Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2023-03-30 05:53 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2023-03-30 05:53 pm
[ SECRET POST #5928 ]
⌈ Secret Post #5928 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[Far Cry]
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[Starry Love]
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 11 secrets from Secret Submission Post #848.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 12:35 am (UTC)(link)Like, first of all, I genuinely have no idea whether or not it's psychologically and emotionally unhealthy to enjoy toxic elements of media without engaging in any sort of self-reflection about why we like them. Personally, I'm not someone who is capable of just...not engaging in that kind of self-reflection. So the idea of not doing it feels very, very wrong to me. But I have no idea whether it's unhealthy for other people or not.
And secondly, we obviously don't actually know what sorts of self-reflection other people are doing and just not sharing openly. I'm the sort of person who finds the psychology of kinks fascinating, so I want to discuss the subject openly. But other people may not feel that way. Maybe they have thought about why they like the dark stuff they like, but they prefer to keep that stuff private.
With that said, I do find it frustrating that sometimes people are actually hostile to the very notion of discussing the psychology of kinks. Like, even if the person isn't speaking for anyone but themselves, there are people who will act like they're being uptight and catering to antis for wanting to engage with the question. And it's like, no, some of us just want to engage with the question because engaging with those sorts of questions feels good to us.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 12:46 am (UTC)(link)Oh, I hear this, because I think it's a fascinating subject and it's totally worthy of discussion. As long as there isn't an assumption (spoken or unspoken) that the goal of analyzing your kinks should be to think yourself out of having them. It's almost impossible to have this conversation in good faith with people who have that notion as an underlying baseline. Unfortunately that's all too common and frankly I feel much safer doing my kink-examining with trusted friends in semi-private spaces.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 02:48 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 12:59 am (UTC)(link)In your case (and I do believe you're acting in good faith), absolutely! Engaging with the ideas of why kinks appeal to us is an interesting exercise in self-reflection. As a point, I know I enjoy being submissive because my life outside of the bedroom is very tightly structured and demanding, where I command influence and have to keep track of a million things at once-- submitting allows me to let go of control and gets me into a calmer, "emptier" mind-space where I can fully relax. I like tracing lines like that!
But that said, all too often in the fandom space, the question of "why are you into the kinks you're into" comes with a heavy implication of "so you can fix it." That there must be some sort of damage that causes you to enjoy darker things sexually, and that having hard kinks (or kinks at all, in some cases) must mean that you are unwell or deviant. I can't tell you the number of times I've been told, apropos of very little, that not only must I be an abuse victim in denial, but that I am an affront to feminism for enjoying submission. So the defensiveness doesn't come from nowhere.
I do think there should be safe spaces where we can talk about our subjective experience with kink, especially if it's getting into uncomfortable realization territory. But it must come without judgment, and with the full knowledge that many people genuinely do simply enjoy it for the sake of enjoying it. There doesn't always have to be a "reason"-- it just feels good for many people!
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 02:38 am (UTC)(link)Yeah, this is totally fair. Your whole comment is, and the people who react to your kinks that way are the fucking worst, I'm sorry.
Honestly, with my last paragraph I wasn't really talking about having the freedom to ask other people why they like what they like--which I do think is a very iffy thing to do under most circumstances. Like, you probably shouldn't just ask that, and if you do ask, people are totally reasonable to say it's none of your business, or that they just find it hot.
I was mainly talking about how, sometimes people can get so broadly dismissive of the very notion that one might have complicated feelings about their kinks, that they end up shutting down that conversation for other people. I mean, I have lots of complicated thoughts and feelings about my kinks and I'm okay with that, it doesn't actually bother me in any deep-seated way. But I often feel like I can't express any of my complicated thoughts and feelings, or talk about having them, because I've seen quite a few people scoff at the very notion of feeling weird or ambivalent about one's kinks, like only a dull and unenlightened pleb would feel any of that.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 05:31 am (UTC)(link)Part of the thing about really analyzing one's complicated feelings about their kinks is that it requires you to be open and vulnerable if you're going to be honest. In the current fandom/internet climate, I would frankly advise people against being vulnerable in this way unless they're very very confident, because if there is no filter and no privacy, there will inevitably be those who will use that vulnerability against you. And it might hit you in some soft and painful places, and if there's any trauma anywhere in that, it might indeed trigger something and leave you worse off than before you started.
No matter what your fictional kinks are, you have the right to privacy and emotional self-protection. If bravado or dismissive behavior is part of that, so be it. I do think you're underestimating just how ruthless and vicious anti-kink people can be in aggressively going after people. It often is truly safer to not even let them get a toe in the door.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 06:42 am (UTC)(link)I'm not; they just don't bother me. My OTP is very controversial--tons of antis. I'm just very unbothered by any of the stuff they say. I guess because I find it so ridiculous. Or hell, maybe it's because I shared some of their perspectives when I was younger and so I feel like I understand why they think the way they do and that makes it easy to brush off. IDK.
I do know I'm a lot more bothered by people trying to shame me for feeling a little conflicted or weird about something than I am by people trying to shame me for liking it.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 07:17 am (UTC)(link)I think maybe if they were doxxing you and sharing photos of your house and telling you that you must have enjoyed and deserved the rape and/or SA in your past if you ever mentioned it, or posted videos of you taken without your consent when you didn't even know it was happening, you might not be so blithe. These are things that have happened to me and people I know. (Or maybe it has happened to you and you really are that secure and confident.)
I'm not saying it's the norm or anything, but it definitely has a chilling effect on honesty. I've never seen this behavior from anti-shaming people, but it is very much a thing from the pro-shamers.
By all means, be ambivalent as much as you want. Question is as much as you want, and talk about it as openly as you feel safe to. It's okay! But the "shaming people for liking things" includes a lot more credible death threats, so there is a lot more legitimate reason to be wary.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 07:22 am (UTC)(link)you might understand why they think the way they do, but I do think you're still not understating how hateful and violent the "problematic ship" discourse has become. How absolutely brutal they are with victim-blaming ("oh, you like x ship and you were raped? You deserved it and you must have liked it. too bad your rapist didn't kill you") Can you really easily laugh this sort of thing off?
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 04:34 pm (UTC)(link)I don't laugh it off when it's directed at other people, because I'm not insensitive like that. But directed towards me? Sure. The person saying those things is a hateful clown; nothing they say means anything to me.
The place where I wouldn't laugh it off anymore is when they take it into real life with doxxing, etc. But in the twenty years I've been in fandom, I've seen two doxxings, which, for perspective, is the same number of pedestrians I've seen hit and killed by cars in that time. So personally it's just not something I worry about beyond basic mindfulness of the possibility. I guess maybe if I got into a fandom where people were fucking insane and doxxing all over the place, then I'd be warier, but I've been in some wanky fandoms and doxxing has still been very rare. *shrug*
Also, to be clear, you don't need to convince me that antis are worse than the people who are so kink positive they end up unintentionally implying that people who feel anything but horny delight about their own kinks are less valid. Of course the antis are worse. They're not even in the same ballpark. The fact that I personally feel worse after an invalidating run-in with the latter type of person than I feel after a run-in with the former does not mean the latter is doing worse things or is a worse person; of course they're not. Of course they're not.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 06:13 am (UTC)(link)I believe we would do better to talk about kinks to destigmatize them as a means to separate sexual desires/fantasies from who people are outside of that.
But of course, if some others don't see it that way, I just have to accept it.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-03-31 07:05 am (UTC)(link)I'm in favor of both. I'm in favor of recognizing that kinks often don't mean anything concrete or specific or significant about who a person is in the social sense. Like, to everyone who is not that person, the fact that they have that kink should basically just be taken to mean they have that kink.
However, I'm personally a lot more interested in the psychology of kinks as described by the individuals who have them, as well as the psychology of kinks much more broadly, from sociological, cultural, and historical perspectives, etc.
And those things aren't mutually exclusive. The fact that psychology is an innate aspect of kink doesn't negate that kinks should not be stigmatized or viewed as defining who a person is.