The whole issue of pornographic legitimacy aside:
One of my huge problems with a blanket condemnation of “people who write non-con” or “people who write underage sex,” is the assumption that there’s only one reason that a sexually explicit scene could possibly exist in a piece of fiction: to arouse the reader and uncomplicatedly celebrate whatever sexual activity is taking place. At best, when this mentality does acknowledge the existence of other types of sex scenes, it assumes that the categories “sex scenes that celebrate and arouse” and “sex scenes that problematize and dissect” are mutually exclusive, and that the line between them is clear, easy to draw, and easy to agree upon.
Say for a moment, that we as a group are going to prohibit the writing and reading of sexually explicit scenes involving rape or underage sexuality. Does the prohibition extend to writing and reading fiction that depicts rape and underage sexuality in order to condemn them or detail trauma around them? If that’s allowed, does it apply to writing and reading fiction that deals with those themes in order to explore the complexities of individual responses to them? What if those responses are themselves morally dubious? If that’s allowed, does the prohibition kick in if any of the characters experiences arousal? If the reader does? Or does it just kick in when the reader perceives that a character is aroused at a point when, according to the reader, they shouldn’t be? Or when the reader senses, through a hundred intangible narrative cues, that the writer’s attitude toward the events in the story aren’t the same as the reader’s?
If you feel that the location of this line is obvious, are you sure that your boundary is the objectively correct one?
Because historically, there is a VERY STRONG PRECEDENT that once censorship/taboos around these issues gain a toehold, people will disagree about the location of that line; that they will in fact challenge and attempt to ban any book which includes the issues in question, regardless of whether it does so to glorify them, condemn them, or something more complicated. If you would take issue with any of the following calls to ban or remove books from libraries, perhaps the line is not so clear-cut as you believed (also, more commentary under the cut):
lol ur acting as if that’s why the people we complain about write those scenes tho. it’s blatantly obvious when it’s for a good cause, the ones we condemn write that shit bc they think it’s “kinky” and “edgy.”
The entire point of this post is that both I and history strongly disagree that it’s “blatantly obvious” when controversial content is artistically justified. Historically that has been anything but obvious to society at large, which I why I cited all those examples of books that most reasonable people would consider artistically and politically unimpeachable, but which plenty of folks still want to ban. The power of censorship isn’t a cat you can put back in its bag once it’s clawed your particular enemy.
Also, the metric for critique really should not be authorial intent. Who cares what the author thought when they were writing something, or whether they wrote the thing “for a good cause”? Fandom discourse is far too fixated on scrutinizing the traumas and guessing at the intentions of writers in an effort to determine whether they’re allowed to write a given thing. Forget about the author. The metric should be whether the created object, in its context and totality, reinforces oppression. And it should be a metric for two-way CRITIQUE, not blanket censorship, for heaven’s sake!
From my previous examples: for my money, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is misogynist in both its treatment of rape and its essentializing of its female characters. This may or may not have been an intentional or socially-minded decision on Ellison’s part, but regardless, I would argue that it does not serve the narrative as a whole, and that that aspect of the book perpetrates gender-based oppression. Other aspects of the book combat race-based oppression, and do so extremely eloquently and effectively. It’s also just a corker of an absorbing read. None of these things negates the others. We should neither ban the book, nor remain silent about its misogyny because of its seminal anti-racism work and its powerhouse prose. We should critique the ways in which it fails while also acknowledging the many ways in which it succeeds. We should read it and have a conversation about it!
Or, another example: I think Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is rapey, politically poisonous, and poorly written. It perpetrates gender-based oppression and class-based oppression, and generally inhibits empathy. But its philosophy apparently resonates with a huge group of people. I think we as a society need to take a compassionate and non-shaming look at why that might be—and as a tool in that discussion, we need the book. Banning it would only drive Rand sympathizers underground, inhibit discussion since nobody is supposed to be reading it, make The Fountainhead more desirable for its forbidden status, and frankly accord it more social importance than it deserves.
From a 2006 decision by Sonia Sotomayor, now a Supreme Court justice:
For purposes of evaluating artistic or cultural merit, the term “pornography” is notoriously elusive. In that context, determining whether material deserves the label of pornography is a subjective, standardless process, heavily influenced by the individual, social,and cultural experience of the person making the determination.
The same holds true for any sub-set of written pornography that might be deemed beyond the pale. The discussion itself can be useful, but not if it deteriorates into two polarized sides screaming threats at each other over the contents of a blanket checklist of fictional no-nos.
2) IMO this discussion could be more productive if we as fans openly critiqued the political dimensions of one another’s work, so that the conversation could move from “writing about non-con is wrong” to “here are specific issues with the way that this story in particular depicts non-con.” I doubt this is ever going to happen, however.
the thing is, fandom used to do that! I call back again to LJ days, but back then, there were various fanfic crit communities. Sure there were plenty that were used purely for malicious sporking, but there were also others that spoke of specific, legitimate issues that certain fics had, or prevalent tropes – for example, “asylum” fics are typically done very poorly and using extremely ableist tropes, or how Barret Wallace is often portrayed as homophobic in many FFVII slash fics is racist. There were also fic critiques where they talked about anything from how the anus is not self lubricating (yes, fandom youngins, we used to do this) to how recovery really looks like for rape survivors from rape survivors and people who worked with them as part of their jobs. And so on and so forth.
What we’re seeing now? a MAJOR step backwards. And fandom needs to realize this sooner rather than later. Lest we see what’s already happening in TFA and Voltron fandoms spread like a virus.
On taboo themes in fiction
Published
i'll apple your turnover 