Avoidance chronicle.

[sinsense]

Today, while at work, I planned my trip to Washington D.C. I also researched jello wrestling opportunities. There's lesbian jello wrestling in D.C., but it's not while I'm there -- I may have to make a second trip

Comments

[sinsense]

My thoughts on it have changed a whole lot because of fandom. I used to have the attitude that it was creating a kind of readerly experience? Like, essentially traumatizing the reader (the unpredictable, out-of-nowhere) so that they would understand the character's experience. Even if that wasn't the author's intent -- it usually isn't, at least in fandom, because whatever it's porn -- it's interesting to me that text can produce something like the experience of trauma. But, I don't know, getting older, meeting people who have gone through a buttload of stuff, I've come around to "yeah, that's interesting, but interesting isn't a justification for someone getting hurt" a whole lot more. I mean, 'interesting' is enough reason for me to get hurt, but I'm less self-centered these days and realize that it's not reason enough to allow others to be hurt (or re-hurt, especially

[impertinence]

(THREADJUMPING BUT THIS COMMENT GIVES ME FEELINGS

[secrethappiness]

The thing I don't get is that it takes so much less energy to not be an asshole and write a quick one sentence like you said than it does to be an asshole, have a hissyfit when people call you on it, and then defend your asshole stance repeatedly all while making it seem like its the commentor's problem and they don't understand your art.

Maybe I should stop assuming the rest of the world is as lazy as I am?

[sinsense]

But why isn't the rest of the world as lazy as you are? It would make everything so much better, damn it.

[apiphile]

Speaking of Tumblr, do you ever do that thing where you find one good porn image on a blog and then you plough through 58 pages of pictures of people pooping on Barbie dolls in extreme close-up* because you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that if you quit before the end then you will miss a goldmine of further images? And then you just end up having spent several hours scrolling past pictures of Mattel figurines with shit on them at first in disgust and then in general boredom and by the end of it you start noticing repeated images and you realise you have just assimilated some knowledge which you never, ever, ever wanted to have and that it is ALL YOUR OWN FAULT.

*No this is actually a thing.

[sinsense]

YES. YES I DO THAT THING. Oh god. And! At a certain point I start RE-VISITING those blogs, because now I feel like I have a profound knowledge of the Tumblr owner as a person, and so I am weirdly attached to their fixation on "anal orgasms." My brain thinks that because I have that knowledge, now I need to exercise it or whatever. It's bizarre.

Also thanks ever so much for getting me to google shit on Mattel figurines. Because it's your fault, obviously, and not my own impossible curiosity.

[apiphile]

OIDVHDASIOUAOUHCAC Oh lord I do that with this one Tumblr that occasionally has porn I like on it but more often just caters to the individual's love of latex body suits, dirty jocks, lyric, and shoe-sniffing and I just god help me I find it STRANGELY ADORABLE. Why. Whyyyyyy. Also there was the most hysterically funny Cowboy With A Massive Boner And Handlebar Moustache picture which I think I emailed to almost everyone I know. How do people communicate without ludicrous porn?

... Whoops.

[belle_noiseuse]

oh god. oh god. oh god. I googled and it took me to College Girls Pooping (warning: exactly what it sounds like). INTERNET.

[mrsquizzical]

i have loved scrolling through tumblr with my head tilted to one side thinking sort of 'ooooh... i think i almost can see why people like that now!' (it hasn't worked for 'men wearing suits' yet. constant exposure to that one still leaves me wondering. except for phil coulson apparently.)

as a kid from a family of arty-farty pseudo intellectuals i got really sick of the 'but it's ~art' justification for a bunch of things. i feel deeply that ~art is actually really wonderful and deeply important to the human experience, but the experience of the ~artist is not more important than the experience of "ordinary" people. that is one of the only things that actually will make me just walk away from a conversation. what i mean is that i am nodding along and affirming your vegetable spiel.

<3

[sinsense]

I find men in suits with their penises out rather hilarious. It's all: "Serious serious serious WANG serious serious," and just immediately sets off my giggle reflex. There are certain men who can pull off menswear, though, I will admit. Joseph Gordon Levitt springs to mind. The man can rock a vest.

I think "~art" is actually a really good way of summarizing it. Not that I don't get why people make that argument, because there's also a deep puritanical vein to American art criticism, right. But at the same time, I think it's absolutely true, what you said, that the experience of the artist doesn't get to trump the experience of those around the art.

[mrsquizzical]

since my family was british i really wonder about what differences there would be with the american puritanical streak. it was more an elitist streak that i observed. quite the opposite of puritanical, too. but i'm sure the way in which the lines were drawn was similar, if you know what i mean.

[belle_noiseuse]

I AGREE WITH YOUR VEGETABLE RANT. The last time I got seriously triggered, it was in a kind of secluded part of a public event. I shouted threats and recriminations at a guy until he got scared and ran away, then felt mostly okay excepting my pounding heart for about twenty minutes, then shivered uncontrollably for the next 12 hours, during which creases brought me heating pads and cups of water and every blanket in the apartment. The next day I ached so much I could barely move and I was too brain-foggy to concentrate on anything for longer than a few minutes at a time, so I got zero work done. Not cool! Don't do that to people! (At least the guy I shouted at deserved it

[sinsense]

I am very proud of you also for not kicking that guy in the actual nards! Also, exactly, this is exactly what I was responding to, that feeling that "triggered = offended." I've been guilty of letting the two categories slide into one another, to be perfectly honest. It's a seductive slide, because it allows me to pretend to understand the experience of being triggered. A lot of my feminist education has been saying quite firmly to myself that "no, you don't get it, you don't know, shut the fuck up."

(NOPE.avi pretty much made my day, because it put Lana saying "nope" into my head quite pitch-perfectly. Delicious.)

I tend not to mind spoilers myself. There are times where it's been detrimental to my desire to finish reading whatever it is I was spoiled for -- Sophie's Choice springs to mind -- but a lot of times that's because the trope that the thing is exercising is so goddamn stupid and awful. I didn't see Prometheus because -- spoiler warning! -- one of the central plot points is that a scientist lady is super sad that

[belle_noiseuse]

Maybe part of the confusion is that occasionally triggery things are in fact also offensive? Like, the dude I shouted at wanted to have a discussion with me and creases and two friends about all those women who want to be raped by anonymous strangers and what an interesting and salacious edge case that is for testing theories of autonomy. I knew right away where he was going before he got there and told him to shut the fuck up a few times with increasing rudeness to no avail, until there was nothing for it but shouting (and also I felt cornered in the small tower room we were all in and really genuinely did feel in imminent danger of attack, ugh). So the stuff he wanted to say was offensive as hell, but what made it triggering was not the content of it but my own experience with having my rapist inform me that he had just known better than I had what I wanted. It would actually have been very convenient for me if I'd only been offended!

(The part I didn't understand was why he was talking to us at all! Which creases figured out immediately. Dude

[creases]

Guy wanted in on our conversation because we were the cool kids! He wanted to be cool too! Except he catastrophically failed to understand what the conversation was actually about.