Anonymous asked: I just want to really really really thank you for what you wrote about badwrong porn being comparable to sexual roleplay and how the consent of the reader as the only real participant functions in those kinds of fantasies. As someone whose taste in sexual fantasies predates my trauma by a wide margin and doesn't feel particularly related to it I often feel thrown under the bus even by people on "my side" of this issue and I can't say how much it means to have at least one person not doing that
I’m sorry that you’ve been put in that position. The amount of doublethink that goes into holding up certain kinds of fantasies as morally bad while validating others as fine and normal drives me absolutely nuts, because we already know that when it comes to things like sexual orientation and behavioural preferences, you can’t get “converted” away from your inclinations because of media. Contrary to the fears of conservatives, playing violent video games doesn’t make you violent, just like watching stories with queer couples in them doesn’t make you gay - and the same goes for making that content, too. Certainly, there are instances where people seek to validate or explore their existing impulses through their choice of fiction, and that’s equally true of negative impulses (violent people enjoying violent games) as positive ones (queer people enjoying queer representation), but in either case, the fiction itself is not the cause.
But when it comes to darker sexual fantasies, people suddenly start confusing “I personally can’t think of a reason why someone would want to read or write this unless they’re an abuser” with “being pro-abuse is the only way such content could exist.” I mean, I have seen, on this actual website, people make the genuine argument that anyone who willingly engages with or supports BDSM is either an abuser or someone so indoctrinated that they don’t realise they’re a victim. Like… I’ve seen that discourse. It exists right alongside the claim that it’s not feminist for women to enjoy being sexually submissive, and I just Cannot with that bullshit.
Here’s a misogynist argument: what women enjoy in bed defines them in all other aspects of their lives, which is why it’s Right and Proper that women lie down for men like Eve lay down for Adam. And I’m using that phrase in the sexual sense as well as the metaphoric one: in the old Talmudic story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, her desire to be on top rather lying meekly beneath him was cited as one of the reasons why she fled the Garden and turned into a demoness. There’s a reason why the missionary position is called what it is, and that reason ties into a longstanding tradition of Christian sexual hangups in the West. For as long as Europeans have been thinking about women and sex, the assumption that women are defined by their arousal and their submission - or by their refusal to submit - has existed. So as much as it infuriates me, the idea that getting aroused by something dark in fanfic, roleplay or the privacy of your own head = wanting or supporting it the rest of the time has a long cultural lineage. It’s just also fucking wrong.
My personal way of looking at it is this: human beings are, to the best of our knowledge, unique in our sentience, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still animals. What arouses us - what our bodies like, and what our brains then analyse - doesn’t always have a rational, intellectual origin, but that doesn’t stop us looking for one and feeling frustrated if we can’t conjure up a justification that fits our social context. That conflict leaves a lot of people feeling ashamed of themselves or their desires, but shame doesn’t help anyone to live well, and especially not when we start wielding it against one another. And so we have fantasies: things that let us compromise between our bodily desires and our human intelligence without endangering ourselves or others. Fantasies didn’t create that dichotomy between the physical and the mental - they’re what we created to deal with its existence.
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