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I’ve been thinking a lot about this fan/sex survey thing going around. I found the kink_bingo mods’ response compelling, but I have a couple of concerns to add.
First, institutional review boards (IRBs) are bad. [ETA: I'm leaving this in for accuracy, but it really was an overstatement that I should have avoided. I still believe IRBs are not generally fit for purpose, but that doesn't make every IRB bad, especially when discipline-specific standards are applied.] They’re bad for social science and they’re bad for ethical thought, too often substituting medical models for the best, most informed debate within a particular discipline. Not everyone is subject to an obligation to do no harm (think historians: should they care about the sensibilities of the Kennedy family?), and IRBs often don’t know what the relevant risks of harm from a particular course of research even are. I occasionally need reminding of this bit of trivia: the Stanford Prison Experiment—a core example of what IRBs are supposed to avoid—was IRB-approved. It was stopped because (one of) the experimenters recognized a violation of their own professional ethics.
One could persuasively argue that reporting the netporn survey authors to the IRB is a viable strategic move, attempting to enlist a more powerful entity against people who have more social/educational capital than pseudonymous fans are perceived to have. I still think this is a mistake, because IRBs use the very same totalizing, naturalizing models of personhood, risk, and harm that the original kink_bingo response so powerfully deconstructed. Fans can assert the entitlement to be disciplined only on their own terms, and I think we should, but the IRB move goes against that commitment.
Second, I think vidders’ recent debates about visibility are relevant here. Fanwork creators are visible: Hollywood knows, lawyers know, the Simpsons writers know, teachers know. This means that nonfannish (and non-antifannish) academics are going to follow their noses to us once in a while, no matter what. We can and probably should put greater trust in our homegrown academics (a set that overlaps with, but is not identical to, fan theorists) than in outsiders, and we can definitely decide not to help educate outsiders—or to do so. None of us individually has any obligation either way, nor do we have a community obligation to explain ourselves or to stay silent.
But beyond reaction to this survey, I suggest we should think about the benefits of visibility as well as the risks. Social scientists, like the proverbial drunk under the lamppost looking for his keys, like to go where the data are. If—and it’s a huge, difficult if—visibility dispels the stereotypes that fannish pleasures don’t exist/are somehow flawed/etc., then that’s a good result, and it won’t happen without some kind of visibility. Francesca Coppa has made the point that vidders do well in the art world and the legal advocacy community because vidders are organized, articulate, and show up to talk about their interests. When you become a prototype, social policy starts being made around you. (Or against you. This isn’t inevitable or riskless.)
Any subcultural group that asserts the entitlement to define its own worth, I suspect, ends up with its liberals (me) and its radicals (kink_bingo mods, I think, but that’s my characterization). Because I think it’s inevitable, I’m more interested in talking about strategic moves and self-understanding than in convincing anyone to do anything—other than, here, rethinking the deployment of the IRB.
Comments on LJ
First, institutional review boards (IRBs) are bad. [ETA: I'm leaving this in for accuracy, but it really was an overstatement that I should have avoided. I still believe IRBs are not generally fit for purpose, but that doesn't make every IRB bad, especially when discipline-specific standards are applied.] They’re bad for social science and they’re bad for ethical thought, too often substituting medical models for the best, most informed debate within a particular discipline. Not everyone is subject to an obligation to do no harm (think historians: should they care about the sensibilities of the Kennedy family?), and IRBs often don’t know what the relevant risks of harm from a particular course of research even are. I occasionally need reminding of this bit of trivia: the Stanford Prison Experiment—a core example of what IRBs are supposed to avoid—was IRB-approved. It was stopped because (one of) the experimenters recognized a violation of their own professional ethics.
One could persuasively argue that reporting the netporn survey authors to the IRB is a viable strategic move, attempting to enlist a more powerful entity against people who have more social/educational capital than pseudonymous fans are perceived to have. I still think this is a mistake, because IRBs use the very same totalizing, naturalizing models of personhood, risk, and harm that the original kink_bingo response so powerfully deconstructed. Fans can assert the entitlement to be disciplined only on their own terms, and I think we should, but the IRB move goes against that commitment.
Second, I think vidders’ recent debates about visibility are relevant here. Fanwork creators are visible: Hollywood knows, lawyers know, the Simpsons writers know, teachers know. This means that nonfannish (and non-antifannish) academics are going to follow their noses to us once in a while, no matter what. We can and probably should put greater trust in our homegrown academics (a set that overlaps with, but is not identical to, fan theorists) than in outsiders, and we can definitely decide not to help educate outsiders—or to do so. None of us individually has any obligation either way, nor do we have a community obligation to explain ourselves or to stay silent.
But beyond reaction to this survey, I suggest we should think about the benefits of visibility as well as the risks. Social scientists, like the proverbial drunk under the lamppost looking for his keys, like to go where the data are. If—and it’s a huge, difficult if—visibility dispels the stereotypes that fannish pleasures don’t exist/are somehow flawed/etc., then that’s a good result, and it won’t happen without some kind of visibility. Francesca Coppa has made the point that vidders do well in the art world and the legal advocacy community because vidders are organized, articulate, and show up to talk about their interests. When you become a prototype, social policy starts being made around you. (Or against you. This isn’t inevitable or riskless.)
Any subcultural group that asserts the entitlement to define its own worth, I suspect, ends up with its liberals (me) and its radicals (kink_bingo mods, I think, but that’s my characterization). Because I think it’s inevitable, I’m more interested in talking about strategic moves and self-understanding than in convincing anyone to do anything—other than, here, rethinking the deployment of the IRB.
Comments on LJ
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I disagree that surveys should, in general, be thought to offer a potential to cause harm sufficient to trigger IRB review. In fact, the government says that surveys are generally exempt from its IRB requirements, though lots of institutions have covered them through mission creep. Now, absolutely privacy and data security should have been part of the process. But that's so little of what IRBs do, and they do so much that's counterproductive, that I feel compelled to argue against their involvement.
From:
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From: (Anonymous)
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