xmenfirstkink | Mod Post: So let's talk about this ableism thing.

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Mod Post: So let's talk about this ableism thing.

Disclaimer: After writing this, I sent it to the other mods and some friends of mine to check to make sure it didn't say anything problematic, but if they or I missed something important or said something wrong, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'm still learning.

Something's been brought to our attention in regards to language people have been using re: disability, and problematic depictions thereof. It's great that we have a character in this fandom who is disabled, and it's great that there is a lot of interest in writing about him! But there are people on this meme who are also disabled, and insensitive or simply ignorant words can really hurt them. As our goal with this meme is to maintain a space where everyone present can feel comfortable participating, we'd like to keep this from happening, and we hope you feel the same way.

You may have noticed that "ableism" has been added to the list of triggers to warn for. If you're not familiar with the word, it refers to any speech, action, or treatment that hurts, oppresses, or discriminates against disabled people. Words like "cripple" and "gimp" fall into this category. Prompts using these words (with a few exceptions, noted below) will be deleted. So do stories that depict Charles' disability as disgusting or unacceptable, or erase it completely. Language like “the crippled man”, “the disabled man”, and “the handicapped man” focuses on his disability, perpetuating the common mindset that disabled people are only disabled, and never have any other defining traits.

Now, we're not going to ask you to stop writing these stories, because this is a kink meme and it is not our business what you choose to ask for or write about. But we do ask that you warn for it, if you think your prompt or fill contains it. Wanting stories about Charles and Erik having acrobatic post-movie sex does not make you a bad person, but that doesn't really matter to someone with a disability who reads it and is hurt by that erasure. Taking the time to consider if your content could hurt someone is just the considerate thing to do.

Likewise, it’s entirely possible to write about ableism without taking part in it yourself -- for instance, depicting Charles dealing with being visibly different for the first time and showing the ways people treat him. Unless they are part of the prompt (“someone calls Charles a “cripple”, cue him defending himself/the team defending him”), ableist slurs are unnecessary; comments in which the prompter casually uses them to refer to a character are unacceptable. But no matter how you write about it, any ableist content needs a warning.

The mods will treat this as any other warning issue: if we see ableist language or actions in your fill or prompt (or it's called to our attention by someone else) and there is no warning, we will ask you to post it again with that warning and delete the offending prompt or fill. We'd rather not do this, so please just be aware of what you're writing so that we can all enjoy this meme.

Please also be aware that we are not perfect; if you find unwarned-for ableist content that we haven’t caught, please feel free to contact the poster or us about it.

So to clarify: I am asking you to either change your wordings or warn for your content. Not because of politics or what bothers you, but because this is a space for everyone to enjoy their kinks and it's courteous to let people know that you've written content that might upset them.

And appended: took "crazy" out of the post because it's not that relevant to the discussion and I was informed that lumping mental and physical disabilities together was a bit insensitive, which, yes, I see now. I am leaving the computer for a while; if I don't get to replying to you in a timely fashion, that's why.

One more edit. Someone suggested having a "choose not to warn" option. Is this something people can agree on/ are interested in? It's not ideal but it seems like a good compromise so that we can all get back to the meme.

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Yes but there are many, many, many, MANY words that individuals find offensive that most other people do not ("lame," "dumb," "hysterical," "cunt," etc). The list is endless, endless. Is a kink meme mod really the one who should be regulating language use and forbidding ANY word that ANY one person finds offensive or problematic? Because that will be like 75% of the words in the English language.

It's really my opinion that there cannot be a safe space for kink and a safe place for everything else at the same time. In a kink meme, id-based linguistic expression and id-based fantasy should trump all, and I'm very disappointed and worried about what this first step into social-justice restriction means.

And it's not as simple as "just warn." It's impossible to warn for something you, or any reasonable person, never thought could be offensive, and the idea that mods will be deleting anything they see fit and requiring a warning at ANY complaint just makes this an environment where you have to watch every word, every theme, every possible implication of your porn at every moment. It's exhausting and anemic and kills enthusiasm dead, I've seen it time and again.

I really wish there were a default "CHOOSE NOT TO WARN FOR POSSIBLE OFFENSIVENESS" option in every comment header, so that those who are concerned about being offended might only read SPECIFIC headers written by people who ARE fine with watching every word/theme/possible implication of their porn and subsequently put that work into it. Most of us do not.

Aren't they always specified as AUs, though? Maybe something like "Bulletfree AU" or something?

Respectfully, as someone who suffers from mental illness, I think you should perhaps be careful you're not lumping all disabled people in together. "Crazy" really isn't a word that's analogous to "cripple" or "gimp", even if some people don't like it, and it's really part of a different discussion than the one you're trying to have here. If you want to have that discussion, cool, but have it, don't just throw it in as an afterthought when you're talking about something else.

Okay. I'm sorry I didn't think that through. You're right, I shouldn't have thrown it in, it didn't help anything and it was insensitive of me to lump disabilities together. I am going to take it out, and then I am sorry but I am done for the day. I am absolutely out of energy.

How are you supposed to warn for it when it would never occur to you that such a thing needed to be warned for?

Are you telling me I should warn in my fics for "ableism" at all times just in case, even if they're not ableist at all IMO, just so people won't complain? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of labeling them at all?

I don't understand how I should label or warn for something that seems so thematically nebulous. Like, I still don't understand what's considered ableist by your standards, beyond the obvious of calling Charles a "cripple" or what have you. I also don't see how expressing sadness he got SHOT IN THE SPINE is ableist. Are fics where Erik cries over his hospital bed because he's paralyzed ableist? Anything that expresses a negative emotion toward that event?

I'm just very confused, and frustrated that you seem to be acting like this is an obvious and simple task for us writers, when clearly, judging from the above complaints, it is neither.

I'm not asking you to be 100% right all the time. If it doesn't seem ableist to you, don't warn -- but also be prepared to add a warning if someone asks for it. That's all. That's really all I'm asking. I really, really don't understand why this is such a big deal for people, and I'm sorry if there's some reason I'm not seeing, but I've yet to have someone explain to me why this is so difficult.

Thank you, I appreciate you listening. FWIW I'm glad you brought up the issue re Charles, I think that was important to say. I wasn't trying to get at you, it's just the lumping thing is something I see a lot and it grates.

You're not being policed. You're being asked to make a warning, something that will take approximately five seconds out of your busy schedule, and you're being educated on rudimentary topics, like how it's rude to call someone who's disabled a cripple.

I am sorry you don't have the option of asking everyone to just quietly ignore your privilege.

Oh my friend, gifs will not bring you peace. :[

(<3)

You know those writers who must absolutely indicate that the slash couple is switching, because otherwise it won't be an ~~egalitarian~~ relationship oh noes, so the last sentence in the fic is always 'Next time, I'm fucking you, Bob/Sam/Megatron!'?

In this fandom the last sentence will be: "And the next day Charles was hit by a bus!" Just so it's respectful.

It's not as simple as "warning for ableist language," if you'd read the entire post and the comments that followed. Obviously, that would be easy. But the definitions go beyond that to thematic content and are confusing and contradictory.

But thanks for conflating anyone with objections or questions into evil insensitive bullies who clearly just want to throw around the word "cripple" or whatever without being called on it. That's real mature of you and reflects wonderfully on the concerns I've had about this entire situation.

Except it takes far more than five seconds of my busy schedule to consider whether my fic contains any of a long list of increasingly unobjectionable (from my point of view) words that I'm nevertheless told not to use because they might possibly offend someone somewhere.

There comes a point where overpolicing stifles creativity and discourages activity for fear of slipping a single word and becoming the centre of an exhausting argument when all you wanted was to write some light fiction as a hobby.

And by single word I don't mean a slur, which I'd hope none of us use casually anyway, but something like "crazy". Which isn't even used negatively all the time. Crazy awesome, anyone?

lol, how is having fills deleted that are "thematically unacceptable" NOT the definition of being policed?

Also, fuck you for your condescension and ignorant assumptions. "Privilege," indeed -- I guess I should have been waiting for that favorite word-of-the-month. Go to hell, I'm disabled myself. A CRIPPLE, in fact, if you need to know the specifics.

I swear to God, you social-justice crusaders ruin every fucking thing you touch. I can't go anywhere on lj anymore or raise any concerns without being told I'm ignorant and privileged in an attempt to silence me out of the gate. Then I have to show my oppression credentials in order to be listened to, in the one place where it shouldn't have to dog me at every turn.

I'm tired of being bullied and having every space on livejournal dominated by personal offense apparently trumping all.

This issue is NOT as simple as just warning for words! Even the words themselves aren't all agreed upon. What part of that don't you understand, and why do you feel the need to pigeonhole anyone who disagrees with you into an Evil Privileged Ass or a Self-Hating Minority and try to bully them into silence?

I lol'd.

imabickilometer is a man, jsyk.

And yes, later he clarified, but the good-faith policy wasn't clear at all to begin with and so people panicked initially that this was going to be yet another place on livejournal where every single word became scrutinized and condemned and every "offender" ridden out on a rail. Your bombastic (and ignorant, by your own admission) condemnation of anyone who ~*~complained~*~ doesn't really help to prove them wrong.

Seconded so hard. So fucking hard. Thank you.

THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING THIS. thank you, thank you.

Which is why what I'm asking is that you make the best call you can and then be open to add warnings at the request of others. Asking people to be right all the time would actually be ridiculous, and I'm sorry if I made it seem like that was what was going on.

However, because I am more interested in keeping the meme running smoothly than arguing a point, and I agree that this meme has a priority toward kink, I am taking your suggestion of "choose not to warn" and asking what other people think. It seems like a good compromise, providing people are willing to take the time to add it to their posts.

It was really not that difficult to understand that they were never banning anyone from writing anything, but that they were asking for trigger warnings.

I think I love you a bit for this comment.

This has been a very distressing issue that seems to be plaguing both kink memes and I'm very glad to see it being addressed. Thank you to our awesome mods for commenting on this matter, and for reinforcing that this meme is meant to be a fun and tolerant space for all.

So let's not fight about this and let's all go back to reading/writing porn and being groovy and stuff together again, yeah? ♥

Ditto!

I approve of the idea, in general, but I do have one question (and I apologise if it has been explained already, and I didn't pick up on it) .
What's the rules regarding a prompt of an AU ending in which Charles' injury doesn't occur due to completely changed circumstances that are the focus of the plot. As in, if I wrote a prompt that said 'I'd like to see an AU ending of the movie where Charles convinced Erik not to kill Shaw', would I need to warn for ableism because it implies that Charles doesn't get hit by the bullet, or is it unnecessary because the rewriting of that scene is simply a side-effect of a different part of the movie plot that I want to see revised?

(I have a feeling I've worded that question terribly. If it makes no sense, let me know and I'll try to explain what I mean without twisting myself into tangles.)

I'm sorry. I was out of line, and I agree with a lot of what you say. But I also think that the mods need to have the rights, to some degree, to watch what's posted, and that material that could be seen as hurtful should be labelled as such so that people with triggering issues can avoid it. I've gotten a warning for material that I did not consider offensive (with, I might add, the touchy material visibly requested as the prompt) on a kink meme, and I definitely wasn't happy with it, but I kind of figure you do what you can.

"So do stories that depict Charles' disability as disgusting or unacceptable, or erase it completely." (...) "Now, we're not going to ask you to stop writing these stories..."

Either it's forbidden or it's not. You can NOT have it both ways and decide on a whim what's okay and what's not. Give us clear rules, not something that will allow you to do whatever you want, whenever you want. That's bad mod'ing. Either stand for the one or the other, no grey middle ground.

And why can't I write an AU fic where Charles does NOT get shot in the spine? So, it's okay to have Charles as a woman. To have him pregnant. To have him lose his telepathy. But it's NOT okay to have him walk?

Wow. No, really, just wow. What will be next? Charles can't be an intersex because it might hurt intersex people? Charles can't be a woman because it's misogynist towards the women who already exist in the movie? Erik can't have a happy childhood because it's hurtful towards Holocaust victims?

Newsflash, it's called ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. Wow, and I thought that the other comm's "no sex till 18" was nuts. This tops it.

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Mod Post: So let's talk about this ableism thing.

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