At every instance, the shipping can be driven by amatonormative assumptions, but to argue that therefore it inarguably is is some mind-reading bullshit my aro that obsessively analyses the interactions between everything isn’t willing to co-sign.

“If you're not even DDGL, why does it bother to see them singled out? Why do you take people going after a specific controversial kink so personally if it holds no appeal for you?"

1) I am a sadist. Like, an actual physical sadist that likes beating people for sexual gratification. Let’s not pretend physical violence isn’t hinky just because it’s so normalised that society no longer recognises it as traumatic.

2) I have absolutely nothing in common with someone who has the priviledge to blithedly assume they can’t possibly be a predator when I’ve had to deal with the knowledge of my potential to hurt people since I was roughly ten years old. I have at least the self-knowledge of “wow that’s a fucked up thing to be into” in common with every even moderately self-aware kinkster.

3) If at all possible, I'd like to keep becoming more emotionally self-aware, not less. This means that even if something fucking sets me off, I need to be able to look at whether it's actually A Really Harmful Thing, or whether my emotions are reacting out of my control. I've seen kinksters harrass and violate the boundaries of stim blogs in the past, I am aware of why DNIs exist, but just like with RPF, I've also realised that the problem is the harrasment instead of the pretext. Kinksters who have done fucking nothing don't deserve to be treated like their existence is harmful.

4) Rhetoric is king, rhetoric is king, rhetoric is king. The way things are talked about determines their nature. Rhetorically equating kink with bigotry only serves to shield bigoted kinksters, and cut non-bigoted kinksters off potential allies.

Ohhhhh man in the spirit of "I am not going to give bad posts notes, even just to respond to them", I'm gonna use my journal for The Purpose It Exists

and complain about a bad take I just saw

namely, a bad take inspired by the recent article about how the thin membranes between public and private spaces on the internet are causing children to stumble upon porn from kids' shows. Someone I follow reblogged a post saying that the obvious solution people are suggesting -- that parents teach their children responsible internet-usage and supervise them if necessary -- is not a good solution...

... because the OP has trust issues from their parents going through their internet history.

And, like, I'm sorry I guess? I'm sorry about your trust issues, but what do they have to do with kids needing healthy boundaries? If anything, I feel like that supports the point that parents should teach their kids about boundaries, because if your parents had adequately explained what you should do if you see something disturbing online instead of treating you like you had no right to privacy, you probably would have had much less adverse experiences online... right?

This treatment of parents taking responsibility for their kids' online habits being conflated with being a controlling helicopter parent is some prime responsibility avoidance in action, tbh. Just because your parents did a bad job with you, it doesn't mean that everyone else is now responsible for raising you. Learn to enforce your own boundaries like the rest of us, who just learned to click away when something disturbed us.

Look, just... eventually, we're all going to see or experience something that is going to disturb us. We are born with nothing, and need to learn everything, and that also includes learning about the unpleasant and harmful things we all genuinely wish didn't exist. And if you have parents who you don't trust and can't go to for support when that happens, that is genuinely rough. I know -- I practically raised myself, and I genuinely had some fucked-up ideas about how life worked because turns out a mentally ill teenager raising themselves is gonna make some mistakes.

But it's important to recognise that in that instance, it was your shitty parents who failed you (and possibly the person who sent you the thing that disturbed you, if it was done maliciously), not the person who made the thing you stumbled on. You can't just say "I don't know how to cope with this so you need to stop doing it". Telling other people to stop is not a coping mechanism you can sustain very far. This is why you learn boundaries -- learn to go "I never want to see this again -- please go do it somewhere else where I don't need to see it" or better yet, leave the space where people are doing it.

Not everywhere on the internet is for kids and we shouldn't act like it is. This is not just about porn of stuff kids watch (lest we forget, kids also watch stuff that is made for them and the rest of the audience) but also about other things kids aren't ready to deal with. (Graphic violence, for example. It's really convenient how everyone who talks about porn forgets about that.)

Ugh. Time to go watch some kitten videos until I stop being annoyed at being drafted to raise someone once they're already fully responsible for their own internet experience.

Talking about the goings on with my friend, it made me realise that if there's something I wish was better understood to be a conflict of needs, is that indulging people's fear-based behaviour is not an option for some people.

Being treated as a threat, being treated like you're a bomb that might go off, has just as much of an effect of putting anyone even a little more outspoken who gives a shit about how they treat people in walking-on-eggshells mode. We should be capable of sympathising with anxious people without indulging their coping mechanisms if those coping mechanisms are maladaptive and harmful. Jumping, flinching, being startled all signal things to the environment, and unless contextualised, the person doing that is ultimately responsible for how they're received.

Someone projecting their inferiority onto me and apologising a lot as a result is harmful for me because it fucks with my read of and expectations for that person. Someone treating me like I'm out to take advantage of them has the same effect. Someone treating me like I'm aggressive and dangerous is literally doing the exact same gaslighting thing that was done to crush my sense of self when I was younger. These are not value-neutral behaviours just because they're defensive.

Just because someone is behaving defensively because they think their needs will not be accommodated doesn't mean their defensive behaviour should go entirely unexamined. Just because someone expects to be mistreated doesn't give them a pass for treating people like they're personally responsible for that trauma.

Poor self-esteem needs to stop being treated as a pass for a lack of prosocial behaviour. You get treated the way you treat others, and nobody is under obligation to wrap their own issues up just so they can treat you better.