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fridgepunk
Intelligent and thoughtful post by sohotrightnow Which required a substantial post to reply to
The bit that caught my eye:
To put it in the most blunt and flamey terms possible: you clearly have not fully understood what they actually did.
let me unpack this for you and other people who are not getting it:
1, they were trying to exploit slash fiction for monetary gain because they believe that their mighty genitalia driven brains give them that right.
2, they broke EVERY bit of professional ethics they were bound by as scientists doing this.
3, the way they were trying to exploit us involved NOT JUST appropriating slash, NOT JUST othering women in general and transwomen in particular, BUT ALSO doing both of those things in a way that further stigmatises us all.
4, the sociological effect of that kind of stigmatisation, especially when it comes to sexual taboos and mores is to make people who transgress sexual taboos (that means slashers, sexual het women and non-het, non-cis people in general btw) targets for REAL LIFE sexual and other violent physical abuse.
5, That goes triple for transwomen, especially those mid transition who, must I remind you, got Ogi going "trannyladyboytrannyladyboytrannyladyboy!" at them.
6, the Ogi/Sai RPS, at least mine did, had a purpose other than just to "sexually humiliate" Ogi/Sai.
7, I am talk as one of the writers of the TWO (2) RPS fics now and expressin my personal reasons for doing that.
8, this point left blank on purpose.
9, The, imho, biggest and most obvious ethical violation Ogi/Sai committed was in not requiring that all participants sign off on some sort of consent and release form.
10, in human experimentation a consent form gives a paticipant certain rights and places certain obligations upon the experimenters.
11, those rights and responsiblities are that the participants must always be able to withdraw their participation from the experiment and withdraw the results of their participation in the experiment at any point. It also requires that the experimenters inform the participants of the purposes and potential problems associated with the experiment so that the participants can give their full informed consent to the experiment.
12, As you may now realise, they effectively did the scientific equivalent rape - human experimentation without even a token attempt to obtain informed consent from the participants, with, in fact, the intent to exploit and hurt the participants.
13, they were using my field, the biosciences, where the golden rule is "DO NOT HARM", to exploit people without their expressly written and informed consent.
14, so I thinks to myself, myself; these people are being very naughty, in fact they seem to think that it doesn't matter if thei subjects consent to be used in human experimentation, and they appear to have... a certain amount of sexual insecurity about themselves.
15, heh. They explicitly said in so many words that they don't think they need to obtain consent from people.
16, So I hope you see, under no other circumstance would I normally resort to RPS - I don't particularly like it personally, though I do not find anything wrong with other people finding it hot, it's just not my thing, but if someone does something that... disgusting (human experimentation without consent that is, not RPS) I am very willing to make a exception on that, especially considering I love writing crackfics to the point that I would slash bread with butter epicly if I had an excuse to and enough spare time.
17, Human experimentation without consent, and human experimentation with the intent of inviting violence upon and making good people targets for further consentless activities by other people with even fewer braincells than these two, well that changes the rules of engagement something chronic imho - it says that here is someone who considers me and other people to be objects they can exploit.
18, an ongoing ethical problem in mental hospitals and old peoples homes is the use of anti-psychotics to "manage" patients and residents - anti-psychotic drugs can keep people in a sort of docile semi-concious state of awareness that stops them from having any violent outburst or even complaining about the treatment they receive. Mental hospitals and old people's homes have serious problem with attendants raping and otherwise abusing inmates and residents obviously. There is also another problem with the over use of anti-psychotic drugs to "manage" people; most anti-psychotic drugs will, if prescribed to someone who is not suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, give them Parkinson's Disease due to schizophrenia and Parkinson's being opposite ends of the dopamine hypothesis (too little dopamine leads to Parkinson's, too much leads to schizophrenia and as many anti-psych drugs are thought to inhibit dopamine production...)
Why would anyone then do that given the results, you may now be wondering? Well the people who do this sort of thing do not view the sick or elderly as people to be cared for; they view them as objects to be stored and put away.
Understand why I consider Ogi and Sai to be bad people as well as scientists? I could godwinise, and godwinise in a way that was totally appropriate and valid. and they invoke my fucking field of study to pull this crap. FLAMES FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE
19, so when I wrote that RPS understand that I was angrier on more levels than you have ever been in your brief and insignificant existence in this cruel veil of tears, so the fic was about two simple things:
20 It was about Monstering, as spider jerusalem put it, which is about the principle of giving a fucking shit, about discomforting those who in their privelaged comfort think they are allowed and can get away with pulling this shit, about treating people as figures or math or statistics or objects for their amusement and benefit.
21, It was about ownership - it was about taking something back from them using these two hands, in this case themselves and their identities as homophobes and bigots, and it was about doing it in a way that was fun for me, and which would amuse other people these bastards wished to steal from.
22, Slash is brilliant in this sense, because sexual politics are so ridiculously intertwined with the politics of power and consent in our society that it can be used with the precision of a scalpel to make political and conceptual statements when done properly.
23, and it must be understood that the RPS in my case did have a thoroughly cathartic aspect as well - it was, as childish and petty as I know this is to do, about lashing out at a target this primitive member of Pan Historia* who's words you now are reading could not physically reach and yet wanted to hurt in some way. I should also note that I sincerely doubt that Ogi and Sai have been exactly hurt by the total of three (3) RPS fics/pic so I'm a bit confused about the cries about how fandom has failed forever and ever form some people (and what if it was us that effectively science!raped fandom and got RPS made about us huh? What then? What if santa claus rode penguins up my fucking arse I say? what then!? Won't someone think of the penguins!?)
24, therefore and in conclusion I think, and this is deeply In My Own Humble Opinion, that the ethics violations make Ogi/Sai fair game for RPS, beause of the specific TYPE of ethics violations they committed, but also that I will not follow up with other RPS if it is causing trouble and triggering for people - the sensible and intelligent people who've done the leg work of contacting BU and publishers and are following up other leads are amazing and deserve to be crushed to death by piles of flowers heaped upon them by us silly admiring people, and I do not want to undermine what they're doing as I want Ogi and Sai to fucking be unemployable in academia from now on - that much I think everyone should be able to agree they are due.
But understand why RPS got made folks, and that it was as much about us reappropriating from thieves and cockbibs as it was about creating a hostile space for Sai/Ogi, and why I have no qualms about it. I also think it is important for people to know why the acafans are coming out of the woodworks and being very angry and being very agressive and committed to destroying these two: These are not mere breakers of arbitrary rules made up by egg heads in labcoats or wankers or trolls we are dealing with - these two are potential human rights abusers.
And so this IS Srs Business, but sometimes you have to laugh so you don't cry or explode with rage.
* This is greek for "The Studying Ape", which is both a tribute to Jean Piaget, a child psychologist who proposed a brilliant theory of cognitive development that proposed that children were basically little scientists, and a riff on the term Pan Narratis from the science of the discworld books, which means "the storytelling ape" - either are far more apt than homo Sapiens considering that I don't like the hubris involved with declaring humanity wise; it can be a smart race, but I think most people would agree that it is rarely wise for particularly long periods of time, and especially not in large groups.
The bit that caught my eye:
Here is the thing: I am fully okay with exposing what bullshit the SurveyFail dudes were pulling. Sai and Ogi were, imo, condescending jerks who were using bad science and terrible data-gathering methods to try and prove that their sexist "findings" were right and to generally treat women's sexuality like it is something shocking and alien. This is really offensive to me.
To put it in the most blunt and flamey terms possible: you clearly have not fully understood what they actually did.
let me unpack this for you and other people who are not getting it:
1, they were trying to exploit slash fiction for monetary gain because they believe that their mighty genitalia driven brains give them that right.
2, they broke EVERY bit of professional ethics they were bound by as scientists doing this.
3, the way they were trying to exploit us involved NOT JUST appropriating slash, NOT JUST othering women in general and transwomen in particular, BUT ALSO doing both of those things in a way that further stigmatises us all.
4, the sociological effect of that kind of stigmatisation, especially when it comes to sexual taboos and mores is to make people who transgress sexual taboos (that means slashers, sexual het women and non-het, non-cis people in general btw) targets for REAL LIFE sexual and other violent physical abuse.
5, That goes triple for transwomen, especially those mid transition who, must I remind you, got Ogi going "trannyladyboytrannyladyboytrannyladyboy!" at them.
6, the Ogi/Sai RPS, at least mine did, had a purpose other than just to "sexually humiliate" Ogi/Sai.
7, I am talk as one of the writers of the TWO (2) RPS fics now and expressin my personal reasons for doing that.
8, this point left blank on purpose.
9, The, imho, biggest and most obvious ethical violation Ogi/Sai committed was in not requiring that all participants sign off on some sort of consent and release form.
10, in human experimentation a consent form gives a paticipant certain rights and places certain obligations upon the experimenters.
11, those rights and responsiblities are that the participants must always be able to withdraw their participation from the experiment and withdraw the results of their participation in the experiment at any point. It also requires that the experimenters inform the participants of the purposes and potential problems associated with the experiment so that the participants can give their full informed consent to the experiment.
12, As you may now realise, they effectively did the scientific equivalent rape - human experimentation without even a token attempt to obtain informed consent from the participants, with, in fact, the intent to exploit and hurt the participants.
13, they were using my field, the biosciences, where the golden rule is "DO NOT HARM", to exploit people without their expressly written and informed consent.
14, so I thinks to myself, myself; these people are being very naughty, in fact they seem to think that it doesn't matter if thei subjects consent to be used in human experimentation, and they appear to have... a certain amount of sexual insecurity about themselves.
15, heh. They explicitly said in so many words that they don't think they need to obtain consent from people.
16, So I hope you see, under no other circumstance would I normally resort to RPS - I don't particularly like it personally, though I do not find anything wrong with other people finding it hot, it's just not my thing, but if someone does something that... disgusting (human experimentation without consent that is, not RPS) I am very willing to make a exception on that, especially considering I love writing crackfics to the point that I would slash bread with butter epicly if I had an excuse to and enough spare time.
17, Human experimentation without consent, and human experimentation with the intent of inviting violence upon and making good people targets for further consentless activities by other people with even fewer braincells than these two, well that changes the rules of engagement something chronic imho - it says that here is someone who considers me and other people to be objects they can exploit.
18, an ongoing ethical problem in mental hospitals and old peoples homes is the use of anti-psychotics to "manage" patients and residents - anti-psychotic drugs can keep people in a sort of docile semi-concious state of awareness that stops them from having any violent outburst or even complaining about the treatment they receive. Mental hospitals and old people's homes have serious problem with attendants raping and otherwise abusing inmates and residents obviously. There is also another problem with the over use of anti-psychotic drugs to "manage" people; most anti-psychotic drugs will, if prescribed to someone who is not suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, give them Parkinson's Disease due to schizophrenia and Parkinson's being opposite ends of the dopamine hypothesis (too little dopamine leads to Parkinson's, too much leads to schizophrenia and as many anti-psych drugs are thought to inhibit dopamine production...)
Why would anyone then do that given the results, you may now be wondering? Well the people who do this sort of thing do not view the sick or elderly as people to be cared for; they view them as objects to be stored and put away.
Understand why I consider Ogi and Sai to be bad people as well as scientists? I could godwinise, and godwinise in a way that was totally appropriate and valid. and they invoke my fucking field of study to pull this crap. FLAMES FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE
19, so when I wrote that RPS understand that I was angrier on more levels than you have ever been in your brief and insignificant existence in this cruel veil of tears, so the fic was about two simple things:
20 It was about Monstering, as spider jerusalem put it, which is about the principle of giving a fucking shit, about discomforting those who in their privelaged comfort think they are allowed and can get away with pulling this shit, about treating people as figures or math or statistics or objects for their amusement and benefit.
21, It was about ownership - it was about taking something back from them using these two hands, in this case themselves and their identities as homophobes and bigots, and it was about doing it in a way that was fun for me, and which would amuse other people these bastards wished to steal from.
22, Slash is brilliant in this sense, because sexual politics are so ridiculously intertwined with the politics of power and consent in our society that it can be used with the precision of a scalpel to make political and conceptual statements when done properly.
23, and it must be understood that the RPS in my case did have a thoroughly cathartic aspect as well - it was, as childish and petty as I know this is to do, about lashing out at a target this primitive member of Pan Historia* who's words you now are reading could not physically reach and yet wanted to hurt in some way. I should also note that I sincerely doubt that Ogi and Sai have been exactly hurt by the total of three (3) RPS fics/pic so I'm a bit confused about the cries about how fandom has failed forever and ever form some people (and what if it was us that effectively science!raped fandom and got RPS made about us huh? What then? What if santa claus rode penguins up my fucking arse I say? what then!? Won't someone think of the penguins!?)
24, therefore and in conclusion I think, and this is deeply In My Own Humble Opinion, that the ethics violations make Ogi/Sai fair game for RPS, beause of the specific TYPE of ethics violations they committed, but also that I will not follow up with other RPS if it is causing trouble and triggering for people - the sensible and intelligent people who've done the leg work of contacting BU and publishers and are following up other leads are amazing and deserve to be crushed to death by piles of flowers heaped upon them by us silly admiring people, and I do not want to undermine what they're doing as I want Ogi and Sai to fucking be unemployable in academia from now on - that much I think everyone should be able to agree they are due.
But understand why RPS got made folks, and that it was as much about us reappropriating from thieves and cockbibs as it was about creating a hostile space for Sai/Ogi, and why I have no qualms about it. I also think it is important for people to know why the acafans are coming out of the woodworks and being very angry and being very agressive and committed to destroying these two: These are not mere breakers of arbitrary rules made up by egg heads in labcoats or wankers or trolls we are dealing with - these two are potential human rights abusers.
And so this IS Srs Business, but sometimes you have to laugh so you don't cry or explode with rage.
* This is greek for "The Studying Ape", which is both a tribute to Jean Piaget, a child psychologist who proposed a brilliant theory of cognitive development that proposed that children were basically little scientists, and a riff on the term Pan Narratis from the science of the discworld books, which means "the storytelling ape" - either are far more apt than homo Sapiens considering that I don't like the hubris involved with declaring humanity wise; it can be a smart race, but I think most people would agree that it is rarely wise for particularly long periods of time, and especially not in large groups.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:01 am (UTC)But. "What if it was us that effectively science!raped fandom": are you serious?? I realize that you are mockingly putting those words in someone else's mouth, but, you know, if you are not able to see the problem in saying that this shitty oppressive hurtful violation which isn't rape is so bad that it's ~effectively~ rape, then maybe you should... just... stop.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:06 am (UTC)And I want to make my own reply on the topic, and am using link-gathering as a way to calm down first.
edited for spelling
Date: 2009-09-04 02:30 am (UTC)Can we just agree as a baseline that no one deserves to be raped for any reason? I feel like... that's pretty basic. No one. Ever. For any reason.
The RPF wasn't akin to rape, wasn't analogous to rape, had nothing to do with rape or sexual assault. RPS and RPF are not sexual assault or rape, in any fashion, and are not analogous to same. Fiction. Fiction.
Unless you are somehow forcing people to look at the fiction, or distributing the fiction in an attempt to cause harm to a private citizen, then at worst it's libel. When it's fiction involving public figures, it's rarely even that; and these guys made themselves public figures to us by presenting themselves to us as such, in the guise of researchers using public credentials and bona fides to convince us to cooperate with them.
RPFers routinely write about people they like, people they dislike, people they feel largely indifferent toward. It's nothing unusual to turn these guys into fictional characters for purposes of parody or commentary.
I don't see how anger or rage or (especially!) analogies to rape have anything to do with this materially. You wrote fic for whatever reason you felt like writing it, to express your views. Like any other fic by any other fan writer.
Re: edited for spelling
Date: 2009-09-04 05:46 am (UTC)Yeah, I would feel a lot better about this debate if I was sure everyone agreed on that.
Re: edited for spelling
Date: 2009-09-04 05:34 pm (UTC)About the use of the term rape; I'm going in and striking them through and replacing it with "abuse" - I very nearly left an angry comment down there that explained how a book in which sexually intimate details being collected from minors by people who were also violating the anonymity of their subjects and collecting personal details could actually lead to people being psychologically traumatised when their personal details were published in the book, and be traumatised in a way equivalent in manuy of the important ways, including ways that significantly affect people's ability to go to cons or school or college because they fear being physcially sexually assaulted etc...etc... the functional point was that if you have an event that involves the exact same abuses of power, and the same issues of consent and has many of the same effects, then A=B comes into play because if you can describe something in the exact same way as soemthing else then the two are logically equivalent - which is why I described it as such, because the way I conceptualise rape does make them similar (though note that no one should have to share or even accept my perspective on the matter as valid, because there's no reason my perspective should be privelaged in any way)
The next paragraph however then went into why semantics is a really fucking stupid thing to argue from in this case because a better arguement wold focus on how using the term rape like this trivilialises and appropriates rape for my own ends, and is done in a way that could be harmful to rape survivors.
At which point I was arguing that I was wrong to have used rape like that, but that they were wrong for criticising me incorrectly therefore blahblahblah - which is what I believe is called A Really Fucking Stupid Argument In Which I Run Around With No Pants On. And someone who resorts to that kind of argument should probably just put some pants on and apologise... or at least that's what I've been telling people for the past year! oy on just so many levels...
Re: edited for spelling
Date: 2009-09-04 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-06 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 04:21 am (UTC)You extrapolated from the shitty fandom survey to medical abuse of the mentally ill and elderly. I won't argue that the thinking is similar in both cases, and certainly harmful and unscientific. But the argument people have been making is simply another extrapolation: using written sex to humiliate two people you disagree with is an ugly aspect of a larger mode of thought that comprises rape culture. No one's arguing that the RPF was rape or anything close, but it is uncomfortable and - I believe - wrong, because it so violently and immaturely skirts the bounds of consent for the sake of cheap laughs and vicious humiliation.
Even though the faux-scientists are vile, I think it says pretty bad things about us as a community if we consider that kind of RPF acceptable.
just my datapoint
Date: 2009-09-04 05:26 am (UTC)i dislike RPF in general. i think it's fundamentally disrespectful of people's ownership over their private lives, and as such i generally don't think that kink is ok (and please, i don't want to start an argument about that; i am just mentioning it to provide personal background).
however, i'm (barely) ok with alchemia's piece of art. it's very, very close to the line for me, but comes down just this side of it, for reasons i've listed in a's journal.
your piece, even though i admit i laughed, and quoted especially purple bits to a friend in IM, feels right now like it comes down just on the other side of that line. not so much because of the piece itself, mind -- i don't see the rape others see in either alchemia's work or yours; in both "sai" and "ogi" are having consensual sex. no, but because you posted it in ogi's journal; you shoved it in his face, and it feels like you used sex to humiliate those guys.
that feels ... different to me from using sex to point out how obnoxiously rotten their "research" was. i understand the anger (i am getting steadily angrier at those two the more i think about what they did). i understand the need for catharsis. but the striking back in anger makes me deeply uncomfortable, and using sex to do it niggles even more.
so, i am conflicted. writing sex to humiliate somebody feels wrong to me. using sex as a medium for expression, on the other hand, like what i feel alchemia did, feels acceptable, even if it's close to the line. i can't really put my finger on why i think you did the humiliation thing and alchemia didn't -- and mind, i have no idea whether i am even right. i just have these impressions, and am pondering.
Re: just my datapoint
Date: 2009-09-04 05:29 pm (UTC)Alchemia did not try to shove their picture into OGi/Sai's face, and did not construct the picture so that it neatly parralleled what Ogi/Sai were doing - it works more as a caricature of the silly insecure men who kept talking about how they're been doing "research" on all sorts of fetishistic porn while repeatedly, and TMIingly, making it very clear that they found the notion of Teh Ghey gross and not erotic or anything - Alchemia's peice then works because it's clearly all about laughing at them, but isn't attacking them if that makes any sense.
My fic... not so much.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 08:15 am (UTC)I'm being a facetious arse, but that's all this post deserves.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 03:14 pm (UTC)It's getting ridiculous.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 08:51 am (UTC)What they did was terrible, yes. But it was nothing like the brutal, bodily violation that actual. fucking. rape is. Both are violations, but they are not analogous.
Taking another survey in the future isn't likely to trigger in the same way. Trying to trust in the future isn't likely to be the same obstacle.
Seriously: find a new analogy.
Rape?
Date: 2009-09-04 07:55 pm (UTC)i actually believe these guys have quote unquote good intentions. But Words cannot describe what i feel like, KNOWING that I, and you and the rightwing erotica-lovers who keep that desire hidden, and those straight men who crave shemale porn-- we are all of us helpless and can only hope that their intentions are good and their product is not destructive.
So much potential for damage in the hands of these two men. And no one to oversee them for ethics.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-05 04:48 am (UTC)