(no subject)

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

I would consider a 'flame' or an attack to be a vicious affair, with no regard for the feelings of those involved. I don't think I was vicious to any unreasonable degree, I was simply stating our opinion of censorship and splats, and stated an opinion we felt was valid.

Since you obviously feel that any kind of free speech that doesn't match your own is an 'attack', we don't expect you to listen or understand now you've made up your mind we're all out to verbally bash you.

I stand by my statements. Censorship is discriminatory. The expectation that a community should alter its stance on free speech to cater to your issues is selfish. What is acceptable to you and your system is a personal issue, and should be dealt with by you, not by censorship of the whole community.

As we said before, If you don't like it, don't read it. Don't expect others to change their posts to meet your comfort zone. We tried to be polite to you, but you are evidently only hearing what you want to hear. So we are saying it again, and open on the forum this time. We advocate free speech and free posting. As a member of this community we have a right to that opinion. And just because you believe differently, don't expect us to change to cater to you.

Comments

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Once again, it is my understanding that this community was intended by its founder, asrai_d, to be run along the lines of the old Dark Personalities mailing list: no spoilers, splats or trigger warnings, with members taking responsibility for managing their own feelings when it comes to allegedly "triggering" material.

I have seen plenty of posts to this community that discussed frankly matters that some might considered unpleasant. Some were lj-cut, some were not. Those who lj-cut such posts were likely veterans of online forums where such rules were strictly enforced. The lj-cut tag was invented to help users link lengthy posts to subsidiary pages. Unless and until asrai_d says otherwise, it's community members' own choice whether or not to hide material they think others might find upsetting.

For the record, I saw no flames or attacks in the now deleted threads. A flame is a personal attack, e.g., "you ___, what a stupid thing to say." No one said anything of the kind.

[thenetwork.livejournal.com]

Since you obviously feel that any kind of free speech that doesn't match your own is an 'attack', we don't expect you to listen or understand

Why o why can't people tell the difference? Is it so *hard*?

We friended you. (we post lots of triggery, threatening classical poetry.) ;)

And now we're all terribly confused

[nematoddity.livejournal.com]

Considering when I'm not ranting about personal difficulties, my journal is primarily poetry of a highly emotional--and occasionally triggering--nature...And damn--I had decided I was too tired last night to respond to the poetry post, and now all the responses are gone?

That's just...rude. As has been said, but still.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

My $.02: I don't see how requesting the use of lj-cuts is "censorship". The posts are still there, to be read by any who wish to read them; they just don't show up in their entirety on one's Friends Page. Why is that such a big deal?

It actually would be my preference to have ALL posts of more than a paragraph or two use the lj-cut - not just on this community, but everywhere - but I realize that's not going to happen. *shrugs* Whatever.

As for "The expectation that a community should alter its stance on free speech"... ummm... the community is to be considered an entity in and of itself, independent of its members, with its own views and stances? This does not make sense to me. There are 131 members of this community, and the Information Page specifically says there are no guidelines, so... exactly how is "the community's stance" being determined here?

I haven't been a member of this community very long, so maybe there is some kind of method of polling for consensus that I have not yet heard about... or perhaps input into "the community's stance" is based on duration of membership, so I don't yet have a say in it. If the latter is the case, I would like to know, because I don't really *do* the group-think thing very well, and would have serious problems with belonging to a community in which I had no voice concerning "the community's stance" on issues.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

As for "The expectation that a community should alter its stance on free speech"... ummm... the community is to be considered an entity in and of itself, independent of its members, with its own views and stances? This does not make sense to me. There are 131 members of this community, and the Information Page specifically says there are no guidelines, so... exactly how is "the community's stance" being determined here?

I was cranky, and the statement I made referred to the wording of her request, and her refusal to listen to any 'alternative' method of dealing with her problem short of the whole community censoring their poetry by putting it in an LJ cut.

I was not speaking for the community as a whole, rather voicing my impression of what seemed to be 'demanded' of us. "Hide the poetry or I'll be forced to leave." I don't go onto websites with splats and spoilers and demand they use full wordings because I don't need splats. If someone is too sensitive to deal with poetry in an open forum, they shouldn't think it their right to ask for it to be 'hidden' just to make them more comfortable.

I didn't have a problem with the discussion. I was stating my opinions, not attacking anyone. I didn't get cranky until she deleted all the responses, and claimed she was being 'flamed' and 'attacked', and that no one would listen to her.

She wasn't listening to us either. She seemed to think that just for having a different stance from her, we were on some crusade to make her life miserable.

I haven't been a member of this community very long

To tell you the truth, neither have we. As far as acceptability goes, I think that people should be able to self-censor, that is, don't read what you don't want, or feel capable, to read. It seems to us a mature enough logic. If we can't 'keep ourself safe' without stars, splats, spoilers and trigger warnings, how are we expected to cope with real life, where no such things exist?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Fair enough - I understand "cranky" all too well myself. Hey, it happens; no blame.

I only saw the original post, because I was at work while the rest of the (now deleted) discussion took place. The initial request seemed reasonable enough to me - not a demand, just a request, with an explanation of why it was being made. I can't "just scroll past" anything myself, because I read too fast; to see words is to read them automatically, and there have been times when I've read things I would much rather not have read because by the time I realized what they were, it was too late. I also have a ton of poetry so grim and distressing that I have a hard time even reading it myself, and I'm the one who wrote the stuff - I wouldn't subject anyone else to it. In light of that, I've got no problem with using lj-cuts if someone asks it, even if I don't think what I'm posting is that bad. The "edit" button's right there, after all; it's only a moment's work to make use of it, and if that's all it takes to make someone more comfortable, I'm willing to do so.

"If someone is too sensitive to deal with poetry in an open forum, they shouldn't think it their right to ask for it to be 'hidden' just to make them more comfortable."

Well, I can't agree with that. Surely anyone's got a right to ask for what would make them more comfortable? I've got preternaturally sensitive hearing; noise-levels that don't trouble other people are often painful to me, and where it's an option I do ask for the volume to be cranked down, because otherwise I may have to leave. It took me a long time to learn to do that, too... I used to just silently slip away, assuming that no one was going to care, until my friends made it clear to me that they did care, and would rather crank it down than have me either vanish or remain but be in discomfort. I don't know rockstargrrl (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rockstargrrl/), but I'd rather crank down the "emotional volume" than have her leave the community.

I don't know what "splats" may be, and "spoilers" I've only seen used to mean revealing the plot-elements or ending of a book or film someone else might not have seen yet... which is clearly not what it means in this context, so I am somewhat perplexed by the usage. I get the impression that the whole issue has a lot to do with old politics from other sites (which I have not seen), and that people here may still be edgy and annoyed about those interactions - yes?

"I think that people should be able to self-censor"

That would be nice, surely, but if "should" were "is", the world would be a whole lot different. *wry grin* Not to get off on a rant about it, but I've got 'issues' with the s-word... whether or not she should be able to do something is really irrelevant if she can't do it. It may be that the only way she can avoid reading what she doesn't feel capable of handling is to leave the community... in which case, stating that that's what she'll have to do isn't "making a demand", it's just stating a fact.

"If we can't 'keep ourself safe' without stars, splats, spoilers and trigger warnings, how are we expected to cope with real life, where no such things exist?"

It's my impression (from random reading of members' Ljs) that quite a few people here aren't actually doing such a terrific job of coping with real life. Some seem to be struggling pretty desperately, in fact, and come here in hopes of a respite from the struggle. Now, that may be a pretty forlorn hope, because the World Online isn't really any different from the Realtime World... both have got exactly the same kinds of people, and therefore exactly the same kinds of problems. Perhaps a community like this should be different, but that doesn't mean that it is, or will be... still, the hope is understandable.

People who are having difficulties are often edgy, easily distressed, and have trouble saying things the way they'd like to say them. There's a proverb I think applies well here: "You add as much to the suffering in the world when you take offense, as when you give offense." Perhaps more slack could be cut all around?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

rockstargrrl was requesting specifically that poetry be hidden behind an lj-cut tag because "the poetry being posted lately was extremely triggering" to her.

She went on in the discussion to say that she wanted the choice not to read material that was upsetting to her; she could not simply scroll past it. It seemed, although she never said this explicitly, that it was poetry itself that was triggering her. I would have liked to see her clarify that, but she chose to end the conversation.

The way we see it, lj-cutting "potentially triggering" material simply because someone might be offended by it(and everything can be triggering to somebody, as jinkies pointed out in their post on the now-deleted thread) is, in fact, censorship of a sort. It might lead to the sort of excesses one sees in forums such as Mosaic Minds. At least some members of this community appear not to wish for this community to go in that direction.

Like you, I'd like it if people lj-cut lengthier entries as a matter of common courtesy so that friends lists become easier to scan; that is what the lj-cut is for, not (as rockstargrrl suggested) for hiding "potentially triggering" material.

As far as we can tell, multiplicity is not supposed to be "based on traumatic experience" as she stated; it is supposed to discuss multiplicity. Some people can't do that without discussing traumatic experience and that's fine; for them, it's intrinsically related. For others it's not. asrai_d knew this when she created the community, that's why she didn't give guidelines.

Her only statement on it that we know of can be found in this thread:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/multiplicity/34412.html (scroll down, it's toward the end)

For HIN2, I'm Ekristheh Akanora.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I'm getting "Page cannot be displayed" for both the links in that post to the darkpersonalities pages. I haven't ever seen any of the other Multiples sites except Kinhost at Yahoo, which I read only rarely, so I'm not "up" on whatever political stuff has taken place in the past. In truth, I do what I can to avoid "political stuff" in general, because it doesn't feel good to me. *grins* Not that I'm saying it's a "trigger", mind you, or that anyone has to refrain from it for my sake.

I still don't *get* this whole thing about "triggers". For sure, after really terrible things have happened, one doesn't just shrug them off in a year or two... reminders of them pop up unexpectedly, and then one feels bad, may have to withdraw from people for a while in order to get a grip... that's natural enough. There are some songs I'd rather not hear, that will induce me to go lock myself in the nearest bathroom for an indeterminate time if no other escape is possible. I don't see that as "triggering", however, and it has little or nothing to do with me being more than one person.

Maybe it's that the word "trigger" seems so mechanistic... since a lot of the whole PTSD thing originally came out of the experiences of Viet Nam vets, I guess it's logical that a mechanistic, "military" term would become common parlance, but I don't really relate to that mind-set myself. The whole concept of "triggers" also seems to me to carry a distinct flavor of Woundology (http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap5/chap5d2.htm), which is not a flavor I like.

Be that as it may, if someone asks me to do something which is no trouble for me to do, I'm more likely than not to do it, whether I think their reasons for wanting it are sensible or not. Therefore, if I post any of my poetry here, sure, I'll stick it behind an lj-cut - it's a small thing, and costs me nothing.

I don't speak for any community... LOL, not even for the one occupying my body (which is partly why I say "I", not "we"), and certainly not for other people online whom I do not even know. By the same token, nobody else speaks for me... and that was the point of my initial post to this thread. If people are expressing their own individual opinions, that's fine - I just can't be party to any "community stance" about which I didn't get a choice.

iamshadow (http://www.livejournal.com/users/iamshadow/) already said that wasn't how she meant it, therefore I am not having any problem about it.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Well I can't speak to all the online history as an expert, but I can say what I understand about the "no censorship due to triggers" ethos. So much of multiple-to-multiple interaction in support groups of various kinds centres around fear and disability and where there is a fierce protectiveness of the 'victims' by making rules about what can and can't be posted, with and without warnings.

And that's real; I'm not implying it's something that people have to get over. There are people who enjoy themselves best in those communities.

But there are communities that have sprung up in direct reaction to that (that doesn't mean they don't evolve and change; just talking about origin here). A number of multiple systems have gone through some kind of experience where someone in their system expressed something true or real for them and then been chastised for doing it inappropriately. For example, systems where someone posts that they had sexual enjoyment out of being abused, and then that system is labelled a perpetrator and is asked to leave the group. Or multiples who feel they don't need therapy.

So I think that's where the fierce defense of the "no censorship rules" comes from. It is setting a ground rule that although ideas about the *content* of a post might be argued, ideas about the *appropriateness* of a post won't be. And that's probably why (I missed it too) this post raised such a fierce reaction.

Where Lj-cut tags come into that, I could not say. :) But as I understand it, there's the history.

Shandra

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay, that makes sense. As I said, I haven't been part of any of those other groups, and don't know the histories behind them.

It was my impression that this community is not supposed to be about "fear and disability", and the medical model that says being multiple is this terrible thing. I wouldn't have had anything to do with such a community, for the same reason I stay away from a great many of the autism forums: IMHO there's not a damn thing wrong with being multiple and/or autistic. What we need is not medical treatment, but social change so we are not discriminated against for being different from the norm.

Which is not to say that multiple or autistic persons can't have psychological difficulties the same as anyone else - anxiety, grief, rage, low self-esteem, dysfunctional patterns - and life-issues that need work. Hey, y'know, everybody gets hurt, "normal" people and weirdlings alike; it's really rare for any person to reach adulthood without having at least one year of 250+ on the Stress Scale (http://www.qut.edu.au/healthservice/am_i_stressed.html) (and note that that scale totally ignores abuse) - everybody's got bad memories to cope with, though not everybody admits to them in public.

Some people "split" into multiplicity, or are joined by other consciousnesses, due to abuse. That's not the only way it happens, though - it's not how it was for me - and I don't see any good reason to assume that just because a person is multiple, that that person is also in distress from either past or present issues.

Also, we don't have to stay dysfunctional, no matter what bad shit happened to us - "getting over it" is an option. Where Woundology comes into this: it may be that some people don't heal because they've been taught that being multiple is "a symptom"... so if they get better, that means they'd have to be just one person, and naturally they don't want that, so they have to "stay sick". It's like being told that having a family is a symptom of illness, and that the only way to be well is to get rid of them: the price is just too high. But why believe those who say this?

*shrugs* I'm not a victim. Sure, bad shit has happened to me, but I survived it - I'm not going to go around calling myself "a survivor" either, like my whole life was some sort of shipwreck. Ship's been wrecked a time or two, aye, but not so badly it couldn't be repaired... *grin*... 's got a good crew.

[thenetwork.livejournal.com]

We originally posted this (posthttp://www.livejournal.com/community/multiplicity/53396.html?thread=300436#t300436)as a comment on the following post, but it seems really relevant here. That remark about woundology is right on the mark, too, we think.

Regarding links to darkpersonalities

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Darkpersonalities.com is down. It will not be returning, nor will there be any mirror site, by request of its founders, the Anachronic Army.

We were assisting them with maintenance at one time, and so we have all the files, a few of which have been hosted at astraeasweb.net.

Blackwidow Crew's essay on spoilers can be found at
http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/bwc.html