quick sparrows

#2019 commission for @quicksparrows >:) 

mercykills/ hallerweens 

me, 15 years old w 3 children and smallpox:

What makes the “Queer theory” we see today noticeably dissimilar from the 1990’s is the rise of cynicism and nihilism among people pushing queer theory in the academy for the past… 13 or so years. An edgelord phase, so to speak. The greatest work of queer theory to me is “Epistemology of the Closet” by Eve Sedgwick. One the worst is “No Future” by Lee Edelman, which highlights the nihilism streak.

The fixation on “inclusitivity” and queerness sort of being a grab bag of identities that straight people can cloak themselves in to feel oppressed and have moral authority on demand is largely a ~2010’s invention. Straight people were interested in queer theory before of course but this is where we really begin to see “Being weird makes you queer” types of things. Headlines about “if a woman pegs her man that makes you queer” hilarity. Queerness quite explicitly being reduced to “you are oppressed if you don’t identify as straight” and valorizing minoritarian identities.

“Everyone lies: ‘Oh, getting old is terrible.’ What the fuck are they talking about? It’s so great! Let me count the ways. It takes until you’re 40 for you to have enough money to buy anything—like a bunch of weird chairs, that thing for my cat, the stuff for the web comic. You can’t afford a comic made of tiny things when you’re in your 20s. You need to get to a point in your life when you’ve made connections in your community, and you can do fun artistic projects, and you can buy a couple of movie chairs and have them sent to your apartment. That’s what it means to be 40. You just do whatever the hell you want. It’s awesome! People say, ‘Oh, being in your 20s is the best.’ Is it? Because I found it very anxiety producing, and sad, and kind of lonely. I feel none of those things now. Life is awesome. And then they say, ‘Oh, you know, you’ll be wrinkled and ugly.’ Wrinkled? Maybe. Ugly? Are you kidding me? I’ve never looked this good. Look at my hair. I just had it done. Ask me how much that cost. I couldn’t spend that much on my hair even in my thirties. Look at this thing. It’s a shirt from a museum. I’m going to get all my clothes from museums. I couldn’t get any clothes from museums when I was in my 20s. Also, I know so much more now. I’m like a genius—just from life. I have all sorts of knowledge. I feel like we’ve all been lied to by society—that youth is where it’s at. Not really. Youth kind of sucks. It’s thrilling, but it’s also terrifying. I’m not scared of anything now. Oh, that’s the other thing. It’s the biggest thing. When I turned 30, a friend of mine wrote to me and said, ‘Tell me what you’ve learned. Give me your wisdom at 30.’ I remember reading that and thinking, ‘I have no idea.’ But I thought about it for a couple of days and I wrote back to him. ‘You now? I do have an answer for this: I feel more confident now. And I care a little bit less about what other people think.’ Now, at this age, I don’t give a fuck what people think. This is how this translates to me. I’ve never attempted to be popular by any definition, which is good, because I certainly haven’t been. But it always killed me to disappoint people. I feel that less now. You can’t hang anything over my head emotionally because I just don’t care. I don’t feel that I have to impress anyone anymore. It’s awesome!”

Let me repeat that. Archive Of Our Own is not a safe space, not in the way you mean it.

From the AO3 Terms of Service:

Why does the Archive have a goal of maximum inclusiveness?

There are a number of wonderful specialized archives. Our aim with this Archive is to provide a place to preserve as many fanworks as possible. At the same time, the Archive software can be used by anyone to create their own archives, including archives limited to particular topics, fandoms, or ratings.

What kind of content do you allow?

We will not remove content from the Archive because it contains explicit material, as long as it doesn’t violate any other part of the content policy (e.g., the harassment policy).

One basic consequence is that users are responsible for reading and heeding the warnings provided by the creator. Risk-averse users should keep in mind that not all content will carry full warnings. If you want to know more, you may also wish to consult the bookmarks that people other than the creator have used to categorize the fanwork.

Some creators do not want to put specific ratings or warnings on their works. Our policy aims to enable creators to choose appropriate labels or to opt not to use ratings and warnings, with the understanding that some users will avoid unrated or unwarned content.

The ratings/warnings policy is really minimal. Why is this?

We believe that appropriate ratings and warnings are often in the eye of the beholder. Users who feel that a fanwork lacks an appropriate rating/warning are encouraged to try to resolve the issue with the creator. Users may also add tags of their own to on-site bookmarks of a fanwork, which other users can consult for more information. When those tags are present, you can click on the “Bookmarks” link at the top of the work to see them.

The stated desires/goals when AO3 was conceived and initially developed can be found here, on a livejournal post from @astolat (founder of VidCon, Yuletide, and AO3, and all around fannish legend). In short, the goal was “allowing ANYTHING – het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult.” 

And that, in fact, is precisely what AO3 hosts. You see, AO3 is a safe space for fanfiction. It’s a safe space for people to explore all kinds of fannish content without fear of banning, deletion, or legal reprisal. It was founded, designed, and developed to be a safe space for fandom and fannish works.

There also seems to be some confusion about the nature of safe spaces vs. trigger warnings. A fannish work that merits a trigger warning isn’t something that doesn’t belong in a safe space. The trigger warning is what MAKES something a safe space despite the presence of fannish works that merit warnings.

Something else to consider: there are many other things that include het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, and highly adult material, in addition to incest, pedophilia, infanticide, necrophilia, rape, bestiality, sadism and violence, adultery, and all manner of other things. 

FOR WRITERS TO POST PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING AS LONG AS IT IS ADEQUATELY WARNED FOR AND MEETS THEIR CLEARLY POSTED CRITERIA.

IT LITERALLY EXISTS TO PROTECT FANWORKS FROM BEING CENSORED, THREATENED BY LAWYERS, OR TAKEN DOWN OR ALTERED AGAINST THE WRITER’S WILL. THIS APPLIES TO ALL WORKS THAT MEET ITS TOS. ALL OF THEM. YES, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY THAT REALLY ICKY ONE.

THAT IS LITERALLY ITS PURPOSE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. IT WILL NOT CHANGE ITS PURPOSE AND SUDDENLY DECIDE SOME KINDS OF CENSORSHIP ARE OKAY NOW BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE YELL.

I know it’s a good thing that we’re now in a world where indignant young people have no idea how vulnerable they historically have been and still are in this particular context.  The time before: that was worse, for many people.  But it’s still very tiring to see.

Take a sip from a mug with your beverage of choice and I’ll tell you a story about your fucking safe space. In Russia, slash forum was deleted by government in 2012 (or something, I don’t remember) and most gorgeous fan works are lost forever. And some scrambles of works that were saved on people’s computers are now passing back and forth between people like it’s some forbidden shit. Want to know why? Because law here basically bans everything that in Russian government’s opinion may harm children’s young minds while they are surfing the Internet. And you know what Russian government thinks is a perverted thing that children have to abstain from at all costs? Good chap, it’s fucking anything to do with LGBT. This is how Russian government makes the Internet a fucking safe space. Oh, you think this is not safe space? Well, neither do I, but no one cares about my opinion.

Don’t like whatever triggers you? Triggers are tagged there for a fucking reason. They are there to spare your feelings of reading something that may trigger you or you find either offensive or traumatising. I’d rather read a tag that says “rape fantasy” rather than be prosecuted for hosting a slash forum or a help line for LGBT kids.

It’s because 99% of the arguments boil down to denying an individual’s agency

Fiction is one of the safest ways to exercise your right to choose - especially fanfic, which comes with an entire culture of tagging and content warning etiquette

If you go seeking fanfic on AO3, you can try new things with a fairly good understanding of what you’re getting yourself into

And if you get in over your head - you can close the window and walk away with no regrets

No real people were hurt in the production of words on a page - you aren’t sitting there thinking “gosh, I hope those people in this YouTube video survived that fall”

Fiction gives you the right to try on all kinds of ideas

Which is why I get so indignant when I see stuff like “XYZ content could be bad for some people, therefore it shouldn’t exist”

Or “what if minors clicked on porn for ABC fandom uwu”

The truth is, you have agency

My god, but you have agency

If you are old enough to be poking around these sites without parental supervision, you are old enough to start reading the warning labels on what you consume

And if that isn’t true for you? Then ask someone in your real life for help

(I have some pals who do ask me to screen fics for things that might trigger them)

But seriously, with fiction, you can choose what to access, and learn (in private) what you can handle

they’re rooted in the same politics that gave us terfs/swerfs, aka radical feminism, which believes among other things that women can’t make free choices under patriarchy - like the choice to do sex work or engage in kink or any number of other things. the reasons women give for doing these things aren’t real reasons, the only reason they do them is because patriarchy has manipulated and brainwashed them into thinking these are acceptable things to do. it’s a “feminism” founded on the idea that most women (except the radfems themselves, of course) are not real agents.

hence the transphobia - because being a woman isn’t about how you feel, only about whether you were assigned in childhood to a particular sex-based second class

hence the biphobia - because bi is a “lesser” kind of gay, because it taints the true equality of gay relationships with imbalanced man/woman ones, which are always inherently coercive towards the woman because the man has all the power

hence the hate of kink, of stories with cruel or abusive themes, because if you like that sort of thing you can’t be trusted to know your own mind. at best you’re participating in your own oppression, mindlessly acting out the desires of a bunch of old white men circlejerking it to your humiliation. at worst, you’re a traitor who’s enabling and encouraging our pedophilic anti-woman overlords, the creators of all cruelty, without which we’d live in a lesbian separatist paradise with no war or suffering.

it can never be just because you find something valuable in reading about weird shit - the only people who could do that without gagging are oppresor menz or brainwashed women. (nb people don’t really fit in here, so they’re ignored.) try on ideas? but some of those ideas are Dangerous, Corrupting, Objectively Sick, and it’s our job to keep you away from them. there are some thoughts that are too awful to ever be admitted into your head, even for a moment, because they’ll change you.

And I am deeply creeped out by this current thread in fandom that says “readers have no agency” for exactly the above reason

I’m not saying we can never be critical about unconscious bias, or issues within fandom like racist themes, sexist themes, etc