Defcon Peep

Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence, ICE raids, and isolation—in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood’s elementary school in 2014.

Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced, he chose what some might consider a radical approach for his writing and social-studies classes, weaving in concepts such as racism, classism, oppression, and prejudice. Barrett said it was vital to reject the oft-perpetuated narrative that society is fair and equal to address students’ questions and concerns about their current conditions. And Brighton Elementary’s seventh- and eighth-graders quickly put the lessons to work—confronting the school board over inequitable funding, fighting to install a playground, and creating a classroom library focused on black and Latino authors.

“Students who are told that things are fair implode pretty quickly in middle school as self-doubt hits them,” he said, “and they begin to blame themselves for problems they can’t control.”

Barrett’s personal observation is validated by a newly published study in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development that finds traditionally marginalized youth who grew up believing in the American ideal that hard work and perseverance naturally lead to success show a decline in self-esteem and an increase in risky behaviors during their middle-school years. The research is considered the first evidence linking preteens’ emotional and behavioral outcomes to their belief in meritocracy, the widely held assertion that individual merit is always rewarded.

“If you’re in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough doesn’t create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] made it,” said Erin Godfrey, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School. But for those marginalized by the system—economically, racially, and ethnically—believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences.

“If the system is fair, why am I seeing that everybody who has brown skin is in this kind of job? You’re having to think about that … like you’re not as good, or your social group isn’t as good,” Godfrey said. “That’s the piece … that I was trying to really get at [by studying] these kids.”

The findings build upon a body of literature on “system justification”—a social-psychology theory that believes humans tend to defend, bolster, or rationalize the status quo and see overarching social, economic, and political systems as good, fair, and legitimate. System justification is a distinctively American notion, Godfrey said, built on myths used to justify inequities, like “If you just work hard enough you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps … it’s just a matter of motivation and talent and grit.” Yet, as she and her colleagues discovered, these beliefs can be a liability for disadvantaged adolescents once their identity as a member of a marginalized group begins to gel—and once they become keenly aware of how institutional discrimination disadvantages them and their group.

“If you’re [inclined] to believe that … the system is fair, then you’re maybe going to accept stereotypes about you more easily.”

“It is a radical upheaval, a national reckoning with massive social and political implications,” says Traister. “Across classes, and races, we are seeing a wholesale revision of what female life might entail. We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.” So, we might summarize one trend as: “Independent Single Ladies on the Rise.” For more than forty years I have specialized in working with men. I’m seeing a disturbing trend of increased male irritability and anger, along with a rise in the depression and suicide rates for males. In doing research for my book, The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression, I developed a quiz that has now been taken by more than 60,000 men throughout the world. I’ve seen a disturbing trend where more and more men feel disconnected, disrespected, and angry. We see the anger acted out in violent attacks such as the ones we saw in Orlando and also in the rhetoric of presidential candidate Donald Trump. We also see it in a rise of male loneliness. Unfortunately, this is a common experience for an increasing number of men. Joiner concludes that “Men’s main problem is not self-loathing, stupidity, greed, or any of the legions of other things they’re accused of. The problem, instead, is loneliness; as they age, they gradually lose contact with friends and family, and here’s the important part, they don’t replenish them.” I see these two trends interweaving and reinforcing each other. As women become more independent and self-sufficient they are not willing to settle for a marriage where their needs are not met. They would rather get their social and emotional support from work associates, friends, and family. As men feel unable to meet women’s needs for economic, emotional, and social support, they feel more inadequate and distance themselves even more, often escaping into pornography, increased alcohol consumption, and compulsive work habits. I hear from many women that “there just aren’t any good men out there to marry” and they become even more self-sufficient and self-contained. I hear from men who say, “Women just don’t want intimacy anymore.” They become more fearful of reaching out to women and risking rejection.”

When are males going to collectively decide to change?

Go to therapy, make better friends, stop being rapist, develop some interests other than porn, develop better social skills, become more empathetic, gain knowledge on actually giving a woman an orgasm, repair their relationships with their family, read a book on social skills, take a class on social skills, stop having sexual Tourette’s, develop a life that a woman would actually say yes to if you propose.

For me I think it’s (in no order) - A+ sex and physical contact - Companionship, enjoyable conversations and time together - Emotional support - Reliability/dependability and these don’t seem like impossible things in general – some of my friends are 3 for 4.

But it seems like so many guys are not getting the “you’re not required anymore” message and understanding its ramifications. Then instead of making themselves desirable partners, they mostly react by just…getting mad and playing video games 24/7?

In fact, most of my friends, in lieu of any useful romantic partners around, are beginning to discuss forming these long-lasting social and economic bonds with each other instead of a single male romantic partner. Seems reasonable; that way everything’s sort of spread out. If two humans are better at surviving together, surely three to five would be better, and between the lot of us, we’re BOUND to figure out the companionship, romance, and sex stuff. And I can tell you for sure, that if a decent guy came around wanting in on this (ESP a cis guy, out of the sheer innovation of the concept), he’d be the goddamn belle of the ball. The only thing is that he’d be expected to add just as much support to the group as everyone else… and as the article pussyfoots around, that’s the exact goddamn problem. 

The kind of guys that are getting angry instead of just depressed are guys that feel obligated. Entitled. The men who were promised the world–which INCLUDED a submissive woman–and then never got it. Not romantically, not economically. 

There’s literally never been a plague of ace/aro/aroace men goddamn murdering people, this is not, as the article seems to be pushing, because these men ~don’t have a woman~ to do literally ALL their domestic and emotional and social labor for them. It’s because they never learned and can’t be bothered to learn how to do that labor themselves because they were PROMISED someone else to do it for them. Now they don’t have it, and still, instead of being honest and telling them the problem is internal and there IS hope and they CAN fix it and gain companionship (and letting them know they need emotional companionship! do you know how few men fucking realize that’s a THING they need and then don’t understand why they’re depressed all the time???) in this life, articles like this coddle them and then point the blame squarely at women for not being willing to be abused by emotionally stunted men anymore. So of course the men continue to blame women and society, when they’re told it’s women and society’s fault that they’re alone and miserable! 

I want 2018 to be the year women stop trying to appease men who have nothing to offer them but restraint from violence.

Men HAVE been taught how to make friends, how to self-care, how to be part of a community. They get access to the same damn TV shows and movies that we do. They attend the same schools, the same churches, apply for the same jobs. What they don’t get, is punished if they fail to take care of the people around them, starting in infancy.

And they think they’re being punished now, because they’ve been waited on their whole lives (literally, as in, “women have to wait for them, and adjust their schedules to fit around what men want to do”), and now… that’s not happening. Women are saying, “this is what I want to be doing. You don’t want that? Ok, shrug; I will do it by myself, or with my girlfriends. Bye boy.”

We’ll have to make it ourselves, and we’ll have to help each other make it. That’s why it is solarpunk. 

Some resources to consider creating or joining or doing:

Repair cafes - create or join your local repair cafe! Repair stuff, learn how to repair stuff, teach others how to repair stuff.

Map of Makerspaces - make some things! learn how to make some things! teach others how to make some things!

Community Garden Map (note that this is US-only, and not a complete list) - join a local community garden

Support your local farmers / local economy (US only link)

Support or create a local Food Not Bombs chapter

Support or create a local Food Not Lawns chapter

Grow food in 5 gallon buckets

Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity (as a bonus you can learn extremely practical skills)

Volunteer via 350.org to help the environment / the planet / the place we live and depend on

Excellent-and-still-growing wiki from reddit’s awesome r/zerowaste community - great resource to learn how to live more lightly on the earth

Spread the word about solarpunk, especially to engineering students. Show them projects like Open Source Ecology - Global Village Construction Set and Bridges for Prosperity 

Learn how to Patch a Hole, Mend a Seam, and Fix a Hem

Learn how to repair a hole in the sole of a shoe

Learn some basics on passive solar design - clever use of the sun can create extremely energy efficient homes and buildings. You can use these principles to save on energy bills, even if you’re renting.

Free USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision - cut down on personal food waste! Learn how to safely preserve food. Very useful if you suddenly harvest / purchase for crazy cheap in season / dumpster dive a ton of perishable food.

Donate to One Acre Fund, which provides training and capital to farmers (making them more productive and pulling them out of poverty) in various east African countries

Donate to Bridges to Prosperity, which provides technical expertise, money, and volunteers, to help local people build and maintain their own footbridges in extremely isolated rural areas 

joining r/solarpunk, and sharing links/ideas/art/music with the community. Also, upvoting stuff for greater visibility. There’s over 900 members!

Human psychology continues to be basically what I’d predict - while still being startling at the same time. Specifically, getting people to settle down in families is a shockingly good way to make them stop being dangerously antisocial:

It was the most elite unit we [ie: The Palestinian Liberation Organisation] had. The members were suicidal – not in the sense of religious terrorists who surrender their lives to ascend to heaven but in the sense that we could send them anywhere to do anything and they were prepared to lay down their lives to do it. No question. No hesitation. They were absolutely dedicated and absolutely ruthless.

“My host, who was one of Abu Iyad’s most trusted deputies, was charged with devising a solution. For months both men thought of various ways to solve the Black September problem, discussing and debating what they could possibly do, short of killing all these young men, to stop them from committing further acts of terror.

Finally they hit upon an idea. Why not simply marry them off? In other words, why not find a way to give these men – the most dedicated, competent, and implacable fighters in the entire PLO - a reason to live rather than to die? Having failed to come up with any viable alternatives, the two men put their plan in motion.“

“So approximately a hundred of these beautiful young women were brought to Beirut. There, in a sort of PLO version of a college mixer, boy met girl, boy fell in love with girl, boy would, it was hoped, marry girl. There was an additional incentive, designed to facilitate not just amorous connections but long-lasting relationships. The hundred or so Black Septemberists were told that if they married these women, they would be paid $3,000; given an apartment in Beirut with a gas stove, a refrigerator, and a television; and employed by the PLO in some nonviolent capacity. Any of these couples that had a baby within a year would be rewarded with an additional $5,000.

Both Abu Iyad and the future general worried that their scheme would never work. But, as the general recounted, without exception the Black Septemberists fell in love, got married, settled down, and in most cases started a family…the general explained, not one of them would agree to travel abroad, for fear of being arrested and losing all that they had – that is, being deprived of their wives and children. And so, my host told me, that is how we shut down Black September and eliminated terrorism. It is the only successful case that I know of.”

Months and months ago, I wrote a post about Tom Siddell - author of Gunnerkrigg Court - and his near-suicide. Among the responses to it was one calling me a shitty person and bad communicator. 

“Shitty person” I can understand. I mean, it’s not something I agree with, but it is a vague title that will inevitably be given to pretty much anyone who holds an opinion. The one that drew my interest, however, was “bad communicator”. Communication is something I’m deeply interested in; the post itself was about communication. To be called a bad communicator is kind of like walking up to a mathematician working on a chalkboard, saying “wow, you’re bad at math!” and walking away. That is to say, it’s not necessarily offensive, but it certainly raises questions. 

I privately asked him for further explanation, and for the most part his response was stuff I’m used to: saying that I’m too removed, that I lack empathy, and that I treat everything as a big tactical issue when most people are just doing what they feel like. However, along with that was the interesting statement that if I wanted people to listen to me, I shouldn’t have accused a large part of my audience of almost murdering someone. 

At the time, the criticism more or less made sense. As I thought about it more, though, I began to question it. I mean, first of all, I wasn’t accusing them of almost murdering someone, I was accusing them of almost voluntary manslaughtering someone. And second of all: was such an accusation necessarily disputable?

Think about the situation Tom Siddell was involved in: he made a Tweet about Louis Lane that sounded transphobic when taken out of context. People attacked him for it, trying to persuade others to join in the attacks or boycott the comic Tom makes his living off of. It’s not really arguable that they were consciously trying to hurt him. Since he suffers from depression, the attacks were enough to make him seriously consider killing himself. Had he gone through with it, that would pretty much be the definition of voluntary manslaughter. Functionally, it’s no different than a restraining chokehold killing someone whose neck can’t take it. 

When I make the statement that “Tumblr’s social justice community almost killed a guy”, it’s not an opinion; it’s an empirical truth. However, it’s important to recognize that it is not the only true statement I could have made.

Tom Siddell, despite knowing he was depressed, interacted with people in a public setting where his depression could easily be triggered.

This statement is also empirically true and cannot be disputed. However, this one manages to put the blame on Tom. He’s the one who endangered his life by insisting on working a stressful, public job that could potentially push him over the edge. 

Tom suffered from depression, meaning the stress and drama of social interaction that would make most people sad could potentially drive him to suicide. 

Here is another empirically true statement - a rather tactful one that puts all the blame on his mental illness. From this angle, neither him nor his detractors would be made out as responsible for his death. 

Tom made a statement that upset a minority group and then went on to guilt them by saying their criticism almost pushed him to suicide.

Now this one is neat in that it creatively spins Tom as the attacker. Like the others it is still empirically true. It’s not a misleading lie; even if you know all the facts, this is still true. However, it’s miles away from my equally true statement of “Tumblr’s social justice community almost killed a guy”. 

The reason I am bringing this up is because it’s important to this post to establish why I chose the particular phrasing that put blame on Tumblr. If you read my blog, or the posts I make on any forum I visit, they’re about how to do things. I talk about the techniques I use to make stuff, or the way your actions can affect other people. Even when my grandmother died, I exploited those emotions into a post about how you could write realistic death scenes. I want you to be able to do things. 

When I talk about Tom Siddell’s near-suicide, I don't care that it wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t have depression. I don't care that he chose to say things that hurt other people. All I care about is what you and I can do; I care about the angle in which we are responsible for the events that transpire. I care about the angle that empowers us. The one we can use to make a difference.

And after a fourteen paragraph intro, that’s what I want to talk about: empowerment.

Empowerment (for real, now)

An important thing to realize is that any time something bad happens, we are all partially responsible. Like, imagine someone getting mugged in an alley. The mugger made a conscious choice to commit a crime against a victim. The victim, however, also made a conscious choice not to carry pepper spray or a gun, which might have prevented the robbery from succeeding. The person walking along the street makes a conscious choice not to investigate the sounds she hears in the alley, and even the guy sitting at home watching TV made a conscious choice to vote for the candidate who wanted to cut the police budget.

From a legal perspective, the mugger is accountable for anything bad that happens in this event - after all, he’s the one who broke the law and instigated the whole thing, and he is the only one who had a 100% chance of preventing it. However, any one of the people involved in this still could have prevented it. They all had the power - or at least potential - to do so.

If I was trying to prevent muggings from happening, my angle would vary depending who I am talking to. To an ex-convict, I would emphasize the control he has over the situation: ways he could make a living other than robbery. To a potential victim, I would emphasize self-defense and preventative measures. To a potential bystander I would emphasize the importance of never assuming someone else will call 911, and to a voter I would emphasize the importance of security cameras and patrolling officers. I want to prevent this thing from happening, so I am going to take the angle that empowers people to stop it.

The big problem I have with a lot of rhetoric and expectations - especially on Tumblr - is that they are predominantly geared toward empowering the opposition.

Like, what good would come from me saying “remember that time Tom Siddell’s depression almost killed him?”. You can't do anything about the fact that Tom is depressed; all you can change are your actions toward him. To do that, it is important to understand how your actions affect him. Here’s a hint: they almost killed him.

To make a difference, you need control. Part of that means recognizing what control you have. Rhetoric that emphasizes a group's lack of control accomplishes nothing more than alleviating guilt. Convincing yourself that you are powerless means you don’t have to feel guilty knowing you could have prevented something.

I've written about this phenomenon before, but it was in the context of one’s own perceptions - convincing ourselves we are guiltless for the bad things that transpire. However, it bothers me that disempowering rhetoric is something we very actively push onto others - often under the guise of social justice. In many cases, it’s something we’ve come to expect - when something bad happens, we want to read about it in a way where we're not responsible. 

If you don’t get what I mean, look at this Tumblr post that was going around a few weeks ago, comparing Gone Home and The Stanley Parable:

Two games came out in 2013 based almost entirely on walking around a building and listening to voices. One of these was met with a barrage of accusations that it wasn’t really a game, and one was not. One of these was also about a young gay woman, and one was not.

Remember how I showed all the different ways you could describe the Tom Siddell situation to place the blame on different people, and how all of them were technically true? On the surface this post looks like social justice, calling attention to inequality in the games industry, but it’s literally the one angle you could take to blame all of Gone Home’s criticism on the fact it had a gay female character.

Like, how about we discuss the fact that Dear Esther, a game about a straight male character, received all the same “not really a game” criticisms that Gone Home did.

Let’s talk about the fact that The Stanley Parable was a story specifically targeted toward gamers, deconstructing the idea of following a set path. Why don’t we mention that it had a nonlinear plot, or the amazing audience connection it developed?

Let’s talk about how Gone Home was yet another Tragic Lesbian story about forbiddden romance, a cliche so overplayed it has a place on The Worst Muse. 

Or how about we talk about Mighty Jill Off, a game about lesbians, made by a trans woman, and released to critical acclaim? 

Of all the possible comparisons that could be drawn between Gone Home and The Stanley Parable, and all the explanations we could give for the latter receiving less criticism, what is gained by blaming it on the female main character? Who does that empower? What message does that send to a soulless market researcher who is scouring social media to discern what sort of game will sell well? What message does it send to a new indie developer who needs to make a successful game to survive? Hell, what message does it send to a young girl who wants to get into the games’ industry but doesn’t have the upper-middle-class luxury of pursuing an education that won’t necessarily pay off her tuition?

Fuck that noise, is what I’m saying! If you want to help a group, take the angle that will empower them, emphasizing their innate value and what they can achieve, not the angle that will make them feel even more disadvantaged and hopeless. These are the sort of tactics that are used in wartime to make enemies surrender or desert; we should not be using them on people we want to help. We shouldn’t be trusting people who use them.

And actually, a more important question: when people do this stuff, why don’t we view it as misogyny? 

Like… blaming a sexist statement on an external factor doesn’t make it less sexist. A person who pushes the idea that a game with a female protagonist can’t become successful because the game industry is so male-dominated is still pushing the idea that a game with a female protagonist can’t become successful. Blaming it on an external factor doesn’t change that. 

If anything, it’s reminiscent of biotruths - this idea that something’s not actually bigoted if it’s backed up with “fact”. Only, rather than justifying our statements with biology, we justify them with social observations. When we see a game like Portal get critical acclaim despite having a cast entirely consisting of nonsexualized female characters, we don’t take it as a refutation of the idea that the games industry is horribly biased against female characters. Instead, we try to explain it off as an anomaly - saying that its excellent design made up for its female protagonist, or that it would’ve been even more popular with a male one. We use the exact same rhetoric a flagrant misogynist would use to dismiss people like Marie Curie or Jane Goodall, claiming that their femaleness was a liability they managed to overcome.

And like… why is that okay? What is with this emphasis on femininity being a liability? Why don’t we talk about marketing benefits in making game characters that stand out from the norm? Why don’t we talk about the 47% of the human population so few developers are directly catering toward?  I’ve seen tens of thousands of people reblogging posts griping about how female-centric games get less marketing attention, but I’ve personally never seen anyone talking about these tens of thousands of people here right now who would buy a high-budget game with a female or gay or trans protagonist. 

This isn’t even limited to sexism. Even when we’re not in a group, we talk about all the things racial minorities can’t do because of white people, or all the things sexual minorities can’t do because of straight people, and rather than talking about the things they can do and how it can be used to their advantage, we just leave it at this message of hopelessness. We go to extensive lengths to empower these group’s enemies, but do almost nothing for the people we purportedly care about.

And tying this back to the earlier parts, is it really just an avoidance of guilt? Do we just want to avoid the knowledge that we could have made things better if we had acted more strategically? Or is there something more malicious? Are there people out there, right now, suppressing groups by empowering their enemies, defending their bigotry as being veritable “sociotruths”? 

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is a thing people do. It’s a thing people do in wars. It’s a thing people do in business. It’s even a thing people do when playing games - bombarding their enemies with a feeling of hopelessness until they weaken and give up. We all understand the excitement of making everyone at the table fold when you secretly have a shitty hand. When you leave a game and enter the real world, your enemies don’t suddenly get dumber.

The people who oppose you want you to feel disempowered. They want you to feel hopeless, and outclassed, and like no matter what you do, it won’t matter. They want you to spread a message of disempowerment, and to take offense at the idea that you have strength that you are not using. Most of all, they want you to get fucked over, and you need to know this so you don’t play into their plans. 

The world is not kind, but it’s okay because you’re awesome. You need to understand that.

If you feel like you are disadvantaged in an endeavor, you can overcome it. It might not be easy, and you might have to get a little strategic about it, but that’s okay, because there are a lot of resources on doing shit like that. Some people start in the hardest starting position, and that's not fair, but it means that you need to do everything you can to stack the odds in your favor. You need to look past the people who tell you things are hopeless, or encourage you to spread that message of hopelessness, because chances are they have an agenda. Play better than your enemies. Have an underhanded agenda of your own. 

I’m a writer. I write comics about a sad cat. I describe my thoughts and methods in excruciating longwinded detail so you can learn from it. If I do something that works well, you can copy me; if I do something that backfires horribly, you can avoid repeating my mistakes. I will get criticism for being heartless and manipulative and cold and tactical, but I’m okay with that because I don’t want to leave you with a piece of vague advice like “write from your heart and things will work out”. I know that, unless you are a wealthy white cisgendered male with perfect industry connections, that isn’t going to be enough. 

It means you will have to take take blame for your missteps. Understanding the power your actions have means understanding that bad things are partially due to your own actions - or lack thereof - and are not solely a factor of external circumstances. When you get mugged, you’ll think “I could’ve stopped this if I brought my pepper spray”. When your project fails, you’ll think “it would’ve worked if I did things differently”. Sometimes, you’ll accidentally almost kill Tom Siddell. This is normal. Recognize it, because that’s the only way you’ll keep it from happening again.

You are almost never truly helpless, and by proxy you are almost never truly blameless. It’s a worldview not everyone is comfortable with, but one I stand by nonetheless.

Once when I was younger, I was at a little clinic to get a flu shot. A teenage boy and his father were sitting next to me in the waiting room. The teenage boy was writhing in pain.

We were in that waiting room a very long time before he was called in. A while after he was called in, an ambulance arrived, taking him away on a stretcher to the nearest hospital equipped to perform surgeries. A nurse I asked later said it was a very inflamed appendix. His father was following the stretcher, and looked me in the eyes on the way out.

I don’t know if the boy was okay, but I still think about it sometimes. I knew the signs of appendicitis. I knew how to differentiate it from a stomach ache or regular nausea. I sat in that waiting room for minutes and minutes watching him writhe, his father putting a gentle hand on his back for comfort the boy could barely acknowledge. I never thought to look at the signs, or that it might have been something serious and that I should’ve stood up immediately and gone over to them and said that, yes, this boy needed to get to a proper hospital as soon as possible. I just sat there, watching, and I still remember the look his father gave me as they left.

I feel responsible for whatever happened to him. It’s not a wholly bad feeling though, because it carries with it a certain level of empowerment. I know that if I’m ever in that position again, I’ll know what to do. I’ll know there’s something I can do, and that I’ll be prepared to act. Next time, I won’t miss it. 

Mission in Hanamura where everything and everyone is compromised.

Bonus follow-up at Shimada Castle:

Hmm. So, I’m not sure how you came to me to ask this question, because I don’t think I’ve discussed it with any recency.

But, I suppose it’s worth being upfront with people.

Pedophilia, the compulsive attraction to prepubescent children, is a severe psychological disorder. Like any severe psych disorder, it tends to be criminalized and conflated with abuse, whether that abuse is occurring or not.

In the same way that having violent impulses doesn’t make you a murderer, being a “MAP” (”Morally aligned pedophile” or “minor attracted person” depending on who you talk to) doesn’t make you a child molester. 

Most child molesters are actually opportunists, looking for an easy victim, not people with an actual long standing attraction to children.

So, pedophiles are severely mentally ill people.

Unlike other mental illnesses, however, tumblr hasn’t quite caught on to the fact that pedophilia is not inherently violent, and that pedophiles can receive treatment that enables them to never harm a child. (Of course, in the broader culture, all mental illnesses are treated with immense stigma, but pedophilia remains one of the most heavily stigmatized there, as well.)

Unfortunately, that treatment is widely unavailable.

Why?

Because of the constant onslaught of people calling all pedophiles child molesters, which prevents them from seeking help. In many states in the US, going to a therapist and saying, “I have never acted on it, but I have a persistent attraction to children, help me control this,” is considered a criminal act. It is a literal thought crime.

Now, this makes me sound very concerned for the psychological welfare of very sick adults. I am, that’s true. However, the most critical, most important thing that makes “calling out” non-offending pedophiles morally abhorrent?

It puts children at risk.

At severe risk.

Firstly, most obviously, preventing sick people with violent urges from getting treatment usually means those urges are going to manifest. That alone is sufficient cause to make the fundamentally ableist nature of these “callouts” simultaneously an act of child endangerment.

Secondly, creating an environment where the only way to survive as a person with these impulses and attractions is to hide- because acknowledging them is liable to literally get you killed? That teaches people to hide. It literally incentivizes the exact skills that cause predation.

Basically, telling pedophiles you’re going to murder them in their houses means that they learn how to be secretive, quiet, well hidden, easily ignored. And those skills in combination with the horrible mental strain of having an untreated psych disorder will combine to create people who don’t just predate, but who predate effectively, who don’t get caught. 

Callout culture and the stigmatization of disease literally makes child molesters better at child molesting.

Thirdly, it creates a false sense of security. If you’re spending all your time hunting [nonoffending, mentally ill people] then you don’t have to worry about anyone else, because you’re ~*~protecting children~*~. Even though the majority of child molesters are opportunists with no attraction to children who just want an easy victim, or are pubescent teens who have limited ability to understand consequences (estimates vary but between 40 and 50% of all CSA is COCSA involving adolescents and younger children).

That means people don’t learn important CSA prevention techniques like identifying grooming behaviours, teaching children what behaviour is and is not okay form an adult or older child, and learning how to listen to children when they tell you about discomfort or dangerous experiences, or recognizing trauma in children.

Basically, “calling out” nonoffenders is not just ineffectual, it’s endangering lives. The lives the the adults they are accusing of criminal acts, yes, but also the lives of the huge numbers of abused children who aren’t being targeted in this ludicrously specific, nonmajority way.

It’s fucked on every level, basically.

For further research on the subject, I highly recommend this set of studies

http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/43785879/Stigmatization_of_People_with_Pedophilia20160316-14957-1lex72u.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1469656333&Signature=W3wM3mr%2BShSZlszEIFqVtKFZ3x8%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DStigmatization_of_people_with_pedophilia.pdf

As well as looking up information regarding the german Project Dunkelfeld pedophilia treatment and management centers.

Additionally, this post provides a sort of ludicrous number of source citations as well, and as ridiculous as I always feel about saying it, the Cracked article isn’t half bad either.

*wades cautiously into the wank-infested waters of Fan Discourse, pulls out megaphone*

AS FANFIC IS PRODUCED FOR FREE, IT’S KIND OF SHITTY TO COMPLAIN ABOUT ITS LITERARY QUALITY OR THE FREQUENCY OF UPDATES. THESE ARE COMMERCIAL EXPECTATIONS THAT CAN’T BE FAIRLY APPLIED TO WORKS CREATED AT AND FOR NO COST.

THAT BEING SAID:

AS FANFIC IS PUBLISHED FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION, IT’S KIND OF DISINGENUOUS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT READERS HAVING CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE CONTENT. CRITICISM IS A LITERARY REACTION THAT CAN’T BE FAIRLY DENIED ON THE BASIS OF WHETHER OR NOT THE WORK COST MONEY.

THAT BEING SAID:

REGARDLESS OF WHETHER A WORK IS COMMERCIAL OR FANNISH, GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO SEND HATE OR CRITICISM DIRECTLY TO THE AUTHOR IS A DICK MOVE. YOU CAN DISCUSS THE CONTENT, MERITS AND/OR FAILINGS OF A GIVEN WORK WITHOUT THE NEED TO MAKE THEM AWARE OF YOUR FEELINGS. EVEN WHEN A WORK IS CREATED COMMERCIALLY, CREATORS ARE NOT BEHOLDEN TO THE PREFERENCES OF INDIVIDUAL FANS, NOT LEAST OF ALL BECAUSE THIS IS A PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE STANDARD FOR ANYONE TO MEET. SOME WRITERS ARE HAPPY TO BE MADE AWARE OF CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM IN WHATEVER FORM, BUT MANY EXPRESS A PREFERENCE NOT TO SEE ANY, OR PREFER TO DO SO ONLY AT CERTAIN TIMES. IF YOU’RE NOT SURE, ASK FIRST. THIS IS BASIC COURTESY, BOTH PERSONALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY.

THAT BEING SAID:

SOME INTERACTIVE ONLINE SPACES - SUCH AS AO3, GOODREADS AND TUMBLR - ARE FAIRLY USED AND INHABITED BY BOTH CREATORS AND READERS. AS THESE SITES ENCOURAGE READER RESPONSES AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT VIA COMMENTS, REVIEWS AND REBLOGS AS A BASIC FUNCTION, IT’S GROSSLY UNREALISTIC FOR CREATORS POSTING IN THESE SPACES TO EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER ZERO CRITICISM EVER. SOMEONE EXPRESSING ABUSE OR UNWANTED COMMENTARY DIRECTLY TO A CREATOR IS NOT THE SAME AS READER/READER ENGAGEMENT TAKING PLACE WHERE THE CREATOR CAN SEE IT. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY AS TO WHERE THAT LINE EVENTUALLY BLURS, BUT THE POINT IS THAT IT DOES BLUR AS A MATTER OF COURSE, AND THAT THIS IS A FEATURE RATHER THAN A BUG - ONE THAT WE ALL HAVE TO LEARN TO NAVIGATE.

THAT BEING SAID:

THE FACT THAT SOMEONE HAS WRITTEN SOMETHING THAT YOU FIND QUESTIONABLE, IMMORAL OR OTHERWISE AWFUL DOESN’T MEAN THE CREATOR SHOULD LOSE THE RIGHT TO CREATE MORE THINGS, OR THAT SUCH WORKS OUGHT TO BE ILLEGAL. YOU ARE WITHIN YOUR RIGHTS TO OFFER UP CRITICISM OF THE WORK ITSELF, THE TROPES IT EMPLOYS AND THE CONTEXT OF THEIR USAGE, BUT THE PROBLEM WITH ADVOCATING FOR THE TOTAL BAN OF PARTICULAR TYPES OF CONTENT IS THAT FICTION IS INHERENTLY LIMINAL. GIVEN THAT DEPICTION DOES NOT EQUAL ENDORSEMENT AND THE FACT THAT THE IMPACT OF A NARRATIVE IS ULTIMATELY DETERMINED BY THE INDIVIDUAL READER, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BAN ALL STORIES WHICH USE “IMMORAL” DEVICES UNCRITICALLY WITHOUT SIMULTANEOUSLY BANNING STORIES WHICH EXAMINE AND ACKNOWLEDGE THEM IN DIFFERENT WAYS, AND THAT’S BEFORE YOU TRY TO GET A ROOMFUL OF PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, CULTURES AND BACKGROUNDS TO AGREE ON WHAT “IMMORAL” MEANS IN FICTIONAL CONTEXTS IN THE FIRST PLACE, WHICH DEFINITION IS NEVER GOING TO OVERLAP PERFECTLY WITH WHAT “IMMORAL” MEANS TO THE SAME PEOPLE IRL.

THAT BEING SAID:

THE FACT THAT FANFIC IS FREQUENTLY WRITTEN IN THE SPIRIT OF NARRATIVE COUNTERCULTURE DOESN’T STOP IT FROM CONTRIBUTING TO THE SPREAD OF TOXIC TROPES OR STEREOTYPES THAT ARE ALSO PRESENT IN MAINSTREAM CULTURE AND/OR COMMERCIAL MEDIA. DEPICTION IS NOT ENDORSEMENT, BUT IT IS PERPETUATION, AND THE FACT THAT SOMETHING WAS WRITTEN FOR FREE DOES NOT MAGICALLY BALANCE ITS POTENTIAL NEGATIVE IMPACT AT EITHER AN INDIVIDUAL OR COLLECTIVE LEVEL. WRITING FIC IS OFTEN DESCRIBED AS A HOBBY, BUT AS IT IS LARGELY A SHARED ACTIVITY UNDERTAKEN WITHIN A DEDICATED COMMUNITY, IT IS A PUBLIC HOBBY, AND CAN THEREFORE POTENTIALLY IMPACT MORE PEOPLE THAN JUST THE INDIVIDUAL WRITER. KNITTING IS ALSO A HOBBY IN WHICH INDIVIDUALS CAN INVEST A GREAT DEAL OF TIME AND FEELING - AND, INDEED, MONEY - BUT IF SOMEONE IN YOUR KNITTING CIRCLE STARTED BRINGING IN SWEATERS THEY’D MADE EMBLAZONED WITH RACIST SLOGANS, THE IMPACT OF THIS ACT ON OTHER GROUP MEMBERS WOULD NOT BE AMELIORATED BY THE REMINDER THAT ‘IT’S A HOBBY’. IF THIS IS A VIABLE DEFENCE, IT IS A DEFENCE THAT CAN BE USED EQUALLY BY THOSE WHO WANT TO ACT WITHOUT CONSIDERATION FOR OTHERS IN THEIR COMMUNITY AND THOSE WHO WISH TO ENJOY THAT COMMUNITY WITHOUT FEAR OF BEING PERSONALLY DISPARAGED, AND IS THEREFORE LESS A DEFENCE IN EITHER CASE THAN A STATEMENT OF FACT WITH NO ACTUAL BEARING ON HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

IN CONCLUSION:

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOOD MANNERS, PERSONAL POLITICS AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS A COMPLEX ONE. IN THE WHOLE OF HUMAN HISTORY, NOBODY HAS YET SOLVED IT TO THE PERFECT SATISFACTION OF ANYONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES, AND WHILE THAT DOESN’T MEAN THERE ISN’T A BETTER SOLUTION TO BE HAD IN THE FUTURE, I GUARANTEE THAT NEITHER CREATIVE ISOLATIONISM NOR BLANKET CENSORSHIP WILL GET US THERE, BECAUSE THE ONE THING BOTH THOSE POSITIONS SHARE IS FEAR OF CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH A PERSON WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU, WHICH IS THE ONE THING YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED IN ORDER TO PROGRESS A DISCUSSION PAST WHATEVER STALLED YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE.  

I don’t know exactly when or how the discourse around cultural appropriation got expanded to encompass trauma survivors. The logic seems to go like this: we’re all more or less in agreement that it’s wrong to lay claim to the racially specific experiences of marginalised groups to which you don’t belong. Surely the same thing applies to trauma: if you don’t share personally in the experience, you’ve got no right to talk about it. Leave those stories to the people who’ve actually lived them. Stay in your lane.

But here’s the thing: survivorhood is not a stable identity marker in the way that something like race is. ‘Appropriation’ is only a relevant concept when the experience we’re talking about is an exclusive one. It is impossible for, say, a non-Chinese person to ever become ethnically Chinese, or to understand from personal experience what it is like to live as a Chinese person. By contrast it is very, very possible for a non-survivor to become a survivor. That’s … actually kind of the whole point of trauma, you know? The ‘in-group’ is an open and ever-changing roll call that spreads itself out across all demographics. People can and do become members of the group overnight.

Given those circumstances, there’s something very ugly about the idea of trying to claim ownership over the universal human experience of trauma. People who’ve never lived through trauma themselves have a legitimate stake in trauma narratives because they’re aware – assuming they possess normal, adaptive levels of foresight and caution – that it could just as easily happen to them as anybody.

How do you identify a person as a survivor or a non-survivor? Trauma is an inherently subjective experience; a person can suffer catastrophic psychological damage from an incident that a different person, under different circumstances, might completely brush off.  There are people who’ve survived extremely painful and dangerous ordeals but who wouldn’t dream of identifying with any kind of survivor ‘community’. There are people who’ve been legitimately traumatised by an ordeal so small and strange that they feel like impostors if they call it ‘trauma’ at all. There are people with second-hand trauma, people who’ve survived ‘near miss’ incidents, people who’ve lived relatively safe lives but still live in fear of the endless ‘what-ifs’. All of those people have perfectly good reasons to want to talk about trauma, to share stories about it, to create their own narratives about what trauma means and how they should interact with it. They have no moral obligation to defer to any old stranger who comes along claiming superior trauma credentials.

Locking people out of conversations unless they clear some arbitrary bar of ‘traumatised enough’ isn’t just misguided – it’s damaging and offensive. It others people with traumatic personal histories and creates an artificial gulf between ‘survivors’ and ‘non-survivors’. It discourages empathy by treating trauma as something that happens to a distinct group of People Who Aren’t You. It pressures people who’ve lived through trauma to embrace the abuse that’s been inflicted on them as a defining aspect of their identity. It demands that people who are already suffering subject themselves to painful scrutiny over whether their experiences have been bad enough to ‘count’.

Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:

Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)

And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography

I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet

I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it

Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society

It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free

And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)

Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places

I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women

Just think about the hot-button issues in the fannish community, the topics that consistently and reliably get people worked up into a lather, the themes that provoke the nastiest conflicts and inspire the most dedicated resistance movements. Think about the fights that are most likely to spill out over their cyber boundaries and start affecting people in the real world - in public harassment at cons, in doxxing and ‘outing’ to family and employers, in malicious legal allegations.

It’s about sex. It’s always about sex. 

From the constant tantrums over ‘problematic’ shipping to the righteous doxxing of ‘pedophiles’ (which in current tumblr parlance means anyone who draws or writes canonically underage characters in romantic or erotic scenarios), fandom’s big efforts at moral reform always seem to revolve around restricting and controlling the sexual expression of the majority-women community. You won’t meet many people who stay up past their bedtime to scream at strangers on the internet about unethical portrayals of non-sexual violence - unless, of course, they suspect the women involved in its creation are getting off on it. You’ll struggle to find an anti blog dedicated to the insidious social ills of torture whump fic, or goopy hurt-comfort where all manner of human suffering is put on display for the viewer’s enjoyment. The purity crew dress up their agenda as a desire for collective self-improvement and raised moral standards, but they don’t seem too worried about aspects of public morality that don’t somehow tie back into sex. What they’re upset about is the same thing conservative minds have been upset about since basically the dawn of time - there are women out there in the world doing icky sex things without the permission of their communities.

And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ - they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ - they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.

The core assumption underlying all of it - an assumption that I’m sure our puritan forebears would find deeply comforting - is that women’s sexual expression is a matter of public concern, and that women are directly responsible for upholding the moral standards of their communities by restricting themselves to a narrow repertoire of publicly controlled, socially condoned sexual outlets. Anything beyond that repertoire is a grave moral breach.

The fanfiction community is overwhelmingly comprised of women*, and the push to be critical of fanfic comes from within the community, so it is reasonable to infer that the people pushing self-censorship are women. 

I have seen a lot of anger from people calling for censorship, and anger is often the result of fear. It is not unheard of for the calls for censorship to be accompanied by personal accounts of sexual violence, etc., which reinforces the conclusion that this anger is driven by fear.

These women calling for censorship are very much part of our community. While I vehemently disagree with them, I want to acknowledge their place in our community, and I want to respect their anger (which I see as pain and fear). I would ask, “How can we address the fear that writing/reading fictionalized sexual violence perpetuates actual sexual violence?” 

We can explain the remarkable similarities between sex-negative feminism and paternalistic control of women’s sexuality, which the posters above have done admirably well. We could offer the conclusions of academic research that show there is no evidence that suggests that sexually violent material as seen in fanfiction contributes to the occurrence of actual sexual violence, if any such research exists. We can offer research and anecdotal data that show that fictionalized sexual violence is often very effective in helping victims of sexual violence process or cope with their experiences.

Ultimately, though, I don’t see any of those strategies being effective when dealing with someone who is currently experiencing a strong anxiety/panic response to something they perceive as dangerous. If we understand the underlying motivations for censorship in such a way that instead of seeing someone controlling and puritanical we see instead a person having a strongly phobic response, then the most effective way of dealing with calls for censorship has to be found in the answer to this question: “How do we compassionately respond to someone calling for censorship without acceding to the demand or escalating the situation?”

I don’t have an answer to that question; empathy isn’t really my area.

I have phobias and squicks and have experienced a trauma or two in my time, like pretty much everyone. I too find certain kinds of fiction and art greatly distressing, like pretty much everyone. It’s not a creator’s responsibility to change their creative practice to accommodate that distress. If a writer or artist given the standard warnings, or Chooses Not to Warn – well, I’m a grown-ass adult who knows there’s all kinds of Stuff Out There on the Interwebz. Navigation is on me.

So in my view, the answer to your question is that such demands must simply be met with polite, stonewalling refusal. (And with less-polite refusal when the demands mutate, as they inevitably seem to these days, into harassment and bullying.)

One of the reasons I have little patience for this is that fandom TAGS, fandom is at the absolute cutting edge of tag use. And untagged material is definitely a thing that exists, but its much, much easier to avoid distressing material in a fandom setting than nearly anywhere else because of tagging. And darkfic writers are at the bleeding edge of that. I don’t read darkfic, but I’ve sought it out specifically to grab tag-use from, for serious. And tagging has a less discussed second effect. It indicates authorial awareness. If I read a fic tagged with noncon then I can have very little doubt that the author is aware that the nonconc seens are in fact, nonconsensual, because they tagged it and told me so. 

With our focus on triggers in the community, we sometimes overlook the criticism that writers are somehow endorsing whatever issue the critic has a problem with – often non-con. Fanfic isn’t a commercial that sells a product. It’s fiction, a story peopled with fictional characters, not actual people. It gives voice to the unheard.

I don’t think of my readers as sponges just soaking up what they read without awareness, and the comments I get on my fic suggest they aren’t. They engage with the characters and critically with the narrative. They are well aware of power imbalances and abusive behavior. They don’t just accept it or romanticize it.

So I think we have two different issues here. There are those who are legitimately concerned about triggering and tags address that issue. Readers can actively take control by using tags and avoiding what triggers them.

Holy shit, if I was eight years younger and wandering into fandom for the first time, I can guarantee that the culture right now would’ve fucked me up and ground me down and taken away all my healthy outlets.

Picture: you are a girl at the tender young age of mumbledyteen. Up until this point you have been taught that all dark thoughts are literally hand-delivered into your head by the devil, and that the only correct method of dealing with negativity is to ignore them and pray harder. Concentrate on what is good and righteous and pure to the exclusion of all else, this is how you be a good person.

You are also a fully-functioning human being, one who can feel stressed or lonely or angry or any number of bad things. Mostly, with emotions that are still working themselves out, you feel this rumbling, white-hot white noise under everything, all the time. Sometimes it rolls in like a thunderstorm and everything else gets drowned out, and sometimes it’s only quietly muttering in the distance. Either way it’s always there, and the sound shreds uncomfortably at the inside of your brain.

When you were younger, before you were in charge of your own media consumption, your brain would shred up a myriad of saccharine stories to try and match the noise of the shredder in your head. Bad things happening, people getting hurt, characters trapped in unhealthy relationships of all kinds.

Fanfiction, the product of a hundred thousand other mumbledyteens whose brains are all screaming the same way, makes something in your brain go ping. 

Unfortunately, if the planet had ever been united on any single message, it was probably that no matter how you feel: 1) your feelings weren’t unique 2) they didn’t matter 3) they didn’t matter because they weren’t unique, they were shared among millions of hysterical, worthless teenaged girls just like you.

Fandom was confirmation of the first, but (with some hiccups along the way) outright rejection of the last two. Fuck you, our feelings do matter, and this is a story just for us.

A disclaimer: these aren’t good stories, otherwise they wouldn’t have to be defended. Their flavor of topic is not within societally acceptable bounds. Fictional characters have sex and get tortured and raped and abused, but their screaming harmonizes with the pitch of the shredder when it’s burrowing deepest.

As a teenager I never thought that my feelings were important enough to deal with, but these stories let me look at them sideways. Audience catharsis is the whole point of tragedy, after all.

And hell, these days I’m a happy, healthy adult who barely even has the urge to go looking for whump fic when I’ve had a bad week. I’m not going to forget just how much bad stuff that fic helped me air out, though, not ever. (Not to mention that thanks to all of those abuse!fics, I can recognize an unhealthy relationship at 500 paces, even if the fictional abuse was depicted as something loving and romantic. Abusers in real life don’t go around with helpful warning tags on their sleeves anyway.)

But holy shit, can you imagine if I’d found fandom as it is today.

Yes, your church is right, your family is right. Horrible things in stories are only there because they were written by horrible people, and they’re only popular because horrible people read them. The very concepts they address corrupt everything they touch.

That shredder in your head, the one that takes innocent cartoons but then shits out sadness and mayhem? That’s disgusting, you’re disgusting. How dare you think about minors having underaged sex, you minor? How dare you consider another person getting hurt? Your feelings don’t matter, they aren’t unique, they’re shared with all kinds of worthless shitbags just like you.

Every ounce of what you read and write and enjoy is going to be weighed for sin and tested for purity. You know, just like the rest of your life, except this time there’s no deity who’s handing out second chances.

Maybe that’s what bothers me most about all of this. It’s the same petty fandom bullshit as always, but “you’re wrong for liking a ship because IT WILL NEVER BE CANON” is a hell of a lot easier to laugh off when you’re young than “you’re wrong for liking a ship because YOU’RE AN ABUSIVE PEDOPHILE AND IF SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS IT’S YOUR FAULT FOR PERPETUATING IT.”

My fault, my bad thoughts, no outlet for any of them. The message to repress all the bad things so I can look like a good person, but my brain is so full of unprocessed shit that it’s solidified. Nobody actually saved any real children, but my brain sure is getting a second dose of fucked-up.

Are the people getting attacked going to be okay, will they be able to go and address their braingremlins somewhere else? I’d also ask if the people doing the attacking are okay, with all of the denial and repression they must deal with, but it seems like they’ve got venting pretty well handled by taking it out on strangers. 

Hey, c’mon, calm down friends. I bet I’ve read a story that’s got a character screaming at just the same pitch you are.