Branch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot) wrote2005-03-05 01:40 pm
branchandroot) wrote2005-03-05 01:40 pm
Entry tags:
Manifesto on Wank
So, the discovery that Frienditto is run by the same people who run ljdrama and Encyclopedia Dramatica, and the accusations currently being tossed back and forth over the fd service, have finally crystalized some thoughts I've been turning over for a while. I want to try to get them down in a moderately coherent form, despite my own outrage.
*wishes self luck*
There is no excuse for wank comms.
I'm not going to phrase this in "I believe" terms, because I'm laying out an ethical judgement, here, and while that is invariably a personal endeavor, it is one that, by its nature, extends beyond just myself. I apply this to everyone, and not just as an opinion. There is no excuse.
The people who participate in wank comms, such as Fandom Wank, insist that they merely display a healthy sense of humor. That they are perfectly happy to have their own wanking mocked just as they mock others. And that anyone who posts on the internet should only expect to be targeted, because the internet is a public place.
The sense of humor argument is the one I find hardest to refute, actually, because it has a grain of truth. If, in the middle of some wank explosion, someone were to speak up and say "you know, we're all getting kind of shrill and behaving foolishly, and blowing the original disagreement out of proportion to the point where I'm laughing; congratulations, everyone", that might indeed have some beneficial effect on the wank in question. But only if it comes from the inside--from a participant in the forum affected. Because it isn't the business of anyone who is not affected. For a participant to go outside that forum to another, one which is not affected or involved, to say such a thing is not 'having a good healthy laugh at ourselves'. "Ourselves" does not apply when the participant has removed herself from that context. Instead, this is making fun of other people.
And that's a cruel thing to do. No matter how great or small, it is an immature activity and a cruel one.
That people like the FW members understand this perfectly well is demonstrated by their use of counter-wank as a disciplinary measure. Someone who posts something considered unacceptable is, in turn, mocked. For them to do this, and then say that they are happy to take what they dish out, is extremely disingenuous. To say that they can laugh at themselves, and why can't the people they mock just do the same, is verbal slight of hand that turns attention away from the manifest hurtfulness of what they are doing. That they all seek to avoid being mocked, and use mockery as an internal punishment for their own, shows very clearly that they know it hurts to be the target.
So why do they do it?
I have, by the way, no sympathy for the suggestion that FW is not as bad as it was two years ago, and that it's mostly a social comm now, where people compliment each other's icons. That's a load of bullshit, and the merest skim through the latest posts will show it.
Likewise, any statement that they confine themselves to mocking people who make public fools of themselves is, if not a technical lie, certainly just as disingenuous as the second argument. There is, for example, mockery posted, fairly recently, of some extremely personal matters that one of the members found on a couple of personal journals. When the embroiled parties protested, they were told they had invited this treatment by posting publically and unlocked, as if posting unlocked in an obscure individual journal were equivalent to posting in a community forum. It was implied that the insults levelled at their romantic lives and psychological stability, and the links back to the personal journals, posted in such a high-traffic community as FW, were exactly the same as those same comments and links would have been if made in the FW members' own personal journals.
I am reminded of this argument by the statements now being made that anyone who posts anything on the net, even locked, has no right to protest if the information becomes public. Because the net is a public place, and anyone who posts anything there, no matter how secured, is just asking for it to be publicized.
I am reminded of other arguments about victims "asking for it".
Nor do I consider this an unreasonable analogy to make. There is a voilation of personal integrity invovled. And the perpetrators are denying their responsibility by insisting that it is the victim's job to be aware of all risks and guard against them with such vigor that even the most aggressive perpetrator has no opening. That it is only the utterly, inhumanly blameless who have the right to respect.
And you know what pisses me off even more? If I posted this publicly, I have little doubt it would be pounced upon as Wank! and Drama! and promptly linked and reposted for mockery by people who would say "My God, she's so serious about it, can't she take a joke?" As if to make light of the pain they have caused. As if to say that, because it is "humor", they cannot be held culpable for the cruelty of it. As if to say the cruelty is deserved, because the target didn't behave with irreprochable reserve and purity.
Anyone who works with sexual assault issues or with women's rights issues should recognize this pattern. The fact that it is applied, here, to emotional rather than physical assault, and, usually, assault on a lesser scale, does nothing to alleviate my disgust with anyone who would employ the pattern to excuse themselves.
There is no excuse, and I'm sick of hearing people who have indulged their own pettiness and cruelty claim that they have done nothing wrong, and that it is the victim's fault.
*wishes self luck*
There is no excuse for wank comms.
I'm not going to phrase this in "I believe" terms, because I'm laying out an ethical judgement, here, and while that is invariably a personal endeavor, it is one that, by its nature, extends beyond just myself. I apply this to everyone, and not just as an opinion. There is no excuse.
The people who participate in wank comms, such as Fandom Wank, insist that they merely display a healthy sense of humor. That they are perfectly happy to have their own wanking mocked just as they mock others. And that anyone who posts on the internet should only expect to be targeted, because the internet is a public place.
The sense of humor argument is the one I find hardest to refute, actually, because it has a grain of truth. If, in the middle of some wank explosion, someone were to speak up and say "you know, we're all getting kind of shrill and behaving foolishly, and blowing the original disagreement out of proportion to the point where I'm laughing; congratulations, everyone", that might indeed have some beneficial effect on the wank in question. But only if it comes from the inside--from a participant in the forum affected. Because it isn't the business of anyone who is not affected. For a participant to go outside that forum to another, one which is not affected or involved, to say such a thing is not 'having a good healthy laugh at ourselves'. "Ourselves" does not apply when the participant has removed herself from that context. Instead, this is making fun of other people.
And that's a cruel thing to do. No matter how great or small, it is an immature activity and a cruel one.
That people like the FW members understand this perfectly well is demonstrated by their use of counter-wank as a disciplinary measure. Someone who posts something considered unacceptable is, in turn, mocked. For them to do this, and then say that they are happy to take what they dish out, is extremely disingenuous. To say that they can laugh at themselves, and why can't the people they mock just do the same, is verbal slight of hand that turns attention away from the manifest hurtfulness of what they are doing. That they all seek to avoid being mocked, and use mockery as an internal punishment for their own, shows very clearly that they know it hurts to be the target.
So why do they do it?
I have, by the way, no sympathy for the suggestion that FW is not as bad as it was two years ago, and that it's mostly a social comm now, where people compliment each other's icons. That's a load of bullshit, and the merest skim through the latest posts will show it.
Likewise, any statement that they confine themselves to mocking people who make public fools of themselves is, if not a technical lie, certainly just as disingenuous as the second argument. There is, for example, mockery posted, fairly recently, of some extremely personal matters that one of the members found on a couple of personal journals. When the embroiled parties protested, they were told they had invited this treatment by posting publically and unlocked, as if posting unlocked in an obscure individual journal were equivalent to posting in a community forum. It was implied that the insults levelled at their romantic lives and psychological stability, and the links back to the personal journals, posted in such a high-traffic community as FW, were exactly the same as those same comments and links would have been if made in the FW members' own personal journals.
I am reminded of this argument by the statements now being made that anyone who posts anything on the net, even locked, has no right to protest if the information becomes public. Because the net is a public place, and anyone who posts anything there, no matter how secured, is just asking for it to be publicized.
I am reminded of other arguments about victims "asking for it".
Nor do I consider this an unreasonable analogy to make. There is a voilation of personal integrity invovled. And the perpetrators are denying their responsibility by insisting that it is the victim's job to be aware of all risks and guard against them with such vigor that even the most aggressive perpetrator has no opening. That it is only the utterly, inhumanly blameless who have the right to respect.
And you know what pisses me off even more? If I posted this publicly, I have little doubt it would be pounced upon as Wank! and Drama! and promptly linked and reposted for mockery by people who would say "My God, she's so serious about it, can't she take a joke?" As if to make light of the pain they have caused. As if to say that, because it is "humor", they cannot be held culpable for the cruelty of it. As if to say the cruelty is deserved, because the target didn't behave with irreprochable reserve and purity.
Anyone who works with sexual assault issues or with women's rights issues should recognize this pattern. The fact that it is applied, here, to emotional rather than physical assault, and, usually, assault on a lesser scale, does nothing to alleviate my disgust with anyone who would employ the pattern to excuse themselves.
There is no excuse, and I'm sick of hearing people who have indulged their own pettiness and cruelty claim that they have done nothing wrong, and that it is the victim's fault.
Re: Think of it as Wookie Soccer
This is a discussion I was just having with some other fen--about Sues and the hunting thereof. Our conclusion was that there are, loosely, two kinds of Sue writers. One quickly becomes a reformed Sue writer, who, as you say, has seen the light of canon and wishes to spread it with evangelical fervor. That one wrote Sues out of inexperience, generally, starting with what she knew as any writer tends to. I find that tiresome, because they're as rigid and doctrinaire as any other convert and I have yet to meet any who are capable of holding any kind of dialogue on the subject. They're much more the walking-billboard types. But, I suppose, I can always hope they grow up to be articulate disputants at some point.
The other kind, though, is the one who writes what I call Stories That Are Not Stories. That's the one who doesn't give a flying fig about the art and craft of writing or, really, about canon--those things have no bearing on her goals. She writes something that looks, superficially, like a story but is, in fact, much closer to a personals ad. It's there as a gesture of contact and community, using the form which has become so highly valued in fandom. And I honestly think it's unreasonable to demand that they conform to the same standards as people who write Stories That Are Stories.
I'm a big believer in the influence of utility. If someone wants to write good stories about the world and characters of Fandom Whatever, then, yes, I think the combat of canon v fanon is entirely justified and appropriate, and I'll just be over here getting my cleats on. But if the point is socialization, or the heart-comfort-food of folding the story around oneself, or a wish fulfillment lark... I think trying to deny the validity of those projects is just as much a denial of the passion that goes into this thing of ours as the naysayers at FW.
I probably wont read them. But I'm not about to say that they have no right to exist. And that is precisely what the vast majority of Sue hunting comms and individual members thereof are saying.
*blinks* And I wrote all that before coffee. I must go remedy this...