The problem

Recently I’ve been paying more attention to how often the concept of the “big 3” (map, zoo, necro) comes up in contact discourse. There are new stances coined with a view to convey being anti c for the big 3, pro c for the big 3, or being inclusive/exclusionary of those who are either of the above. This trend has been going on for a while, but I have not been paying enough attention to it, outside of very surface level criticism.

But some recent conversations I had prompted me to think about it in more detail. I believe that the expectation for discourse participants to have a unified stance for acts associated with the big 3 is harmful. I am not trying to say that a random individual cannot have a similar stance for all of them – but you should not be encourage to copy and paste the views you developed around one subject onto a different one.

Contact stances largely formed around the topic of youth age gap relationships, and they remained exclusive to it for about 10 years of their existence – up to 2018 and the big integration of the Tumblr zoomaps into the zoo Twitter discourse. It feels like the map contact discourse framework was plastered onto human/nonhuman relations whole. Back then I identified as a pro c zoo, and this transfer did not feel like a big deal, since I was willing to engage with the topic of interspecies relationships from the same positions a pro c map may use.

As time went, I discovered that more well-established zoo spaces actually used completely different paradigms, with wide scale acceptance for things I found unethical (like training of companion animals for sex). I switched to the theoretically more anti c-compatible views I have now, and I discovered that the residue left by map discourse affects the anti c zoo stance pretty badly. This included:

• a somewhat widespread belief that it’s unethical to romantically express towards any companion animals;
• equation of footage of animals engaging in species-typical sexual behaviors to footage of animal sexual exploitation;
• significant opposition to the practice of posting real life animal photos with sexual captions even when it’s clear the animal was not sexually approached anyhow;
• opposition to behaving sexually in presence of animals without any sort of interaction.

These things are significant components of the anti contact stance in regards to youth age gap intimacy, due to the fact that children and young teens are capable of perceiving such behaviors and being affected by them (it get more complicated than that, but that’s the tl;dr). And these things appear in zoo-related contact discourse because they were borrowed here – not because it makes sense to arrive to such conclusions if you start from scratch. At most, the effect of some of these behaviors will be species-dependent. And I do not think I will wholesale condemn such stuff when it’s applied to nonhuman animals just because I condemn it when it’s applied to the youth, and the fact that it’s uncritically included in the anti c zoo paradigm by so many makes me think the zoo contact discourse is just severely underdone.

A few years ago I did encounter something resembling the anti c zoo stance assembled properly from scratch – it was the anti practicing stance, formerly developed by PACHE. It included a stronger focus on opposition to the currently accepted norms of intimate involvement with animals in bigger zoo spaces. I never identified with this label for unrelated reasons, but I could get behind its logic. However, when I saw the anti practice framework applied to necro issues, the exact same problems took place. The anti practicing stance emphasized the current realia of the sex acts it criticized, without trying to resolve the question of whether it could be ethical in theory. And it worked for human/nonhuman contact discourse, because 1) a large amount of pro c zoos engages in ethically dubious sexual behavior with animals, and that is a concern that takes priority over theory, 2) the question of animal consent is anything but straightforward and cannot be resolved here and now. And that differs from the state of things in the necro communities, where a large amount of people are celibate/engaging in relationships with living partners, and living people who express consent to post-mortem sex (like me) are present.

With all that in mind, I come back to my initial statement: I do not like the idea of a whole unified contact stance for the big 3 – as opposed to 3 separate stances that may or may not align – because I feel like it invites copying arguments.

These three types of contact discourse all have different conditions.

The differences

Map contact discourse is the type of discourse I am most familiar with. It deals largely with discussions of social/philosophical implications of sex, family structures, and the age social hierarchy. Some participants base their stance in their views of sex as inherently healthy versus hazardous, some – in their opposition to family versus idealization of it, some – in belief in youth age gap intimacy as something that reinforces the oppression of youth versus overcomes it. Presence of youth who express desire to enter relationships with older people is notable, but presence of those who had such relationships willingly and ended up traumatized by them is equally notable.

Zoo contact discourse, in its form popular in contemporary mainstream zoo spaces, is largely about the physical capabilities of nonhuman animals and how to manage their needs on their behalf, about the idea of love towards animals as something that imposes the role of their protector and “voice” onto you. An important aspect of it is that theriform animals do not express their social or political wishes, so what’s “best for animals” is argued about by humans.

Necro contact discourse is the one I am least familiar with, because I am not a necro, but I do have some experience participating in it as a potential corpse donor. I do not intend to die, but I cannot rule out that possibility yet, and the idea of being just burned or buried unused anyhow is unacceptable for me. This discourse is about the topic of funeral rites as a cultural concept, the dead body as an object owned by someone (regulated by the will the person left, or owned by the society, the family, someone else). One thing, particular to this discourse, is that the subjects of it (the dead bodies) in the recent past have been people who could express their wishes on how their body should be handled, and after death you can no longer be affected by unforeseen consequences of your own choices.

The three paragraphs above are only a short approximation, lacking many important details, but I hope I made it clear how these three discourses can be opposed to each other and contrasted in different ways. And you need to consider different social aspects of humanity in order to make a conclusion about your stance in each.

The conclusion

The concept of the big 3 was not coined for contact discourse. It was coined to discuss the way para spaces discriminate towards the most stigmatized paraphiliacs. And it probably does not belong in contact discourse.

I have been complaining for a long time about contact stances being rolled up into some sort of a featureless blob that is meant to describe your whole policy towards all para adjacent acts. It takes away attention from cornerstone moral questions and turns having a contact stance into something cosmetic. This is not what we want, this is what abusers and antis want.

There’s also the whole problem with being pro c seen as a measure of coolness and liberation and being anti c seen as a measure of safety and virtue. Discourse participants are pushed to adopt a big simple stance that would align with how they see themselves vibes-wise, rather than what they believe in. And they do not want to say “well, I’m a bit pro c for that, a bit anti c for this”, because it removes from the emotional impact.

I do not think replacing the word “contact” for stances (as was suggested by some) would help to differentiate them from each other. I think this problem needs a deeper approach, a bigger discussion about what questions lie at the foundation of what discourse. A good thing to start with would be to encourage people to specify what sphere they mean when they express having a contact stance (at least with code, to avoid mainstream social media bans).

Contact discourse is an important tool of analysis of abuse, in and outside of the para communities. We cannot lose that.