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

[dmarley.livejournal.com]

I know some others have commented on this era, but to fill in some more:

I got on the internet in 1996, and at the time it seemed to be not unusual, but also not always done, to warn or describe the content for explicit sex, and to warn/describe again if the explicit sex was slash. (About half the time the information was expressed as a warning, about half as a factual statement: This story contains explicit sex between two men, don't read if you're underage.)

I actually have a lot of stories saved from that era, and a quick, unscientific glance at some of them shows a lot of emphasis placed on age ("if you're not an adult/over 18 stop reading") over describing actual content--that is, an author is more likely to include just an age warning than an age warning and a content statement. Some stories had warnings/content statement, others didn't, but all of them were labeled as to pairings and ratings.

This is especially true of Star Trek stories posted to Usenet. The explicit stories had their own separate group(s), so anyone accessing that group already knew somewhat that they were getting explicit material. (Although there was a huge debate over different groups and slash in 1997-8, I think, with an effort to create a group that banned "non-canon" pairings, which of course would instantly eliminate all slash.)

I know that one reason authors warned for slash was, frankly, that a lot people didn't know what "slash" was. If someone came across a fan page or Usenet post and saw the term "slash," they were just as likely to think it was a horror story or a story about Guns N' Roses' guitarist. Spelling out that slash = same-sex relationship was a way of preventing misunderstandings at a time when slash fiction was pretty darn rare on the internet. (Just as a for instance, the first time I checked out the HIGHLA-FIC archive, of the more than a hundred or so stories on there, a grand total of three were slash, a trilogy by the same author.)

I have a lot more to say, but I have to go rescue a bunch of old slash zines. ;)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Here from Metafandom. When I first started reading broadly, I thought 'slash' meant 'really violent,' so I never clicked on it. Oh, the stories I missed out on!