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

[medie]

I remember it being pretty hardcore in the Sentinel fandom. You did not post slash to the main fic list. You could post anything else there you wanted, but slash? No, that stayed on its own list. There was some pretty, um, unpleasant stuff that happened to slashers then. I don't remember much about warnings being involved though they might have been.

[seperis]

I remember in Smallville was the latest time that I regularly saw warnings for slash, though I've seen it since then but not institutionalized.

There was some pretty, um, unpleasant stuff that happened to slashers then. I don't remember much about warnings being involved though they might have been.

Ratings have been as much a point of fannish polarization and politicalization as warnings; I remember, vaguely, an explosion over rating anything slash PG-13, even if a het equivalent would be like, G or PG. It was on a discussion list I was on, so the specific elude me, but it did get me thinking on my ratings a lot.

[concinnity]

Let me know when the panel is, and I'll be there. 4rlz. You just made my heart patter with anticipation. *waits expectantly*

[seperis]

I keep hoping I'll open my eyes and it will appear before me, GO HERE AT THIS TIME YAY!

*keeps hoping* This would be awesome.

[legionseagle]

I wrote the attached story in April this year inspired by the April fanfic challenge of the Lord Peter yahoogroup dealing with the detective stories of Dorothy L. Sayers, but in the end did not post it to the list because of the then rule that all fic featuring a same-sex pairing (even if it otherwise fell within the PG guidelines of the challenge as a whole) could not be posted on-list but only linked, and if it were linked the title bar had to prominently include the work "SLASH" so that list members who objected could avoid it. I decided I didn't feel comfortable complying with that restriction, so didn't make it available to the list.

On a Harry Potter yahoogroup when Half-Blood Prince came out (2006?), someone who tried to analyse the Tonks/Lupin relationship in terms of Queer Theory was told that doing so without posting a warning in the subject line was equivalent to breaking into other list members' living rooms and fornicating there.

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 .

So in some of the corners of fandom in which I am active (book fandoms, you'll note) there is an active and on-going use of warnings as a mechanism of conservative social control, which shapes my response to warning discussions rather profoundly.

[ratcreature]

Hm. Sentinel fandom still had remnants of that old skool split that had gen and non-graphic het on one side and adult het and all slash on the other. Only in TS het was totally marginalized with regular warnings for mere inclusion of canon female characters (like the Cassie warning for example), so you never saw any graphic het on the nominally "adult" list. And non-graphic het on Senfic was also very rare.

[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

[concinnity]

I've never been to a con, but I would haul my ass anywhere in the country for this panel. Um. Can we like, propose a panel? At/for a con? Do you or the organizers put out a cfp? Or, like...how does it work, exactly?

[princessofgeeks]

i would love to attend such a panel and am particularly interested in the various splits in the explicit camps. thanks for the post.

[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.

[(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.

[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).

[elspethdixon]

someone who tried to analyse the Tonks/Lupin relationship in terms of Queer Theory was told that doing so without posting a warning in the subject line was equivalent to breaking into other list members' living rooms and fornicating there.

And that is why I don't hang out in places that are het and gen only anymore (comms dedicated to a specific het pairing, yes, but any place that forbids slash-in-general, ew, no).

What kind of warning would you even put on that? "Warning: OMG it's about a man and a woman being in a relationship with each other but it has the word 'queer' in it! Hide the children?"

[legionseagle]

The Tonks/Lupin piece was meta and not fic; someone wanted to analyse the text of a metamorphamagus (someone who can change their bodily attributes at will) being in a relationship with a lycanthrope (someone who is compelled to change their bodily attributes on a regular schedule and vilified for the condition) in terms of gender constructs and identities.

Until the response to the comment happened it was literally not known that people on the list (which, again, was a discussion list not a fic list) thought discussion of relationships needed to be constrained heteronomatively.

Also, while I respect your choice not to hang out "in places that are het and gen only", sometimes the only comm for discussing a particular fandom has a mod who imposes such rules and there isn't the critical mass to create a new comm; also, (and very relevant to the current discussion) people have a genuine fear that the imposition of warnings policies in places which did not previously have them will create the position as stated above; it may be unlikely but it has, after all, happened before now.

[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").

[elspethdixon]

sometimes the only comm for discussing a particular fandom has a mod who imposes such rules and there isn't the critical mass to create a new comm

*nods* I used to be in a relatively small tv-show fandom that was like that - probably only a few dozen active members, and only one mailing list, which was firmly gen-and-het-only. It made me feel weird, like I was there under false pretenses. I was writing and posting gen, and didn't really even have any slash pairings for the fandom, but the policy also meant I had to stay in the closet to the rest of the list, because I knew I'd be unwelcome otherwise. Eventually, I got tired of feeling weird and left, but I pretty much had to leave the fandom in the process, because the fandom = that one list.

So I can understand someone being willing to out up with it for the sake of being able to be in a fandom for the thing they're fannish about at all.

[(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.

[fyrdrakken]

I came about this close yesterday to commenting you a link to legionseagle's latest post, but by the time I'd gone through all your posts on the topic my impression was that you'd gotten really burned out on it, so I didn't. But it's worth reading, if you haven't already.

[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").

[pocketmouse]

I still come across fics with the 'warning' for slash, even on slash-only lists. When confronted, they usually claim that they're crossposting, and that they'll get yelled at if they don't include the warning, etc etc.

[aivilo-18.livejournal.com]

Shit. I flagged an academic paper a while back on my old computer and now, of course, I can't find it, but it linked current notions of ratings and warnings to historical accounts of authors and literature and the need for secrecy in writing because, way back when, one couldn't be or write about the gay experience because everyone would be clutching their pearls and, y'know, sending them to jail for writing such "explicit" material.

Basically it discussed how, through time, all those "secret handshakes" in literature that certain people knew how to read but that were layered in such a way that "commoners" couldn't tell what was really going on, how those evolved into warnings and ratings, if that makes sense.

It focused more on old school literature and the history of film censorship and I don't remember there being a lot, if any, focus on internet literature and fandom, but the general idea might be interesting in this context?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

God I want to see that paper. That must have been fascinating. *entranced*

It focused more on old school literature and the history of film censorship and I don't remember there being a lot, if any, focus on internet literature and fandom, but the general idea might be interesting in this context?

I think it really would since a lot of fandom is based off of pushing against social pressure/stereotypes or, in reaction, embracing some of them and not others.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Even now? Dear God. I've seen it a few times, but not anywhere I frequent, and off the top of my head, I'm not sure when the last time I saw it was.

[pocketmouse]

Several friends of mine have been seeing it on Torchwood comms. Which is why it's so bizarre.