Jan 4, 2021
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I wonder if anyone else went through some major personal ethical and moral changes over 2020?

Here, I went from being way too liberal/sex-positive to the point where I have no doubt that my pro-ship stances or NSFW fics or my sense of humor probably made people feel uncomfy or take me for a creep, to being sex-repulsed, kink critical, fiction critical. (I don't call myself an anti because I'm not totally in agreement with anti tactics or the need to punish others for creating bad fictional content, I think people need to be educated and made aware about the harm of glorifying/not warning for and gating off certain things in media, not harassed or punished), I'm now opposed to publicly posting NSFW fic/rp/jokes (all of my public fic now stops at the bedroom door, I only go nsfw if I am privately writing for an audience of one person and we have both verified our age, our triggers, our stances, etcetera and can communicate with each other to immediately call boundaries. Some of my old stuff I orphaned on AO3 may still be kicking around - please don't see me as a hypocrite, back at the time I debated whether to orphan fics or delete... and now I can't delete ones I chose to orphan). Most of all, now, I believe that IRL sex belongs only within a longstanding relationship such as marriage, between two people 25 or over - and that it's a deadly serious thing, not a joking matter or something to just be flippant over or throw around everywhere.

And I'm actually really thankful that I have adopted these stances, as long as it took me to work my way around to them (because I initially rejected the idea of a strict stance regarding sexuality due to the usual homophobia/transphobia bundled with the concepts of sexual morality and restraint, and due to the hate sex-negativity and kinkshaming gets on the internet) seeing all the scandals that pop every other day on the internet and... I just feel like to reject sex and reject kink/NSFW/pr0n and a culture so drenched in immorality is to take a real stand for myself, to tell people that being gay and trans ISN'T being a degenerate sick fuck and we can be better at restraint and ethics than the homophobes.

I also quit smoking as of late 2019 and cheated a bit when I went out pre-pandemic in like December and January 2019, but had to absolutely quit once the pandemic began, and I've also realized that's an ethical and moral issue and I must stay quit because if I smoke again, I will be putting my own body and that of others at risk and being a bad example if someone sees me and fund an industry based on killing people... I will literally be responsible for deaths if I ever light up again, and I possibly already carry the deaths of many on me for the ten years I did smoke and support the tobacco industry by doing so...

I've just been taking a deep moral inventory of myself and finding things to change and I wonder if anyone else has done this in 2020 over the pandemic? Change their entire ethical and moral views, possibly even to something the past you would have seen as prudish or silly or something else?

(now if only I could go vegetarian - that's something else that's been poking at my conscience a long time, but I haven't been able to make myself do it yet...)
 
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I'm glad to hear you've hardened your resolve on quitting smoking! It's not easy at all, I really admire your strength ^^

I personally have started to learn to accept mental illness as a real issue that needs to be treated. I mean I've always believed in mental health awareness and have supported all my loved ones and friends, and am pursuing a psych major to work in the field, but I guess I was just too self loathing to really apply that to me lol. It took me a long time for me to admit I needed help and finally see a professional and I can't overstate how much I wish I had done it sooner haha.

The protests and political events over the year also made me realize the people in my life who I really don't think I can agree to disagree on lol
 
Honesty hours here: Well, I kind of half failed the quit - went back on nicotine lozenges because nicotine is the only thing I've found to keep me from getting canker sores, and as long as I'm not exposing others to smoke, at this point I would much rather take a small risk of cancer years down the road than painful mouth sores every other month that last for a week.

And as for the moral awakening stuff... well I agree with most of it still, but I also realize I bought into an assload of SWERF/conservative agitprop from the antiship community to the extent that I was getting REALLY angry with people over nonsense and self-hating and... just not cool stuff. Basically went too far in the "trying to be pure" direction and became a fucking asshole as a result. I haven't become a proship completely (I think that while one should consider harms in writing fiction and while I still believe writing stuff that glorifies/supports underage sex or r*pe or racism/fascism is bad, being an extremist anti willing to treat other human beings like garbage over writing anything short of blatantly advocating awful shit like that/simply being clumsy writers who aren't as "aware" is as bad as being an extremist proship), and I still hold to very strong IRL boundaries around this stuff, and at this point I just accept the good points from people not in the depths on either side of ship discourse)
 
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Hello friend! This is a really interesting thread I'm excited to dig into, because I love talking about philosophy and how we can change over our lifetimes. I've been doing some of that myself! However, I am going to politely ask you to please thread tag topics such as this in the future. My apologies for not seeing this sooner. Heavy discussion is generally allowed on the board, but we consider it polite to tag threads or utilize spoiler quotes so that those who wish to avoid such subjects can. :)

The board is fairly new so I'm not sure everyone is aware of the feature, so I'll elaborate: you can tag threads so that the warnings show up at the top and users who do not wish to see them can silent them. I've gone on and done this for this thread IE:
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I should really make more posts describing some of these features better, so consider it my bad, but in the future please tag threads for content. :)

You can also add them at the top of your threads/comments (comments unfortunately cannot be tagged) just for good measure and to give folks a heads-up about the content of your post.

I am going to CW my own comment for discussion on death, covid, sex/kink, LGBTQ issues, consent,
sexual assault/rape culture
I wonder if anyone else went through some major personal ethical and moral changes over 2020?
Oh lord, a ton. I've become a socialist hermit person, for one. I have tried to teach myself to enjoy things again for another. For a long time I made myself really miserable denying myself things I enjoyed because I thought they were dumb and immature. The reality is, I had a lot of residual built up hurt around religion and events that occurred in the past that I still had to process. Hell, still process because what is life but not a constant process? Barring anything actually harmful, it's ok to let things spark joy for you. It's downright necessary. :) As awful as covid has been, I'm thankful for the time it's granted me to work on myself. I am one of the lucky ones who gets to work from home...

However, between covid and the passing of my father earlier this year, I've been thinking more and more about the value of life. It's too short so don't sell a second more than you need or otherwise desire to and take care of yourself. Far too many people died and continue to die and we continue to work half (probably more) the population to death...over stonks. It's disgusting to live through, I am tired of living through history. On the other hand, my dad was a bitter mean old man who did not take care of himself and I must do everything I can not to become him. Empathy is necessary though and his passing put a great deal into perspective for me. I used to be a bit of an edgy nihilist.

This whole thing has made me realize: everyone is doing their best. Be compassionate! Engage in good faith. :)

Here, I went from being way too liberal/sex-positive to the point where I have no doubt that my pro-ship stances or NSFW fics or my sense of humor probably made people feel uncomfy or take me for a creep, to being sex-repulsed, kink critical, fiction critical. (I don't call myself an anti because I'm not totally in agreement with anti tactics or the need to punish others for creating bad fictional content, I think people need to be educated and made aware about the harm of glorifying/not warning for and gating off certain things in media, not harassed or punished), I'm now opposed to publicly posting NSFW fic/rp/jokes (all of my public fic now stops at the bedroom door, I only go nsfw if I am privately writing for an audience of one person and we have both verified our age, our triggers, our stances, etcetera and can communicate with each other to immediately call boundaries. Some of my old stuff I orphaned on AO3 may still be kicking around - please don't see me as a hypocrite, back at the time I debated whether to orphan fics or delete... and now I can't delete ones I chose to orphan).
I'm personally of the opinion that as long as everyone involved in the ship are consenting adults, and you have adequately warned for questionable content, it's Gucci (no NSFW here please we keep the board to 'content you may see in a hard T to soft M game + adequate content tagging level' but I am not personally opposed to its existence, SFW of any consenting adult ship is welcome). I'm not gonna come at you for your old AO3 and I don't think anyone here will. On top of that, people change, and it's generally pretty crap when some feel the need to drag up old laundry over petty things such as a fic or a tweet (context is always key though).
Most of all, now, I believe that IRL sex belongs only within a longstanding relationship such as marriage, between two people 25 or over - and that it's a deadly serious thing, not a joking matter or something to just be flippant over or throw around everywhere.
Don't know if I agree with this. Plenty of folks have sex outside of marriage and go on and live happy and fulfilling lives. This can and should be done responsibly and with consent at all times but, people are going to experiment and honestly, it's important to a lot of people's development. Everyone is different and I've known 19 year olds who are very mature and 30 year olds who are hot messes. We need better sex education in general, a lot of the population is sadly misinformed on sex safety and consent.

But there is a good point that maybe it shouldn't be 'thrown around everywhere'. We do have a highly sexualized culture, that does cause a lot of people pain and beyond that whole can of worms... some people just don't want to see it! Time and place and all that. There's a space for everything.

And I'm actually really thankful that I have adopted these stances, as long as it took me to work my way around to them (because I initially rejected the idea of a strict stance regarding sexuality due to the usual homophobia/transphobia bundled with the concepts of sexual morality and restraint, and due to the hate sex-negativity and kinkshaming gets on the internet) seeing all the scandals that pop every other day on the internet and... I just feel like to reject sex and reject kink/NSFW/pr0n and a culture so drenched in immorality is to take a real stand for myself, to tell people that being gay and trans ISN'T being a degenerate sick fuck and we can be better at restraint and ethics than the homophobes.
I understand this sentiment, as a lot of people will throw assumptions at you for being LGBTQ. I'm bi myself, but I'm married and have been with the same person for 8 years... that doesn't stop people from assuming I'm some sort of kink machine when they hear it! That's really unfair.

That said, like... I don't think kinky gay and trans people, or kinky het and cis people for that matter, are "degenerate sick fucks". Plenty of people live rich lives and enjoy some kink. There are studies (I can dig em up if you want) that show that consensual, healthy kink can in fact be part of a person's healing process through trauma. But frankly, even if it's not, what people do in bed is none of my business.

I also quit smoking as of late 2019 and cheated a bit when I went out pre-pandemic in like December and January 2019, but had to absolutely quit once the pandemic began, and I've also realized that's an ethical and moral issue and I must stay quit because if I smoke again, I will be putting my own body and that of others at risk and being a bad example if someone sees me and fund an industry based on killing people... I will literally be responsible for deaths if I ever light up again, and I possibly already carry the deaths of many on me for the ten years I did smoke and support the tobacco industry by doing so...
Great job quitting! That's a big deal, you should be really proud. But don't be so hard on yourself. You're not personally responsible for any of those deaths -- that's on the corporations that push cigarettes and the people who choose to continue smoking them. Everyone has agency and makes their own choices, and congrats on making the healthy choice here.
I've just been taking a deep moral inventory of myself and finding things to change and I wonder if anyone else has done this in 2020 over the pandemic? Change their entire ethical and moral views, possibly even to something the past you would have seen as prudish or silly or something else?
Completely, see my above response. My memo has been to embrace the silly. Cringe is dead dudes.
(now if only I could go vegetarian - that's something else that's been poking at my conscience a long time, but I haven't been able to make myself do it yet...)
This is very noble for the environment. I have a lot of faith in some of the meat alternatives that are coming out, but I can't lie... I do love to grill some meats.
 
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