Offensive is as offensive does

[Cagivagurl]

You're not entirely wrong.

We are not a group of friends. We are writing colleagues talking about the craft of writing. The rules for how we deal with one another are different from what they would be if we were friends sitting across a table. You and others who share your views show no empathy for me. You don't have to. I don't make appeals here based on wanting others to care about my feelings, and I don't want others to make such appeals to me. If you think that's cold hearted, so be it. I respect your personal views about subjects, as I do francesscott's, but those personal views offer no guidance for what we as authors are ethically obligated to do.

Thanks for at least being honest.
If you don't care, you don't care.
End of story.

Cagivagurl.

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks for at least being honest.
If you don't care, you don't care.
End of story.

Cagivagurl.

That's not what I said, and if you listened to me with the empathy you demanding of others concerning your perspective you would ilunderstand that.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

In my opinion, responsibility and obligation can be switched... They both suggest the same thing. As writers, we have the ability to support or not some types of activity....
In this instance we are discussing sexual assault...
I hope we can all agree that sexual assault is horrific and abhorrent, and cannot be acceptable in any form...
If you accept that statement, explain to me how it is acceptable to write a story that empowers people to sexually assault another human being???

They are opposing viewpoints....

There are bounds in common human decency that should never be crossed...
Removing a human beings licence to say no. Is crossing those bounds, and writing stories that suggest otherwise is counter productive to the work people around the world undertake every day to make people understand...

I dislike censorship, I hate the fact we need it, but a world devoid of censorship is one where anything goes, and to me that is unacceptable...

Writers can hide behind, "It's just a little harmless fun." But the truth is, if you write something that normalises sexual assault, and the right of another human being. You are in fact promoting the notion....

Yeah, it's an unpopular opinion in here, because the audience is 80% Male.... Fact: Men get raped as well...
In here, the opinion is we're just having fun... Nobody's getting hurt... Sorry, but that's bullshit... Words influence readers. Some of those readers are not able to separate fact from fiction... You only have to read comments to see that...
Words... Are they simply harmless????

I don't think so, and that is my opinion...

Don't hide behind the argument of free speech.
Either you are for or against sexual assault...
It's your right to have that opinion. All I ask is be honest about it.

Cagivagurl

I am not sure I can be any clearer about this topic.

Writers can't simply not write about rape. Or murder. Or murder of children, even. These horrible things happen every day. As I am writing this, some person somewhere is being raped or murdered. This is the reality of the world that we as humans have created. We are a deeply fucked up race.

Not writing about those things would be sugar-coating the reality. It would be putting our heads in the sand and pretending that bad things don't happen. I think that such an approach would make things even worse in the real world. It would lower the awareness of humanity towards violence and crime.
We can't just write about rainbows and unicorns and pretend everything is great. Art is there to depict both the beauty and the ugliness of the world.

But once again, we do have a responsibility to paint those terrible things accordingly. Rape, murder, etc. shouldn't be sexualized in any way. I already said how much Literotica's rule about rape stories creeps me out. I've spoken against that rule a hundred times.
So, when we do write about those terrible things, we need to present them for the horror they are. We should show the horror of rape and murder, the pain and suffering it creates. If anything, such writing raises awareness of such acts. And to be perfectly clear, I don't think rape should have a place in erotica. I don't think sexualizing rape could lead to anything good.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Stop expressing your opinion without saying that's all you're doing...

Cagivagurl

No, YOU are the one who continually spouts all of your righteousness and then puts that fake qualifier "my opinion" at the end. I'm not stating opinion when I call out your high holier-than-thou unassailable bullshit righteousness. I am stating FACT.

 

[Cagivagurl]

That's not what I said, and if you listened to me with the empathy you demanding of others concerning your perspective you would ilunderstand that.

I demanded nothing....
I voiced my opinion... The same as you...
If you can't share empathy, you cannot expect it in return.

 

[Cagivagurl]

No, YOU are the one who continually spouts all of your righteousness and then puts that fake qualifier "my opinion" at the end. I'm not stating opinion when I call out your high holier-than-thou unassailable bullshit righteousness. I am stating FACT.

Yes you are...
It's only your opinion...
You can offer nothing more...
You don't know me, so all you can offer is an opinion....
You simply can't accept mine is different to yours...
I accept our opinions vary... So be it....
That's just my opinion, of course... That's not fake... It is my opinion.

Cagivagurl

 

[Just_Words]

I've made a personal decision to stop bitching about LW. If you don't have something nice to say, and all that.

But I suspect your prediction is incorrect. The thing at the heart of LW that makes it so toxic is pretty specific to the content of that category. And it's a self-accelerating negative feedback loop.

When the children, as you say, leak out to other categories, they'll find themselves screaming that nonsense into a void in which most authors will simply delete their nonsense and be done with it. Feedback loop annihilated.

I hope you are right, but I suspect you are not. My own policy is that I keep negative comments on the story and delete the personal assaults. However, I suspect that does very little to shut down immature behavior.

Readers who leave personal attacks on the character or intellect of the author are people who (1) have limited verbal skills, and (2) have a burning need to be respected. The irony is their behavior makes respect impossible. So when we delete their comments, I strongly suspect they double down on comments and low grades. You can easily imagine their anger, can't you? I suspect that denying them the ability to attack authors only increases their resolve. Still, I won't put up with it and will continue to delete their remarks. I do learn a lot from negative comments about my writing and I remember several of those lessons quite vividly.