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Them: Fiction affects reality! Representation matters! The stories we tell affect the way we see the world!
Me: Yes, yes! Let's talk about racism in general and anti-black racism in particular and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and how we need to both advocate for (and support) media featuring people other than straight white able-bodied neurotypical men, and let's talk about how we can hack our own brains to shift our preferences to be more inclusive, and--
Them: And that's why everything you read or make must be Morally Pure and if there's any dubcon you are a rapist and if there's any sexy stuff for anyone under 18 you are a pedophile!
Me: :facepalm:
The "media affects reality" idea gets brought up in two ways, these days, and one of them I heartily agree with ("so therefore we need to promote greater diversity and inclusiveness") and one of them I heartily disagree with ("so therefore we need to police our desires so that we only desire/read/write/watch things that are Acceptably Pure And Unproblematic"). And there are a lot of reasons for that, but I spent some time last night pondering what the difference is and why. I mean, the basic underlying idea (that representation matters and the stories we tell affect our view of the world) is quite true, and provable; why do I accept that argument for things like racism in fic and not for, say, dubcon sex? (Insert arguments about thought control and the viciousness of purity culture here; enough electrons have been spilled arguing about this that I don't need to go into detail.)
What got me thinking about this specifically was a case where someone wrote a PWP Black Panther fic, shipping a black character and a white character, chock full of really racist tropes fetishizing the black character, and defended it with "that's just my fantasy!" Why do I accept (and defend) the right of people to write/read Hydra Trash Party, and think that's acceptable, but think that the racism fetish kink is a step too far and shouldn't use the same justifications? Here's what I've come up with.
1) Everybody knows that noncon is bad in real life.
When someone writes, say, a fic with noncon in it, nobody is arguing that noncon is good or should happen outside of fiction. You can have fantasies where you are raped and know perfectly well that however titilating it may be to you, you would NEVER want ANYTHING even CLOSE to it to happen in real life. Like, you might try kinky role-playing with someone(s) you trust to simulate it, but there's still a big difference between fantasy and reality. Neither fandom nor the larger culture is trying to claim that being raped is a good thing. There is a clear separation between fantasy and reality. As long as that separation is maintained, there is little if any harm in exploring that fantasy, and often good. (allows people to know themselves better, work through their issues, see that they're not alone and having disturbing fantasies doesn't make you a bad person.)
On the other hand, when someone writes fetishizing racist porn, there are a LOT of people in society and in fandom who ... can't tell that it's racist and demeaning to the people that it's fetishizing. Extremely few people (especially in fandom) believe "women want to be raped" but there are a LOT of people who believe "black men are animalistic and insatiable" or "asian women are submissive" or whatever fetish you're writing. And that makes a HUGE difference in the ethics of both reading and writing. If you write out your noncon fantasy, nobody who reads it is going to assume it means that rape is good and you're just reflecting reality. If you write out your racist fetish fantasy, lots of people who read it are going to be nodding along and going, yes, X really are like that.
2) There's a far wider gap between, say, noncon porn and reality than there is between racism and reality
So you have written your Hydra Trash Party fic where Bucky Barnes gets abused and raped and everything is really creepy. Are you going to go in to the office the next day and start beating up the low many on the totem pole? No? Didn't think so. Are you going to try and live out those kinks in your daily life? No, unless MAYBE you and your partner are into BDSM, and then there are a lot of manuals for how to explore those fantasies in a safe, sane, consensual, non-damaging way. You're not going to start treating people like Rumlow treated Bucky; even if you wanted to, there is a wide gulf between that and socially acceptable behavior. Even if you wanted to, there are resources in society for stopping people like that and helping their victims get away. Not enough, but they exist.
On the other hand, if your fantasy is Black men being animalistic and insatiable? Huge amounts of our culture are devoted to saying just that, everything from the (in)justice system to the news to the movies and TV we watch to the jokes we tell. Instead of society being disgusted by your actions, society will support you and egg you on. There's no gap between your fantasy and what society thinks the world is like.
In conclusion: representation matters, and the stories we tell affect how we think and feel. However, when there is a clear separation between fantasy and reality (as in the case of non-fetishizing kinky porn) there's a limit to how much the fantasy can affect us in negative ways, and it's better to allow people to explore the less-nice parts of their psyche than to shame and demean them for ever thinking anything that isn't "unproblematic" enough. On the other hand, when there isn't a clear separation between fantasy and reality (as with racist, ableist, etc. fetishes), that's when the stories we tell and give brain space to are most likely to affect us for the worse, reinforcing the -isms in our hearts and minds.
Me: Yes, yes! Let's talk about racism in general and anti-black racism in particular and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and how we need to both advocate for (and support) media featuring people other than straight white able-bodied neurotypical men, and let's talk about how we can hack our own brains to shift our preferences to be more inclusive, and--
Them: And that's why everything you read or make must be Morally Pure and if there's any dubcon you are a rapist and if there's any sexy stuff for anyone under 18 you are a pedophile!
Me: :facepalm:
The "media affects reality" idea gets brought up in two ways, these days, and one of them I heartily agree with ("so therefore we need to promote greater diversity and inclusiveness") and one of them I heartily disagree with ("so therefore we need to police our desires so that we only desire/read/write/watch things that are Acceptably Pure And Unproblematic"). And there are a lot of reasons for that, but I spent some time last night pondering what the difference is and why. I mean, the basic underlying idea (that representation matters and the stories we tell affect our view of the world) is quite true, and provable; why do I accept that argument for things like racism in fic and not for, say, dubcon sex? (Insert arguments about thought control and the viciousness of purity culture here; enough electrons have been spilled arguing about this that I don't need to go into detail.)
What got me thinking about this specifically was a case where someone wrote a PWP Black Panther fic, shipping a black character and a white character, chock full of really racist tropes fetishizing the black character, and defended it with "that's just my fantasy!" Why do I accept (and defend) the right of people to write/read Hydra Trash Party, and think that's acceptable, but think that the racism fetish kink is a step too far and shouldn't use the same justifications? Here's what I've come up with.
1) Everybody knows that noncon is bad in real life.
When someone writes, say, a fic with noncon in it, nobody is arguing that noncon is good or should happen outside of fiction. You can have fantasies where you are raped and know perfectly well that however titilating it may be to you, you would NEVER want ANYTHING even CLOSE to it to happen in real life. Like, you might try kinky role-playing with someone(s) you trust to simulate it, but there's still a big difference between fantasy and reality. Neither fandom nor the larger culture is trying to claim that being raped is a good thing. There is a clear separation between fantasy and reality. As long as that separation is maintained, there is little if any harm in exploring that fantasy, and often good. (allows people to know themselves better, work through their issues, see that they're not alone and having disturbing fantasies doesn't make you a bad person.)
On the other hand, when someone writes fetishizing racist porn, there are a LOT of people in society and in fandom who ... can't tell that it's racist and demeaning to the people that it's fetishizing. Extremely few people (especially in fandom) believe "women want to be raped" but there are a LOT of people who believe "black men are animalistic and insatiable" or "asian women are submissive" or whatever fetish you're writing. And that makes a HUGE difference in the ethics of both reading and writing. If you write out your noncon fantasy, nobody who reads it is going to assume it means that rape is good and you're just reflecting reality. If you write out your racist fetish fantasy, lots of people who read it are going to be nodding along and going, yes, X really are like that.
2) There's a far wider gap between, say, noncon porn and reality than there is between racism and reality
So you have written your Hydra Trash Party fic where Bucky Barnes gets abused and raped and everything is really creepy. Are you going to go in to the office the next day and start beating up the low many on the totem pole? No? Didn't think so. Are you going to try and live out those kinks in your daily life? No, unless MAYBE you and your partner are into BDSM, and then there are a lot of manuals for how to explore those fantasies in a safe, sane, consensual, non-damaging way. You're not going to start treating people like Rumlow treated Bucky; even if you wanted to, there is a wide gulf between that and socially acceptable behavior. Even if you wanted to, there are resources in society for stopping people like that and helping their victims get away. Not enough, but they exist.
On the other hand, if your fantasy is Black men being animalistic and insatiable? Huge amounts of our culture are devoted to saying just that, everything from the (in)justice system to the news to the movies and TV we watch to the jokes we tell. Instead of society being disgusted by your actions, society will support you and egg you on. There's no gap between your fantasy and what society thinks the world is like.
In conclusion: representation matters, and the stories we tell affect how we think and feel. However, when there is a clear separation between fantasy and reality (as in the case of non-fetishizing kinky porn) there's a limit to how much the fantasy can affect us in negative ways, and it's better to allow people to explore the less-nice parts of their psyche than to shame and demean them for ever thinking anything that isn't "unproblematic" enough. On the other hand, when there isn't a clear separation between fantasy and reality (as with racist, ableist, etc. fetishes), that's when the stories we tell and give brain space to are most likely to affect us for the worse, reinforcing the -isms in our hearts and minds.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 05:53 pm (UTC)From:I think your separation of fantasy and reality is a good point; I just wonder how that would play out in reality: in writing, in reading.
Certainly there is a weird lack or interracial porn in general, to the degree it bothers me because I want to read it. There are interracial stories; don't get me wrong, of the sweeter instances, like Star Trek Discovery's Michael Burnham / Sylvia Tilly, or the less loaded instances, like Michael Burnham / Philippa Georgiou. But if I look for kinky Peter Grant / Thomas Nightingale, there's not a lot at all, and if we are talking any Lucca Quinn / Maia Rindell fic, is there any I haven't had to write myself? :/
no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 03:30 am (UTC)From:I think the key is, the best response is to increase the amount and variety of things about people who aren't straight white neurotypical able-bodied cisgender middle/upper class men. While obviously we don't want people to be jerks, and there are some things that are damaging enough to be called out, the ultimate answer is not to quest for that one true example of unproblematic representation, but rather to have so much (and so varied) representation that the truly bad stuff is a small footnote rather than a large part of the whole.
Not coincidentally, this approach also will (hopefully) result in more fic for me as a reader and more freedom for me as a writer.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 07:24 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 10:53 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 12:00 am (UTC)From:There's still plenty of canon out there that says stalking, abusing and/or gaslighting someone is a perfectly okay way to start a romance. And plenty of parts of fandom will fail to read noncon and abuse and power differential as creepy or coercive or fucked-up or RL okay if the actors are hot enough, similarly to the way they'll fail to see racist tropes if they have an incentive not to.
And unfortunately, the people who can't see the difference (between abusive and not abusive, between racist and not-racist, but also between works that normalize and behavior and works that don't, or who think the only alternative to normalizing is being didactic) are the ones who are least likely to listen to any nuanced discussion about it, and who most need to hear.
I think, given the way the Black Panther movie directly addresses race, there could be some REALLY HOT, REALLY FUCKED UP porn that plays with stereotypes about black men, between Erik's issues, M'Baku's issues, T'Challa's issues, and Ross's issues, while making it very clear that it is NOT OKAY. I suspect there are just as many racism survivors who could use porn that worked with that kind of stuff as there are rape survivors who benefit from noncon. (I mean, was just listening to a podcast with two Indigenous Canadian fangirls who spent a lot of time talking about their deeply problematic yet undeniably hot cowboy fetishes - it's a thing.) Not talking about it, or scaring people away from working with it, is not the way to make it get better.
But do I trust fandom as a whole to either write it or discuss it well, especially White fandom, especially me? Hell no.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 04:19 am (UTC)From:And if I am honest I have to admit that I enjoyed plenty of porn that meshed with my kinks even when the author seemed to entirely lack awareness of how messed the things they are writing were. So I can't even claim that I only enjoy the "self-aware" approaches.
And I don't think it is primarily a porn issue even. Some of my own narrative kinks that I am most uncomfortable with are related to my love for ritualized and glorified concepts of violence/war/warriors in fiction. Like, even if these days the war/violence itself may be depicted as (superficially) horrendous (yet beautifully choreographed), it serves as a backdrop for displays of honor, solidarity, comradeship, bonding etc., which I like a lot, even though intellectually I know how much these narratives are part of the underlying support system of militaristic and patriarchal ideologies. I still love those stories, emotionally, so on a gut level I plain *like* the fictional version of the ideology I resent in RL, because my ideas of drama, of good storytelling whatever have been ingrained to me in a patriarchal culture.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 03:30 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-25 02:52 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 07:57 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 01:47 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 03:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 03:18 am (UTC)From:Honestly, I would disagree with the first part of this. Most people wouldn't believe that women want to be raped in the "violent stranger in a dark alley" sense, but "no means yes" or "if she's drunk she can't say no" and "if she consents to one thing she consents to everything" are still really common. I would instead argue that I would much rather see better tagging for everything *including* fantasies that are racist than arguing that one kink is okay because it's understood not to be real. Both influence the real world, but fandom is a very minor part of that, and fandom standards shift all the time.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 04:52 am (UTC)From:Yes, this. Though I think for that to work there needs to be more awareness of racism and racist tropes we enjoy in fiction, much like the rape warning diversified into the current crop of various, dubcon, non-con, consent-issues, enthusiastic consent tags as awareness of this has risen.
The problem is that just as the romcom writer often isn't realizing that the thing might need the "stalking" tag the fic writer might not realize their work needs a "race fetish" tag or such. But a non-judgmental approach will probably help to make people more likely to tag when they suspect they ventured there, even while not sure. Maybe like right now people tag for impaired consent for drunk sex, that they don't think is non-consensual, but might bother some people, without facing censure for writing happy drunk sex.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 04:32 am (UTC)From:I think for me what makes a piece of writing seem exploitative/damaging vs. not is something similar to the difference between punching-up and punching-down humor. A woman writing noncon strikes me as different from a man writing it; a white person writing race porn strikes me as different from a person of color writing it.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 12:54 pm (UTC)From:It this as platform-specific as it seems to me because I don't see it on DW or Twitter but to be fair it's likely I'm a little in a fandom bubble these days.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 04:59 pm (UTC)From:e.g., Eurocentric beauty standards across all forms of media has been shown to impact black girls' standards of beauty. On the other hand, notoriously, people have desperately tried to connect violence in video games to actual violence but found no clear conclusion. This analysis covers it fairly comprehensively, with the interesting aside that some studies find that the release of video games is actually correlated with a drop in violent behaviour.
So the assumption that anything depicted in a fictional context (even when there's much more immediacy than in most fandom canons) affects society is not supported. Fiction may or may not influence reality, depending on the case. And as fans rather than researchers, the issue is going to come down to personal judgment. We know that things like Eurocentrism absolutely affect society, so something like that feels a lot more inappropriate when people really want to see X thing as influencing society, but without evidence.
(I personally do disagree with the general idea that writing something as implicitly/explicitly Not Okay is acceptable while "romanticized" versions are the problem. I find the latter much less alarming because it seems a blatant fantasy—that often quietly ignores or (in fic) excises the problematic elements that people are handwringing about, which IMO contrary to frequent judgment, suggests that they many of them do realize it's there, they just don't want to deal with it in their fluffy fantasy version. Fic/meta/whatever that openly luxuriates in the real thing is a lot more disturbing to me. And that's just as subjective as anyone else's view, it's just ... there can't be any kind of absolute morality when so much comes down to personal squicks.)
no subject
Date: 2018-03-24 05:02 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-03-25 09:59 pm (UTC)From:I agree, in general, with your point that the racist tropes are closer to reality and so carry more danger of replicating systems of oppression--though I do agree with the comments that note this is also true with some consent tropes. (Over at Asphodel's Haven in Mirage of Blaze fandom, we recently had a discussion about how to regard the non-con in Mirage. It was observed that the trope is pretty universal in boys love with some implication that "this makes it okay; it's just a literary formula." However, Asphodel then followed up by posting some very interesting articles on rape culture in Japan, suggesting to me that it's not "just a literary formula"; there actually is a broader set of social assumptions about how dodgy activities X, Y, and Z don't really count as rape, and that is a thing to be concerned about.)
For my own personal comfort zone, I like to see the "not okay" called out as "not okay," whether it's non-con, racism, or whatever. And it doesn't have to be in a one-note preachy way. It can be subtle and complex, as life is. But I like to see some sense of awareness on the part of the author/text. And this is probably why I'm not a reader of "lighthearted" non-con fantasies. I do see that they have a place as escapism, but I expect I'll always be personally put off because I like the acknowledgement of problematic behavior.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-05 05:03 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-04-05 12:32 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)no subject
Date: 2018-04-05 05:02 pm (UTC)From:You know, over-simplifying a complicated issue, misreading someone's argument in a way deliberately designed to be as nasty as possible, and then attacking them for being immoral is a tactic regularly used by Fox News and its associates. It's a shitty tactic whether it's being used by people on the right or on the left.