Anonymous asked: Loved your piece on Sex, Desire & FF, I was nodding along to the whole thing until you got to: 'there's a lot on offer that's non-consenting, pedophilic, creepy or otherwise downright disturbing'. Women are so often shamed for entertaining rape fantasies or other kinks conventionally viewed as deviant. I was kind of bummed out to see you group it in with the 'creepy' and 'downright disturbing'. You maybe try too hard to clean fanfic up. The point is it provides a safe space to be 'bad' in.
Thanks for this response; someone else pointed out a similar thing to me on Twitter - namely, that some graphic fanfic is written as a form of therapy for those who’ve suffered abuse, which isn’t something I’d considered before. I included the paragraph you’re referencing as a brief rebuttal to Morrison’s creep-assessment without really taking the time to think it through: I responded to his conclusion without bothering to consider whether it was reasonable or to ask more questions about it, which - given that the whole point of my piece was otherwise to do just that - was a serious oversight. So, thanks for pointing this out to me; it was definitely an error on my part. I’ll try to do better in future!