Brief Escape into Literary Theory

[moon_custafer]

There was a discussion on notasupervillain ’s blog the other day, about how frustrating it can be when progressive topics and stuff you agree with are handled clumsily in fiction (i.e. the story grinds to a halt so the characters can discuss the importance of respecting pronouns, instead of just showing them doing so). At one point the topic also came up of erotic fiction in which consent is handled awkwardly rather than sexily; and conversely, ones in which it ought to have been addressed and wasn’t.

I mentioned this was making me think-y about noncon/dubcon fics in general, but that I’d rather work it out over here than take over someone else’s conversation. Trigger warning, obviously, for the concepts of non- and dubcon, although I, not planning to go into graphic detail.

To start with, the type of erotic fantasies here are the ones where the person-things-are-being-done-to is the central or POV character, the one the audience is meant to identify with. I find it hard to believe most people want to be a victim of sexual assault in real life, so I’ve formed two overlapping explanations for the popularity of these:

1. Funhouse/thrill ride: It’s about experiencing a frisson without being in any real danger. Makes sense – after all a lot of people enjoy horror movies or thrillers without wanting to actually have to fight off masked knife-wielding assailants or rescue their loved ones from hostage situations.

2. It’s not a rape fantasy, it’s a plausible-excuse fantasy: If some one is uneasy with their own sexuality (in general, or due to a specific kink) they may only feel able to safely enjoy their fantasies if they come set in a frame of diminished responsibility: “I’m really a Nice Girl/Straight Guy, I was just forced to do all those naughty things by aliens/unusual circumstances/Lord Byron!”

This latter is the explanation I find more interesting, especially as it relates to kink.

Bear with me, because I’m trying to think this through as I go. Some kinks – maybe most – can be described as “this would be horror to anyone not turned on by it.*"  On the other hand, among the kink stories I’ve come across, I notice a type** I think of as the “demographic fantasy,” i.e. whatever it’s explicitly about, the real fantasy is of stumbling across one or more people whose obscure fetishes are compatible with yours, whom you also like as people, and who live close enough to meet with frequently, quite by accident—as opposed to hunting the length and breadth of the internet for a chat room devoted to your kink that’s still active and hasn’t been overrun by trolls; or hoping your local fetish scene will eventually turn up someone, but really it’s like trying to date in a small town.

 I think if you put together the diminished-responsibility fantasy and the meeting-the-perfect-partner(s) fantasy, a lot of dubcon erotica (especially if it has supernatural elements) can be interpreted as fantasies of subconscious wishes being granted (which is also the basis for a lot of horror and some noir thrillers). ***

Which is the point at which I’m going to veer off and talk about superhero stories. OK, so superheroes nearly always get their powers by accident or congenital mutation or some alien authority suddenly granting them and assigning a mission. Even Tony Stark built his original Iron Man suit because he had to in order to escape his captors and save his life. Actively setting out to acquire superpowers for oneself is usually the mark of a villain, even one doesn’t harm others in the process. Like creating life or trying to become immortal, it’s a Bad Idea and Tampering With the Natural Order. Having abilities thrust upon one, however, is perfectly ok (as long as one goes on to use them for Good); you get superpowers and a clear conscience.

Which makes me wonder if all these stories are coming out of Guess rather than Ask culture—there are things you’re not supposed to desire, but if they just… happen to you, well, no one can blame you if you end up enjoying them.


* Some are more “this would be really boring to anyone not turned on by it.”

** The “It’s your first day at your new job and HR explains that they do things a little differently around here – instead of Casual Fridays they have Formal Fridays where everyone has to come to work in gowns and tuxedos, and then anyone who’s made an error over the course of that week gets whipped while their co-workers watch. You are shocked, but even more shocking is the sudden thrill you experience at the idea of this novel means of motivating employees” variety. Someone should probably do an anthology with a framing narrative of a headhunter/real estate agency staffed by telepaths who deliberately put individuals with matching kinks into the same workplaces/neighbourhoods.

*** The “guy buys an antique top hat which turns out to be enchanted and transforms him into a clone of the original owner, then sends him back in time to be that dude (who died in the original version of events), thus reuniting him/that dude with that dude’s lover ” story I once found would function perfectly well as horror. It wasn't written as horror.

Comments

[notasupervillain]

Ahhhh I love everything about this post and I will have to think about it more because yes, many thoughts are happening in my brain prompted by this. But first thing:

I read a blog by someone who used to be in American purity culture and she said that when she got married, she (and everyone else) expected her brain to instantly flip from "thinking about sex is bad and wrong" to "constantly horny for my husband". And instead what she found was that she could only get off on rape fantasies. She considered this entirely the excuse mechanism, as you've defined it. And she was Not Happy about it.

[sovay]

she (and everyone else) expected her brain to instantly flip from "thinking about sex is bad and wrong" to "constantly horny for my husband".

This reminds me of an anecdote I read once about Charles and Frances Kingsley, who married in 1844 and did not consummate their marriage on their wedding night; they spent the first month of their marriage acclimating to one another, becoming comfortable with physical as well as emotional expressions of tenderness, effectively working their way up to intercourse rather than catapulting zero-to-sixty as Victorian purity culture expected them to do. There was a fair amount of prayer wrapped up in the process, but it struck me as amazingly sensible. They were both afraid of the wedding night going wrong, so they just didn't let it. And they had four well-loved children.

[moon_custafer]

I’d read that about the Kingsleys too (probably the same article) and wonder whether they were best-case-scenario outliers in Victorian private life, or more common for the period than people today think.

I mean, I’d hope for the latter, and certainly there are a lot of beliefs about the Victorian era that I consider inaccurate (it was six decades long, for heaven’s sake, mores are going to shift over three or four generations, so just because you can point to some individuals who were puritanical and some who were kinky doesn’t mean *everyone* who lived during the era was a hypocrite, just the ones who were puritans in the streets and kinky in the sheets, and even then, for some of those that might have been more a case of not-getting-arrested than glorying in how they were deceiving everyone) Pauses for breath.

[sovay]

I mean, I’d hope for the latter

Ditto. Just statistically, I don't see why the Kingsleys should have been the only couple who thought of the idea and could communicate well enough to make it work. They just happened to leave a body of letters about it so we know. This gets back to the perpetual problem of received images and unrecorded lives.

[moon_custafer]

It’s definitely easier to know about the relationships between couples who were separated by events and geography (or who both kept diaries, I suppose).

[nineveh_uk]

I've certainly read a number of later (early C20) advice guides that advocate not having sex on the wedding night, under the assumption that there has hitherto been only mild kissing and the bride at least is otherwise totally inexperienced. Though the cultural/time difference there is significant.

[kore]

They just happened to leave a body of letters about it so we know

omg it's right out of Comfortable Courtesan

[notasupervillain]

That seems incredibly sensible. Adding tons of stress has never made sex go better.

[kore]

Aw, that's lovely.

[sovay]

“guy buys an antique top hat which turns out to be enchanted and transforms him into a clone of the original owner, then sends him back in time to be that dude (who died in the original version of events), thus reuniting him/that dude with that dude’s lover”

Yeah, that's almost something that would happen to a Lovecraft protagonist, except he wouldn't enjoy it at all.

[nineveh_uk]

a lot of dubcon erotica (especially if it has supernatural elements) can be interpreted as fantasies of subconscious wishes being granted (which is also the basis for a lot of horror and some noir thrillers).

I'm sure that you are probably right about this. However I personally would also throw into the mix some of the ancestry of fanfic through the romance genre with its long (and indeed continuing), long history of noncon/dubcon. And the element of subconscious wishes being granted and the plausible excuse fantasy in the form of "nice girls can't say yes" are absolutely in there, and an awful lot of it I suspect is simply the reiterating of genre tropes (this is fanfic, after all). But I think that as well as allowing people to explore things they would like to do (e.g. explore (subconscious?) sexuality) through that, there is also the history of exploring ones feelings about things done to one. To my mind much of the classic dubcon genre comes out of the possibility that for a non-zero proportion of readers marriage itself was rape that couldn't be acknowledged and legally wasn't.

[moon_custafer]

Good point.

I'm also trying to figure out if and when non- or dubcon overlaps with hurt/comfort -- my feeling is that it doesn't much, since in h/c and suffering is not an end in itself, but the necessary prelude to the comfort and sympathy; while in dubcon (if not noncon), the emphasis is not so much on suffering as on "circumstances pushed me/us into something which turned out to be unexpectedly enjoyable."

[nineveh_uk]

Hmm, yes. It hadn't occurred to me to consider them in parallel, but I think you're right - they don't particularly intersect even though they are Thing A gets you to Thing B.

[sabotabby]

I've never thought about it like that, but I suspect you're right. (Granted, I don't read a lot of dubcon or noncon; it is very much Not My Kink, and where I've read it, it's generally been in smaller fandoms when I've run out of consensual h/c to read.)

[moon_custafer]

The weird thing is that it isn’t even my thing either. I suppose I’ve just been pondering why some instances, when I come across them, bother me less than others.