"You can't touch me there"

[eumelia]

Via rm I discovered the comm kinkfreezone and friends... for a fanfic comm that allows high ratings on the fics and includes Slash, Het and Gen; I have never in my whole on-line life seen a more sex-negative fic community.

Wanting to have a community and specific requirements on fic is fine, fun and dandy. Honestly, it is. Wanting to exclude certain criteria that you and others would rather not read, very fine, your prerogative.
That's not the issue.

The issue is with language and the so-called binary of Vanilla and Kink.

For a more lighthearted, yet not, commentary on the list of kinks NOT permitted you can read thingswithwings' entry here. The comments are hilarious.

But oh, where to start... hmm, possibly from the most offensive one:

Gender themes (gender confusion; sex changes; genderfucks; hermaphrodites; cross-dressing or other forms of genderbending; drag queens and transvestites; androgyny; forced feminization; butch/femme; tomboys).
Ya know, these are actual honest to god actual identities in the real world. The way this is worded, the explicit implication is that the very existence of these, ontologically speaking, in a fic is a kink. Rather than, for example, a person with a specific gender identity. Butch and Femme, are gender identities. Androgyny is also an identity. A sex change is something people do in order to live their lives.
You want to exclude "chicks with dicks" and "guys with pussies", that's fine. Don't start saying the actual identity is a fucking fetish.

Orientation issues (confusion; discovery and coming out; self-hatred; two-beer queers; homosexual panic).
Now how to you explain two people who are explicitly straight in canon falling for each other, I ask?
How the hell, is this a kink? I demand an explanation!

Situational homosexuality.
Bwahahahahahaha! I'm sorry, what? they have Homosocial Environments as well and I'm genuinely baffled by this. How is this a kink? This is a PLOT for a "Plot? What Plot" fic... it can even be, ya know, actual circumstances.

Power issues (inequities in beauty, rank, or class; power games; BDSM; power reversals; sheikhs, sultans, princes, and other royal figures; teacher/student pairings; magical powers; abuse of power; blackmail; romantic slavery; liege/lord pairings; issues of respect; sexual scenarios such as a dominant character giving his partner to others to use, or a character kneeling beneath a desk and blowing someone who's on the phone).
There goes every single fandom that has a team, ranks, people of different genders, race and nationalities.
*Thumbs up*

Religion (sin; faith and lack of faith; priests, monks, nuns, etc; shamans; biblical characters; angels and demons; gods and goddesses; saints; monastic or convent culture).
Because religious people do not include their lives into their sex lives.

Predator/prey pairings.
There goes Buffy fandom.

Striptease.
Don't look while I get naked under the covers! No peeking! That's oh-so kinky!

Voice fetishization (cracking or broken; husky, low, throaty; purring; accents; whispering close to someone's ear).
Fucking hell! Involuntary reaction is not a kink. No, really. This is possibly the most absurd (not offensive, I've listed things I found particularly offensive) criterion on this list.

That whole list needs a serious language editor, a workshop in sex-positivism and just a little shake-up when it comes to Vanilla/Kink binary - here's a secret... it's NOT!).

Enjoy mocking the whole thing.

Edited to Add: Amazing what going to bed will do.
My comment in now deleted, as are all the other critical comments made on the post - I restrained myself a lot and wanted to be respectful, I may have failed a tad.
Here's my comment for keeps:

This list has extremely problematic and prejudicial language.
Perhaps if you edited it, it would read differently, but as it stands, this is offensive to a whole slew of people who you included as a kink.
Some of these aren't even kinks but literary tropes!
Trope=/=Kink, please learn the difference.

Also, including involuntary bodily reactions? Please, get a clue - also the inclusion of "accents", "uncircumcised penises", "homosocial environmental", "nautical themes", "exoticism" and a big portion of "gender themes" just to name a few is downright, and here are heavy words, racist, xenophobic and over-all queerphobic in general.

Fetishising Vanilla is also a kink, you know.
As I said, get a clue.

I understand and respect the want of specific kind of fic, but that toes a line that isn't just about criteria... this is exclusionary in the extreme.

Here is the Mod's reply:

WOW am I getting sick of repeating myself. Had you actually READ the damn post you would see RIGHT AT THE TOP!!! that it is, in fact, a list of KINKS, TROPES AND CLICHES from fandom!

You can go GET A CLUE sweetheart and get the fuck out of my community.

For serious.
The post itself has been updated, because you know, instead of trying to make the comm a little more inclusive - let's just be all the more offensive and delete the things I dun like!
How dare people get offended and say something about it! Sheesh!

Comments

[svollga.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell.
Do they know the difference between a kink and a trope? Because at list a third of this list is made of tropes. Which can or can not be kinks.
I wonder why the missed 'first time'. Or is it assumed to be under 'Virgins or inexperienced partners'?

I don't even want to think about identity points.

After scrolling through the list, I wonder what IS sex and sexy for those people.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Thing is, while fandom has always been a site of sex-negativity, because it's a little slice of real life, fanfiction always seemed to be a place in which sex could be, ya know, a good place (Sturgeon's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law#.E2.80.9CNinety_percent_of_everything_is_crud.E2.80.9D) taken into account, of course) and here they are ruining it!
Doing it wrong by saying that all of that is wrong!

[svollga.livejournal.com]

This is ridiculous. In this list, there are things that are described in every PG-ish YA story. Like moonlight on the person's face and such.
The saddest thing is, the comm founder is not alone in her ideas. :(


You know what... http://tinypic.com/r/fk85z7/4

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

It reads like a manual on how to have a joyless sex life.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Joyless and dysfunctional really.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

"DON'T TOUCH MY NIPPLES YOU PERVERT".

Ok, people need to be writing spoof vanilla fic and lots of it right now.

[http://users.livejournal.com/vinyl__/]

oh my god the creator of that comm is so painfully sexually repressed that it is difficult for me to comprehend and also my sex drive just whimpered in confusion and sadness. whoa.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Sadness followed my snort of derision and dismay when I began to read that list.
WTF, dude. WTF.

[http://users.livejournal.com/vinyl__/]

Oh man, and I wanted to say something, you know, critical and poignant about all this and words failed. FAILED! It's just too completely absurd.

[newsbean.livejournal.com]

I am sort of confused about what Fic isn't excluded by this list.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

My first thought was "Good god, most boring comm EVER!"

[sabotabby]

I got turned on a third of the way through that list and couldn't finish. ;)

Is this a joke? These people seem very horny to me.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Horny, but oh so very repressed.

I mean for fuck's sake. No really, for the sake of fucking! That comm should be pointed, mocked and fined for promoting confusion between kink, trope and vanilla.

[stateofwonder.livejournal.com]

Ummmm.. vanilla fetish much? I would consider THAT to be a kink.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I commented (http://community.livejournal.com/kinkfreezone/1677.html?thread=3725#t3725)... I couldn't resist, I'm so weak.

[stateofwonder.livejournal.com]

Journal has been deleted!! Hahahaha!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Oh dear...
If you can't take the heat... alas.
Of course, the existence of the comm was not the issue, but the language of the list - seriously. The comm would have been way more successful if that list had been edited (a lot) and made some sense, you know?

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I made a response!fic:
http://community.livejournal.com/kinkfreezone/1677.html

Not sure how long it will stay up. I also posted it in rm's comment thread for purposes of preservation.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting me know!

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

You are so good at controlling yourself when you comment on these things. :P I hope you don't mind that I'm not.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I didn't get to see you comment because the Mod deleted them all while telling us to fuck off.

Would you mind sharing? I want to be entertained :)

[st-aurafina.livejournal.com]

Wow. I can't imagine why that community hasn't taken off, or why there's only one person posting in it. Since, you know, so many fun things are welcome there. Wowsers will never figure out why, when they've finally eradicated everything they disapprove of, things are really, really flavourless and dull.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

She replied to me, before telling me to fuck off and deleting my comment (all the comments) that if I had read I'd see that they included cliches and tropes and not just kinks and that I have no reading comprehension.

I'm not so sure about the Mod's because really, including tropes and cliches - which are literary devices used all the time even in the most innovative pieces of fiction - is just not understand writing!

[st-aurafina.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree - the mod is desperately trying to shape the world to fit their view, so they call anything outside that view a kink. Poor thing is obviously very scared, but that doesn't excuse them from using hurtful definitions to protect herself.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

OMG, if I went by this criteria in the two fandoms I read in, there would be nothing left to read. And that's anime set in feudal Japan, ambiguous historical China and medieval AU Europe. And it's really hard when the average age of the characters is 16-18 to avoid first time virgin fic.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

HAHA!
This made me laugh!

[tinyrevolution.livejournal.com]

Journal is deleted now, but I read the whole thing yesterday and showed it to a friend and we were lol'ing so thank you for the heads up! My favorites were "begging and offering" and "crotch bulges".

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I'm still boggling on the "voice fetishisation". Accents?! Voice breaking!?
Dude, if your voice is still at a normal speaking tone during sex, you're clearly not in the mood and/or may be doin' it wrong.