Some stuff that didn't fit in my previous Tumblr post, and which OP wouldn't want to see anyway

[brin_bellway]

[...this post definitely should *have* content warnings, but I'm not sure how to phrase them. Probably your best bet is just to read the OP and decide whether you want to read a discussion of the kinds of things likely to come up in response to it.]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by kkujo)


(Is anyone else weirded out that so many people in the notes of this post are saying, essentially, that their access to information should have been censored harder? That's...not a thing I hear people say very often. Huh.

I always felt like the main value of my parents' Internet restrictions was precisely that it gave me a chance to *practise circumventing restrictions*. The Chalkzone fan forum I mentioned? I didn't tell my parents I was there. I had some related notes, and I kept them *in a hollow in my mattress*.)

((Was I *good* at keeping secrets and circumventing censors at the age of nine? Not especially, no. But that's exactly why I needed that relatively low-stakes environment to practise such things in.))

(((Also there are a lot of people saying that they were exposed to weird porn at a young age and it fucked them up, while I feel like if anything the *lack* of exposure to weird sex as a child fucked me up. I had the kind of sex education that was like "we're Liberal and Inclusive, in that we have *two* or even as many as *three* boxes for people to fit themselves into instead of just the one". Meanwhile I, a very paraphilic child, was given absolutely no information whatsoever about a fundamental part of my being and left to just figure it out on my own (which I could not, in fact, do).

I get why they did it that way! I'm not even saying there were necessarily any better options! But while I intellectually acknowledge they were doing their best, I still *feel* resentful about it.)))

((((god I cannot relate to people who just, like, *didn't have* a sexuality until they were like 13

it was awful and violating to get even a much smaller version of the appropriate genetic payload: the magnitude of the atrocity implied by people talking about sexuality as if the *whole thing* *normally* shoves its way into an already-formed personality is staggering, and I am concerned by the precedent of concerned for the people who apparently got mind-controlled so hard they stopped even caring about having been mind-controlled))))

Comments

[brin_bellway]

To be clear, I love my sexuality (the real one, not the latecomer) and would not trade it for the world. But I meant the connotations of "fundamental": it's part of the foundation of my psyche, I'm *built around* it, it's integral to me. I would not inject it into a mind that already grows and lives well in its own way, *without* the person's informed consent to embarking on some heavy-duty psychonautics, and just expect them to fucking cope.

[sigmaleph]

I do find people saying they wish they'd been censored harder weird, yeah.

i replied to that same post about how late my unrestricted internet access was compared to some of these people, and how i wish it'd been earlier. and, like, i literally fail to imagine how any of the things i am likely to come across in the internet, now or then, could've had any effects i regret on my younger self, but this might just be a failure of imagination, i don't know. maybe if i had come across some stuff at age 6 rather than 12 my sense of what damage uncensored information can do would be more vivid? it does not viscerally feel plausible

[contrarianarchon]

Yeah def have a strong sensation that sexuality is an alien parasite worming it's way into my mind and spent most of my teens building fences to keep it out of as many places as possible and that failed pretty much and just ick. Would probably have fewer issues with it if I had fewer sensory issues?

(Also I went and re-read that slate star codex post about in-groups again and checked the comments and then ran face-first into someone who apparently is straight-up in favour of the genocide of non-human sophonts and considers the alternatives to be actually incomprehensible, what the fuck)

This conversation is making me update somewhat in favour of putting weak censorship controls on children, because "practice evading censorship" is a useful skill.