Am I really the only person who finds

[WCSGarland]

P.S. Apologies for side-tracking the discussion to clarify the definition of slut(s), r.e. the labeling/name-calling preferred by rapists of all stripes, i.e. shaming victims by applying labels to victims by foisting undeserving labels on them by said rapists.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

P.S. Apologies for side-tracking the discussion to clarify the definition of slut(s), r.e. the labeling/name-calling preferred by rapists of all stripes, i.e. shaming victims by applying labels to victims by foisting undeserving labels on them by said rapists.

I don't think there's any apologies required; this thread is a pretty broad discussion of many things related to how people write, read and respond to NC/R fiction and that's a pretty broad terrain.

Anyway ... as with the concept of "loose women" in the 19th century, the term "slut" exists with a permanent ambiguity that allows shifting pejorative uses, given meaning in part by more or less overtly invoking distinctions of class and status.

As with "whore", "loose women" were officially 'lower class' women probably engaged in survival sex work, but also women deemed to be without sexual morals separate from the question of sex work, women deemed promiscuous and associating with the disreputable in ways that are inherently beyond the boundaries of behaviour for 'proper' women.

In our time, the pejorative use of 'slut' has diminishing force and meaning in some circles because it's so obviously based on judgements about women and sex that feel like leftovers from repressive patriarchal gender relations - misogynist double standards that seem harmful to all women - as well as persisting from men holding on to parts of such ideology, using such terms precisely to try to shame and bully women, individually or collectively. Which is obviously why women attempted to contest such ideologies in Slutwalk protests, for example, a refusal of slut-shaming and the policing of women's behaviour of which it is a symbol.

So when women use the term 'slut' against other women it's tempting to view it as women having internalised reactionary ideas about proper behaviour and about women and sex, compulsory monogamy, the shamefulness of 'too much' sex or sex with 'too many' people.

But such women are often visibly also using the term as a marker in relationship to class and status and how particular groups of women are framed as behaving and why..

As an article from a decade ago put it, some women "use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social class". While seeking to impact how people view female sexual behaviour and gender performance.

And broadly speaking this feels to me not too distant from how late 19th century authorities used the concept of "loose women" to classify lower class women (as I gestured toward documenting in a few comments here recently).

 

[AngelaSaxon]

This is an excerpt from Anne E. Perkins, 'Vanishing Expressions of the Maine Coast' in the December 1927 issue of the journal American Speech.

God forbid one is accused of having had a "persuasive look".

 

[AngelaSaxon]

And speaking of the history of labelling women as 'sluts', this article appeared in the 13 May 1966 issue of The Argus, Illinois Wesleyan University student paper. So almost sixty years ago.

 

[AlinaX]

The phrase 'loose women' has a long history, going back at least to the 16th century, and connects with how people were expected to live/work in/with a respectable household. In respsectable society, women would live with family or in quarters, and any who didn't were described as 'loose', literally being untied a master. Similarly 'loose' could apply to men who answered to no lord or master.

Increasingly over the years, 'loose women' applied primarily to prostitutes or women of low morals.

 

[beliefofmine]

Well, you could always just try it and see if it gets published or rejected.

I get that, but I'm trying to make a point to the OP idea that often stories that get published get around the rule by generic tropes that they don't like. So I'm asking what sorts of alternatives they had in mind for how to write a story with noncon that the character ends up enjoying it, when we kind of established that they never really do in reality.

 

[AlinaX]

Never? I'm sure I've said this before, but a lot of the trauma in non-con comes from the shock of learning that the rules you believe in simply don't hold. There's a huge difference between forced into sex when you believe it could never happen, and being forced into sex when it's a known risk.

I think, also, being forced into sex by an unthinking mechanism is very different from being forced into sex by fellow human being.

Which is not to say there's no trauma in consequence, but the differences are there.

Another important factor in the eroticism is the anticipation factor. If you have time in advance of the act itself to prepare for it, then... maybe there could be pleasure.

You write the story.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

I get that, but I'm trying to make a point to the OP idea that often stories that get published get around the rule by generic tropes that they don't like. So I'm asking what sorts of alternatives they had in mind for how to write a story with noncon that the character ends up enjoying it, when we kind of established that they never really do in reality.

Well I certainly didn't... but we'll return to that.

Ok, a serious question, and I have an answer, sort of, though maybe not one many will like.

First, let's consider the infamous Rule. It's really posed as a guideline, and doesn't have to involve the victim ending up loving everything, just experiencing some kind of sexual pleasure at some point, and even then there's discretion (in the hands of the site).

And I think the reason for this particular formulation is the reason for the rule per se: to not have the site flooded with, identified with and ultimately destroyed because of the worst kind of violently misogynist rape torture porn.

In earlier years this meant a kind of inverse realism rule - an entire genre of, if you like, 'light-hearted rape fantasy'. Think George Tasker. The further away from gritty realism, and the further away from aforementioned violently misogynist rape torture porn, the less the rule, as people currently routinely frame it, mattered. Except for the It's A Guideline There's Discretion bit.

The victims in George Tasker's massively popular fantasies weren't generally portrayed as having explosively orgasmic opinion-reversing experiences or anything like that at all - often the experience of women was barely addressed at all - because they were comic tales of horny sexual opportunism in which the form of misogyny was primarily just reducing women to objects to be enjoyed, not the kind in which women are people to be violently hated as you'd find in so much contemporary incel-adjacent resentfully-entitled misogyny, for example. And that wasn't a problem apparently.

(I also suspect that it helps to not make it seem like you yourself, the author, are someone filled with the kind of barely controlled violent misogyny you'll find much more overtly expressed in the comments of the Loving Wives section, much more than in the work of authors and commenters in many NC/R stories. Probably less of an issue for most women.)

A counter-example might be Ashson, one of the most read and certainly most prolific NC/R section writers here. He sticks firmly, unerringly to the Victims Do An Instant 180 format, and has said that early stories that didn't do so were rejected (making much of my criticism of his choices kind of mean-spirited, you could argue).

But also if you look back in time at his earlier stories, what differentiates them as they do appear is that sometimes sex is extorted by strong men explicitly and plausibly threatening actual violence - resist and I'll punch you unconscious, and such. He doesn't do that anymore, so far as I can tell, but if those were the stories which didn't follow the OHMYGOD I CAN'T STOP MYSELF FROM PUSHING UP AGAINST THIS GUY'S COCK format, I kind of get why the site might have invoked the rule. But who knows?

But beyond all that, while the wording of the rule hasn't changed, I think the practice has, as popular opinion has shifted, public understanding, Me Too, and such. Would the many many popular NC/R stories by prominent writers of the past, which didn't involve Victim Enjoyment, get through now? I'm not sure.

But I still think that there are ways to negotiate the site that either don't involve having to have the victim loving what happens at all, or does so in a way that is fleeting involuntary sexual pleasure, and doesn't change how they understand or experience what happens.

I don't love the stories I've written on this site but the two that are in the NC/R section don't involve the tropes we're talking about, at all..And the one I'm writing now will do so only in the most technical sense.

I spent quite a lot of time years ago around a certain sexual assault counselling service and one of the things I discovered is that it's not That rare for women to cum when being subjected to prolonged rape - and, from consistent testimony directly contradicting so many many stories here, those orgasms were the shittiest anyone had ever had and didn't move their opinions and feelings about what was happening in the slightest, except for the worse if they'd internalised crappy assumptions about what that might mean. Was that a sexual pleasure "at some point" we'd felt? Would that count?

I guess I'll find out when I finish this story and see if I can get it through.

I do agree that not every story must aim for realism. I've just found it remarkable that they all have the exact same forms of not realism. But they overwhelmingly weren't written for me.

If I had more time, I might come up with a better expressed answer but I'm literally at work and this is definitely not what I'm supposed to be doing...

 

[NuclearFairy]

I would like to reiterate a point I made earlier. All you need to get a rape through is to mention that some part of it was pleasant. In Neptune's Blessings my MC get's raped, and otherwise abused, the only mention of pleasure he made was the first time when I put in the words, "Disturbingly pleasant feeling." He in no way wants it again, or really enjoyed it. It was traumatizing enough to give him nightmares. And the other times he get's raped not even that much was mentioned. Although the next times were mostly off screen because the story isn't really about the rape angle. It's more about a merman trying to survive, stay sane, raise his offspring and find a way to escape while dealing with an abusive mate who is being groomed to take over their community.

The rape and the other forms of abuse also never happen at the same time.

He gets quite fearful of his mate but he never wants or seeks out her touch, nor does it make him submissive with other women. If anything it makes him more aggressive and dominant in consensual situations where he feels safe enough to take control.

So yeah that's a guideline and it is not necessary to have the victim be totally brainwashed by the rape. Although, I suppose my story might not be a good example because the fetish part of the story is not the rape. It's the consensual harpy on merman action.

 

[H. Jekyll]

It doesn't have to be forced sex descriptions. So much about sex at Lit stories fails the 'suspension of disbelief' rule. Women's panties become soaked. Women love to drink semen. Women love (and are almost universally able) to take a full erection down the throat (especially those 9 and 10 inch ones!). Cum flows down their thighs from intercourse (men must come in quarts, or at least pints). Women who are cheating keep telling men "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me hard" or other words to that effect. I wonder how much is just following the descriptive models they've read, and how much is because they haven't much experience at real sex.

 

[beliefofmine]

Well I certainly didn't... but we'll return to that.

Ok, a serious question, and I have an answer, sort of, though maybe not one many will like.

First, let's consider the infamous Rule. It's really posed as a guideline, and doesn't have to involve the victim ending up loving everything, just experiencing some kind of sexual pleasure at some point, and even then there's discretion (in the hands of the site).

And I think the reason for this particular formulation is the reason for the rule per se: to not have the site flooded with, identified with and ultimately destroyed because of the worst kind of violently misogynist rape torture porn.

In earlier years this meant a kind of inverse realism rule - an entire genre of, if you like, 'light-hearted rape fantasy'. Think George Tasker. The further away from gritty realism, and the further away from aforementioned violently misogynist rape torture porn, the less the rule, as people currently routinely frame it, mattered. Except for the It's A Guideline There's Discretion bit.

The victims in George Tasker's massively popular fantasies weren't generally portrayed as having explosively orgasmic opinion-reversing experiences or anything like that at all - often the experience of women was barely addressed at all - because they were comic tales of horny sexual opportunism in which the form of misogyny was primarily just reducing women to objects to be enjoyed, not the kind in which women are people to be violently hated as you'd find in so much contemporary incel-adjacent resentfully-entitled misogyny, for example. And that wasn't a problem apparently.

(I also suspect that it helps to not make it seem like you yourself, the author, are someone filled with the kind of barely controlled violent misogyny you'll find much more overtly expressed in the comments of the Loving Wives section, much more than in the work of authors and commenters in many NC/R stories. Probably less of an issue for most women.)

A counter-example might be Ashson, one of the most read and certainly most prolific NC/R section writers here. He sticks firmly, unerringly to the Victims Do An Instant 180 format, and has said that early stories that didn't do so were rejected (making much of my criticism of his choices kind of mean-spirited, you could argue).

But also if you look back in time at his earlier stories, what differentiates them as they do appear is that sometimes sex is extorted by strong men explicitly and plausibly threatening actual violence - resist and I'll punch you unconscious, and such. He doesn't do that anymore, so far as I can tell, but if those were the stories which didn't follow the OHMYGOD I CAN'T STOP MYSELF FROM PUSHING UP AGAINST THIS GUY'S COCK format, I kind of get why the site might have invoked the rule. But who knows?

But beyond all that, while the wording of the rule hasn't changed, I think the practice has, as popular opinion has shifted, public understanding, Me Too, and such. Would the many many popular NC/R stories by prominent writers of the past, which didn't involve Victim Enjoyment, get through now? I'm not sure.

But I still think that there are ways to negotiate the site that either don't involve having to have the victim loving what happens at all, or does so in a way that is fleeting involuntary sexual pleasure, and doesn't change how they understand or experience what happens.

I don't love the stories I've written on this site but the two that are in the NC/R section don't involve the tropes we're talking about, at all..And the one I'm writing now will do so only in the most technical sense.

I spent quite a lot of time years ago around a certain sexual assault counselling service and one of the things I discovered is that it's not That rare for women to cum when being subjected to prolonged rape - and, from consistent testimony directly contradicting so many many stories here, those orgasms were the shittiest anyone had ever had and didn't move their opinions and feelings about what was happening in the slightest, except for the worse if they'd internalised crappy assumptions about what that might mean. Was that a sexual pleasure "at some point" we'd felt? Would that count?

I guess I'll find out when I finish this story and see if I can get it through.

I do agree that not every story must aim for realism. I've just found it remarkable that they all have the exact same forms of not realism. But they overwhelmingly weren't written for me.

If I had more time, I might come up with a better expressed answer but I'm literally at work and this is definitely not what I'm supposed to be doing...

This makes me wonder about "time stop" stories.
If the "victim" isn't even aware that anything happened, and there is no chance to experience positive or negative emotions.

 

[beliefofmine]

It doesn't have to be forced sex descriptions. So much about sex at Lit stories fails the 'suspension of disbelief' rule. Women's panties become soaked. Women love to drink semen. Women love (and are almost universally able) to take a full erection down the throat (especially those 9 and 10 inch ones!). Cum flows down their thighs from intercourse (men must come in quarts, or at least pints). Women who are cheating keep telling men "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me hard" or other words to that effect. I wonder how much is just following the descriptive models they've read, and how much is because they haven't much experience at real sex.

I feel like I see that alot where people say they must not have any real sexual experience. But maybe it could just be that they like to write or fantasize about something that's not possible or unrealistic. Not everyone is looking for the same thing.

 

[H. Jekyll]

I feel like I see that alot where people say they must not have any real sexual experience. But maybe it could just be that they like to write or fantasize about something that's not possible or unrealistic. Not everyone is looking for the same thing.

Argh! I'll try to respond again (I got thrown off somehow). I don't disagree. I'm thinking of myself, that when I find a story is falling outside the 'suspension of disbelief' limits, I begin to lose interest, unless it's clear the story s trying for fantasy/sci-fi (I just read one where God is a fat slob in a Manchester United sweatshirt, and I loved it). We write in awfully narrow genres (I mostly write stories of the LW adulterous wife variety -- not the "hot wife/happy cuckold" ones). A story grabs me when it manages to not be overly cliched. It's fun to try to write something that's a bit different. Part (only part!) of my problem with s-o-d violations is that there are so damned many of them, and they're so often identical. It's like reading the same really bad story, over and over. Groundhog Day for dreck.

 

[AlinaX]

This makes me wonder about "time stop" stories.
If the "victim" isn't even aware that anything happened, and there is no chance to experience positive or negative emotions.

Sometimes true, although often there is an awareness. You're right that it's particularly questionable in respect of the rules here, and I think it highlights that it's not so much that there should be something positive about the sex so much as the experience should not be wholly negative.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Here's a small excerpt from a much longer piece, 'Confessions of a Self-made Moralist: An Erstwhile Pornographer Blows His Cool', an unsigned article which appeared in the 26 May 1966 edition of The Paper, an East Lansing, MI publication.

If anyone is curious, that entire edition including that article can be freely downloaded here:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28042553

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Sometimes true, although often there is an awareness. You're right that it's particularly questionable in respect of the rules here, and I think it highlights that it's not so much that there should be something positive about the sex so much as the experience should not be wholly negative.

As exemplary if ultimately abbreviated confirmation from decades ago, I give you a story that appeared in the ever-changing 'Random Stories' section of the NC/R page, prevacker's 'My Stairwell'.

Though arguably it's retrospectively negative. But maybe that's cancelled out by what happens to the protagonist...

https://www.literotica.com/s/my-stairwell

 

[HopefulDaddy]

I don't love the stories I've written on this site but the two that are in the NC/R section don't involve the tropes we're talking about, at all..And the one I'm writing now will do so only in the most technical sense.

Pray tell... are there any you do love? Ignoring the nc/r arena for a moment. Is this a 'old works obviously weren't my best work' thing? Also, why write in that area if it's not appealing to you?

 

[HopefulDaddy]

I'm going to start by saying I didn't read all 7 pages of comments, but was referred to this post in relation to a post of my own. I think you bring up good points of what not to do. But do you have examples of what to do? It feels like a conundrum writing something that is realistic and within the rules, and doesn't follow the typical tropes.

My personal opinion is not everyone is looking for something realistic. And not everyone is trying to write for everyone.

Honestly, the only use of nc/r that I am comfortable with is in those cases where the "victim" sincerely desires the aggressive and and potentially violent sex that they are receiving. There's clearly hesitation because the consent wasn't explicit, but once they start being honest with themselves they realize that they are quite happy with their circumstances.

It's about dominance and submitting, less about a victim being created and the dysphoria inherent in their circumstances, but about someone essentially losing control and taking the object of their desire - and said object realizing that they always wanted it just like that.

When people write 'true' rape scenes, it's usually about the taking, with little to no concern for the taken. THAT is what this site doesn't want posted, I believe. I think the goal is to lean much more into the consensual nonconsent area where there was clearly no consent, but there was also no victim.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Pray tell... are there any you do love? Ignoring the nc/r arena for a moment. Is this a 'old works obviously weren't my best work' thing? Also, why write in that area if it's not appealing to you?

I've tried to explain my thoughts about and reactions to particular tendencies in stories in the NC/R section, in general and in relation to particular stories, but I don't think I've ever said that I don't find any value in its existence, or that I find nothing there appealing?

I don't expect everyone or anyone to meticulously read the large amounts of text I've posted in this thread but I think I've kind of said the opposite directly a few times in different ways.

After all, the thread started with me discussing tropes that tend to undermine the kinds of engagement and identification I find a big part of being able to enjoy fiction here. And asking if any other people felt similarly.

People have posted a whole range of responses agreeing and disagreeing in a variety of ways, but the initial question wasn't a declaration that I'm against and horrified by NC/R fiction per se. Obviously there's NC/R fiction I do find horrifying, or unappealing, or even insulting.

When someone asked what I thought might be viable ways to write in this section taking into account some of what's been said in this thread, my answers might not have been satisfying to anyone, but my answers also didn't dismiss the question or the project of writing in this section. Or argue that everything already here is just bad, or even that it's all not to my tastes - two categories that it can be difficult to keep separate when talking about this section.

Relatively early in the thread, from memory, I talked about fiction of defeat versus fiction of submission. Unlike many people who defend or like very specific versions of NC/R fiction, I didn't come out on the side of specifically enjoying fantasies of submission. I'm not utterly opposed to stories with versions of such themes but I'm not even slightly attracted to dom-sub fiction or play in reality - it hasn't occurred to me to look at the BDSM section for a long time, for good reasons - I don't like it at all really.

At a more personal level,, my aversion to narratives of conversion, where the victim not only has their moment of 'enjoying' things but as a result does a 180 on almost everything, sometimes becomes willingly subservient, even a 'slave', is quite strong. Mostly it just fractures my identification because it feels absurd, like the character has suddenly become a dom-sub cliche and/or an idiot.

I just can't eroticise that version of adding insult to injury, where the woman goes over to the other side.

So, never said there's nothing appealing, but have opinions about what is and isn't to me and why, and actively trying to understand how and why this fiction takes the precise forms it tends to...

 

[beliefofmine]

Argh! I'll try to respond again (I got thrown off somehow). I don't disagree. I'm thinking of myself, that when I find a story is falling outside the 'suspension of disbelief' limits, I begin to lose interest, unless it's clear the story s trying for fantasy/sci-fi (I just read one where God is a fat slob in a Manchester United sweatshirt, and I loved it). We write in awfully narrow genres (I mostly write stories of the LW adulterous wife variety -- not the "hot wife/happy cuckold" ones). A story grabs me when it manages to not be overly cliched. It's fun to try to write something that's a bit different. Part (only part!) of my problem with s-o-d violations is that there are so damned many of them, and they're so often identical. It's like reading the same really bad story, over and over. Groundhog Day for dreck.

My (problem?) Is that I often find that some people are looking for stories to be so realistic that there's no suspension of disbelief, that it almost makes whole categories obsolete. Such as incest and non-con. There's people who just don't believe either of those stories are realistic from the bat.

To me it's not that it's unrealistic, it's just that it's unlikely. And I think that's where it can become a fantasy for people. To refer to comments on one of my stories, some readers weren't happy that the character (F) first time was unprotected and she wasn't overly upset about having cum inside of her.

I agree that generally that's unrealistic, but not impossible. Is there suspension of disbelief there, yes. I think a lot of stories have this to some degree, which is why a lot of it is fantasy. If everything was hyper realistic this site would just be a bunch of stories about slightly out of shape married men with average cocks having sex with their reluctant wives for 5 minutes and then going to sleep.

 

[mirafrida]

I agree that generally that's unrealistic, but not impossible. Is there suspension of disbelief there, yes. I think a lot of stories have this to some degree, which is why a lot of it is fantasy. If everything was hyper realistic this site would just be a bunch of stories about slightly out of shape married men with average cocks having sex with their reluctant wives for 5 minutes and then going to sleep.

Most fiction of any kind is either truly "unrealistic," or at least vastly exceptional (unpredictable, way outside the norm, 'the unique moment when...,' etc.) Hats off to the authors who can write an interesting 30 page stream of consciousness about eating their daily boiled egg in the morning, but we all know that's not the nature of most narrative art.

As such, navigating the suspension of disbelief is something creators almost always have to deal with, to a greater or lesser extent. There are lots of ways to approach it, and a huge spectrum of possible places to end up at - not to mention an infinite number of reader/viewer tolerances and preferences. There’s certainly no one right answer, simply a case of creating what works for you, and hoping you can find readers who concur.

In NC/R in particular, because of the disturbing quality of the fantasy, I suspect most consumers appreciate a lack of realism in certain regards, even as they demand it in others. They may often be incapable of articulateling the nuances, however.

For me personally, I totally agree with the OP that a lot of the tropes that are ubiquitous in NC/R don't work. They feel dumb and fake, and take me out of the story. This has led to my own writing being somewhat divergent. But I certainly wouldn't want to read "photo-realistc accounts of real rapes" either. It's a line I don't find terribly easy to navigate, and this has resulted in some bouncing back and forth.

In rather end, I suppose we must acknowledge that the tropes being discussed in this thread must serve a lot of readers well, or they wouldn't be reproduced so often.

 

[H. Jekyll]

My (problem?) Is that I often find that some people are looking for stories to be so realistic that there's no suspension of disbelief, that it almost makes whole categories obsolete. Such as incest and non-con. There's people who just don't believe either of those stories are realistic from the bat.

To me it's not that it's unrealistic, it's just that it's unlikely. And I think that's where it can become a fantasy for people. To refer to comments on one of my stories, some readers weren't happy that the character (F) first time was unprotected and she wasn't overly upset about having cum inside of her.

I agree that generally that's unrealistic, but not impossible. Is there suspension of disbelief there, yes. I think a lot of stories have this to some degree, which is why a lot of it is fantasy. If everything was hyper realistic this site would just be a bunch of stories about slightly out of shape married men with average cocks having sex with their reluctant wives for 5 minutes and then going to sleep.

Ouch!

 

[beliefofmine]

Most fiction of any kind is either truly "unrealistic," or at least vastly exceptional (unpredictable, way outside the norm, 'the unique moment when...,' etc.) Hats off to the authors who can write an interesting 30 page stream of consciousness about eating their daily boiled egg in the morning, but we all know that's not the nature of most narrative art.

As such, navigating the suspension of disbelief is something creators almost always have to deal with, to a greater or lesser extent. There are lots of ways to approach it, and a huge spectrum of possible places to end up at - not to mention an infinite number of reader/viewer tolerances and preferences. There’s certainly no one right answer, simply a case of creating what works for you, and hoping you can find readers who concur.

In NC/R in particular, because of the disturbing quality of the fantasy, I suspect most consumers appreciate a lack of realism in certain regards, even as they demand it in others. They may often be incapable of articulateling the nuances, however.

For me personally, I totally agree with the OP that a lot of the tropes that are ubiquitous in NC/R don't work. They feel dumb and fake, and take me out of the story. This has led to my own writing being somewhat divergent. But I certainly wouldn't want to read "photo-realistc accounts of real rapes" either. It's a line I don't find terribly easy to navigate, and this has resulted in some bouncing back and forth.

In rather end, I suppose we must acknowledge that the tropes being discussed in this thread must serve a lot of readers well, or they wouldn't be reproduced so often.

I totally agree. I just haven't heard any very compelling alternatives that check all those boxes. It feels like something doesn't work no matter what you do.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

I totally agree. I just haven't heard any very compelling alternatives that check all those boxes. It feels like something doesn't work no matter what you do.

I'm not worried about realism per se. I think there are reasons to think critically about particular tropes and what they do, but not just because they're not true to reality.

There's many untrue things people can say. If everyone writes stories in which the animalistic virility of big-dicked black guys is a threat to the relationships of white men, though, with some guys finding the idea of their always white girlfriends being fucked by a black guy more deliciously emasculating than the idea of their girlfriends being fucked by a white guy - I think it's worth posing the question of why they all feel that way? And what stops them from seriously asking the question of why they feel that way? The problem isn't simply whether or not something is realistic.

I know, for instance, that seemingly instant conversion to a sub role is possible. I once went with a few friends to a BDSM club, the first time one woman had been there, her first time with any proximity to anything remotely like that. She was a reserved, nominally respectable medical student. And a few hours into that night she disappeared with a guy who worked there as a Dom and didn't show up for a couple of days, by which time she had piercings in, shall we say, a few new places. Of course, rightly or wrongly I found it impossible to interpret this as the inherent underlying truth of her being being finally revealed, rather than her desperately attempting to find a way to live given that the first sixteen-odd years of her life had been spent in the compound of an extremely abusive cult. But nonetheless, there was apparent instant conversion to a sub role, at least for a while and at least in parts of her life. A very dramatic shift which to the outside observer seemed out of nowhere and unpredictable.

My issues aren't really about realism, so much as the meanings of particular tropes realistic or not, and how those interact with what people find exciting - and what I find exciting - and why.

Those aren't answers to anyone's questions - just slightly different questions.

 

[beliefofmine]

So I won't speak for everyone, but I can speak to my own self.

My biggest underlying kink is willingness. I don't know if there's an exact word for it, but I get turned on by my partner being turned on. So non-con is like the biggest turnoff for me. The only way that I could reconcile it in my mind is the trope you have a problem with. That a "victim" gets aroused and wants it to happen to them. I realize that in the context of non-con it would just be fantasy, so to me it feels so unlikely that it's forced upon the reader in most of the stories I have read. As a personal preference I would just assume read something where the characters are 110% willing participants.

But I know that's not everyone's cup of tea.