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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: 2009-09-05 04:48 am (UTC)