BlackHeart Biohazards

im-a-pro-at-shipping:

antishipping:

anti-anti-survivor:

shinelikethunder:

itsbuckybitch:

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet since this incident the other day, and I figure it’s probably time to get it out of my system.

Darkfic is not a new phenomenon. It’s as old as the hills. For as long as there have been fic writers, there have been fic writers using the medium to explore themes that are taboo in mainstream fiction. Torture and gore, death and destruction, rape and sexual abuse. Every author has their own motives and inspirations for the content they produce, and there’s no ‘average’ darkfic writer. But what I can tell you – anecdotally, from a full decade’s worth of experience drifting in and out of various darkfic communities – is that when you involve yourself with these authors, you start meeting survivors. Lots of survivors. In what I think it’s fair to call a statistically significant concentration. 

For some, their survivor status is incidental to their controversial interests; for others of us, past trauma and mental illness are intrinsically tied to what we read and write. Darkfic can be a lifeline, a validation, a liberation, a profound and unbeatably intense catharsis for the shit we’ve got stored in our heads. Darkfic enclaves within fandom are places where we can air our darkest and most desperate fears and fantasies in a safe, supportive environment, in the company of others who remind us that we are not broken or defective just for wanting the things we want.

And here’s the thing: literally no one in these communities wants to force outsiders to join us. We recognise that our content is stuff that the majority of people don’t want to see, and we do our best to protect the rest of fandom from involuntary exposure by using appropriate trigger warnings. We don’t want to hurt anyone, we don’t want to ruin anyone’s innocence – we just want to be left alone to do our thing. But tumblr callout culture has taught people that “speaking out” against things they don’t like is cool and brave and socially progressive. It has created an environment where virtually the automatic response to distress, discomfort or personal offense is to look for a perpetrator, a culpable oppressive villain to whom the offended party can deliver a vicious “smackdown” while their friends look on and cheer.

I’m not going to argue just now about whether that’s ever an acceptable way to treat people. Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings on callout culture as a whole, there’s an intersection between darkfic and trauma survivors that you guys all need to understand before you go targeting darkfic authors as convenient representatives of everything you think is wrong with the world. So let me lay this out as simply and clearly as I can:

• When you oppose darkfic because it “harms survivors”, you are talking directly over large crowds of survivors who will tell you they find darkfic to be a validating, healing experience.
• When you claim that darkfic is self-destructive and unhealthy, you are privileging your personal beliefs over the lived experience of other people.
• When you accuse darkfic authors of glorifying and supporting real-life abuse, you accuse survivors of glorifying and supporting their own abusers.
• When you blame darkfic for supporting rape culture, you are making victims responsible for the actions of their oppressors.
• When you set conditions around the creation and enjoyment of darkfic – aka “it’s only okay if you’re a survivor” – you create a culture of coercive disclosure, where survivors are expected to trade their right to privacy for the right to live free of harassment.
• When you criticise darkfic authors for using survivor status as an “excuse”, you are locking us out of our own communities and denying our past traumas for the sake of a political argument.

If you are anti-darkfic, you are anti-survivor. I’m sick and tired of watching vulnerable members of my community get harassed and bullied by people who claim to be acting in the interests of survivors. I’m sick of being told that survivors like me aren’t survivors at all, that our very existence is toxic and harmful, that we have no right to speak and be heard on an issue that affects us so intimately. 

Anti-darkfic fans, you need to pull back. You need to realise that your comfort and safety, while important, are not more important than the comfort and safety of other people. You need to understand that it is your responsibility to learn how to peacefully coexist alongside people who experience the world differently from you, even if their experiences make you unhappy or uncomfortable. You have no right to ask us to stop existing so that you can feel at ease. You have no right to demand that we prioritise the needs of some survivors over others. You don’t own fandom, and you have no right to dictate who does or doesn’t get to participate.

You are not brave heroes speaking out against the spread of moral degeneracy in fandom. You are bullies, deliberately and systematically targeting trauma survivors with your abusive tactics. It really is that simple. And it needs to stop.

WELL FUCKING PUT.

Addendum: coercive disclosure is not the only reason it’s a terrible idea to draw a line in the sand between survivors and non-survivors liking darkfic. Fiction is a way to explore various aspects of a theme or situation in a controlled, safe environment–including aspects that could never be explored in real life without harming real people. It’s a way to explore, dissect, understand, and rehearse traumas that could befall anyone. For those who’ve actually experienced something similar, it can help them process it, or be an outstretched hand and a voice saying “you aren’t alone; either I know that feel, or I can imagine having that feel if I put myself in your shoes.” For those who haven’t, it’s an outlet for anxiety, a mental preparation, a “what if?” and a “how might someone react to–?” And even the most twisted, fucked-up darkfic is usually an exercise in empathy: empathy for characters we already care about thrown into terrible situations, and also a space outside of actual RL horrors where we can take a deep breath and attempt the kind of radical empathy that lets us understand what drives people to do abhorrent things. As far as the first one goes, I certainly don’t think anyone should be compelled to partake if it distresses them, but I do think that actively discouraging and shaming people for trying to empathize with another’s suffering–even if they go about it badly or the execution is shoddy and distasteful–is utterly toxic behavior. As for the second, the kind that consists of trying to imagine your way into a perpetrator’s shoes: it may make you wildly uncomfortable, but understanding the reasons for a thing is among the best tools for recognizing and preventing real-world evil. Beyond that, dehumanization–even of villains, bullies, and abusers–is a dangerous impulse. No one’s required to empathize with the people who’ve hurt them, but making a fucking policy out of attacking everyone who tries only plants the seeds of further evil and abuse.

And we need these stories. Desperately. One of the reasons noncon/dubcon fic in particular has such a staggering variety of weird, fucked-up, iddy tropes and clumsy/insensitive/offensive executions is that we’re fucking marinating in rape culture and have very few scripts or outlets to talk about it. All of it. Even the ugly, unsavory parts, the impulses we know are wrong, the desires we hate or feel guilty about and can’t discuss without being accused of straight-up validating whatever heinous cultural messages planted them in our subconscious. Even the dumb, unrealistic power fantasies of fighting off rapists, taming rapists and making them love and respect you, walking away unaffected and being able to laugh it off as a wacky misadventure, being comforted by someone whose love (and/or healing cock) will magically fix everything. One person’s insensitive is another person’s escapism; one person’s offensive is another person’s “thank god, I’m not the only one broken enough to have that awful thought.” Fiction–particularly the communities that have formed around fanfiction–is one of the very few no-holds-barred places where we can Fucking Talk About It, without the pressure to speak only in hushed tones and behind closed doors where decent people won’t be exposed to it, or to uphold the image of a perfect model victim who never has ugly, unacceptable thoughts about the ugly mess left behind by an unspeakably ugly act. When you shame and police darkfic in fandom, you are taking that space away from the people who need it the most. You are telling them to their faces that they’re filthy, abnormal, tainted and contagious, and that they need to either shut the fuck up or keep it in the shame closet where it belongs instead of sharing it in public with other people who might understand. You are, in other words, doing the exact thing that’s tied with “I don’t believe you” for first place on the list of What Not To Say To A Survivor Opening Up About Their Abuse. Survivors aren’t the only ones with a tangle of conflicted thoughts, feelings, and neuroses about sexual violence and rape culture who benefit from exploring it in fiction, but you can be damn sure they’re a major constituency. The absolute last thing they need is some white-knight ‘anti’ bullying them into silence with concern-trolling about whether their “coping mechanisms” are “healthy” or whether they’re setting a sufficiently good and wholesome example for teh childrens.

The “only if you’re a survivor using it to cope!” bullshit is also noxious because fiction lets us handle difficult issues through several layers of distance and displacement, isolate particular aspects, transpose them into different but related situations, etc. Just because someone’s not a survivor of the exact thing they’re reading or writing about doesn’t mean they don’t have very real pain they’re trying to process. And again, empathy. I don’t give a shit what your sexual-assault history is; if you read my fucked-up Hydra Trash Party porn about Steve Rogers getting gang-raped by Crossbones & co and staggering away still shouting “FITE ME U PATHETIC ASSHOLES” even though he wants to die inside, and it hits you where you live, I’m fucking glad you found it. If I read your fucked-up Hydra Trash Party porn and hit a line that makes me feel like you’ve plucked something ugly and painful and private directly from my brain, frankly I’ll be even more impressed if it turns out you were extrapolating rather than writing from personal experience. And if your badwrong noncon porn is directly at odds with everything I’ve experienced re: rape and its aftermath? I don’t live inside your head, dude. I don’t know what you’re drawing on or what demons you’re exorcizing. I don’t even know whether you’re writing from firsthand experience that’s dramatically different from mine. All I know is that whoever your target audience is, it ain’t me.

One final note on noncon fic specifically: it works on the exact same principle as consensual nonconsent play IRL. No, the character(s) didn’t consent; neither did the persona being acted out by someone playing the victim in a con-noncon scene. The consent that distinguishes it from real-world violation isn’t between the characters in the fantasy; it’s between author and reader. The back button is the safeword. And in contrast to one of the dangers of IRL con-noncon play, it’s a safeword the author has zero power to override or ignore.

The back button is the safe word. 

“you’re retraumatizing yourself” → “I’m the one that’s able to recognize when a coping mechanism works for you, but you don’t get a say in it. also I know better than your professional therapists”

“find something healthier” → “find a new coping strategy because I don’t approve of your current one”

“get help” → “I support the idea that therapy is for ‘sick’ or ‘crazy’ people aka go sit in the Bad Person corner until you’re Normal again”

“you can trigger survivors” → “by going by this logic, I’m also going to prevent victims from venting or talking about their own abuse, as well as ban things such as posts explaining how to spot grooming or predatory behavior, and articles talking about dealing with abusive relationships, because those things can trigger survivors too”

“you’re faking it, why else would you support this genre of content” → “I’m going to accuse you of lying about what you went through solely because you like something I consider ‘problematic’ by my standards”

“you can only create or consume this content if you’re a survivor” → “I’m going to force victims into telling their personal information by harassing them into outting their survivor status, because non-survivors aren’t allowed to enjoy darkfic. I’m also invalidating and confusing people who are unsure if their trauma was ‘extreme enough’ for them to be considered survivors or not”

“it’s contributing to rape culture” → “I support the idea that fiction alone can be at fault for someone’s rape and that there are things that cause rape that aren’t just limited to rapists themselves”

“prove you’re a survivor” → “retraumatize yourself by digging up the memories of all the horrible shit you went through to prove you’re allow to write this, or you’re not valid”

“you’re glorifying your own abuse” → “I’m going to accuse you of painting your own abuse in a positive light because of how you cope with it”

“stop getting off on my trauma” → “I’m going to make this about me even though it’s your own abuse that you’re writing about, and I’m also going to assume this is what you get off to.”

“but those survivors don’t really count” → “I’m going to treat being a victim of abuse like it’s an exclusive club that I own”

“cope in private” → “I’m going to treat your coping mechanism like it’s something shameful by demanding you to do it behind closed doors only. also you have to make your own content even if you don’t have the talent nor motivation to because you rely on people not coping in private to cope. which is something I won’t allow”

“not aimed at survivors” → “by adding my ‘this doesn’t apply to survivors’ disclaimer, all trauma victims are now magically shielded from getting hurt, offended, or triggered when I tell people that support darkfic to choke and die”

“listen to survivors” → “obey survivors. since I’m also a victim of abuse, you have to listen to me when I tell you to take down your properly tagged fic because it’s oppressing me”

“as a survivor myself, I hope you…” → “I’m heading down the path to abuse myself by treating my trauma like it’s a free pass to suicide-bait and trigger other survivors if they write about something that I link to my personal traumatic experiences”

“you deserved your abuse” → “I’m going to tell victims that they absolutely deserved it when they got scarred for life because they safely explore dark themes in fiction”

*drops mic*

“I’m also invalidating and confusing people who are unsure if their trauma was ‘extreme enough’ for them to be considered survivors or not”

This.