I reacted against a lot of what was said there - about how it's *just* boundary policing and not really about what's likely to get written in a fest - but I don't know how well I was listening there.
I think it's not a very clear issue, even (practically, if not intellectually/emotionally) for eruthros and the commenters to her post. My old, bad squick list at one point included a request to not receive "any 'extreme' kinks (e.g. bloodplay, scat, etc.)." I'd deliberately put "extreme" in quotation marks in my request in an attempt to acknowledge that there's nothing inherently more kinky about one practice than another, but my phrasing was still offensive and imprecise, and it put an unfair burden on my author to try to read my mind about what I in particular would consider extreme kink.
On the other hand, eruthros wrote in her post, "Seriously, how often do people write watersports for people who haven't asked for it in fic exchanges?" So there are kinks that are considered extreme...um...specialty items, even by people who identify as kinky and who are against boundary policing of sexual desire. But, of course, the reason that things like watersports are considered off-limits unless specifically requested is precisely because of previous iterations of boundary policing, which has created a community standard that's comforting to the majority and painful to the people who fall outside the boundaries. It's all very circular.
And it gets further complicated (for me, at least; I don't know if others feel this way) because I hesitate to give my writer a multi-paragraph essay about my kinks and squicks, especially for something like Yuletide, where the majority of the fic produced for the exchange is G-rated gen. I mean, I always write a note assuring my writer that I'm happy to receive a story of any rating, but I think it could be hard to write a PG-rated story with self-confidence when your recipient's Dear Challenge Writer letter includes an in-depth discussion of her feelings about a few dozen sexual kinks. So, yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with all of these conflicting considerations. :-)
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I think it's not a very clear issue, even (practically, if not intellectually/emotionally) for
On the other hand,
extreme...um...specialty items, even by people who identify as kinky and who are against boundary policing of sexual desire. But, of course, the reason that things like watersports are considered off-limits unless specifically requested is precisely because of previous iterations of boundary policing, which has created a community standard that's comforting to the majority and painful to the people who fall outside the boundaries. It's all very circular.And it gets further complicated (for me, at least; I don't know if others feel this way) because I hesitate to give my writer a multi-paragraph essay about my kinks and squicks, especially for something like Yuletide, where the majority of the fic produced for the exchange is G-rated gen. I mean, I always write a note assuring my writer that I'm happy to receive a story of any rating, but I think it could be hard to write a PG-rated story with self-confidence when your recipient's Dear Challenge Writer letter includes an in-depth discussion of her feelings about a few dozen sexual kinks. So, yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with all of these conflicting considerations. :-)