I've seen some discourse in a few different places recently, and it's been on my mind a lot. Setting boundaries for yourself is healthy and good, and expressing those boundaries is essential for making sure you have a space that is safe for you. We can't dictate what other people do, but we can express our boundaries in a healthy way. But if your boundaries cross someone else's, you can't expect them to give up their boundaries for you. You have to do some self-policing and look out for yourself, especially on a platform that allows you to block tags you don't want to see.
Asking someone to tag something so you can block it is a healthy way of enforcing your boundaries. Expecting other people to cater to your boundaries on their blog is not.
For example, though I haven't posted a lot on this blog, on one of my old blogs, I had a muse who was very into knives and bl.oodplay. I made sure to tag both of those things because not everyone wants to see that, and I recognized that.
For me, I have that I don't like eye squick in my rules, and I request that people tag images, especially. I have all sorts of synonyms for eye squick listed as tags I don't want to see because that is a way for ME to look out for my own boundaries. I'm not going around to everyone going "You can't write eye squick because it grosses me out," especially when sometimes in a fight-heavy series, people might have injuries to eyes or hands (which is another one of my things, though it's a lot less).
It's honestly kind of the same for s.mut. I am never going to say that everyone has to write smut; not everyone wants to! Some people aren't comfortable, some people have trauma, and some people just flat out don't want to. And any and all of those reasons are perfectly fine, valid reasons! No one has to explain their reason for wanting or not wanting to write something.
I have discovered, though, that writing s.mut has actually been very healing for me. I've been through a lot of different types of traumas, and have felt so ashamed for so long of basically ever even thinking about s.ex, that being comfortable enough to write it has actively been helping me heal some of that trauma. Because that embarrassment and shame followed me everywhere, and allowing myself the permission, the freedom to write characters that are so much more comfortable with themselves has helped me in a way I didn't know was possible.
And maybe this is too much information, but writing is amazing. It can help you heal parts of yourself that you've been struggling with for a really long time, it can help you discover parts of yourself that you didn't know existed or get more in touch with parts of you that you've known for a while. It can help you channel emotions that you have trouble dealing with, help express those emotions and feelings in a healthy way. It can do so much.
So yeah, long story short: look out for your own boundaries, curate your own experiences. And while you should definitely respect other people's boundaries, don't try to force your views onto them. This is a collaborative hobby, and if we all look out for ourselves and offer one another mutual respect and understanding, it'll be even better.
And if you ever need anything of mine tagged, just shoot me a message or an ask, even on anon if you're not comfortable! and I'll make sure to tag that for you. But I'm also going to continue writing the things that I want to in my little corner of this space.
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