AoOO Thoughs

[alixtii]

1. I understand "Choose Not to Warn for Some Content" as meaning that, if no other warnings are selected, then there is a nonzero number of primary standardized warnings which don't apply to the story (most likely noncon)--because if all of them applied, and the author didn't warn for all of them, then the phrase "Choose Not to Warn [full stop]" comment would apply and, in accordance with Grice's Maxim of Quantity, the author would have used that tag.

Apparently, not everyone shares this understanding.

2. I'm very uncomfortable with the implication, given by the existence of the primary warning tag "noncon/rape," that dubcon isn't rape. "Rape," as the term is used more or less uniquely in contemporary usage, is a legal-ethical concept: it identifies a certain type of illicit sexual activity. "Noncon" and "dubcon" pull out certain aspects of these acts which are relevant to the needs of fanfic readers and writers, but not to a legal or ethical understanding, and involves knowledge unavailable to people who are not omniscient narrators (e.g., the precise mental state of the victim, and what what that state would have been in other circumstances). But any circumstance in which consent is in any way dubious--whether through the use of alien influence, or power imbalances, or social pressure, or drugs or alcohol, or through not being of legal age--is rape. Period.

"Noncon" and "dubcon" identify out types of rape, in much the same way the term "statutory rape" does. (ETA: Actually, they don't even do that, I think; they measure something which is on completely different axis than what "rape" measures. It just happens that there is an incredibly huge degree of correlation.)

Now, one doesn't have to read the "noncon/rape" tag as implying that "noncon" and "rape" or synonymous or equivalent. But if not, the meaning is ambiguous: does it cover for cases which are "noncon AND rape" (but not dubcon) or cases which are "noncon OR rape" (which would include dubcon). ("Noncon XOR rape" can be safely ruled out.) Praxis seems to support the first usage as being dominant, but I think this somehow covertly encourages the (problematic equivalence between the two terms discussed above. (And both usages are fundamentally redundant, because "noncon AND rape" = "noncon" and "noncon OR rape" = "rape.")

And, continuing to read the post linked above, I'm not the only who has thought of this (not that I had assumed I was).

Comments

[zvi]

"Rape," as the term is used more or less uniquely in contemporary usage, is a legal-ethical concept: it identifies a certain type of licit sexual activity.

The problem with that is that the warning tags do not function solely as an ethical standard or merely to alert readers about content they wish to avoid at all cost, but also as a genre marker. For the sort of person who cares about non-con, dub-con, and rape as literary tropes, they may well be three separate things.

RE: Choose not to warn for some content -- I don't understand what you think the meaning of Choose Not To Warn is, if you think that a (primary?) reason for choosing to use it is because one's story includes rape, violence, underage, and character death.

[alixtii]

I think that "Choose Not to Warn" means "I won't warn for any of the primary warnings if they appear in this story. Anything at all could happen in this story, caveat lecteur."

I think "Choose Not to Warn for Some Content" means "I won't warn for some subset of the primary warnings if a member of that subset appears in this story, but will use the other warnings. "

I think that the meaning of "one's story includes rape, violence, underage, and character death" is the logical conclusion of not using the meanings I gave above and, thus, a reductio ad absurdum.

[alixtii]

Well, I think it's dangerous to use the term "rape" to apply to a genre marker or literary trope without having all real-world cases of rape included within it. It confuses the issue of what is and is not rape.

Indeed, to my mind, that's exactly why terms like "noncon" and "dubcon" exist, so that we can refer to the literary tropes without making (or being read as having made) problematic claims or statements about real rape.

[elf]

2. Dubcon is not necessarily rape. (Noncon is not necessarily rape... if Draco is forced to perform a striptease for a circle of Death Eaters, and they drool over him but don't touch, you have noncon eroticism without rape.)

Dubcon sex (I'm not trying to pretend that "dubcon" normally means anything other than "sex," just pointing out that it's a bit broader than that) is legally rape, but that doesn't make it the-same-as-rape in a literary sense. In fic, we can know the difference between "maybe" and "no;" we're inside the character's head. We can have "I never would've done this of my own volition, but as long as we've got the magic pollen going, I'm gonna enjoy every moment of it and never regret it."

Rape is a legal concept. Noncon and dubcon are literary concepts. A woman who consents to sleep with the villain she hates to protect her family, and hates it, but goes back every night until her family is safely out of the country, is not being raped--but a lot of us would want that warned for noncon. Or dubcon.

Who defines "rape?" The modern American legal system, or the social "No means no" system? Or something else? (Rhetorical questions, those. Meant to point out that the concept of "rape" is not a stable, objectively-definable tag.)

There are people squicked or triggered by noncon or rape, but not by dubcon. Especially considering the wide array of dubcon. (I've read a number of Harlequin romances recently, and am *stunned* at the amount of what'd be dubcon if it were fanfic. In both directions, but much more commonly with the man as the aggressor.)

I assume the Noncon/Rape tag means "rape or noncon sexuality," with an understanding that a noncon not-sex situation that was entirely offscreen & non-explicit might not be warned for.

1. I have five stories tagged "Choose not to warn for some content," and none tagged "choose not to warn." (Four of them are some level of filk, bordering on crack; I feel weird putting warnings on crackfic. The other is a "20 random facts" thing.)

I will have to ponder whether I'd rather just tag them "choose not to warn." I suppose they have nonzero content that would require a warning, and I didn't want to get specific. Between the four, they span all four required warnings, some with multiples. The warning I'm most often avoiding is underage, not noncon/rape, but for a couple of them, it's "I can't be bothered to figure out if someone would think this is noncon so I'm tagging it Choose Not To Warn." (Sometimes it's, "I'm not going to bother to figure out if this is underage or not.")

[alixtii]

2. "Noncon" isn't an adjective; nonconsensual is. Now there probably are cases of phrases like "noncon eroticism" out in the wild (although Google doesn't have any hits for that particular one), but yeah, I think we can take it as read that "noncon" is a noun that means "nonconsensual sex."

I agree that "noncon" and "dubcon" are indubitably literary terms and, as you say, allow us to make distinctions between "no" and "maybe" that are useful to us as fic writers and readers.

But rape is not a literary term; it's a term for a real, horrible thing which happens to too many women and men.

Rhetorical questions, those. Meant to point out that the concept of "rape" is not a stable, objectively-definable tag.

It's stable enough for our purposes, I think, especially if we assume our purposes are feminist ones based on empowering survivors. I don't think it's a rhetorical question, though; redefinitions of rape are commonly utilized as an anti-feminist tactic as apologia and defenses for rapists. Just look at the reactions to the Polanski extradition. We need to be unified against that sort of behavior.

I assume the Noncon/Rape tag means "rape or noncon sexuality," with an understanding that a noncon not-sex situation that was entirely offscreen & non-explicit might not be warned for.

But would it include a case of rape that we would label "dubcon" rather than "noncon"? I don't think it would, which means it wouldn't mean "[either] rape or noncon sexuality," since it wouldn't cover all the
instances that were one or the other or both. Indeed, the word rape seems superfluous.

I think the way the noncon/rape tag has been used could act to confuse the issue of what is really rape, to make people think that what they read in Harlequin romances is acceptable behavior, and that's dangerous to our society.

1. Yeah, the issue assumes that fics with zero warnable content will be tagged as "CN2W" and/or "CN2W4SC." Which as a statement writ large about the Archive as a whole, is clearly true, but may not be for many particular users. But since one might not know a particular user's policy, one can't be able to be sure whether a fic with either of those tags would have nonzero warnable content, and people's intuitions are clearly not unified in which tag, if either, is more likely to host nonzero warnable content.

[rodo]

2. Dubcon is not necessarily rape.

I'd like to agree with this. I labelled one of my stories dubcon, mainly because it was a variation on the sex pollen trope and the other character was very drunk. They didn't talk, and the top didn't ascertain that the bottom actually wanted to have sex (he did, btw). So they didn't deal with consent issues and definitely weren't in a situation where informed consent was possible.

I labelled it dubcon because for the characters themselves, the consent issues were unclear. I would feel uncomfortable if I had to lump it in with noncon, though.

KnXvEDItUTRa

[(Anonymous)]

it's OK for a man to say No. Society equates being a Real Man with the coantnst pursuit for sex and being ever ready to perform sex. So men are socialized out of relating to women as something more than the object of that pursuit, and so it feels counter-intuitive refusing sex when they don’t want it.

[treewishes]

Excellent points.... I think you've inspired me to post on this, even though I really don't think it will do any good :\

[alixtii]

Thank you--I look forward to reading it!

[inalasahl]

1) See I consider "Choose Not to Warn for Some Content" a warning in of itself. To me it means, "There is definitely something in this story that requires a warning, but I don't want to tell you what it is." So, yes, a story with CNtWfSC could have all of the big warnings. But then, I've always assumed that the warnings applied to that specific story, not the author's overall policy.

Whereas, "Choose Not to Warn" may mean, "I never warn for anything in my fics and nothing is implied either way." It may mean "Somebody dies in this fic, but I think it's stupid that people want a warning for that. It's not like Joss calls up viewers ahead of time and gives them a heads-up when he kills off a character. I refuse to do it." It may mean "I don't know if there's something I should warn for in this fic or not. I've got 80 stories to upload, and I don't have time to re-read them all."

[alixtii]

Well, I guess fundamentally, I just don't understanding how one gets that meaning from those words. If "Choose Not to Warn for Some Content" doesn't mean "Choose Not to Warn for Some [But Not All] Content," then I still don't understand how it's semantically different from "Choose Not to Warn"; despite having been through conversation several times in various threads.

In two or three months, I'll probably just look at how fandom as whole is interpreting the tags, and then see if I need to re-tag.

[darkrose]

See I consider "Choose Not to Warn for Some Content" a warning in of itself. To me it means, "There is definitely something in this story that requires a warning, but I don't want to tell you what it is."

And this is my problem with "Choose Not to Warn for Some Content". If I select that option, it's because there's no option to warn for the content I feel should be warned for--not that I'm being difficult and refusing to warn, which is what "there's stuff that needs to be warned for, but I'm not going to tell you what it is" implies to me.

For example, any fic set in the Keptverse involving sex with slaves is by definition non-con, because slaves don't have the option to say no. However, within a given relationship, it's entirely possibly for an owner to choose to respect a no from a slave, making it as consensual as you can get within that world. I'd warn for slavefic, but I don't have that option, so I'd have to go with "CNtWfSC", which isn't really accurate either.

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, I don't mean for this to be anon but I don't have have dreamwidth so, alas.

Anyway, while I agree with your general assessment I might also beg to differ in some respects. A fic I recently posted I labeled as "dubcon" not because there were drugs or blindfolds or alien/magical means in the fic. Rather, the one character was nervous about the sex more out of unsurety, out of a desire to not, shall we say, fuck with something he doesn't entirely understand (to defile it in this case). But after this summer's warnings meta and wank I'm nervous I'm going to get yelled at for not warning "properly". There was some convincing, some seduction, but by no means any rape involved in the fic.

I think on the whole your comments apply. But it is possible there are some other authors like me who are overly cautious. At some point I'll probably say fuck it and post only warnings I think are relevant but it was my first fic after the wank and thus I'm still feeling a bit bruised.

[shiv]

The difficulty I have is I read all these discussions about what is rape and what is noncon including some of the ones on here.... and technically, from a legal perspective, they'd all be rape and could be prosecuted as such.

[alixtii]

Which, I think, is what I'm arguing here.

[legionseagle]

"Rape," as the term is used more or less uniquely in contemporary usage, is a legal-ethical concept: it identifies a certain type of licit sexual activity.

You think rape's LEGAL?????????

[alixtii]

Well, it's illegal, which is a legal category. I'm not quite sure what you're asking.

ETA: Although I do notice I called rape licit, which is clearly wrong. *goes to fix*

CulOCbNgakhxaDIy

[(Anonymous)]

I'm filling out the form now (thank you so much for rasniig awareness of this and making it easier to get in touch with Google), and I see this note at the bottom:Was your organization interested in using Google products, but were unable to because of accessibility requirements? If so, please take a moment to explain below:Interesting, huh? Seems like they know there's problems OH. I just hit submit on my finished accessibility form, and what happens? The page blinks and I just see my form again. Nothing to say my feedback has been received. :/

Here from metafandom

[anya_elizabeth]

I've already concluded from all this that I'm just going to slap warnings on like nobody's business, because I'm hopelessly confused.

The dubcon issue is hurting my brain, but here's what I think, although bear in mind I'm still not 100% clear on AO3's system.

In terms of warnings, which surely by their very nature are for people's protection and not necessarily any kind of genre statement, I think dubcon should be categorically included in with rape. At the very least, it'll be sexual assault followed by consensual sex – and if it's aphrodisiacs in the soup or alien mind control then it's still about defilement, even if no-one in the sex act is actually the aggressor. Unless everyone is all "Yay alien aphrodisiacs, what a great excuse to make out like we always wanted to!" Which I dunno what to call, because can you consent if you don't have a choice? It's the same sort of issue as is implicit in Dollhouse.

In any case, IMHO dubcon should be part of the main rape warning, because it shouldn't really be about the sexual specifics or legal definitions or genre definitions. Warnings should be about triggers and squick, and I can imagine a character's 'I don't want to do this' thought track is going to be problematic even if a good time is eventually had by all. Surely, people should be able to avoid consent issues entirely via the warnings.

But if people wish to read dubcon but not noncon, or noncon as fandom understands them, as a literary trope... isn't that what the other tags are for? Genre searches? Or are people not encouraged to warn AND tag for the same thing?

I, personally, would drop the 'noncon', which has alternative fandom meanings and significance, and change the warning to something like: "Non-consensual or dubiously consensual sex acts." Or "Issues with sexual consent." Or something equally wordy. But I dunno.

Re: Here from metafandom

[alixtii]

I'm agnostic as to what if anything other than noncon should be in the primary warnings, but that would have the benefit of being clearer, certainly, and not have the problematic implications I read out of the current options. And people not wanting to warn for dubcon would still have the option to choose not to warn.

(another head from metafandom)

[boosette]

While I think that dubcon (with its fandom-specific meaning) ought to be added to the Rape/Noncon/Dubcon warning, I also think that Rape ought to stay there, because it encompasses stories about about surviving rape, and recovery from it - which can be triggerier for some individuals than prurient noncon/dubcon because as a type of story it's a sharp departure from the fantasy/unreality of noncon/dubcon presented as porn.

Re: (another head from metafandom)

[alixtii]

Sure, if we're going to expand the warning to cover all types of rape, then it certainly should say rape. I don't know how popular that change would be, though.

[legionseagle]

But any circumstance in which consent is in any way dubious--whether through the use of alien influence, or power imbalances, or social pressure, or drugs or alcohol, or through not being of legal age--is rape. Period.

I disagree with this contention profoundly, on legal, ethical, pragmatic and feminist grounds. To begin with, once you bring in power imbalances where does that leave heterosexual women? Gives them a choice between celibacy and consenting to rape, given the patriachial imbalance of power.

Furthermore, it has been shown by actual practice that people will not convict of rape a man or woman who has consensual sex with someone a week or so shy of legal age - whatever that means in a relevant jurisdiction. Or, if they do, it's because there's something else going on - racism, often.

Once you start painting everything as rape - from the dark alley to the woman who mutters to herself, "Hell, I'm not really in the mood but if I don't go through with it he'll sulk" - then all you do is cheapen the expression, meaning that more rapists will walk free.

[alixtii]

Gives them a choice between celibacy and consenting to rape, given the patriachial imbalance of power.

It's not quite true that Andrea Dworkin believed that, but one can understand why so many people think she did.

Furthermore, it has been shown by actual practice that people will not convict of rape a man or woman who has consensual sex with someone a week or so shy of legal age - whatever that means in a relevant jurisdiction. Or, if they do, it's because there's something else going on - racism, often.

I'm not quite sure where you are going here. Do you feel this behavior by juries is just?

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Re: 1)
'some content' is weasel words if I have ever heard them. It could mean absolutely anything. Mind you that will be true of any warning tag because a significant proportion of people who tick any checkbox will have simply gone for the nearest thing that sounded vaguely right without considering the full implications of the alternatives and another significant proportion will have checked the box by mistake.

Re: 2)
I've always taken dubcon to mean the consent was given but to an external eye probably shouldn't have been. That to my thinking means it isn't rape because the sole definition of rape, for me, is lack of consent, not anything that merely worries about the pressure used to obtain the consent. It's the difference between theft (rape) and fraud (dubcon) if you like, and the difference does matter.

Hmm. If you look at the fraud metaphor you can in fact see that under some circumstances the victim will feel worse about it than a normal rape, because there is an element of guilt at their own complicity.

On reflection, I can see why some people try to remove that guilt by saying it is all rape, but while that is a kindness to the victim it is also a lie.

And I take noncon as just a synonym for rape, which is used in fanfic circles because the word 'rape' is very emotionally charged and people are shy of admitting that they enjoy reading/writing rape.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

2. Well, it's a question of what counts as consent, no? Genuine consent requires the full faculties of the consenter, and "consent under pressure" is an oxymoron, just like "forced mercy" would be. ("The quality of consent is not strain'd"?) (And that's not something I'm interested in arguing.)

燕晓东<h1><a href="http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48868f4d0100082x.html" title="燕晓东"><em><s

[(Anonymous)]

Hack again?!

[(Anonymous)]

Stop hack the program!!!