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Oct. 8th, 2015 09:18 amI've been mulling the Yuletide Naziwank a bit. I'm a Jew with pretty strong Holocaust-sensitivities, who has called out stories in the past for their misuse of Holocaust story elements, and yet I'm also someone who has also requested and written fic featuring Hitler as a character, including for Yuletide.
I can honestly see both sides of this one. Fic is a tool we use to rethink our world, and that can and should include engagement with even horrors like the Holocaust. And I particularly don't buy the 'but it's a holiday exchange!' argument in the FFA threads, since it runs up against the other longstanding Yuletide Jew wank, the argument about the fact that for Jews, Yuletide is not meaningfully a holiday exchange at all, and treating it as such is Othering. I believe in Yuletide as a place for fans to engage with other fans of their rare fandoms, not as any kind of holiday observance.
At the same time, some of the really horrible scenarios people in the FFA thread mention do strike me as really horrible. It would suck if I ended up assigned to someone with a fucked up Nazi request because we matched on a different fandom. It would be immensely painful to me and would force me to make difficult choices from a bad position. That is not a thing I wish to see happen, and I can understand moderators wanting to make sure that didn't happen. And I think also that it is possible to create fanfic based on these subjects that unambiguously shouldn't have been created, work whose only function is to offend sensibility, and probably I would say that Yuletide is not the exchange for that.
But I'm not as comfortable with some of the stuff on the thread attacking the nominator. I have zero interest in Nazi slash. I find the idea of reading it horrifying. But I don't have any principle that looks down on people for enjoying things I find horrifying.
I can honestly see both sides of this one. Fic is a tool we use to rethink our world, and that can and should include engagement with even horrors like the Holocaust. And I particularly don't buy the 'but it's a holiday exchange!' argument in the FFA threads, since it runs up against the other longstanding Yuletide Jew wank, the argument about the fact that for Jews, Yuletide is not meaningfully a holiday exchange at all, and treating it as such is Othering. I believe in Yuletide as a place for fans to engage with other fans of their rare fandoms, not as any kind of holiday observance.
At the same time, some of the really horrible scenarios people in the FFA thread mention do strike me as really horrible. It would suck if I ended up assigned to someone with a fucked up Nazi request because we matched on a different fandom. It would be immensely painful to me and would force me to make difficult choices from a bad position. That is not a thing I wish to see happen, and I can understand moderators wanting to make sure that didn't happen. And I think also that it is possible to create fanfic based on these subjects that unambiguously shouldn't have been created, work whose only function is to offend sensibility, and probably I would say that Yuletide is not the exchange for that.
But I'm not as comfortable with some of the stuff on the thread attacking the nominator. I have zero interest in Nazi slash. I find the idea of reading it horrifying. But I don't have any principle that looks down on people for enjoying things I find horrifying.