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both fyi and tl;dr
7/6/11 19:25So, for those of who have seen X-Men: First Class and want fic, there is good news and bad news! The good news, there is already a very active kink meme going on, located here: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
1stclass_kink! On the other hand, I personally cannot recommend the community ever, because I find some of the rules and decisions the mod has made to be actively offensive.
To quote from the rule post:
1. This is a KINK meme.
It is for porn. It is for random crack and smut. It is for FUN. If one poster's kink happens to be your anathema, avert thine eyes an' scroll on by.
2. No kink too vanilla, no perversion too strong... Except THAT one.
From G-rated baby squirrel adoption to NC-17 rated anathema insertion - prompt away. But please bear in mind that prompts involving shota/chan/underage characters in sexual situations ARE NOT currently permitted on this meme.
So, to be clear: this is a kink meme, and even in the very midst of the language of kink positivity these memes are based on, it stops to police and shame one specific kink - and, honestly, not that unusual of one.
I myself have been open about my underage kink forever. While I don't have any interest in, for example, sexual content about prepubescent children, I find stories about teenagers discovering and exploring their sexuality to be fascinating. I mean, for goodness' sake, my first fandom was Smallville.
But for this fandom, I can't think of a single prompt I would want to give that would be underage. That's beside the point. The kink singled out could be scat or vore and I would still find it unacceptable for a kink meme.
The mod goes into further detail in the discussion post here.
I am gonna go ahead the quote the reasoning almost in full here:
The spirit of a kink meme is to fetishise, sexualise and promote turn-ons. Prompts and fic involving underage characters in sexual situations fetishises, sexualises and reinvents childhood itself as a 'turn-on'. That's pretty much the legal definition of paedophilia. Paedophilia is illegal in the most countries.
So, no it's not against the spirit of a kink meme to prohibit the promotion of child-focussed erotic material. Especially when LJ could close the meme down for such an infraction.
There will NOT be a warning system for anyone who posts prompts or fic where underage characters participate in sexual situations. If it's against your values to post-date the timeline of the prompt to age-up an underage character then DO NOT post the prompt. Prompts where a character is recounting their experiences as a childhood abuse survivor is a separate issue, as that has been known to help real-life survivors of abuse come to terms with their own experiences through writing and reading. The same can be said for fiction depicting adult rape, non-con, dub-con, drug/drink influenced sexual activity, and extreme violence. I'm no one's therapist, but I can't deny anyone an outlet for their own catharsis.
Okay. The mod does go on in other comments to go into more detail about being afraid of LJ shutting down the comm. While I suppose this could be theoretically possible, it's not a particularly realistic worry, honestly. As I said above, underage is not a particularly uncommon kink in fandom: there are thousands upon thousands of communities and journals that might include two fictional 16-year-olds getting it on without any such interference. In any case, the manner in which both the rules and first response mention such a danger only secondarily gives the impression that it is less important than the fact that it's just gross.
At this point we get to the second reason I don't feel comfortable supporting the com, which is the position on trigger warning systems, which several people suggested in the same thread. The mod responded thus:
There is no warning or trigger list because this is a kink meme. If you don't like something, or it disturbs you, scroll past it - that's Rule #1.
and
If you're triggered by something specific (for a mild example: feet) then seeing 'foot fetish' in the header should be clue enough to scroll past it or jump to a new page ... What the poster above was asking for was a trigger LIST - a separate list of everything prompters should warn for ... If I did that, I'd still be writing the damned thing by Xmas. So, I'm leaving that to the discretion of prompters and readers, the use of headers, and the knowledge that this is a kink meme with just enough offensive content for everyone
Which is to say, a) "You shouldn't be on the kink meme if you're can't handle seeing something you don't like!!!" and b) "ANYTHING could trigger somebody, it's impossible to cover EVERYTHING!!!" which are pretty much the two most annoying arguments people put up on the subject, and which I can't respect.
As I said, it's a pretty active comm, and during my first look through there seemed to be some quite fic in there, so if the things that bother me aren't big deals for you, it would probably be a quite positive experience for you! But for me, these are dealbreakers.
1stclass_kink! On the other hand, I personally cannot recommend the community ever, because I find some of the rules and decisions the mod has made to be actively offensive.To quote from the rule post:
1. This is a KINK meme.
It is for porn. It is for random crack and smut. It is for FUN. If one poster's kink happens to be your anathema, avert thine eyes an' scroll on by.
2. No kink too vanilla, no perversion too strong... Except THAT one.
From G-rated baby squirrel adoption to NC-17 rated anathema insertion - prompt away. But please bear in mind that prompts involving shota/chan/underage characters in sexual situations ARE NOT currently permitted on this meme.
So, to be clear: this is a kink meme, and even in the very midst of the language of kink positivity these memes are based on, it stops to police and shame one specific kink - and, honestly, not that unusual of one.
I myself have been open about my underage kink forever. While I don't have any interest in, for example, sexual content about prepubescent children, I find stories about teenagers discovering and exploring their sexuality to be fascinating. I mean, for goodness' sake, my first fandom was Smallville.
But for this fandom, I can't think of a single prompt I would want to give that would be underage. That's beside the point. The kink singled out could be scat or vore and I would still find it unacceptable for a kink meme.
The mod goes into further detail in the discussion post here.
I am gonna go ahead the quote the reasoning almost in full here:
The spirit of a kink meme is to fetishise, sexualise and promote turn-ons. Prompts and fic involving underage characters in sexual situations fetishises, sexualises and reinvents childhood itself as a 'turn-on'. That's pretty much the legal definition of paedophilia. Paedophilia is illegal in the most countries.
So, no it's not against the spirit of a kink meme to prohibit the promotion of child-focussed erotic material. Especially when LJ could close the meme down for such an infraction.
There will NOT be a warning system for anyone who posts prompts or fic where underage characters participate in sexual situations. If it's against your values to post-date the timeline of the prompt to age-up an underage character then DO NOT post the prompt. Prompts where a character is recounting their experiences as a childhood abuse survivor is a separate issue, as that has been known to help real-life survivors of abuse come to terms with their own experiences through writing and reading. The same can be said for fiction depicting adult rape, non-con, dub-con, drug/drink influenced sexual activity, and extreme violence. I'm no one's therapist, but I can't deny anyone an outlet for their own catharsis.
Okay. The mod does go on in other comments to go into more detail about being afraid of LJ shutting down the comm. While I suppose this could be theoretically possible, it's not a particularly realistic worry, honestly. As I said above, underage is not a particularly uncommon kink in fandom: there are thousands upon thousands of communities and journals that might include two fictional 16-year-olds getting it on without any such interference. In any case, the manner in which both the rules and first response mention such a danger only secondarily gives the impression that it is less important than the fact that it's just gross.
At this point we get to the second reason I don't feel comfortable supporting the com, which is the position on trigger warning systems, which several people suggested in the same thread. The mod responded thus:
There is no warning or trigger list because this is a kink meme. If you don't like something, or it disturbs you, scroll past it - that's Rule #1.
and
If you're triggered by something specific (for a mild example: feet) then seeing 'foot fetish' in the header should be clue enough to scroll past it or jump to a new page ... What the poster above was asking for was a trigger LIST - a separate list of everything prompters should warn for ... If I did that, I'd still be writing the damned thing by Xmas. So, I'm leaving that to the discretion of prompters and readers, the use of headers, and the knowledge that this is a kink meme with just enough offensive content for everyone
Which is to say, a) "You shouldn't be on the kink meme if you're can't handle seeing something you don't like!!!" and b) "ANYTHING could trigger somebody, it's impossible to cover EVERYTHING!!!" which are pretty much the two most annoying arguments people put up on the subject, and which I can't respect.
As I said, it's a pretty active comm, and during my first look through there seemed to be some quite fic in there, so if the things that bother me aren't big deals for you, it would probably be a quite positive experience for you! But for me, these are dealbreakers.
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