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   Chicken :cqlgusu: (lookitmychicken@blorbo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 05:57:42 JST Chicken :cqlgusu:

   • Léto le Gaosaure

   @LeGaosaure my gut reaction says: put an adult rating on any kink, regardless of whether it's sexual.

   Kink is an adult thing, in the sense that it requires understanding and consent for things that kids can't usually understand well or consent to. And also: adults should not do kink activities with kids.

   What's your thinking around not wanting to play into the idea that kinks should automatically get an adult rating?

   (I'm genuinely curious and not set in my thinking about this. Haven't really thought about it much before.)

   • Embed this notice
     Léto le Gaosaure (legaosaure@blorbo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 06:08:34 JST Léto le Gaosaure

     in reply to

     @lookitmychicken It's the same reason I think blocking minors from acceding *any* sexual content is dangerous: this is a reality of life and some of them might already be experiencing it, and forbidding them from having representation is "at best" keeping them from education that could be useful for them, and at worst making them feel like monsters for experiencing things they don't know are human. Some kinks manifest in quite young kids, and thus treating them as something that only happens to adults is not a reflection of reality.

     I agree that participating in kink *with someone else* should be an adult thing, but *having* kinks? That doesn't wait for you to be of legal age.

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     Chicken :cqlgusu: (lookitmychicken@blorbo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 11:59:05 JST Chicken :cqlgusu:

     in reply to

     • Léto le Gaosaure

     @LeGaosaure oh I didn't mean to suggest that minors should be blocked from accessing it!

     I think of a rating as indicating the nature of a work, not about deciding who should be allowed to have access to it.

     Having said that, it sounds like you've come up with a solution you're happy with, and it sounds like a good solution to me.

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     Léto le Gaosaure (legaosaure@blorbo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 17:01:00 JST Léto le Gaosaure

     in reply to

     @lookitmychicken Me being me, I overthought my answer to you for hours after posting it so maybe this could be a clearer explanation: in my mind tags are purely descriptive, they say what's in a fic in a neutral way, but ratings are not purely descriptive, they have a prescriptive function too, a "you shouldn't open this if you were being a good person" meaning, because they say "at your age this is what you should be reading", which is why I tag everything all the time with no more question than "what's the canonical form of this tag?" but ratings are more difficult for me. Rating a fic about a character discovering all by herself that she enjoys something "unusual" Mature makes me afraid it's sending the message "if you were a normal minor you wouldn't experience this kind of thing". Hope it makes more sense =S

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     Chicken :cqlgusu: (lookitmychicken@blorbo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 18:26:49 JST Chicken :cqlgusu:

     in reply to

     • Léto le Gaosaure

     @LeGaosaure that makes sense.

     i was reading adult stuff (with my parents' knowledge) from around 10 years old maybe?? I think I grew up expecting that 'adult' just means it's not *intended* for kids, and kids might not understand some of it, or might find some of it more confronting than what they're ready for.

     so I hadn't thought much about any *should* or *shouldn't* associated with that kind of rating.

     thanks for helping me understand. it's really helpful to hear different perspectives and experiences that might not have occurred to me otherwise. ❤️

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     Léto le Gaosaure (legaosaure@blorbo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Sep-2024 18:35:41 JST Léto le Gaosaure

     in reply to

     @lookitmychicken I was reading from the adult section at 8-9 yo too lol (with parents blessings too) (which is why I'm chronically unable to know if something is Gen or T), but I still get the impression that I should be extremely careful about how people interpret the meta information I put around my fics. And technically you're saying it: if it's not "intended" for kids, isn't it easy for a reader to imagine it means things shown in it are things no "normal" kid should understand or relate to?

     I happen to have several friends who grew up with kinks they discovered before their puberty and absolutely no positive (or even neutral) representation, be it in fiction or real life, so this might be why I'm thinking that hard about this topic. I'm probably overthinking it I suppose, but well, that's how I work ^^""

     And thank you for being so kind in your questioning ♥ It's really good for me to have that opportunity to explain myself without being preemptively dunked on ^^"""