What drives me nuts about the whole “boomers vs. millennials” narrative is like – its construction depends entirely on the erasure of already marginalized people.
“Boomer”, in these arguments, always means “white, affluent, and able-bodied”. The existence of poor, nonwhite, or disabled baby boomers contradicts the oppressor/oppressed paradigm, so they are simply ignored. “40 years ago everyone had a house and a job and lived in harmony” is a fiction. It has always been a fiction. It’s post-WWII propaganda constructed to dismiss systemic poverty and racism. Hold up the smiling suburban ideal and no one will notice the slums. It has never been true for more than a fraction of people, and it drives me batty how many millennials wholeheartedly buy into it. I’m sincerely sorry you can’t afford a house, but for the love of god stop acting like systemic inequality was just invented because you hadn’t noticed it before.
Anonymous asked: Hey here's a fun fact, I've been sent into tons of panic attacks and bouts of crying, vomiting, shaking, and self harming because of accidentally coming across works where people wrote the abuse I suffered as kinks. And you, ya little rascal, you're defending it. A whole blog! Wow. If there's a hell, you have a one way ticket. That's all I can say. It's fucking incredible.
First of all, I’m sorry you have to deal with that. I also have panic attacks and they’re awful. But you need to address the fact that you have a serious problem here and the solution isn’t censoring other people’s stories. If you’re having panic attacks and episodes of self harm from just being reminded of the existence of certain kinks, please see a therapist. This is not healthy, it’s not normal, and it’s not a situation that you should be in for the long term. These kinks aren’t going to go away and you need to learn how to handle that for the sake of your mental health.
Also? People aren’t writing about your abuse. We have no idea who you are or what you went through. We’re writing fictional stories about fictional characters in fictional scenarios. It’s not about you.
Fun fact: Giant otters have 22 distinct noises they use for communication. Also they want you to get help too, anon. Please listen to the otters.
Sometimes people have these kinds of symptoms from: hearing a garage door open. Popsicles and soup broth. Certain common children’s toys.
Asking people to voluntarily tag a trigger is good.
Offering to tag for triggers to the extent that you are able is good.
Making sure your fic is well tagged is good.
Using AO3’s filters to filter out tags you find disturbing is good.
Seeing a therapist is good.
Thinking that other people are maliciously doing something because they know you’re triggered by it (when said people don’t even know you) is a cognitive distortion.
Yelling at other people who are also trying to help you get access to a space free of your triggers? Is counterproductive.
(Sometimes, also, although it’s very thorny to talk about it, people have triggers around the existence of another type of person. Sometimes people take their triggers as a moral imperative, and decide that some group of people different from them is bad as evidenced by how they personally feel around such people. Other times, they do the work to respect other people and avoid harming anyone, despite their physiological reactions. Mental illness can make ethical responsibility confusing, but it doesn’t automatically strip us of moral agency.)
While I am a known stan for the specific right of trauma survivors to write fic without harassment (everyone should have that right, but protect the most vulnerable first), that right depends heavily on the ability for trauma survivor fic writers to have a crowd to blend with. To not have to disclose personal upsetting history in order to write.
Which means that the distinctions between sexual and artistic and cathartic are going to be inherently blurry! Plus also many people need to comprehend their suffering as an experience connected to other narratives and human experiences, in order not to dissociate it forever.
(Everything fictional I write lately is intended as all three, at least a little bit. Sometimes it’s mostly catharsis with a little bit of sex and art. Sometimes it’s mostly sex, art or both, with a little bit of catharsis. All of which is to say, I don’t genuinely know whether anon would find my handling of difficult subject matters to be “as kinks”, in their vernacular, or not - even though, where there is abuse in my stories, I do my best to handle it seriously.)
Favourite Tropes #137: the hero who’s been through so much inexplicable nonsense that they’re impenetrably jaded, except instead of being grumpy and cynical they’re just sort of amiably cheerful about it all. Like, the universe has just turned itself inside-out, and they’re all: “Right… I guess it’s that time again. Could be worse, I suppose - at least this time I’m wearing pants!“
