NSFW RP: consent, minors, and other boundaries

And either way, it helps us get a feel for what people are okay with, or not-okay with. If a lot of people are bothered by things that we aren't inclined to Make A Rule Against, that doesn't mean "there's no problem", that means "we need to give people better tools for controlling what they are seeing".

 

I don't think either of those was really "out of nowhere", though. I think there's definitely some influence on how people are thinking about things coming from purity culture, and the "this could happen, therefore anything that could look like it should be banned" attitude is absolutely a real thing that happens.

I'm not saying "we should definitely ban everything because of the risk of emotional cross-contamination". I'm just pointing out that the risk is significant enough to merit caution in circumstances where it's been known to cause problems in the past. "Caution" doesn't mean "a ban on a behavior or person". But we've had some cases in the past where people have concluded that, since a thing is probably-safe or usually-safe, they've sorta run past other people's boundaries in a way that ended up being upsetting.

Possible starting point: If someone says a thing's squicking them or upsetting them, even if you have a very good argument that it is not innately bad, maybe in that specific case you should apologize for distressing them and knock the thing off, or at least consider it? Especially if it involves emotionally-charged boundaries and RP.

Because I think the concern here is roughly that people see the (quite valid) arguments that fade-to-black is Not Simulated Sex, and then conclude that this means that if they, who are creeped out by its use with regards to their character, mention feeling uncomfortable with that, they're just going to get told that it doesn't count and they shouldn't be bothered. And to some extent, it doesn't even matter whether that would actually happen. What matters is that the perception makes them likely to not say anything, and then we have people being distressed and unhappy for months, and other people being told suddenly that actually you've been really upsetting someone for months, they just... you know, didn't say anything. And then people are defensive and want to say things like "I couldn't have known because you didn't tell me", which may be true but does not constitute an apology for the distress-inducing behavior. And people are defensive and focus on "I was too scared to say anything, this hurt me badly" rather than saying something like "Sorry, I probably should have told you", and we end up with people angrily defending positions they don't hold and actions they regret rather than apologizing to each other for hurt feelings and miscommunications and things get better.

And before someone jumps in and says this is a case that was already hashed out, or a case they didn't give me permission to talk about, consider that there's way more than one instance of this happening.

Which brings us back to:

USE THE REPORT BUTTON IF YOU AREN'T SURE.

 

In this case, I was thinking about cases where the "problem" isn't "this behavior is objectively wrong" but "some people want to avoid this content". So, for instance, it's not a problem that there's some smutty stuff in RP threads. It's a problem that some people are getting smutty stuff in RP threads when they didn't want it. And that they haven't had good tools for determining whether a thread was likely to have smutty stuff, so they couldn't easily avoid it.

In that case, "better tools" that allow people to avoid the unwanted material does actually address the problem. There's no need to explain it to the people doing the thing, because the thing itself isn't the problem.

 

You do have good points about reading Chiomi's doc.

Also, to be clear, I didn't think someone had proposed a "no romance" guideline. I was proposing a "be cautious about romance with minors, even when there's no sex" guideline, because I think people sometimes forget how easy it is for minors to get in over their heads with romantic-flavored interactions, even RP ones involving fictional characters. Note, not a "no romance" guideline.

But I think in a lot of cases, we should be reminding the adults to be extra careful about minors, and (1) let them establish boundaries, but (2) be cautious even given that, because they may not know where they need boundaries to be safe. And romance is an example where I feel like people are inclined to handwave it as "not sex, therefore okay", but... It's not always okay. It's also not always not-okay. It can be really good and important for minors to get a chance to explore these themes in RP type environments... But it can be risky, and people should be alert to that possibility, I think.

 

I think we have pretty strong consensus that one would help, so yes, I think we will.

I'm not sure how we'll decide which threads move there.

 

Also ftr I included the NR suggestion not because minors will definitely want to avoid romance stuff but because I know people who are freaked out by anyone making romantic overtures at characters they're playing and tools for people to improve their own comfort on multiple vectors are rad.

 

https://kintsugi.seebs.net/forums/fade-to-black.46/

i was really stuck on the name, then it was obvious

 

i'm not sure what the distinction of "tabletop" is. are we talking games being physically played elsewhere, or...?