so the history of warnings 101, i could go for this

Picking up a thought from about three different conversations:

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have a panel on warnings, not just common triggers, but the historical perspective on them as vehicles of exclusion in fandom and how they've changed in meaning and reason for existence. A lot of perspective on them during the debates the last time and now is still shaped by when they were used against slash or against certain types of fic, vids, etc. And I didn't know until some discussion enlightened me on this that VVC was at least partially founded on a period of time when warnings themselves were used to exclude, not to facilitate inclusion.

Now, we use warnings to make things more inclusive to other fans, but there was a time they were a form of social control, and it could be institutionalized in ways that marginalized.

In all the debates, I really didn't know that as more than an abstract thing, and when I was in Smallville, there were still slash websites under password and some authors requiring direct contact via email for their fic because that was the only way they felt safe. I mean, I feel as if I should have guessed that one.

Anyone have more information on that? I get the impression this was also an issue before regular 'net access as well and that it might have come from cons originally, but a complete perspective would be interesting to know about and read. A lot of discussion during these two debates makes a lot more sense if the original purpose of warnings was to restrict access and exclude certain groups of fans entirely.

And when I say, "I wonder if it would be worthwhile", I mean, "Please yes one day let's do that?" Any con; just someone take good notes and post them so I can read about it.

Comments

[ratcreature]

You may be interested in this conversation I had last year during that warning debate, in which I tried to give some context about the warning debates in TS:
http://zvi.dreamwidth.org/528976.html?thread=2965840#cmt2965840

[seperis]

I remember reading that! Thank you!

[zvi]

I know that during the last round of the warnings debate, someone else who was in Sentinel at the time (I believe it was bethbethbeth, but it doesn't appear that the comment was made in my journal, and I don't remember where or, for sure, the author) said that it was her understanding that at least one request for a warning for haircuts was made in earnest by someone with a trauma related to haircutting.

[ratcreature]

Huh. I guess it's possible. I don't recall that. I mean, trauma did come up in those warning debates back then too, but I remember that only for stuff like rape, child abuse and such, but I can easily imagine that others read a different selection of posts, and that there was something like that.

I still think why this was in practical use at all for people (including some zines and story collections with haircut free labels and such iirc) wasn't because of rare (I assume) hair trauma, but as a labeling shorthand for a story/characterization type, and that in any case the infamous haircut warning was far more prevalent as rhetoric device in anti-warning arguments (mockery, slippery slope arguments and such).