[Daily Doodle] + Yuletide musings + Warnings musings + Sexting

Daily Doodle: Random generic skinny chick. Something wrong with her neck/shoulders. Head largish and some (prolly not all) proportion weirdness on purpose -- a little cartoony. I tried on purpose to do with without drawing guidelines underneath like I usually do (outline of head/skull with bisecting lines horizontally and vertically); this started with her eyes and worked outward
Time: 5-10 mins, wasn't counting

( Daily Doodle: Sort of cartoony portrait of some chick )

Yuletide's "Umbrella Fandoms" Policy

So I was putzing around the Yuletide page when I saw that they no longer allowed any Final Fantasy or a number of other "umbrella" canons, as they put it. bottle_of_shine was pretty disappointed when I told her, and I've been trying to come up with an analogy to the situation for a while. I think I've found one that illustrates some of the difficulties.

Take a weekly (or monthly) anthology such as Shounen Jump. ( Shounen Jump serializes twenty-plus series right now )

Posting Warnings on Fanworks

There's been a bit of debate about this. I'm honestly not seeing the problem very well. I understand not wanting to spoil your own story (trust me, I understand, I have serious fic disclosure issues), I have no idea how one could place that concern above other people's mental health. I'm thinking specifically of warning for rape, sexual violence, and/or consent issues. You'd think it does not need to be said that rape and sexual violence are serious issue, and if you've been a victim of such, it's not something you just get over, but apparently it does?

The arguments I've seen going "if we start warning for rape soon we will be warning for kittens, blue things, and use or left pinkie toe!" don't fly with me. ( Slippery slope is a logical fallacy to begin with, but it's so seriously out of place here )

But if none of that bothers or interests you, I'm going to repeat: the choice is not spoiling a fanfic on the internets vs. the mental health of someone who has undergone a horrific event. Really guys? Really?



Sexting and Teen Privacy

I heard a piece on the news radio today about "sexting", and have I mentioned that that is one of the stupider neologisms to come out of this decade? But what really bothered me is that the piece was clearly supporting parents stalking their teens' myspace accounts and monitoring their phone use -- basically keeping an eagle eye on their sex lives to make sure there weren't any shenanigans.

Sexting has been in the news a lot recently and I cannot stand it, from the sex-phobic attitude to the endless cases of a girl daring to take pictures of her own naked body and entrust them to her sexual partner and then being publicly shamed for it. A lot of people say parents should talk to their teens about how privacy works these days (hint: not very well), and warn them about keeping their sex lives private and leaving no evidence, as it were. And it's true, there are serious privacy concerns these days, and information your entrust to one person or place pretty much never stays only there.

But that's missing the bigger issues. In my view, there are two of them.
(1) Teens have sex. Get over it and help them do it right.
ETA: shanaqui points out that teen boys suffer, too, when they're brought up on child porn charges for shit like this. I kind of filed that under (1) in my head, but I agree it's worth pointing out as also completely bonkers.
(2) Women own their bodies and can do whatever the hell they want with them. A woman being proud of her body or displaying it to her partner is not a shameful act.
It's the second one that people seem to have more trouble with, because it's always these pictures of girls getting out and then their reputations are ruined for life, pretty much. And in the current social climate -- sad but trufax! -- that kind of thing really does hit your rep pretty hard. So sure, be really careful when you do it. But you shouldn't need to be so worried about -- gasp! -- it being known that you had sex ever. So much stigma with these pictures! I'm waiting for when such a leak of nudie pics brings something along the lines of "Oh whoops, that is probably a little embarrassing, I don't think she meant for us to see those awesome boobies" instead of "Haha, look at that slut! She's not fit for any public position ever!" Especially when the boyfriend or ex leaks these I find it infuriating when the girl is blamed for it -- she shouldn't have taken pictures of herself/let him take pics of her! The girl is socially crippled, the boy is charged with child porn, and pretty much everyone loses. Awesome.