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osteophage) wrote2021-02-27 09:59 am
osteophage) wrote2021-02-27 09:59 am
Entry tags:
Critiques of the Phenomenon of DNI Lists
[Note: this post was reposted to Pillowfort on May 5, 2021.]
Recently I stumbled across this Twitter thread (via a repost) about the concept of "Do Not Interact" lists, and I think it gestures in the direction of legitimate critique, but I also think it's overlooking a few things.
Note I've talked about this subject a few times before (in the comments here and here), and in this post I'm mostly just going to be rehashing some old thoughts.
What Twitter user draculavoice argues in the original thread is that DNI lists introduce the following problems:
1) I don't think "condemning accidental interaction" is itself a feature of DNI lists, but it's an interesting thought, because it's reminded me of something else related to discuss: The way that context clues -- in the form of others' reblogs and likes -- are sometimes brought forward as evidence that a given Tumblr blog belongs to a radfem, as revealed by a pattern of association with radfems.
Thing is, I figure translating that into "if you even so much as brush shoulders with the wrong person, you deserve to be excommunicated" is oversimplifying matters, because if that were the mindset, I'd expect to see people acting differently. As it is, it seems pretty normal to run into posts like, for instance, this one (cw: large nsfw text), which are loudly reacting to the discovery of likes/reblogs/follows from terfs. These occasions seem to be treated as an intrusion on the blogger in question, not something they're worried about getting punished by anyone else for, or else I'd expect them taking more pains to hide it instead of announcing it like this. Now you might interpret that behavior as "people are morally obligated to chase off the terfs," but there's a subtle difference between that and "if your blogpost gets liked by a terf even once, you yourself deserve to be cast out." Those "evidence" roundups I mentioned seem to need a pretty extensive pattern to be convincing -- given, you know, the widely-acknowledged ubiquity of unintentional interaction with radfems -- and making the occasional "no terfs!" post seems to be received well enough as a defense.
2) I also don't think putting different kinds of characteristics on a DNI list necessarily draws an equivalence between them. Personally, there are lots of reasons why I might avoid contact with someone, and not all of them are "equally bad." There are some traits that I don't like/want to avoid/are a pretty reliable signal that I won't get along with someone, and I don't think naming that needs to be a big deal -- I don't need to define those things as morally severe just to justify avoiding them.
With that said, I can understand how typing out a DNI list of very different traits (or traits on very different levels of "severity," however that's judged) can... create an impression, you know, about putting them all on the "same level." I don't think it has to be read that way, but I can understand getting the impression. My point is that deserves to be treated as just an impression, and in my eyes it's overshadowed by bigger problems.
Bigger problems like, say, these:
1) As the original thread described, DNI lists depend on voluntary cooperation. For separating <18 users from 18+ posts on sites with mixed content, it would make more sense for that to be a built-in site feature, like on Dreamwidth and Pillowfort.
2) Because DNI lists depend on voluntary cooperation (through self-identification with one of the designated groups), for someone who already wanted to "interact" (like/reblog/comment/follow) in the first place, a DNI list discourages critical self-reflection. That is, if someone says "DNI if you're a racist," and I'm someone who agrees that racism is bad, then the DNI list becomes functionally a prompt to think of myself as Not A Racist. So by trying to morally delineate Types of People, they put readers in a mindset to disqualify themselves from criticism. This is a problem because people should be open to (legitimate) criticism and recognize their fallibility -- rather than mentally categorize themselves as Not Bad in a simple binary of Bad or Not Bad. The simplistic division of entire people into moral categories will always, always incentivize people to want to categorize themselves as blameless. Morality should be seen as a goal and a project, not a state of being.
3) In addition to the above... DNI lists necessarily create the potential for awkward situations where the lister initiates "interaction" with a listee. To have a rule that says "I can interact with you but you can't interact with me" is just unfair, and presumably the lister would have avoided the person if they knew, but in order for the listee to inform them about the mistake, they'd have to... you know... interact. Now for all I know, the culture of DNI listing involves an implicit exception that you can interact in order to say "I'm on your DNI list" -- I've certainly heard of that going over well enough before. However, that interaction itself seems troubling to me considering the existence of DNI lists that include sexual fetishes/sexual practices. Basically, if the expectation is that a listee should inform the lister that they're on the list, then in some cases that's functionally a demand that people go up to other people, unprompted, and declare their sexual fetishes to them, specifically when they know that's a fetish that person wants to avoid. And y'all... that is simply not good.
Recently I stumbled across this Twitter thread (via a repost) about the concept of "Do Not Interact" lists, and I think it gestures in the direction of legitimate critique, but I also think it's overlooking a few things.
Note I've talked about this subject a few times before (in the comments here and here), and in this post I'm mostly just going to be rehashing some old thoughts.
What Twitter user draculavoice argues in the original thread is that DNI lists introduce the following problems:
- Putting "DNI if racist" and "DNI if you ship X" draws an equivalence between the two.
- A DNI list is like "Keep Out" sign, in that it is literally just a sign and people can ignore it, which is a problem for any adults trying to keep 18+ things away from kids and teenagers.
- While DNI lists have their understandable intentions (in some cases), they seem to intertwine with the idea that "interacting even accidentally with any undesirables" is itself bad and condemnable.
1) I don't think "condemning accidental interaction" is itself a feature of DNI lists, but it's an interesting thought, because it's reminded me of something else related to discuss: The way that context clues -- in the form of others' reblogs and likes -- are sometimes brought forward as evidence that a given Tumblr blog belongs to a radfem, as revealed by a pattern of association with radfems.
Thing is, I figure translating that into "if you even so much as brush shoulders with the wrong person, you deserve to be excommunicated" is oversimplifying matters, because if that were the mindset, I'd expect to see people acting differently. As it is, it seems pretty normal to run into posts like, for instance, this one (cw: large nsfw text), which are loudly reacting to the discovery of likes/reblogs/follows from terfs. These occasions seem to be treated as an intrusion on the blogger in question, not something they're worried about getting punished by anyone else for, or else I'd expect them taking more pains to hide it instead of announcing it like this. Now you might interpret that behavior as "people are morally obligated to chase off the terfs," but there's a subtle difference between that and "if your blogpost gets liked by a terf even once, you yourself deserve to be cast out." Those "evidence" roundups I mentioned seem to need a pretty extensive pattern to be convincing -- given, you know, the widely-acknowledged ubiquity of unintentional interaction with radfems -- and making the occasional "no terfs!" post seems to be received well enough as a defense.
2) I also don't think putting different kinds of characteristics on a DNI list necessarily draws an equivalence between them. Personally, there are lots of reasons why I might avoid contact with someone, and not all of them are "equally bad." There are some traits that I don't like/want to avoid/are a pretty reliable signal that I won't get along with someone, and I don't think naming that needs to be a big deal -- I don't need to define those things as morally severe just to justify avoiding them.
With that said, I can understand how typing out a DNI list of very different traits (or traits on very different levels of "severity," however that's judged) can... create an impression, you know, about putting them all on the "same level." I don't think it has to be read that way, but I can understand getting the impression. My point is that deserves to be treated as just an impression, and in my eyes it's overshadowed by bigger problems.
Bigger problems like, say, these:
1) As the original thread described, DNI lists depend on voluntary cooperation. For separating <18 users from 18+ posts on sites with mixed content, it would make more sense for that to be a built-in site feature, like on Dreamwidth and Pillowfort.
2) Because DNI lists depend on voluntary cooperation (through self-identification with one of the designated groups), for someone who already wanted to "interact" (like/reblog/comment/follow) in the first place, a DNI list discourages critical self-reflection. That is, if someone says "DNI if you're a racist," and I'm someone who agrees that racism is bad, then the DNI list becomes functionally a prompt to think of myself as Not A Racist. So by trying to morally delineate Types of People, they put readers in a mindset to disqualify themselves from criticism. This is a problem because people should be open to (legitimate) criticism and recognize their fallibility -- rather than mentally categorize themselves as Not Bad in a simple binary of Bad or Not Bad. The simplistic division of entire people into moral categories will always, always incentivize people to want to categorize themselves as blameless. Morality should be seen as a goal and a project, not a state of being.
3) In addition to the above... DNI lists necessarily create the potential for awkward situations where the lister initiates "interaction" with a listee. To have a rule that says "I can interact with you but you can't interact with me" is just unfair, and presumably the lister would have avoided the person if they knew, but in order for the listee to inform them about the mistake, they'd have to... you know... interact. Now for all I know, the culture of DNI listing involves an implicit exception that you can interact in order to say "I'm on your DNI list" -- I've certainly heard of that going over well enough before. However, that interaction itself seems troubling to me considering the existence of DNI lists that include sexual fetishes/sexual practices. Basically, if the expectation is that a listee should inform the lister that they're on the list, then in some cases that's functionally a demand that people go up to other people, unprompted, and declare their sexual fetishes to them, specifically when they know that's a fetish that person wants to avoid. And y'all... that is simply not good.
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DNIs also seem sort of like wishful thinking? Like...so you're going to make a list of demonstrably awful people who can't interact with you and expect them to actually listen? Say I put "aphobes DNI" in the description of my Tumblr blog (this is common practice amongst a lot of Tumblr aces). The Anti-Ace Brigade are a contingent of Internet trolls, telling them that they aren't welcome isn't going to deter them. If anything, all I've done is announce that there's an ace person behind the blog ripe for harassment.
For more fandom related things, there's also the matter of I guess flattening the gray areas between things? Say it's common for people to have "People who ship XYShip DNI" in their DNIs because character X is the villain so it's gross and creepy. Now say you don't ship XYShip but you think X is a really well-written villain and like exploring their characterization. The issue with a situation where it's common to proclaim your goodness by saying people who like XYShip can't interact with you is that anyone who expresses any kind of opinions about character X other than utter loathing is leaving themself open to being lumped in with the XYShippers, because only XYShippers are morally bankrupt enough to not hate character X (or to not hate them in the right way).
You also raise a good point about what happens if someone interacts with you and you're on their DNI. I'd probably either do nothing or block them. I wouldn't even attempt to tell them I'm on their DNI. That would likely end badly.
For the record, I do agree with the op about the way this raises fandom-related sins to the same level as actual bigotry.
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Also, yeah, that point about ambiguity raises another issue: what if the wording is unclear enough that you legitimately can't tell if a list was meant to include you? The way a lot of issues are simplified down, like you said... I mean, hell, if a DNI list said "DNI if you don't think all aces are queer," then that technically means me, right? Even though I'm an ace who isn't queer, and that's all I'd mean by saying "no, not all." But you know how these things become code for other things.
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The thing about "queer aces" is interesting, though. I would argue that the phrase "LGBT aces" is an anti-ace dogwhistle because it's generally used by the Anti-Ace Brigade to separate aces who are "allowed" to identify as queer (gay/lesbian/bi/pan aces and trans aces) from "straight aces" (hetero and aro aces) who are not. The difference is that aces (at least in my experience) don't really use the phrase "LGBT ace" so it's the sort of thing that's generally only used in the context of anti-ace harassment ("straight ace" is a little more complicated because obviously straight-identified aces do exist, but they also tend to not be involved in these corners of Tumblr, so there are a lot of situations where if you assume the person using the term is anti-ace, you'll probably be right). I'm not sure is the term "queer ace" is necessarily used particularly commonly anywhere, but I wouldn't argue that it's inherently anti-ace if only because the Anti-Ace Brigade tends to overlap pretty strongly with those people who don't think anyone should be identifying as queer. It's more of a question of context for that term.
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Wandering off on another thought: now I'm wondering if BYF pages could be used for some kind of prank. Just get enough people together who agree to go along with it and we all put links to "BYF" posts in our sidebar all ostensibly referencing some huge argument, all written like "I do NOT think lion cuts for cats are cruel or abusive, that's patently absurd, and if you expect me to condemn it just because of what certain users have been saying then just leave, that kind of attitude isn't welcome on my blog." Get enough people to do it and I'm amused by the thought of someone stumbling across all these like.... what on earth happened here...
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Also, yeah, "I block people who do X" would make more sense wouldn't it? Though I can see how it'd end up twisted the same way.
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