A Secret Person
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- Feb 20, 2021
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Sorry if the title is too close to clickbait. No, I don’t hate tickling. I don’t think it’s bad. I don’t think the community is bad.
But there is a potential for harm.
I lurked on the site for 5-6 years, but now want to say something important about moral. I write it because I didn’t find other discussions like this on the forum (which is expected, as the forum is mostly an art and interest forum). Most questions on the forum connected to ethics or moral are personal and “spiritual” (though it isn’t the best word of course), like “is it ok for a pedicurist to have a tickling fetish if they still do their work properly”, or just “I am not sure if I am comfortable doing X”, where even if the answer is “no”, there is no direct and obvious harm done. What I am asking is about moral in a society, and our effect on the world, rather than just what we feel.
Maybe all the answers for my questions are obvious and everybody knows them already, and I would be happy to hear this is the case.
<B>Of course, not all people are interested in the topic, or should be. You can ignore this post. </B> But I would really like to hear the opinions of people who do care.
Sorry if my manner of speaking is too abstract of philosophical, and for any problems I have with English.
Tickling (or, at least, sadistic tickling) is very similar to BDSM. It is a forceful action to create a physical response, the response is so strong people often need to be tied. Many people enjoy it, but the people who don’t enjoy really suffer from it. And even if it sometimes is not sexual in nature, and sometimes is done without negative emotion, it is often both sexual, and is regarded by both ler and lee as a form of torture (even if enjoyable one). 90% (rough estimate) of the fictional stories on the forum are focused on tickling as torture too, even if often it is technically consensual.
The problem is that BDSM is something people understand the danger of. People understand that BDSM is a serious thing, it requires security measures, consent, and safewords. Some people ignore it, but they consciously ignore it because they are irresponsible or just bad people.
With tickling many people don’t think this. Both because it is regarded as something natural and normal, and because it’s hard to find the exact boundary between innocent everyday tickling which many people engage in, and the sadistic torturous tickling I described earlier. And if such things do happen, it’s possible (not very probable, but possible) for the lee either to not understand they have the right to feel harmed or angered, or be ignored by others, because being tickled will not be considered a serious problem. And there are cases when the consent for such tickling is only partial, so even if there was no aggressive violation of rights, there was still harm. I don’t think it happens often, but the probability is far higher compared to normal BDSM.
Because of this cultural phenomenon, I assume non-consensual tickling of this kind happens rarely, but relatively consistently. I can’t be sure, as I don’t have exact statistical numbers, and I doubt it’s possible to have them at all. But I think this is the situation.
This is not anyone’s fault, and there is nothing to do here beyond changing the nature of humanity, right?
No. because there is another factor here – the tickling community. The community, both on this forum and generally on the internet is, as all communities are, focused on finding similar people and discussing interests, making them more visible and easy to find. For people who love tickling to find each other. And for people who want to read stories about tickling to read them. This is great.
The problem I am worried by is that, as the amount of tickling (serious sadistic tickling) in the world – and people talking and hearing about this kind of tickling – rises, the amount of non-consensual tickling rises proportionally.
And even if this potential fraction of percent of non-consensual tickling in the world is not the community’s fault, but a natural result of human nature and society, still the fact is that if there was no community, less people would have engaged in (sadistic) tickling, and less of it would have been non(or not fully)-consensual.
The conclusion is <b>obviously not</b> that the community is bad. The conclusion is: <B>“guys (“guys” being gender-neutral here), let’s think with our maximal brain power, what can we do so the increase in the amount of tickling would not increase the fraction of it that is non-consensual, how to inspire and encourage tickling knowing that the only kind of tickling we encouraged is good tickling” </B>. I am not talking about just the rules of the community itself – those rules obviously already exist and are already followed when people tickle each other. What I am asking is for ways to spread those rules even to people outside the organized tickling clubs and meetings, so people generally will know (if they already know that tickling is a fetish and it BDSM adjacent) that tickling is a serious business and requires explicit consent and safe words. To reinforce care for safety as an inherent part of tickling culture.
That applies to art like stories or pictures too. Of course, making up fictional bad things is not morally wrong, and reading stories about torture doesn’t make you a sadist, just like playing violent video games doesn’t make you more violent. But it can reinforce, cultivate and normalize those things if they already exist. If I wrote stories here (which I want to do, but don’t really have the option right now), I would always write in the beginning of every story “this story is not only fictional, but also a bad example, never repeat anything from the story, and don’t learn from the characters in it”. but that’s just a personal opinion.
That's not a classical "moral panic" about "bad content", but rather a question - "how to handle the content so it doesn't become bad, or cause harm".
What other ideas do you have?
Of course, all those things should be 100% voluntary, and not limit anyone in any way, as it is stupid to demand anything from people to prevent problems that may exist only in my imagination (even if I am still convinced they are real).
There is also the <b>related but different</b> problem of clip production. It exists in all parts of the porn industry, of course, and there is always the idea of “maybe supporting porn in general will cause some harm somehow”, and there are always rumors like “well I heard this guy is a jerk, maybe I shouldn’t buy his clips”. It’s nothing concrete. For example, everyone discusses the “innocent” studio, that is most likely lying about how horrible they are [1]. Let’s suppose they are lying (even if the lack of lawsuits by itself doesn’t prove anything [2]).
But what if we discover some studio that actually breaks the rules, that doesn’t have safewords, or doesn’t tell the models those are fetish videos, or that it would be distributed at all? Or, in a purely theoretical and crazy situation, if a studio actually tickles random people against their will?
What can be done in situations like this? Not in a “well I guess I will not buy those videos because I would feel uncomfortable with this” way, but a “what can we do so the studio will stop directly harming people, as fast as possible?!” way. There are a lot of problems in the world, of course, but these specific problems would not exist if there weren’t tickle communities purchasing those tickling clips.
Edit:<b>To clarify. The clip production part is completely separate from my main argument, I only mention it as a "that's also a related problem" thing, as I know people already discussed it a lot on this forum.</b>
[1] Though I think that first, if someone pretends to do illegal and immoral things, they should usually be treated like they do illegal and immoral things, and “but what if they just pretend?” shouldn’t be a concern; And second, the fact that a studio pretends to break the rules for safe tickling and advertises it because it makes the videos more appealing and fantasy-fulfilling, by itself says a lot about the culture of the tickling community (as are the fictional stories in which tickling is recorded and uploaded to the internet, but is believed by the watchers to be fine).
[2] I don’t know about South America, but can say with 100% certainty that in places like Russia, with the complete corruption of police and courts, it is completely possible for people to do things like this (and many other illegal things) even if it could result in serious lawsuits.
But there is a potential for harm.
I lurked on the site for 5-6 years, but now want to say something important about moral. I write it because I didn’t find other discussions like this on the forum (which is expected, as the forum is mostly an art and interest forum). Most questions on the forum connected to ethics or moral are personal and “spiritual” (though it isn’t the best word of course), like “is it ok for a pedicurist to have a tickling fetish if they still do their work properly”, or just “I am not sure if I am comfortable doing X”, where even if the answer is “no”, there is no direct and obvious harm done. What I am asking is about moral in a society, and our effect on the world, rather than just what we feel.
Maybe all the answers for my questions are obvious and everybody knows them already, and I would be happy to hear this is the case.
<B>Of course, not all people are interested in the topic, or should be. You can ignore this post. </B> But I would really like to hear the opinions of people who do care.
Sorry if my manner of speaking is too abstract of philosophical, and for any problems I have with English.
Tickling (or, at least, sadistic tickling) is very similar to BDSM. It is a forceful action to create a physical response, the response is so strong people often need to be tied. Many people enjoy it, but the people who don’t enjoy really suffer from it. And even if it sometimes is not sexual in nature, and sometimes is done without negative emotion, it is often both sexual, and is regarded by both ler and lee as a form of torture (even if enjoyable one). 90% (rough estimate) of the fictional stories on the forum are focused on tickling as torture too, even if often it is technically consensual.
The problem is that BDSM is something people understand the danger of. People understand that BDSM is a serious thing, it requires security measures, consent, and safewords. Some people ignore it, but they consciously ignore it because they are irresponsible or just bad people.
With tickling many people don’t think this. Both because it is regarded as something natural and normal, and because it’s hard to find the exact boundary between innocent everyday tickling which many people engage in, and the sadistic torturous tickling I described earlier. And if such things do happen, it’s possible (not very probable, but possible) for the lee either to not understand they have the right to feel harmed or angered, or be ignored by others, because being tickled will not be considered a serious problem. And there are cases when the consent for such tickling is only partial, so even if there was no aggressive violation of rights, there was still harm. I don’t think it happens often, but the probability is far higher compared to normal BDSM.
Because of this cultural phenomenon, I assume non-consensual tickling of this kind happens rarely, but relatively consistently. I can’t be sure, as I don’t have exact statistical numbers, and I doubt it’s possible to have them at all. But I think this is the situation.
This is not anyone’s fault, and there is nothing to do here beyond changing the nature of humanity, right?
No. because there is another factor here – the tickling community. The community, both on this forum and generally on the internet is, as all communities are, focused on finding similar people and discussing interests, making them more visible and easy to find. For people who love tickling to find each other. And for people who want to read stories about tickling to read them. This is great.
The problem I am worried by is that, as the amount of tickling (serious sadistic tickling) in the world – and people talking and hearing about this kind of tickling – rises, the amount of non-consensual tickling rises proportionally.
And even if this potential fraction of percent of non-consensual tickling in the world is not the community’s fault, but a natural result of human nature and society, still the fact is that if there was no community, less people would have engaged in (sadistic) tickling, and less of it would have been non(or not fully)-consensual.
The conclusion is <b>obviously not</b> that the community is bad. The conclusion is: <B>“guys (“guys” being gender-neutral here), let’s think with our maximal brain power, what can we do so the increase in the amount of tickling would not increase the fraction of it that is non-consensual, how to inspire and encourage tickling knowing that the only kind of tickling we encouraged is good tickling” </B>. I am not talking about just the rules of the community itself – those rules obviously already exist and are already followed when people tickle each other. What I am asking is for ways to spread those rules even to people outside the organized tickling clubs and meetings, so people generally will know (if they already know that tickling is a fetish and it BDSM adjacent) that tickling is a serious business and requires explicit consent and safe words. To reinforce care for safety as an inherent part of tickling culture.
That applies to art like stories or pictures too. Of course, making up fictional bad things is not morally wrong, and reading stories about torture doesn’t make you a sadist, just like playing violent video games doesn’t make you more violent. But it can reinforce, cultivate and normalize those things if they already exist. If I wrote stories here (which I want to do, but don’t really have the option right now), I would always write in the beginning of every story “this story is not only fictional, but also a bad example, never repeat anything from the story, and don’t learn from the characters in it”. but that’s just a personal opinion.
That's not a classical "moral panic" about "bad content", but rather a question - "how to handle the content so it doesn't become bad, or cause harm".
What other ideas do you have?
Of course, all those things should be 100% voluntary, and not limit anyone in any way, as it is stupid to demand anything from people to prevent problems that may exist only in my imagination (even if I am still convinced they are real).
There is also the <b>related but different</b> problem of clip production. It exists in all parts of the porn industry, of course, and there is always the idea of “maybe supporting porn in general will cause some harm somehow”, and there are always rumors like “well I heard this guy is a jerk, maybe I shouldn’t buy his clips”. It’s nothing concrete. For example, everyone discusses the “innocent” studio, that is most likely lying about how horrible they are [1]. Let’s suppose they are lying (even if the lack of lawsuits by itself doesn’t prove anything [2]).
But what if we discover some studio that actually breaks the rules, that doesn’t have safewords, or doesn’t tell the models those are fetish videos, or that it would be distributed at all? Or, in a purely theoretical and crazy situation, if a studio actually tickles random people against their will?
What can be done in situations like this? Not in a “well I guess I will not buy those videos because I would feel uncomfortable with this” way, but a “what can we do so the studio will stop directly harming people, as fast as possible?!” way. There are a lot of problems in the world, of course, but these specific problems would not exist if there weren’t tickle communities purchasing those tickling clips.
Edit:<b>To clarify. The clip production part is completely separate from my main argument, I only mention it as a "that's also a related problem" thing, as I know people already discussed it a lot on this forum.</b>
[1] Though I think that first, if someone pretends to do illegal and immoral things, they should usually be treated like they do illegal and immoral things, and “but what if they just pretend?” shouldn’t be a concern; And second, the fact that a studio pretends to break the rules for safe tickling and advertises it because it makes the videos more appealing and fantasy-fulfilling, by itself says a lot about the culture of the tickling community (as are the fictional stories in which tickling is recorded and uploaded to the internet, but is believed by the watchers to be fine).
[2] I don’t know about South America, but can say with 100% certainty that in places like Russia, with the complete corruption of police and courts, it is completely possible for people to do things like this (and many other illegal things) even if it could result in serious lawsuits.
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