Well, it very much wasn't what I'm talking about. But I'll engage.
I'm not one of those people who says "don't kinkshame" and leaves it there. I do think that erotic fiction can be problematic. However, I think it's a lot more complicated than thing bad -> story bad.
I viscerally don't like such stories and might dislike the people writing them, depending.
But I think that the primary harms such stories can do is (a) traumatizing people who see them unexpectedly, and (b) normalizing viewpoints that cause harm in the real world.
Fandom is kind of a special case. We generally take care of (a) by specific tagging and labeling - much more extensive than mainstream media, where disturbing content (like rape) is everywhere without any warning other than that there is "sex and violence." It's also a niche audience and with tagging even more so, which means that a fanfic tagged for disturbing content will never have the normalizing power of ... say ... Khal Drogo sexily raping thirteen-year-old Daenerys.
Fandom has also traditionally been a space have been free to express their sexual fantasies. Policing content - even if we only start with content that we, personally, think is really distasteful - changes that. Once you get in the habit it's hard to stop. Today it's twelve-year-olds having sex with their parents; tomorrow it's fifteen-year-olds having sex with other fifteen-year-olds, and the day after tomorrow it's eighteen-year-olds who were fifteen in canon.
I just have no idea why anyone would find that hot.
My experience is that people write it for a variety of reasons.
I once had to deal with a loli author who didn't seem to understand that it would be wrong in the real world. She was all-around a creepy, unpleasant person with no sense of boundaries.
But I've also been in fandom a long time and read what a lot of authors have to say about their work, many of whom claim not to be attracted to children in real life. I believe most of them. One of the major themes is that childhood embodies a lot of things that they want to write about, like innocence and helplessness. It's not a literal desire for a child but a more metaphorical desire. Another theme is that they are not imagining themselves in the role of the abuser, but in the role of the child.
I get the first one intuitively, because it's a similar reason to why I read some of the things I do - things that aren't as extreme, but would still be wrong in the real world and that I have no desire to happen in the real world. But they are a stand-in for something less literal.
The second one I don't really get intuitively because I don't imagine myself in the fiction I read, but I know many others do, and you can certainly tell that one partner is the stand-in and one partner is the fantasy in a lot of erotic fiction.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-01 03:28 pm (UTC)I'm not one of those people who says "don't kinkshame" and leaves it there. I do think that erotic fiction can be problematic. However, I think it's a lot more complicated than thing bad -> story bad.
I viscerally don't like such stories and might dislike the people writing them, depending.
But I think that the primary harms such stories can do is (a) traumatizing people who see them unexpectedly, and (b) normalizing viewpoints that cause harm in the real world.
Fandom is kind of a special case. We generally take care of (a) by specific tagging and labeling - much more extensive than mainstream media, where disturbing content (like rape) is everywhere without any warning other than that there is "sex and violence." It's also a niche audience and with tagging even more so, which means that a fanfic tagged for disturbing content will never have the normalizing power of ... say ... Khal Drogo sexily raping thirteen-year-old Daenerys.
Fandom has also traditionally been a space have been free to express their sexual fantasies. Policing content - even if we only start with content that we, personally, think is really distasteful - changes that. Once you get in the habit it's hard to stop. Today it's twelve-year-olds having sex with their parents; tomorrow it's fifteen-year-olds having sex with other fifteen-year-olds, and the day after tomorrow it's eighteen-year-olds who were fifteen in canon.
I just have no idea why anyone would find that hot.
My experience is that people write it for a variety of reasons.
I once had to deal with a loli author who didn't seem to understand that it would be wrong in the real world. She was all-around a creepy, unpleasant person with no sense of boundaries.
But I've also been in fandom a long time and read what a lot of authors have to say about their work, many of whom claim not to be attracted to children in real life. I believe most of them. One of the major themes is that childhood embodies a lot of things that they want to write about, like innocence and helplessness. It's not a literal desire for a child but a more metaphorical desire. Another theme is that they are not imagining themselves in the role of the abuser, but in the role of the child.
I get the first one intuitively, because it's a similar reason to why I read some of the things I do - things that aren't as extreme, but would still be wrong in the real world and that I have no desire to happen in the real world. But they are a stand-in for something less literal.
The second one I don't really get intuitively because I don't imagine myself in the fiction I read, but I know many others do, and you can certainly tell that one partner is the stand-in and one partner is the fantasy in a lot of erotic fiction.