Offensive is as offensive does

[pink_silk_glove]

But I don't think that it's controversial to say that ethical behaviour should not encourage sexual assault.

Encouragement is in the eye of the reader. Don't blame the writer.

 

[SimonDoom]

My view:

1. I agree stories can affect people.

2. I think people are mostly blowing smoke when they conjecture that certain kinds of stories, e.g., stories such as those allowed at Literotica where a nonconsensual sexual experience is presented as erotic and the victim enjoys it, cause harm. I don't think any of us know. I suspect, based on what I know, that they cause no harm at all.

3. Contrary to what some think, I think it IS necessary to have some reasonable empirical basis for believing that your story may cause harm before you can form the reasonable moral judgment that you should not write the story. And it's especially important when you are judging other authors.

4. EB suggests I should acknowledge that my story may be repugnant to some. This point confuses the moral issue. That a story may be repugnant to some does not make its publication immoral. I have no ethical obligation to refrain from writing stories that may offend some readers. Giving offense in a story is not, in my view, an ethical wrong. It's a matter of taste, not ethics.

5. The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be whether the publica tion of the story poses a realistic possibility of causing harm in the real world. I mean cognizable harm, not giving offense. Is it more likely that rape will happen because of the publication of my story? Is it roughly like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater?

6. I think we should all admit we are flying somewhat blind on answering this question. The truth is, you don't know. And what level of risk morally obligates one not to publish? Game of thrones is full of horrific violence. Was its broadcast immoral on the ground it "glorified" violence? I would say "no.". Most people would say, "no.". So if Game of Thrones is OK, on what ground do we condemn the author of an erotic story at Literotica that presents transgressive subject matter as erotic? I see this as a matter of moral judgment in search of a working principle. "Be responsible" is not a working principle.

7. I think it's not immoral to publish stories to the nonconsent category be.cause the risk of causing real harm is vanishingly small compared to the evident real pleasure the stories give their authors and readers. This is my attitude about artistic creation generally, but I think it applies particularly well at an erotic fantasy story site, where readers come understanding that this is erotic fantasy.

 

[SimonDoom]

Doesn't the fact that, as you were about to dazzle us with your reasoning your mind went blank, tell you something?

It tells me mostly that I have clumsy fingers, especially when I am writing on a tablet.

 

[Actingup]

Encouragement is in the eye of the reader. Don't blame the writer.

Are we going in circles? What is the point of writing, if it is not to move the reader?

 

[XerXesXu]

It tells me mostly that I have clumsy fingers, especially when I am writing on a tablet.

I had the impression you were taking something today.

 

[SimonDoom]

I had the impression you were taking something today.

Fruit juice. Maybe I should cut back.

 

[XerXesXu]

Fruit juice. Maybe I should cut back.

To wash down the tablets?

 

[Cagivagurl]

My view:

1. I agree stories can affect people.

2. I think people are mostly blowing smoke when they conjecture that certain kinds of stories, e.g., stories such as those allowed at Literotica where a nonconsensual sexual experience is presented as erotic and the victim enjoys it, cause harm. I don't think any of us know. I suspect, based on what I know, that they cause no harm at all.

3. Contrary to what some think, I think it IS necessary to have some reasonable empirical basis for believing that your story may cause harm before you can form the reasonable moral judgment that you should not write the story. And it's especially important when you are judging other authors.

4. EB suggests I should acknowledge that my story may be repugnant to some. This point confuses the moral issue. That a story may be repugnant to some does not make its publication immoral. I have no ethical obligation to refrain from writing stories that may offend some readers. Giving offense in a story is not, in my view, an ethical wrong. It's a matter of taste, not ethics.

5. The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be whether the publica tion of the story poses a realistic possibility of causing harm in the real world. I mean cognizable harm, not giving offense. Is it more likely that rape will happen because of the publication of my story? Is it roughly like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater?

6. I think we should all admit we are flying somewhat blind on answering this question. The truth is, you don't know. And what level of risk morally obligates one not to publish? Game of thrones is full of horrific violence. Was its broadcast immoral on the ground it "glorified" violence? I would say "no.". Most people would say, "no.". So if Game of Thrones is OK, on what ground do we condemn the author of an erotic story at Literotica that presents transgressive subject matter as erotic? I see this as a matter of moral judgment in search of a working principle. "Be responsible" is not a working principle.

7. I think it's not immoral to publish stories to the nonconsent category be.cause the risk of causing real harm is vanishingly small compared to the evident real pleasure the stories give their authors and readers. This is my attitude about artistic creation generally, but I think it applies particularly well at an erotic fantasy story site, where readers come understanding that this is erotic fantasy.

Unsurprisingly,
I take a different view, which is OK, we are all allowed to voice our opinions.
For me it's the element of making the victim enjoy it...
That is the issue.
Rape is not enjoyable... You don't have to read a lot of victim impact statements to understand that...
I volunteer at a battered wives shelter, and occasionally work with Police as a victim support person for rape cases...

So yes, I do have some first hand real experience...

Once you've spoken to a few victims, you realise the devastation they feel. The complete and utter loss of everything. Some victims never ever fully recover.
To see stories written where some poor human being is raped and yet somehow they get enjoyment from it...
it's not just offensive... It's far worse than that.
Stories where victims somehow enjoyed their rape, is to put it plainly (Ridiculous) It empowers people who already think that way. It helps them moralise it to the extent. They believe it.
People all over the world are trying to educate people that "No means no."
Stories suggesting it's OK, they don't really mean no undermines all of that work, and legitimises already existing sentiments.
Don't hide behind the fallacy that it's harmless...
This is again, just another opinion... But just as valid...

Cagivagurl

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Are we going in circles? What is the point of writing, if it is not to move the reader?

Reading about something and feeling things are completely different than going out and acting on it.

Extending your argument ultimately gets to the point where a movie like the Godfather or Saving Private Ryan shouldn't be made/shown because someone might copycat act on it since they may glorify mafia and war. So where is that line drawn that 'this' is permissible but 'that' isn't, and who decides because there is no way in hell that we'll get even a majority to agree.

So the safest thing to do is just have zero conflict or transgression or 'sin' in any of our art. Which means that we will have no art and society will stagnate with stifled imagination and inspiration. And even then that definition of transgression society will never ever agree upon. Societies has tried countless times throughout history with horrifying results.

 

[Actingup]

Reading about something and feeling things are completely different than going out and acting on it.

Extending your argument ultimately gets to the point where a movie like the Godfather or Saving Private Ryan shouldn't be made/shown because someone might copycat act on it since they may glorify mafia and war.

That's not my argument. I haven't seen either movie, but I'm quite sure that both filmmakers would have been well aware of their responsibility to their audience and would have taken care with that - their ethical responsibility was to use their power well. And I don't agree that literature or movies don't affect actions in the real world.

 

[filthytrancendence]

I do appreciate you actually responding. I'd appreciate it if you do me the courtesy of reading this whole thing.

1. I agree stories can affect people.

Yep, we were already on the same page there.

2. I think people are mostly blowing smoke when they conjecture that certain kinds of stories, e.g., stories such as those allowed at Literotica where a nonconsensual sexual experience is presented as erotic and the victim enjoys it, cause harm. I don't think any of us know. I suspect, based on what I know, that they cause no harm at all.

This has nothing to do with my point #2. My point is about your intent. You're not writing for no reason. You're writing specifically to have an effect on someone. Evidence has nothing to do with this.

You have an intent. And you have the capacity to have an effect. Because you have the capacity to have an effect, your intent has the capacity to harm, regardless of whether the harm is intentional. Because you have the capacity to do harm, you have a responsibility to avoid harm where possible. Doesn't matter if you don't have evidence in front of your face that the possibility of harm is 'real.' You still have a responsibility. You're using the qualifier 'real' as a weasel word to obfuscate the fact that glorifying rape is a bad thing for anyone to do.

It's possible to waffle about this infinitely and be a pedant about it not being possible to anticipate every type of harm you could possibly cause. Don't do that. We're not talking about every possible type of harm you could theoretically cause. We're talking about one specific type of harm that you're pretending does not exist because the fact that it exists is inconvenient to your position.

3. Contrary to what some think, I think it IS necessary to have some reasonable empirical basis for believing that your story may cause harm before you can form the reasonable moral judgment that you should not write the story. And it's especially important when you are judging other authors.

The whole problem that you seem unwilling to address is that you are willing to accept responsibility for the positive effect your stories might theoretically have, but suddenly you need empirical evidence in order to even entertain the possibility that your stories might have a negative effect. Effects are effects. You don't get to decide which to accept. They happen, regardless of whether you have the capacity to measure them. This is the entire premise of point #1, which you have made no effort to disagree with. I'm not judging another author in specific. I'm judging the practice of reveling in rape fantasy in stories. If you've done that, sure, I deem that to be unethical. I've been pretty clear about that. I'm not trying to comb through your library to police you about it. You're the one that keeps bringing it up.

4. EB suggests I should acknowledge that my story may be repugnant to some. This point confuses the moral issue. That a story may be repugnant to some does not make its publication immoral. I have no ethical obligation to refrain from writing stories that may offend some readers. Giving offense in a story is not, in my view, an ethical wrong. It's a matter of taste, not ethics.

The point is pretty simple. Rape is bad. Hopefully we can agree about that.

I'm not talking about offense. I'm talking about rape. Stop changing the subject. I'm not talking about taste. You can't re-frame enjoying rape as a matter of taste. It's a matter of morality.

5. The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be whether the publica tion of the story poses a realistic possibility of causing harm in the real world. I mean cognizable harm, not giving offense. Is it more likely that rape will happen because of the publication of my story? Is it roughly like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater?

The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be behaving ethically. Full stop.

6. I think we should all admit we are flying somewhat blind on answering this question. The truth is, you don't know. And what level of risk morally obligates one not to publish? Game of thrones is full of horrific violence. Was its broadcast immoral on the ground it "glorified" violence? I would say "no.". Most people would say, "no.". So if Game of Thrones is OK, on what ground do we condemn the author of an erotic story at Literotica that presents transgressive subject matter as erotic? I see this as a matter of moral judgment in search of a working principle. "Be responsible" is not a working principle.

Violence is not rape. The GoT TV show is not rape apologia. Transgressive subject matter is not rape. Every word of this is irrelevant obfuscation.

7. I think it's not immoral to publish stories to the nonconsent category be.cause the risk of causing real harm is vanishingly small compared to the evident real pleasure the stories give their authors and readers. This is my attitude about artistic creation generally, but I think it applies particularly well at an erotic fantasy story site, where readers come understanding that this is erotic fantasy.

Yeah, that's just really clearly not the thing I said.

The harm is vanishingly small because that's convenient to your position. The pleasure is real pleasure because that's convenient to your position. You conveniently have plenty of evidence to convince yourself that the pleasure is real enough. You conveniently can't think of any reason the harm might be real, and so it is vanishingly small.

That's not a principled stance. It's motivated reasoning. If you wanted evidence that stories that eroticise rape causes harm you've got all the tools at your fingertips to find it. Or you could just listen to some of the people here telling you exactly that from their personal experience.

This is the last thing I'm going to type in this thread. So I'm going to end with some vulnerability. Maybe that'll get through where reasoning cannot.

--

I'm a man. I've been SA'd repeatedly. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until a while after it happened. But I was coerced into having sex with someone after I clearly and repeatedly stated no, I did not want to. It fucked me up, and caused lasting harm. My agency was deeply violated and it's taken years to recover my own sense of agency.

Part of the reason this person did this to me is that they exist within a culture that's largely okay with coercing/forcing people into sex when they want it bad enough. All of the reason I didn't realize it until later was that I exist within a culture that often does not respect consent. This is what people mean when they say rape culture.

Writing a story that's okay with a character getting raped did not create rape culture. But it does reinforce it. It reinforces the attitude in potential rapists that violating someone's agency is fine. Pleasurable, even. It reinforces the attitude in potential victims that having their agency violated isn't a big deal. At least somebody got pleasure out of it, right?

None of us have the ability to change that by ourselves. But we do have the ability to perpetuate the status quo. And the only way the status quo will ever change is if enough people stop being okay with perpetuating it.

The reason I'm 15 replies deep into arguing this point is that I'd really prefer people stop being okay with perpetuating rape culture. The harm is easier for me to see because I have personally been harmed by it. I deleted an extended metaphor earlier about responsibility for the potential harm of driving drunk. I did so because I was all but certain you'd latch onto that and waffle about how the things aren't comparable. But they are.

Rape culture is very much like being intoxicated driving a vehicle. The alcohol in this metaphor is rape culture. The vehicle is your sexuality. You think it's totally fine while just as long as you're uncritically internalizing the harmful cultural attitudes about consent because its never harmed you personally. You think it's fine to write about a scenario where somebody rapes somebody, because it's just a story, right? Nobody's actually getting raped. But you're reinforcing the harmful cultural attitude that's led you to believe that's ok to write about in the first place. You aren't directly inciting anybody to go out and rape someone. But you are contributing to the cultural miasma that leads people to think it's ok to go out and rape someone. And you don't have to do that. You could easily just not do that.

There's other people in this thread that have been saying similar things to you without this level of vulnerability. None of them have any obligation to be more vulnerable about it. Frankly, you've done nothing to show anyone that's been raped that it's even safe to admit as much to you. That's the frustrating irony of you demanding evidence of the harm.

Thing is, I just don't give a fuck if you respond badly about it. Honestly, I'm not going to look at this thread again after I hit reply, because I need to be done. I've made my case. It's a clear case. If you're not convinced by now, then you're not available to be convinced. If that's the case, then you're part of the problem. And that makes me sad, and it makes me angry.

But I've done what I can.

 

[calmlikeabomb]

I do appreciate you actually responding. I'd appreciate it if you do me the courtesy of reading this whole thing.


Yep, we were already on the same page there.

This has nothing to do with my point #2. My point is about your intent. You're not writing for no reason. You're writing specifically to have an effect on someone. Evidence has nothing to do with this.

You have an intent. And you have the capacity to have an effect. Because you have the capacity to have an effect, your intent has the capacity to harm, regardless of whether the harm is intentional. Because you have the capacity to do harm, you have a responsibility to avoid harm where possible. Doesn't matter if you don't have evidence in front of your face that the possibility of harm is 'real.' You still have a responsibility. You're using the qualifier 'real' as a weasel word to obfuscate the fact that glorifying rape is a bad thing for anyone to do.

It's possible to waffle about this infinitely and be a pedant about it not being possible to anticipate every type of harm you could possibly cause. Don't do that. We're not talking about every possible type of harm you could theoretically cause. We're talking about one specific type of harm that you're pretending does not exist because the fact that it exists is inconvenient to your position.


The whole problem that you seem unwilling to address is that you are willing to accept responsibility for the positive effect your stories might theoretically have, but suddenly you need empirical evidence in order to even entertain the possibility that your stories might have a negative effect. Effects are effects. You don't get to decide which to accept. They happen, regardless of whether you have the capacity to measure them. This is the entire premise of point #1, which you have made no effort to disagree with. I'm not judging another author in specific. I'm judging the practice of reveling in rape fantasy in stories. If you've done that, sure, I deem that to be unethical. I've been pretty clear about that. I'm not trying to comb through your library to police you about it. You're the one that keeps bringing it up.


The point is pretty simple. Rape is bad. Hopefully we can agree about that.

I'm not talking about offense. I'm talking about rape. Stop changing the subject. I'm not talking about taste. You can't re-frame enjoying rape as a matter of taste. It's a matter of morality.


The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be behaving ethically. Full stop.


Violence is not rape. The GoT TV show is not rape apologia. Transgressive subject matter is not rape. Every word of this is irrelevant obfuscation.


Yeah, that's just really clearly not the thing I said.

The harm is vanishingly small because that's convenient to your position. The pleasure is real pleasure because that's convenient to your position. You conveniently have plenty of evidence to convince yourself that the pleasure is real enough. You conveniently can't think of any reason the harm might be real, and so it is vanishingly small.

That's not a principled stance. It's motivated reasoning. If you wanted evidence that stories that eroticise rape causes harm you've got all the tools at your fingertips to find it. Or you could just listen to some of the people here telling you exactly that from their personal experience.

This is the last thing I'm going to type in this thread. So I'm going to end with some vulnerability. Maybe that'll get through where reasoning cannot.

--

I'm a man. I've been SA'd repeatedly. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until a while after it happened. But I was coerced into having sex with someone after I clearly and repeatedly stated no, I did not want to. It fucked me up, and caused lasting harm. My agency was deeply violated and it's taken years to recover my own sense of agency.

Part of the reason this person did this to me is that they exist within a culture that's largely okay with coercing/forcing people into sex when they want it bad enough. All of the reason I didn't realize it until later was that I exist within a culture that often does not respect consent. This is what people mean when they say rape culture.

Writing a story that's okay with a character getting raped did not create rape culture. But it does reinforce it. It reinforces the attitude in potential rapists that violating someone's agency is fine. Pleasurable, even. It reinforces the attitude in potential victims that having their agency violated isn't a big deal. At least somebody got pleasure out of it, right?

None of us have the ability to change that by ourselves. But we do have the ability to perpetuate the status quo. And the only way the status quo will ever change is if enough people stop being okay with perpetuating it.

The reason I'm 15 replies deep into arguing this point is that I'd really prefer people stop being okay with perpetuating rape culture. The harm is easier for me to see because I have personally been harmed by it. I deleted an extended metaphor earlier about responsibility for the potential harm of driving drunk. I did so because I was all but certain you'd latch onto that and waffle about how the things aren't comparable. But they are.

Rape culture is very much like being intoxicated driving a vehicle. The alcohol in this metaphor is rape culture. The vehicle is your sexuality. You think it's totally fine while just as long as you're uncritically internalizing the harmful cultural attitudes about consent because its never harmed you personally. You think it's fine to write about a scenario where somebody rapes somebody, because it's just a story, right? Nobody's actually getting raped. But you're reinforcing the harmful cultural attitude that's led you to believe that's ok to write about in the first place. You aren't directly inciting anybody to go out and rape someone. But you are contributing to the cultural miasma that leads people to think it's ok to go out and rape someone. And you don't have to do that. You could easily just not do that.

There's other people in this thread that have been saying similar things to you without this level of vulnerability. None of them have any obligation to be more vulnerable about it. Frankly, you've done nothing to show anyone that's been raped that it's even safe to admit as much to you. That's the frustrating irony of you demanding evidence of the harm.

Thing is, I just don't give a fuck if you respond badly about it. Honestly, I'm not going to look at this thread again after I hit reply, because I need to be done. I've made my case. It's a clear case. If you're not convinced by now, then you're not available to be convinced. If that's the case, then you're part of the problem. And that makes me sad, and it makes me angry.

But I've done what I can.

Thank you for your raw, brutal, unfiltered honesty.

I am not a free speech absolutist in any way. I have seen first hand the harm "free speech" can do when used with malice.

But the sad reality is that there is no clean answer for this (short of doing away with NC/R altogether, and replacing it with Teasing, which will inevitably raise the same questions again).

It's one of those weird things where expressing a desire to experience something in real life can be healthier in the right circumstances with trust and confort, vs being expressed via badly creates "art" with no context. Consensual non consent shows up sometimes in the BDSM community, and people usually don't mind as long as it's handled with care and understanding. But even in the BDSM community, you sometimes run into abusers and enablers of the worst kind.

The best I can say is that maybe you can't be censorius, but nothing stops you from being judgemental. And the free speech that protects malicious and low effort, provocative, trash for the sake of being trash content also protects your opinion.

And you have expressed your opinion eloquently and with force. If someone else is being wilfully obtuse, then ignoring them, or better yet, making fun of them, will be better for your mental health than trying to engage with and convert them.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's not my argument. I haven't seen either movie, but I'm quite sure that both filmmakers would have been well aware of their responsibility to their audience and would have taken care with that - their ethical responsibility was to use their power well. And I don't agree that literature or movies don't affect actions in the real world.

Who is to say what their responsibility is? We can't just use common sense judgement because everyone's idea of common sense is different.

And even then, no one can control ultimately the actions of people who see the movie.

Ozzy Osbourne has a song called suicide solution. It's a very well written metaphor about alcohol abuse. Bob Daisley wrote it watching Ozzy drink himself to death, alcohol in a chemical sense being a solution. The song warns against alcohol abuse. Yet Ozzy was ostracized for encouraging suicide. So by your argument, Ozzy and Bob should have taken greater care with their power and should not have released the song, and we should be deprived of a significant piece of art that most realize simply warns against alcohol abuse.

 

[Actingup]

Who is to say what their responsibility is? We can't just use common sense judgement because everyone's idea of common sense is different.

And even then, no one can control ultimately the actions of people who see the movie.

Ozzy Osbourne has a song called suicide solution. It's a very well written metaphor about alcohol abuse. Bob Daisley wrote it watching Ozzy drink himself to death, alcohol in a chemical sense being a solution. The song warns against alcohol abuse. Yet Ozzy was ostracized for encouraging suicide. So by your argument, Ozzy and Bob should have taken greater care with their power and should not have released the song, and we should be deprived of a significant piece of art that most realize simply warns against alcohol abuse.

Once again, my argument is not about self-censorship. It's about moral responsibility and the need to use your power wisely. By your account, the song is a positive contribution to the pantheon of songs about alcohol abuse.

 

[SimonDoom]

I do appreciate you actually responding. I'd appreciate it if you do me the courtesy of reading this whole thing.


Yep, we were already on the same page there.

This has nothing to do with my point #2. My point is about your intent. You're not writing for no reason. You're writing specifically to have an effect on someone. Evidence has nothing to do with this.

You have an intent. And you have the capacity to have an effect. Because you have the capacity to have an effect, your intent has the capacity to harm, regardless of whether the harm is intentional. Because you have the capacity to do harm, you have a responsibility to avoid harm where possible. Doesn't matter if you don't have evidence in front of your face that the possibility of harm is 'real.' You still have a responsibility. You're using the qualifier 'real' as a weasel word to obfuscate the fact that glorifying rape is a bad thing for anyone to do.

It's possible to waffle about this infinitely and be a pedant about it not being possible to anticipate every type of harm you could possibly cause. Don't do that. We're not talking about every possible type of harm you could theoretically cause. We're talking about one specific type of harm that you're pretending does not exist because the fact that it exists is inconvenient to your position.


The whole problem that you seem unwilling to address is that you are willing to accept responsibility for the positive effect your stories might theoretically have, but suddenly you need empirical evidence in order to even entertain the possibility that your stories might have a negative effect. Effects are effects. You don't get to decide which to accept. They happen, regardless of whether you have the capacity to measure them. This is the entire premise of point #1, which you have made no effort to disagree with. I'm not judging another author in specific. I'm judging the practice of reveling in rape fantasy in stories. If you've done that, sure, I deem that to be unethical. I've been pretty clear about that. I'm not trying to comb through your library to police you about it. You're the one that keeps bringing it up.


The point is pretty simple. Rape is bad. Hopefully we can agree about that.

I'm not talking about offense. I'm talking about rape. Stop changing the subject. I'm not talking about taste. You can't re-frame enjoying rape as a matter of taste. It's a matter of morality.


The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be behaving ethically. Full stop.


Violence is not rape. The GoT TV show is not rape apologia. Transgressive subject matter is not rape. Every word of this is irrelevant obfuscation.


Yeah, that's just really clearly not the thing I said.

The harm is vanishingly small because that's convenient to your position. The pleasure is real pleasure because that's convenient to your position. You conveniently have plenty of evidence to convince yourself that the pleasure is real enough. You conveniently can't think of any reason the harm might be real, and so it is vanishingly small.

That's not a principled stance. It's motivated reasoning. If you wanted evidence that stories that eroticise rape causes harm you've got all the tools at your fingertips to find it. Or you could just listen to some of the people here telling you exactly that from their personal experience.

This is the last thing I'm going to type in this thread. So I'm going to end with some vulnerability. Maybe that'll get through where reasoning cannot.

--

I'm a man. I've been SA'd repeatedly. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until a while after it happened. But I was coerced into having sex with someone after I clearly and repeatedly stated no, I did not want to. It fucked me up, and caused lasting harm. My agency was deeply violated and it's taken years to recover my own sense of agency.

Part of the reason this person did this to me is that they exist within a culture that's largely okay with coercing/forcing people into sex when they want it bad enough. All of the reason I didn't realize it until later was that I exist within a culture that often does not respect consent. This is what people mean when they say rape culture.

Writing a story that's okay with a character getting raped did not create rape culture. But it does reinforce it. It reinforces the attitude in potential rapists that violating someone's agency is fine. Pleasurable, even. It reinforces the attitude in potential victims that having their agency violated isn't a big deal. At least somebody got pleasure out of it, right?

None of us have the ability to change that by ourselves. But we do have the ability to perpetuate the status quo. And the only way the status quo will ever change is if enough people stop being okay with perpetuating it.

The reason I'm 15 replies deep into arguing this point is that I'd really prefer people stop being okay with perpetuating rape culture. The harm is easier for me to see because I have personally been harmed by it. I deleted an extended metaphor earlier about responsibility for the potential harm of driving drunk. I did so because I was all but certain you'd latch onto that and waffle about how the things aren't comparable. But they are.

Rape culture is very much like being intoxicated driving a vehicle. The alcohol in this metaphor is rape culture. The vehicle is your sexuality. You think it's totally fine while just as long as you're uncritically internalizing the harmful cultural attitudes about consent because its never harmed you personally. You think it's fine to write about a scenario where somebody rapes somebody, because it's just a story, right? Nobody's actually getting raped. But you're reinforcing the harmful cultural attitude that's led you to believe that's ok to write about in the first place. You aren't directly inciting anybody to go out and rape someone. But you are contributing to the cultural miasma that leads people to think it's ok to go out and rape someone. And you don't have to do that. You could easily just not do that.

There's other people in this thread that have been saying similar things to you without this level of vulnerability. None of them have any obligation to be more vulnerable about it. Frankly, you've done nothing to show anyone that's been raped that it's even safe to admit as much to you. That's the frustrating irony of you demanding evidence of the harm.

Thing is, I just don't give a fuck if you respond badly about it. Honestly, I'm not going to look at this thread again after I hit reply, because I need to be done. I've made my case. It's a clear case. If you're not convinced by now, then you're not available to be convinced. If that's the case, then you're part of the problem. And that makes me sad, and it makes me angry.

But I've done what I can.

1. I'm sorry about what you have gone through, but your personal experience gives you no right to demand i think the way you do or to be outraged that I don't.

2. Of course I have intent to affect my readers when I write. I want to give erotic and artistic pleasure. I do not seek to offend people with my stories, but I don't care much if I do. They can choose not to read my story. They can opt out at any time.

3. Of course rape is bad. We all agree about that. But fantasizing about rape and getting erotic pleasure from the fantasy is not bad. Reading a story that gives you such pleasure is not bad. Writing such a story that indulges such a fantasy for the pleasure of what obviously is a very large and enthusiastic readership is not inherently bad. I don't agree that it normalizes or glorifies such behavior. There may be some circumstances where it does, but I very much doubt those circumstances exist at Literotica. Is my thinking motivated? Possibly, but certainly no more motivated than those who insist on the "glorification of rape" narrative without proof and who get angry when others don't agree with their narrative.

4. This is why I insist upon the importance of proof. Our personal stories and feelings are valid in themselves, but they don't count for much in determining what ethical rules apply to all of us, because we all have different feelings and no person's feelings trump anybody else's feelings.

 

[Cagivagurl]

I do appreciate you actually responding. I'd appreciate it if you do me the courtesy of reading this whole thing.


Yep, we were already on the same page there.

This has nothing to do with my point #2. My point is about your intent. You're not writing for no reason. You're writing specifically to have an effect on someone. Evidence has nothing to do with this.

You have an intent. And you have the capacity to have an effect. Because you have the capacity to have an effect, your intent has the capacity to harm, regardless of whether the harm is intentional. Because you have the capacity to do harm, you have a responsibility to avoid harm where possible. Doesn't matter if you don't have evidence in front of your face that the possibility of harm is 'real.' You still have a responsibility. You're using the qualifier 'real' as a weasel word to obfuscate the fact that glorifying rape is a bad thing for anyone to do.

It's possible to waffle about this infinitely and be a pedant about it not being possible to anticipate every type of harm you could possibly cause. Don't do that. We're not talking about every possible type of harm you could theoretically cause. We're talking about one specific type of harm that you're pretending does not exist because the fact that it exists is inconvenient to your position.


The whole problem that you seem unwilling to address is that you are willing to accept responsibility for the positive effect your stories might theoretically have, but suddenly you need empirical evidence in order to even entertain the possibility that your stories might have a negative effect. Effects are effects. You don't get to decide which to accept. They happen, regardless of whether you have the capacity to measure them. This is the entire premise of point #1, which you have made no effort to disagree with. I'm not judging another author in specific. I'm judging the practice of reveling in rape fantasy in stories. If you've done that, sure, I deem that to be unethical. I've been pretty clear about that. I'm not trying to comb through your library to police you about it. You're the one that keeps bringing it up.


The point is pretty simple. Rape is bad. Hopefully we can agree about that.

I'm not talking about offense. I'm talking about rape. Stop changing the subject. I'm not talking about taste. You can't re-frame enjoying rape as a matter of taste. It's a matter of morality.


The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be behaving ethically. Full stop.


Violence is not rape. The GoT TV show is not rape apologia. Transgressive subject matter is not rape. Every word of this is irrelevant obfuscation.


Yeah, that's just really clearly not the thing I said.

The harm is vanishingly small because that's convenient to your position. The pleasure is real pleasure because that's convenient to your position. You conveniently have plenty of evidence to convince yourself that the pleasure is real enough. You conveniently can't think of any reason the harm might be real, and so it is vanishingly small.

That's not a principled stance. It's motivated reasoning. If you wanted evidence that stories that eroticise rape causes harm you've got all the tools at your fingertips to find it. Or you could just listen to some of the people here telling you exactly that from their personal experience.

This is the last thing I'm going to type in this thread. So I'm going to end with some vulnerability. Maybe that'll get through where reasoning cannot.

--

I'm a man. I've been SA'd repeatedly. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until a while after it happened. But I was coerced into having sex with someone after I clearly and repeatedly stated no, I did not want to. It fucked me up, and caused lasting harm. My agency was deeply violated and it's taken years to recover my own sense of agency.

Part of the reason this person did this to me is that they exist within a culture that's largely okay with coercing/forcing people into sex when they want it bad enough. All of the reason I didn't realize it until later was that I exist within a culture that often does not respect consent. This is what people mean when they say rape culture.

Writing a story that's okay with a character getting raped did not create rape culture. But it does reinforce it. It reinforces the attitude in potential rapists that violating someone's agency is fine. Pleasurable, even. It reinforces the attitude in potential victims that having their agency violated isn't a big deal. At least somebody got pleasure out of it, right?

None of us have the ability to change that by ourselves. But we do have the ability to perpetuate the status quo. And the only way the status quo will ever change is if enough people stop being okay with perpetuating it.

The reason I'm 15 replies deep into arguing this point is that I'd really prefer people stop being okay with perpetuating rape culture. The harm is easier for me to see because I have personally been harmed by it. I deleted an extended metaphor earlier about responsibility for the potential harm of driving drunk. I did so because I was all but certain you'd latch onto that and waffle about how the things aren't comparable. But they are.

Rape culture is very much like being intoxicated driving a vehicle. The alcohol in this metaphor is rape culture. The vehicle is your sexuality. You think it's totally fine while just as long as you're uncritically internalizing the harmful cultural attitudes about consent because its never harmed you personally. You think it's fine to write about a scenario where somebody rapes somebody, because it's just a story, right? Nobody's actually getting raped. But you're reinforcing the harmful cultural attitude that's led you to believe that's ok to write about in the first place. You aren't directly inciting anybody to go out and rape someone. But you are contributing to the cultural miasma that leads people to think it's ok to go out and rape someone. And you don't have to do that. You could easily just not do that.

There's other people in this thread that have been saying similar things to you without this level of vulnerability. None of them have any obligation to be more vulnerable about it. Frankly, you've done nothing to show anyone that's been raped that it's even safe to admit as much to you. That's the frustrating irony of you demanding evidence of the harm.

Thing is, I just don't give a fuck if you respond badly about it. Honestly, I'm not going to look at this thread again after I hit reply, because I need to be done. I've made my case. It's a clear case. If you're not convinced by now, then you're not available to be convinced. If that's the case, then you're part of the problem. And that makes me sad, and it makes me angry.

But I've done what I can.

I am sorry you had to live through that...
You have my sincerest best wishes for your future...
It must have been horrific.
You have my respect for speaking out. You are stronger than you realise. Your voice is powerful...
Let us hope you exposing your personal journey might actually make a difference...

Much love
Cagivagurl

 

[Cagivagurl]

1. I'm sorry about what you have gone through, but your personal experience gives you no right to demand i think the way you do or to be outraged that I don't.

2. Of course I have intent to affect my readers when I write. I want to give erotic and artistic pleasure. I do not seek to offend people with my stories, but I don't care much if I do. They can choose not to read my story. They can opt out at any time.

3. Of course rape is bad. We all agree about that. But fantasizing about rape and getting erotic pleasure from the fantasy is not bad. Reading a story that gives you such pleasure is not bad. Writing such a story that indulges such a fantasy for the pleasure of what obviously is a very large and enthusiastic readership is not inherently bad. I don't agree that it normalizes or glorifies such behavior. There may be some circumstances where it does, but I very much doubt those circumstances exist at Literotica. Is my thinking motivated? Possibly, but certainly no more motivated than those who insist on the "glorification of rape" narrative without proof and who get angry when others don't agree with their narrative.

4. This is why I insist upon the importance of proof. Our personal stories and feelings are valid in themselves, but they don't count for much in determining what ethical rules apply to all of us, because we all have different feelings and no person's feelings trump anybody else's feelings.

Couldn't even for one minute just show some empathy...

Cagivagurl

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Once again, my argument is not about self-censorship. It's about moral responsibility and the need to use your power wisely. By your account, the song is a positive contribution to the pantheon of songs about alcohol abuse.

I understand exactly what you are saying. I have understood it all along. I merely stated the extension of your argument, which is all that one can do since it's foundation is so soft, built upon personal morals and common sense. If society runs by your argument, then your stance is pointless, unless there is a common police watchdog for moral responsibility. If wise use of one's power is up to the individual who wields it, then you will have chaos anyways, ergo: pointless.

Have you ever met a sociopath, like an actual one? I've worked with a couple, not just my opinion or exaggeration, like actual sociopaths. EVERYTHING that a sociopath does is completely within his conscience, good judgement and common sense and within his own moral responsibilities. I can tell you about a particular one who embezzled thousands from the company, left the building for hours at a time while still being paid, sold drugs to and had sex with vulnerable women, physically abused the woman that he was living with (read: mooching off of) conned vulnerable people out of money and raped and abused someone who owed him money. He was not a client. He was my co-worker. How did he get the job? He lied savagely on his resume (and our lazy manager never followed up) and after he was let go he actually had the audacity to use our director as a reference for another job.

Now if this guy wrote a non-con story on lit, would you trust him to police his own moral responsibility? Furthermore, how would you even know that he was a sociopath by clicking on his profile? He might even be on lit for all I know. With the amount of writers on lit, there have to be a few of them and they are all policing their own moral responsibility. At the risk of sounding sarcastic, I'd say that your system works great.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Couldn't even for one minute just show some empathy...

Cagivagurl

Stop with the righteous judgement already. Just once. Please.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Stop with the righteous judgement already. Just once. Please.

Stop expressing your opinion without saying that's all you're doing...

Cagivagurl

 

[SimonDoom]

Couldn't even for one minute just show some empathy...

Cagivagurl

I did. Right at the beginning.

 

[Cagivagurl]

I did. Right at the beginning.

Yeah you expressed yourself so completely...
Sorry, then turned it into a retort.
Somebody completely opened up and you couldn't wait to say "I don't care."
Sorry, but that's my take on it.

Cagivagurl

 

[SimonDoom]

Very much agree with the rule that "She has to enjoy it in the end" is creepy for the exact reasons you mentioned.

It's weird until you consider the alternative. Do you want literotica to allow stories that feature brutal, realistic rape without enjoyment?

Rules don't have to be conceptually neat or match the real world. They are valid as long as they serve a legitimate purpose. In this case the purpose is balancing the desires of a very large readership for nonconsent stories against the desire not to cater to the worst element of that readership (i.e., those who get off on real rape, as opposed to fake lit nonconsent) the rule serves it's purpose, for all it's weirdness.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yeah you expressed yourself so completely...
Sorry, then turned it into a retort.
Somebody completely opened up and you couldn't wait to say "I don't care."
Sorry, but that's my take on it.

Cagivagurl

You're not entirely wrong.

We are not a group of friends. We are writing colleagues talking about the craft of writing. The rules for how we deal with one another are different from what they would be if we were friends sitting across a table. You and others who share your views show no empathy for me. You don't have to. I don't make appeals here based on wanting others to care about my feelings, and I don't want others to make such appeals to me. If you think that's cold hearted, so be it. I respect your personal views about subjects, as I do francesscott's, but those personal views offer no guidance for what we as authors are ethically obligated to do.

 

[SimonDoom]

I do appreciate you actually responding. I'd appreciate it if you do me the courtesy of reading this whole thing.


Yep, we were already on the same page there.

This has nothing to do with my point #2. My point is about your intent. You're not writing for no reason. You're writing specifically to have an effect on someone. Evidence has nothing to do with this.

You have an intent. And you have the capacity to have an effect. Because you have the capacity to have an effect, your intent has the capacity to harm, regardless of whether the harm is intentional. Because you have the capacity to do harm, you have a responsibility to avoid harm where possible. Doesn't matter if you don't have evidence in front of your face that the possibility of harm is 'real.' You still have a responsibility. You're using the qualifier 'real' as a weasel word to obfuscate the fact that glorifying rape is a bad thing for anyone to do.

It's possible to waffle about this infinitely and be a pedant about it not being possible to anticipate every type of harm you could possibly cause. Don't do that. We're not talking about every possible type of harm you could theoretically cause. We're talking about one specific type of harm that you're pretending does not exist because the fact that it exists is inconvenient to your position.


The whole problem that you seem unwilling to address is that you are willing to accept responsibility for the positive effect your stories might theoretically have, but suddenly you need empirical evidence in order to even entertain the possibility that your stories might have a negative effect. Effects are effects. You don't get to decide which to accept. They happen, regardless of whether you have the capacity to measure them. This is the entire premise of point #1, which you have made no effort to disagree with. I'm not judging another author in specific. I'm judging the practice of reveling in rape fantasy in stories. If you've done that, sure, I deem that to be unethical. I've been pretty clear about that. I'm not trying to comb through your library to police you about it. You're the one that keeps bringing it up.


The point is pretty simple. Rape is bad. Hopefully we can agree about that.

I'm not talking about offense. I'm talking about rape. Stop changing the subject. I'm not talking about taste. You can't re-frame enjoying rape as a matter of taste. It's a matter of morality.


The appropriate concern for an ethical author should be behaving ethically. Full stop.


Violence is not rape. The GoT TV show is not rape apologia. Transgressive subject matter is not rape. Every word of this is irrelevant obfuscation.


Yeah, that's just really clearly not the thing I said.

The harm is vanishingly small because that's convenient to your position. The pleasure is real pleasure because that's convenient to your position. You conveniently have plenty of evidence to convince yourself that the pleasure is real enough. You conveniently can't think of any reason the harm might be real, and so it is vanishingly small.

That's not a principled stance. It's motivated reasoning. If you wanted evidence that stories that eroticise rape causes harm you've got all the tools at your fingertips to find it. Or you could just listen to some of the people here telling you exactly that from their personal experience.

This is the last thing I'm going to type in this thread. So I'm going to end with some vulnerability. Maybe that'll get through where reasoning cannot.

--

I'm a man. I've been SA'd repeatedly. I didn't even realize that's what was happening until a while after it happened. But I was coerced into having sex with someone after I clearly and repeatedly stated no, I did not want to. It fucked me up, and caused lasting harm. My agency was deeply violated and it's taken years to recover my own sense of agency.

Part of the reason this person did this to me is that they exist within a culture that's largely okay with coercing/forcing people into sex when they want it bad enough. All of the reason I didn't realize it until later was that I exist within a culture that often does not respect consent. This is what people mean when they say rape culture.

Writing a story that's okay with a character getting raped did not create rape culture. But it does reinforce it. It reinforces the attitude in potential rapists that violating someone's agency is fine. Pleasurable, even. It reinforces the attitude in potential victims that having their agency violated isn't a big deal. At least somebody got pleasure out of it, right?

None of us have the ability to change that by ourselves. But we do have the ability to perpetuate the status quo. And the only way the status quo will ever change is if enough people stop being okay with perpetuating it.

The reason I'm 15 replies deep into arguing this point is that I'd really prefer people stop being okay with perpetuating rape culture. The harm is easier for me to see because I have personally been harmed by it. I deleted an extended metaphor earlier about responsibility for the potential harm of driving drunk. I did so because I was all but certain you'd latch onto that and waffle about how the things aren't comparable. But they are.

Rape culture is very much like being intoxicated driving a vehicle. The alcohol in this metaphor is rape culture. The vehicle is your sexuality. You think it's totally fine while just as long as you're uncritically internalizing the harmful cultural attitudes about consent because its never harmed you personally. You think it's fine to write about a scenario where somebody rapes somebody, because it's just a story, right? Nobody's actually getting raped. But you're reinforcing the harmful cultural attitude that's led you to believe that's ok to write about in the first place. You aren't directly inciting anybody to go out and rape someone. But you are contributing to the cultural miasma that leads people to think it's ok to go out and rape someone. And you don't have to do that. You could easily just not do that.

There's other people in this thread that have been saying similar things to you without this level of vulnerability. None of them have any obligation to be more vulnerable about it. Frankly, you've done nothing to show anyone that's been raped that it's even safe to admit as much to you. That's the frustrating irony of you demanding evidence of the harm.

Thing is, I just don't give a fuck if you respond badly about it. Honestly, I'm not going to look at this thread again after I hit reply, because I need to be done. I've made my case. It's a clear case. If you're not convinced by now, then you're not available to be convinced. If that's the case, then you're part of the problem. And that makes me sad, and it makes me angry.

But I've done what I can.

By the way, I DID read your entire comment, and i thought about it before responding. I disagree with you, but not because I haven't considered your position.