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

[seperis]

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

[(Anonymous)]

Furthermore, there's a (current) warnings policy posted by an individual describing her own policy which some people are promoting as a sort of aspirational gold standard in the current debate, which, among a lot of other stuff I don't agree with, suggests that the policy's author considers "dialog concerning abortion" is too much of a hot potato to be including in fic even when warned for .

Reading the policy, and the other things she included in that category, I'm not sure if she's excluding abortion because it's 'too much of a hot potato'. It might be, but my own personal experience with abortion and insensitive dialog (on "both" sides of the issue) concerning abortion would make me grateful for the labels, and moreso, I'd want to be fairly sure of the author's treatment of the issue before I'd click on the story.

The author could very well mean that, of course, but I think the assumption that abortion and abortion dialog is included in a list of what she'd warn for because it's an issue of being too political vs. being a possible trigger issue for some people.

[elspethdixon]

I think the assumption that abortion and abortion dialog is included in a list of what she'd warn for because it's an issue of being too political vs. being a possible trigger issue for some people

I don't know - the one time I wrote a fic that dealt with an unplanned pregnancy and a character deciding to get an abortion, I warned for the fact that the fic dealt with a pregnancy being terminated (I think I put it vaguely like that, too, so as not to completely give away the plot), because I was afraid reading the fic could, if not trigger, then at least seriously upset someone who'd either had an abortion themselves under traumatizing circumstances or who had just recently lost a baby (a friend of the family miscarried while I was in the process of writing the fic, and I remember thinking "Okay, this is not somethng I'd hand [name] to read right now without telling her what happens in it. I don't think I'd give her happy fluffy babyfic without warning her that there's pregnancy and babies in it, either").

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, forgot to complete the sentence.

I think the assumption that abortion/abortion dialog is only excluded because it's 'too political' ignores the fact that people who have had abortions or who have lost babies can be triggered by abortion or abortion rhetoric, and that's problematic.

Basically, I agree with you.

[legionseagle]

I didn't say "too political" I said "too much of a hot potato". Basically I did not care for the original warnings poster stating not just that she would warn for abortion but that she had difficulties with its being written at all*.

Using warnings, I can see the logic, as stated by you above, though I also have qualms about how the warning would be worded, since it's one where there are triggers in both ways and where the warning should reflect that.

That is, people who have had abortions might well want to be warned about fics which consisted on thinly disguised sermons on how women who did this were assuredly going to hell. After all, I couldn't even go about my lawful business in entering a Seattle hotel last year without having to fight my way past a bunch of protestors with truly revolting visual aids, whose entire aim and object was to trigger as many people as possible, and I'm sure the fic equivalent of that deserves a warning if anything does.

My unease, therefore, wasn't about the idea of warnings for abortion per se, but the way in which the poster said that even if the canon source contained abortion she would not write it (*which, in a warnings policy which is explicitly set out to be borrowed, comes over less as a statement of personal actions but more as a "And even in some cases warnings aren't enough and I shall think you're a Very Bad Person if you even dream of touching these topics").