JJ Vincent thought long and hard before postinglinks to these stories. What would you have done?
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October 8th was a pretty extraordinary day on The Good Men Project, with two stories about rape on the front page, both being widely read and shared. Titles: The Rapiest Email Ever Could Have Influenced Me and An Open Letter to the Rapey Frat Brother and the “How to Get Laid” Generation.
I read them both. I liked them both. I wanted to share them both. But I was faced with a dilemma. I’m wondering if you have ever faced this, and what you would do.
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Social media is an incredible conduit for getting information out quickly to a lot of people who should be interested in it. If they are connected to you, it would follow that they have some investment in you and what you have to say. If they are close to you, there is probably a deeper relationship cultivated over time. You know more personal information about each one another, you share daily events, you’ve probably talked about your histories, good and bad.
I know, in person, most of my Facebook friends. And I know that at least X number of the women on it are survivors of sexual abuse or violence.
So what to do? I want to show these stories to them, but I know the language in them could be triggering. The writers are clearly, emphatically, anti-rape and the attitudes some men have surrounding it. They are taking a stand against treating women as objects. They are trying to make change. But I want to give survivors a heads up and therefore the educated choice to read or not.
But how do you talk about rape without talking about rape? How do you say what someone shouldn’t do without describing the actions that they shouldn’t do? How do you explain what’s not ok without explaining what’s not ok? And how do you share that with someone who might want to hear the solutions without being reminded of the problem?
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My solution was a combined approach. I posted an intro to the story with a warning of potentially triggering material, and “risky” words censored – yes, censored – from the article title and summary.
I’m ordinarily very anti-censorship, allowing people to make their own decisions to read or watch what they want to. But I did not want to put the words “rapey” and “rapebait” in front of them, because even though there was a warning in the status update, the words were right there with it.
I’m forever wishing that my friends who post graphic childbirth pictures and stories with a picture attached would give a heads up, and I’m only grossed out by those.
When given the opportunity to share a hopeful but potentially triggering story, and the chance to remove up-front potential triggers, I chose to.
What would you have done?
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—PhotoPicture Perfect Pose/Flickr
Author’s Note: In light of a comment I received, I would like to clarify my statement about Facebook friends. The X represents women on my friends list that I personally know to be survivors. There may be more that I don’t know about. I do not personally know that any of the men on my friends list are survivors. If I did, I would have listed that as well. -JV
The problem is JJ is that your story ONLY takes about women as victims and the attitudes that men have towards it which unfortunately is the common narrative, instead of PEOPLE that have been raped and PEOPLES attitude towards it. Writers like yourself have the power to change this narrative but rarely (even on a mens site) do we see it happen. Even the Chris Brown story is one to lets the rapist off the hook becuase she was a girl who molested Chris Brown, we even had some questioning if it were the truth , a classic blame the… Read more »
John, this line, “The writers are clearly, emphatically, anti-rape and the attitudes some men have surrounding it. They are taking a stand against treating women as objects. They are trying to make change.”, is regarding the writers of the two posts I linked to in the first paragraph. Those posts do speak clearly to the women/men situation. The “them” speaks to the fact that the only persons I know on my FB to be survivors are women, as previously stated. As for people questioning whether Chris Brown is telling the truth, I’m inclined to take him at face value. This… Read more »
“My solution was a combined approach. I posted an intro to the story with a warning of potentially triggering material, and “risky” words censored – yes, censored – from the article title and summary.” Thank you for this. Thank you for stopping to thing about all the implications a well-meaning action could have for the people you want to offer support to. As a survivor it’s always a bit of a risk to scroll though social media or even news sites, because “rape” (and all the creative derivatives people can come up with) can be a hard word to see… Read more »
“I know, in person, most of my Facebook friends. And I know that at least X number of the women on it are survivors of sexual abuse or violence.”
And I know that X number of the men on it are survivors of sexual abuse or violence as well but apparantly they don’t count.
John Sctoll, please allow me to clarify, and I will clarify this in the story as well. That X represents the number of women that I know personally to be survivors. There may be others that I don’t know about. I do not personally know that any of the men on my friends list are survivors. If I did, I would have listed that as well. I do personally know male survivors, but they are not in a place where they would have seen that post. I hope that clears this up for you. Male survivors absolutely do count. I… Read more »
I put warnings on all stories I share. – Warning: May cause fits of laughter – Warning: TVtropes – Warning: Graphic images attached – Warning: Spiders I work part-time in a bookstore, and books need to come with trigger warnings, too. Kitty and the Midnight Hour has earned my ire. As with most contemporary fiction, the story is preceded by praises from well-known authors. At first, I merely rolled my eyes at Gene Wolfe’s review: “Do you like Werewolves? Vampires? Talk radio? Reading? Sex? If the answer to any of these is YES, you’re in for a wonderful ride.” Then… Read more »
I think all writers (and this includes social media “posters”) have stuff on their computers and see articles on various sites, and choose not to broadcast them out of the sense that what you do may not be helpful, but hurtful. I’ve said so many things over a lifetime that I wish that I could take back, statements that I thought were innocent, but that whipped up a storm. I’ve gotten gun-shy. Sometimes it’s impossible to explain your good intentions so they’ll be understood. Neil
I think about this as a writer. I wrote a story recently that discussed a time when someone told me that they had been raped in a very abrupt and shocking way. I struggled with do I put a warning on this? Most especially because it was a surprise given the title and topic of the article. I’m still not sure what the right answer is, but I really appreciate the discussion!