AAAGH -- Final Fifty Shades book to be released!

[KeithD]

I'm not the least surprised that you claim to actually engage in humiliation, degrading, torture sexual BDSM gaming (not to mention wanting to fuck your sister to the point of being obsessed with writing about it), Lovecraft. Along with not reading your stories, I'm not going to read your post, either. I'm sure it's full of false, foaming at the mouth crap. You are one sick little puppy.

 

[litfan10]

I would like to chime in that I am very much part of the BDSM community, and I've never caused anyone pain or humiliation. Does that make me any less BDSM? Absolutely not. I am a card carrying Master (yes, there are guilds and chapters and such especially if you live near a large city), owning a very willing slave.

BDSM is about the transfer of power. There are clear distinctions. Master, Dom/Domme, slave and sub have four very distinct definitions, and pain and humiliation do not have to be a part of them. Sure they can be, but they don't have to be.

Where I get concerned with portrayals is that with the transfer of power to succeed there has to be mutual trust and respect. It doesn't work otherwise.

Also depictions of rope play make me nervous. If you don't do it right it is easy to restrict circulation and if the play goes too long that can cause nerve damage. Secondly, if the knots are not proper some may come loose causing the slave/sub to potentially fall and due to other knots not be able to protect him/herself from a bad fall.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

What's fascinating about 50 Shades to me is what the people who've actually read and enjoyed it thought.

Most of those are middle-aged women. Many of whom asked what I thought as a fellow middle-aged woman (some knew of or suspected my knowledge of BDSM, others were just school run mum's desperate to talk about anything other than little Jonny's reading level).

All the ones who liked it said they enjoyed it because it was "aspiration porn" - the young poor woman swept into a life of luxurious apartments and meals and enviable clothes and no more money worries, and was a very easy read (short sentences and fragments) that they could get through in half an hour while feeding a baby at 2am. The sex and 'BDSM' was almost incidental. About half knew it was Twilight fanfic and were reading it in that light, several were amused by the 'BDSM'.

No-one read it twice, though - charity shops were deluged with copies which was great for them for a few months until everyone who wanted had read it.

Given that most wannabe Doms don't have the budget for such nice apartments and all, I suspect the book is less of a bad example than feared, and given that everyone in BDSM is aware of it it's probably no worse to have about than Gorean novels - both are only of use for the game where the top gets their bottom to read pages of the book without laughing, or else...

 

[litfan10]

Yeah, Gorean is a whole other planet (literally.)
I would love to be a fly on the wall in one of the groups.

 

[litfan10]

that most wannabe Doms don't have the budget for such nice apartments and all,

What?!?!?!?!?
You mean every Dom doesn't have a fully equipped playroom?

At one point after my kids where grown and left the nest I eyed my basement for ah...repurposing. Then figured remodeling/upgrading old parts of the house would be a far wiser use of money.

Talk about fiction versus reality.

 

[litfan10]

Another fun time is going on etsy and looking at all the bondage furniture available - and the prices as well as the reviews/comments.

I was talking to a sub once about the total impracticality of a Catherine Wheel. The amount of rigging and anchoring involved would be mind boggling.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Consent Isn’t Enough: The Troubling Sex of Fifty Shades

I'm just going to point back at this happy little story I wrote and note that everything that happens in it is with the consent of those involved...

 

[Bramblethorn]

Fair enough on the point about the use of the word "decency." What word would you use in its place? I don't want to put words in your mouth. But I'm not sure it would make a difference.

It might not make any difference to you, but there are two people in this conversation and it makes quite a large difference to the other one.

"Responsibility" or "ethics", or just "standards" would have worked here.

I think it's odd, and too bad, that you talk about putting me on "ignore." I haven't attacked you. I haven't gotten personal with you. I have no animus toward you. I have expressed respect for things you've said. I have a difference of opinion. I go to the trouble of writing a long response because I have respect for your ability to make an argument and support it with evidence. That you would raise the prospect of putting me on "ignore" seems odd to me.

This is not a great way to respond when somebody has alerted you to the existence of a personal boundary.

My boundaries are what they are. They're not up for debate and it doesn't concern me whether anybody thinks they're odd. I'm happy to interact with people who respect those boundaries and I minimise interaction with people who don't. When I articulate a boundary, I'm telling you what the options are and letting you choose whether we're going to continue interacting.

The alternative to me stating boundaries isn't that I abandon my boundaries, it's that I make that choice unilaterally.

I would regret it if you did that.

Well, then, be glad that I outlined exactly how that can be avoided.

We have a difference of opinion about the impact of words, and about the responsibilities of those who publish words. It's a difference that is worth having a discussion about, IMO.

For that to happen, it needs to be worth the effort for both of us. For me, at present, it doesn't feel like it is, so I'm going to vacate this particular discussion.

 

[Ginlover]

What?!?!?!?!?
You mean every Dom doesn't have a fully equipped playroom?

Talk about fiction versus reality.

I refuse to submit to any dominant unless they own a helicopter. This is normal... isn’t it?

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I don't accept the premise that more than a few will use a fantasy story written to arouse to run out and run amok. If so, as I noted above, Agatha Christie should be exhumed and hung beside Stephen King. Murder mysteries don't produce murderers in mass. Those who do mimic them and go out and do it were primed stupid to do it regardless of the existence of any story or book.

Murder isn’t a socialized crime. Sure, murderers can be triggered, and sprees/serials can lead to copycats. But there’s never been communal upticks coupled with begrudging acceptance of “murder culture”. So saying that since murder mysteries don’t produce murderers en masse, ergo, no literature/media can socialize any type of behavior is a logical fallacy.

Suicide, for example. is a socialized crime. Once it reaches a tipping point, it trends and there’s correlated communal uptick in suicide rates. Therefore, as a society we expect measures to be taken that stop suicide triggers: for example, in the US, Google and other platforms are required to redirect pro-suicide searches and content to some extent, otherwise they face certain liability exposure and/or culpability.

Rape, like suicide, is socialized. Sexual violence trends, and can be heavily influenced by media exposure: hence, the term rape culture. Multiple studies have shown that this starts with childhood exposure: most children have access to pornographic literature and images, and young men and boys who consume pornography are more likely to condone and/or commit acts of sexual coercion. Here’s a shit ton of research on this subject—to be clear: I always assume that few if any people in these threads actually read or investigate anything beyond the comments; those who do/not know their own M.O. and reasons, and I’m not trying to change that, I’m just putting links here because I personally don’t make comments like this based off uninformed “opinions”.

The point of The Atlantic article I previously linked was that there’s conflicting data about who was (is?) reading Fifty Shades: whereas the assumption was that white middle class women in their late 30s, 40s, 50s were the ones reading this book, a conflicting Nielsen study showed that readership was 1) higher than presumed and 2) more than a THIRD of people actually reading the book were young women and men between 18-29. They did not discuss younger readers under age 18—given that one of the Hot100 when I was a teen was “Rihanna’s S&M” I think younger readers would be expected because for them, BDSM was already kind of blasé.

EDIT: media added—this response is long and boring without pics. As we all know, visuals heighten content intake and retention.

https://i.gifer.com/R5FU.gif

Paraphrasing from The Atlantic article (cause I haven’t read the book): Fifty Shades has no scenes where the FMC wants to have rough “BDSM” sex, though she allows it to happen for many other reasons that have nothing to do with her sexual pleasure. The MMC apparently is using “BDSM” to work out his childhood issues; and ultimately, the FMC’s love is able to “fix” him so that he can just have “regular” sex.

Setting aside the problems of insinuating that BDSM is a disorder....

Sexual assault is a specific intent crime: ie, if there’s consent, then there’s no rape. However, literature like Fifty Shades teaches people to to conflate wantedness to consent, thus normalizing rape (for example, “No means yes and yes means anal!” was heard everywhere around my school during Hell Week, and when Fifty Shades was published, the LGBT Coop at my school gave lectures about what is/not BDSM versus assault.) Again, here’s some literature on that. And, here’s some more. Your first inclination may be to balk at those facts because you don’t understand the correlation—“How can you pin that on one book, it’s just a fantasy story??”—but this specific story, in book and movie format, has been consumed by more than a BILLION people worldwide.

It would be a logical fallacy to claim that kind of exposure and consumption has no socialized effect. But: to be fair, McDonald’s still claims everyday that it’s billions of burgers sold don’t make the world fat.

—​

EDIT re murder: I forgot about lynchings. Lynching murders are highly socialized and lynching culture is a mob phenomenon that trends socially.

EDIT EDIT: Also, mass shootings.... Those are socialized too.

I'm just going to point back at this happy little story I wrote and note that everything that happens in it is with the consent of those involved...

What?!?!?!?!?
You mean every Dom doesn't have a fully equipped playroom?

At one point after my kids where grown and left the nest I eyed my basement for ah...repurposing. Then figured remodeling/upgrading old parts of the house would be a far wiser use of money.

Talk about fiction versus reality.

 

[SimonDoom]

Sexual assault is a specific intent crime: ie, if there’s consent, then there’s no rape. However, literature like Fifty Shades teaches people to to conflate wantedness to consent, thus normalizing rape (for example, “No means yes and yes means anal!” was heard everywhere around my school during Hell Week, and when Fifty Shades was published, the LGBT Coop at my school gave lectures about what is/not BDSM versus assault.) Again, here’s some literature on that. And, here’s some more. Your first inclination may be to balk at those facts because you don’t understand the correlation—“How can you pin that on one book, it’s just a fantasy story??”—but this specific story, in book and movie format, has been consumed by more than a BILLION people worldwide.

It would be a logical fallacy to claim that kind of exposure and consumption has no socialized effect. But: to be fair, McDonald’s still claims everyday that it’s billions of burgers sold don’t make the world fat.

It's not a logical fallacy. It's an empirical question. Logic has nothing to do with it. I don't see any evidence that 50 Shades has normalized anything in a significant way, and the cites you cited don't prove that it does. I'm not dismissing the possibility that it has an impact, I just don't think we know what it is, and I keep looking and finding extremely little methodologically sound empirical support for the idea that books like 50 Shades normalize anything or cause any significant harm.

Sexual violence against women is a major problem, but I don't see evidence that greater access to pornography or to books like 50 Shades makes that violence go up. Violence of all kinds, including violence against women, has dropped since 1994, right before the widespread access to the Internet and the explosion of access by everyone, including young people, to porn. It might be the most startling fact about American society over the last 25 years, but few seem to pay much attention to it.
Most people I know are surprised when told that violence has been going down, not up. If acts of violence are not going up in response to access to this sort of material, then I don't know what it means to say that it "normalizes" anything. I don't believe it. I don't dismiss the possibility, but I don't believe it without solid evidence, and I don't see it.

Your own story indicates that 50 Shades prompted a conversation on campus that called attention to the issue of consent. That conversation may have been helpful. It's entirely possible that because of 50 Shades society is more, not less, sophisticated about the subject of consent. I'm not going to make that claim, because obviously, I don't know, but my sense is that all of us know much less about the connection between sexual entertainment, whether it's porn or erotic stories, and individual behavior than we think we do. We make assumptions based upon personal and political biases. Much of the research I've seen is infected with bias on all sides.

I obviously have my own bias. I'm at the far end of one side of the spectrum on the subject of free speech. My tentative belief -- no more grounded in solid research than anyone else's, admittedly -- is that the more speech and the more tolerance for more points of view and access to entertainment and speech of all kinds, including material that is wildly transgressive, the better off society will be in the long run. It will be more tolerant, more progressive, and more peaceful, not less.

 

[Ginlover]

50 shades didn’t normalise behaviour of rape, but it brought a new audience to be curious about BDSM. Any woman who has tried to explore BDSM either virtually or in real life will have come across predators claiming to be experienced in either dominance or submission. Many women have then be subjected to abuse - and I’m sure a few men have been too, because fifty shades was what brought them to explore BDSM.

In The Story of O, a much older ‘BDSM’ book, there is no consent until O requests permission to kill herself, which was granted in one version. 50 Shades gave curious women a spring board to explore kink and then subjected many to abuse as they didn’t know consent is a core requirement of any authority exchange. The writers of non-consent stories badged as BDSM perpetuate this idea.

If I wrote a story of a man and woman having a sexual relationship and then said it was a lesbian story no one would hesitate to inform me this is not a lesbian story no matter how hard I say it’s my artistic license and people should realise it is just fantasy and not reality. So why should rape, manipulation and abuse stories with out consent be badged as BDSM?

 

[SimonDoom]

50 shades didn’t normalise behaviour of rape, but it brought a new audience to be curious about BDSM. Any woman who has tried to explore BDSM either virtually or in real life will have come across predators claiming to be experienced in either dominance or submission. Many women have then be subjected to abuse - and I’m sure a few men have been too, because fifty shades was what brought them to explore BDSM.

In The Story of O, a much older ‘BDSM’ book, there is no consent until O requests permission to kill herself, which was granted in one version. 50 Shades gave curious women a spring board to explore kink and then subjected many to abuse as they didn’t know consent is a core requirement of any authority exchange. The writers of non-consent stories badged as BDSM perpetuate this idea.

If I wrote a story of a man and woman having a sexual relationship and then said it was a lesbian story no one would hesitate to inform me this is not a lesbian story no matter how hard I say it’s my artistic license and people should realise it is just fantasy and not reality. So why should rape, manipulation and abuse stories with out consent be badged as BDSM?

Well, keep in mind 50 Shades isn't published at Literotica, in a category. It's not badged as anything. It's just a book. It can be whatever it wants to be.

There's no evidence for your speculation about the impact of the book -- or, at least, you don't cite any. I'm not saying you're wrong, because I have no evidence to prove you're wrong, but it seems to me we simply should not make assertions of this kind without evidence, and there's no evidence.

My gut, which is no more empirically sound than yours, tells me this is what happened in response to 50 Shades:

The great majority of readers were or were not entertained by it, and it did not affect their real-world behavior in any way.

Some people explored BDSM as a result, and it positively contributed to their lives.

Some people explored BDSM as a result, and they were hurt by it in some way.

The net effect probably was neutral or positive. Many were entertained, some people's lives were enhanced, and a very few experienced some harm. But we really don't know and we're speculating. I don't believe it means anything to say it "normalized" anything. I don't think that's an empirically sound statement. It's a silly fantasy story and most people see it that way.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I obviously have my own bias.

Yeah, your own biases and conjecture have you all over the place, Simon.

Keith said that he doesn’t accept that fantasy fiction can drive mass behavior and gave murder mysteries as an example. I replied that yeah his example is probably true, but fantasy fiction can drive mass behavior in certain types of crime that trend towards socialization, and Fifty Shades falls in that bucket....

What in that discussion has anything to do with free speech...?

You’ve discussed your biases a lot. I haven’t discussed my biases or opinions at all. You don’t have the first clue of what my personal opinion is about any of this and you should stop assuming. My politics, opinions, and regular life would simply astound you.

My comments have been specifically about research and articles that discuss criminal intent in specific intent crimes, and the effect of pornographic media. In direct contradiction to your reply:

• The Atlantic article specifically discusses, with experts more informed than you or I, that the content of Fifty Shades does NOT make society more informed about consent.
• Some of the medical journal articles that I linked to DO discuss Fifty Shades.

You’ve given an uncredited citation for violent crime reduction. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I do know that it’s a moot issue: in the US, date rape and molestation are significantly more prevalent than forcible rape but whereas in most jurisdictions, forcible rape is a violent crime, in many states, date rape is not.

It seems like you’re trying to narrow the scope of related information supporting discussion that is contrary to your opinions by asserting that only research titled “Fifty Shades: Bad” can be credible or on-point. You say that there’s no evidence, despite my offering a shit ton of evidence dispositive to your question whether there’s been any research. Your conjecture is untrue, unfortunate and abysmally narrow-minded. My assumption is that it’s why Bramblethorn left this cyclical converso. You can ignore facts so you can be right, but in doing so, you can’t still say that you’re open to discussion despite your biases.

Rape culture is so obviously not propagated by one book, just like obesity is not caused only by MickeyDs, that I truly didn’t think I had to couch that tongue in cheek attempt at humor. Apparently I do: that was a joke. Fifty Shades is one book series and movie series, BUT— it’s one with a massive prevalence in mainstream culture and is thus it is a significant part of rape culture conversation, for good or bad. There’s reason for concern that the premise of book itself is misleading about what consent is.

You missed the points of my examples; I apologize for not being clearer. My school was memorably in worldwide news for its “no means yes” chants, as an example of how dangerously prevalent rape culture is. The LGBT coop had lectures to inform people that, unlike Fifty Shades, real BDSM is not thinly veiled sexual assault, rape and/or domestic abuse. Those seminars were not a platform for discussing the book, but for discussing its harm: the book was not viewed in academic spheres as something that successfully fostered dialogue about either BDSM or domestic violence—it was sort of an unavoidable ill because Fifty Shades is so prevalent.

You like to argue; it’s your prerogative to do so. But you also tend to flatter yourself that you’re the only person in these threads willing to see and appreciate multiple positions despite your personally held biases. You’re not; many of us here are. And some, like me, prefer to come to the table informed and willing to set our opinions aside if facts don’t support them.

I don’t like to argue; I like to read and I like to have reasonable discussions. If you want to be better informed, I provided links to multiple articles: I suggest you read their actual content rather than just skimming the titles, dates and captions for keywords that you think will support your immovability. If you do, in just this instance alone, you’ll discover considerable insight directly responsive to the things you allege are unknown unknowable variables (cause they’re just not). If something therein changes your perspective, I swear: I won’t sing-song “told you so” as a result.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

Follow-up

Violence of all kinds, including violence against women, has dropped since 1994,... It might be the most startling fact about American society over the last 25 years, but few seem to pay much attention to it.

So I went and looked this up since 1994 sounded like an oddly specific year for violent crime to start going down in the United States — particularly coming from someone who’s demanding this conversation can’t proceed without correlation and empirical evidence.

Lo and behold: 1994 is the year the Violence against Women Act was enacted.

I don’t usually mic drop but 🖐

So again, to make sure this comes across empirically to you: your comment is a moot issue because you’re talking about forcible rape, which is a violent crime. And violent crime is down in direct correlation with the federal act requiring investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women. Sexual coercion, molestation and date rape are not violent crimes in all jurisdictions in the US.

Since you’re bringing this up here and have discussed this in the past with others, I don’t know why you or the people you’ve told don’t already know this correlation between the Act and drop in violent crime. This was really easy to Google.

 

[jsmiam]

To add, I don’t think anybody has specifically brought up ignorant and impressionable (and to be fair, oblivious and probably inexperienced) people who think something is normal/ acceptable, and do unacceptable things that they learned from porn. Keep in mind, I’m NOT defending them. But some of these people do wrong/bad things because they ignorantly and obliviously don’t know better. Hence, authors, try not to cause this.

Examples : (intentionally different topics for my examples)
- How many real women in real life let a man go from back there to up front, practically guaranteeing at least a yeast infection, maybe worse? Whereas that happens grotesquely frequently in porn.
- And in real life, do alll women welcome it up the butt? And do they all want to fulfill my.. umm... men’s threesome fantasies with their hot former college roommate who also likes it up the butt and knows how to deep/throat too? Because it’s really common in porn. Here. And (this paragraph only) most of my stories.

I could go on and expand to this bdsm topic, rape fantasies, incest, and on and on. Some porn misconceptions are quickly eliminated in real life during the first attempt with a “hell no I’m not doing that” response, but not all.

So, without spoiling all the fun, I tend to agree with a basic level of responsibility in writing and porn. You can give a little sex Ed and still write a hot story. And this is coming from a person who always chuckles at how seemingly EVERY bdsm person’s answer to everything is a snippy “THAT’S not real bdsm”. (Not singling anyone out, they ALL do it.). Let’s at least keep consent and safe words? Seems fair.

 

[Ginlover]

There's no evidence for your speculation about the impact of the book -- or, at least, you don't cite any. I'm not saying you're wrong, because I have no evidence to prove you're wrong, but it seems to me we simply should not make assertions of this kind without evidence, and there's no evidence.

....

Many were entertained, some people's lives were enhanced, and a very few experienced some harm. But we really don't know and we're speculating. I don't believe it means anything to say it "normalized" anything. I don't think that's an empirically sound statement. It's a silly fantasy story and most people see it that way.

https://www.femicidecensus.org/reports/ The tip of the iceberg, but still doesn’t look to me like ‘a very few’

If the report is opened the number of women killed in sexually motivated attacks or as part of an intimate relationship is unpicked.

We know classifying violence against a partner (male or female) as a ‘domestic’ reduces the perception of the level of the crime. The most popular book published in decades and read predominantly by women and containing the implication abuse was part of an exciting all consuming intimate relationship doesn’t help with the perception of domestic violence being a lesser crime than other crimes.

 

[Bramblethorn]

EDIT re murder: I forgot about lynchings. Lynching murders are highly socialized and lynching culture is a mob phenomenon that trends socially.

EDIT EDIT: Also, mass shootings.... Those are socialized too.

To those two, I would add: murder of disabled people by their caregivers (lost count of how many times I've seen a "parent murders their kids" news piece that shows more sympathy for the murderer than for the victim/s), and murder of women for infidelity (think "Hey Joe").

Not at all coincidentally, those are four areas where I would want to think very hard about how I presented that kind of murder in fiction.

This keeps on being said in these discussions, but since certain folk (not Vix!) keep pretending otherwise: nobody is saying you can't or shouldn't write about these topics. Only that authors ought to think carefully about how they're writing them and what their readers might take away from them.

In the latest incarnation of that particular red herring, I see KeithD brought up Agatha Christie. I'm not sure whether he's actually read Agatha Christie, but as a kid I read dozens of them and I can say with confidence that Christie's books do not endorse murder.

She consistently presents murder as a soul-staining evil, the kind of act that stems from venial motives or a deranged mind, and her murderers almost always face justice in one form or another. In one of her better-known stories, a very sympathetic character ends up committing murder to stop a thoroughly horrible serial killer who can't be touched by the law... and then he dies by suicide, because he is afraid that having committed one murder he might start believing he had the right to do it again.

 

[KeithD]

Keep me out of your discussions on this now, Bram. I gave my take and I think yours shows that perhaps you shouldn't be playing at Literotica. Perhaps you should be consulting a therapist. You are cherry picking what disturbs you and demanding control over it disturbing others as well. You seem to be unable to just mind your own business and let others pursue their own reading pleasures. If you want to control what's published at Literotica, buy it. Until then, what gets posted here is what gets past Laurel and those who dump on what others write rather than just avoiding what they don't want to read are being asshats.

I continue to hold to putting BDSM used in erotica stories and BDSM practiced in clubs in two different buckets. Erotica is about arousal. Use of extreme fetish can enhance arousal. It doesn't send practitioners out into the streets in droves anymore than Freddy the 13th movies send people in droves to the stores to buy hockey masks and chain saws.

I think those who claim to be BDSM clubbers in real life are sick, though. They are practicing a demeaning, humiliation, manipulative, exploitive brand of sexual activity. I don't think that their problem is that BDSM isn't presented as their rules say it should be in stories. I think they themselves are their problem and they shouldn't be playing here at all. I don't, however, initiate discussions to push that. I let Laurel take her chosen lead for what is posted here and what isn't and who is permitted to post here and who isn't.

 

[litfan10]

I refuse to submit to any dominant unless they own a helicopter. This is normal... isn’t it?

So....does a remote control helicopter count? Just establishing boundaries here...

 

[SimonDoom]

The salient question is whether the exposure to erotic fiction that contains "bad" messages -- i.e., portraying as fun or erotic behaviors that in the real world would be harmful, dangerous, or criminal -- causes harm to real people in the real world, by influencing real people (mostly men) to do bad things (to women, most of the time).

I don't have proof that it doesn't. It's a hard thing to prove a negative. The burden of proof, IMO, lies with the person making the assertion. I remain skeptical unless I see meaningful proof.

I scanned the citations cited by Vix and I read the article cited by Ginlover. I looked up footnotes 206 and 207 in the article Ginlover cited, which concern the impact of pornography on violence toward women. And I'll repeat: I don't see the evidence. Is there "shit tons" of evidence, as Vix claims, that transgressive erotic fiction causes harm? No, there's not. There's virtually no such evidence, as far as I can see.

When you actually follow the footnotes and look up the articles (I don't claim to have done so in every case, because there are paywalls that I don't want to shell out the cash to get past, but I looked them up where I could for free), you tend to get two kinds of "evidence":

1) There are studies that note that some men who've done bad things to women have a higher exposure to pornography than men who have not hurt women. That doesn't prove anything. The most plausible explanation for that is that men who want to hurt women are more likely to seek pornography than other men. It doesn't prove, and isn't even highly probative of, the proposition that exposure to pornography makes it more likely that a man will hurt a woman. And, in any event, none of these kinds of studies, as far as I can see, have anything to do with erotic fiction. They concern pornography -- visual images. Presumably, the pool of people who read stories is quite different from the pool of people who consume images.

2) There's a lot of so-called "evidence" that consists of so-called "experts" -- usually people with psychology degrees -- giving opinions about the impacts of pornography or fiction on people's perceptions, and it's just that -- opinions. In my view this counts for nothing at all. What counts with me is methodologically sound studies that establish a statistically significant correlation between A (exposure to erotic fiction with bad messages) and B (actual, tangible harm to women). I don't see that. And it's not for lack of looking.

Here's a cite to an article that says that the available evidence does not establish a link between exposure to pornography and sexual aggression. You have to pay $37.50 to read the actual article, and I didn't do that. My guess is that all, or nearly all, of the rest of you haven't shelled out the money to read these articles, either. And if that's true, the best we can all say is that we're just speculating. Here's the cite: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1524838020942754?journalCode=tvaa

The Bureau of Justice Statistics website maintains easily accessible data on crime over time in the United States. It is undisputed that the rate of violent crime of all types in the US has declined significantly in the last 25 years, a period during which the accessibility to pornography and erotic fiction has expanded dramatically. Here's a link to BJS data relating to violence against women in the US: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvv.pdf Violence against women of all kinds in the US is lower today than it was 25 years ago, despite the explosion during that time in access to pornography and erotic fiction.

Regarding Vix's point about the 1994 Violence Against Women Act: It's not likely that this act was the cause of a long-term decline in violence against women. Number 1, the Act didn't do that much and didn't authorize the expenditure of money that would be likely to have an impact over 25 years. No.2, it's much more probable that this decline is the result of a much broader decline in the US of violent crime generally. I don't claim to know why that decline has occurred. But maybe the Act did have some impact. If so, it's still irrelevant to the question that matters here: does erotic fiction cause harm? I see no evidence that it does. Vix cited no such evidence. What we do know is that in the last 25 years, violence against women in the US has dropped a lot while access to pornography and erotic fiction has increased dramatically.

And, of course, erotic fiction and pornography (visual images) are not the same thing, and there's no empirical reason to believe their impact is the same.

Ask yourself this question: If a Literotica story involves people having sex without condoms with no consequences, do you really believe that exposure to that story will increase the chance that real people in the real world will be more likely to have sex without condoms and pass on sexually transmitted diseases? I don't. I don't believe that for one second. I think the vast majority of people who come to Literotica to read stories understand, before they get here, that this is a fantasy space to explore erotic fantasies. I don't believe for a second that as authors we are obligated to make sure our fantasy characters use condoms to send the message to the real world out there that one should use condoms. Maybe you think differently. Maybe you think that Literotica stories with people having sex without condoms make it more likely that real people in the real world are more likely to have sex without condoms. If so, your belief, without empirical support, is sheer speculation, and nothing more. You're entitled to your opinion, but that's all it is. Write your stories the way you want to, to send the moral and artistic message that you want to. But you're in no position to moralize about what other authors do.

I am skeptical of the "normalization" theory -- the idea that when people read stories about people doing bad things and getting away with it, it "normalizes" the attitude underlying that behavior, and real people in the real world are more likely to do bad things to real people. But if you have evidence to the contrary (as long as I don't have to pay for it), please cite it and I'll read it (as long as I don't have to pay for it).

 

[KeithD]

The salient question is whether the exposure to erotic fiction that contains "bad" messages -- i.e., portraying as fun or erotic behaviors that in the real world would be harmful, dangerous, or criminal -- causes harm to real people in the real world, by influencing real people (mostly men) to do bad things (to women, most of the time).

I don't have proof that it doesn't. It's a hard thing to prove a negative. The burden of proof, IMO, lies with the person making the assertion. I remain skeptical unless I see meaningful proof.

The research project is right there for anyone wanting to do it--the 50 Shades series that started all of this on this thread. Hundreds of thousands of copies of these books, if not millions, have been read. Research should be able to surface how many actual reports of bad coming from following the 50 Shades methods that BDSM clubbers declare are incorrect and physically dangerous. I remember a couple of reports, which were aired as novelties, not a significant number on that number of reads. The reports are there somewhere in media history. Anyone who thinks the effects are significant (like more than the damage done of not wearing seatbelts or safety helmets when riding bikes or insisting on playing pro football in the face of reports on injuries just waiting to happen) is welcome to do the research and report the numbers and specific types of damage. I don't think it's there in significant numbers.

 

[lovecraft68]

As a reply to one part of Simon's very long post the correlation of porn, visual and written has been mentioned in the sense many serial rapists have an abundance of it.

But that kind of goes along with their issues in the sense they are going to read and watch what fuels their demons, difference is unlike average people who just might think its a hot fantasy kink, they have that extra edge that will do it.

On the other side of things many studies have shown porn is good catharsis for people to enjoy some rather extreme fantasies-rape, incest, etc...in a harmless way, catharsis in a sense, and its completely healthy release.

In fact, I want to say it was Denmark where porn was outlawed for a long time, and when they removed the ban there was a significant drop in rape and other sexual assaults.

To be clear, when I say Shades was full of misinformation that's dangerous I mean in the sense of linking certain behavior with abuse and mental illness which is not true in real life, true for that character is fine, her getting BDSM ass backwards is whatever, but in an of itself fiction, music, games...these are make believe and people need to know that.

But when the misinformation presented in any work is then taken by fans of that work who are real people having real conversations and now using said fiction as example and advice, that's where it is dangerous when passed on as sooth so to speak.

So is it the work that's dangerous? Not in and of itself, its the lemming audience who with no prior experience now think they're an expert because they read this book and think its the real thing.

Or, as I have pointed out and will always do so, anyone here who runs around saying consent is not only not needed in BDSM, but any sexual encounter as being dangerous and irresponsible because they are an actual person(or what passes for one in the loose term) going around trying to convince people rape is perfectly acceptable.

Big difference in Make believe Christian Grey, saying something and a POS cyber dom or poser at a munch, or a blowhard know it all in a forum trying to get people to buy into violent behavior.

 

[KeithD]

lovecraft68
This message is hidden because lovecraft68 is on your ignore list.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Here's a cite to an article that says that the available evidence does not establish a link between exposure to pornography and sexual aggression.

FWIW, the abstract actually says no link between nonviolent porn and sexual aggression, and that there is a weak correlation between violent porn and sexual aggression (with significant caveats in the abstract, and more in the full article).

You have to pay $37.50 to read the actual article, and I didn't do that. My guess is that all, or nearly all, of the rest of you haven't shelled out the money to read these articles, either. And if that's true, the best we can all say is that we're just speculating.

Oh, my sweet summer child.

Anybody who has the faintest experience with academic research knows three or four ways to get that article text for free. I found it in thirty seconds, in the first place I looked. Rhymes with "thigh rub".

This is illustrative of why I'm not keen to have the grand evidence-based debate that you're so keen for. If you don't know how to find an article of this nature that's so easily available - and don't even realise that other people do - then you don't have the experience to interpret it. The thought of a discussion where I have to play research assistant for both sides and attempt to teach basic interpretation, to somebody who thinks he already knows it, just fills me with weariness. I choose to be kind to myself by not putting my hand up for that.

For that reason, I am purposely not linking the article, but here's a quote just to confirm that I've read the full text:

"Analyses of funnel plots suggested that publication bias may be present for correlational studies of violent pornography but were generally absent for most other research areas. Given the high heterogeneity in results and high number of null results, neither p-curve nor r-index were appropriate for examination as these are more often used with the number of positive findings are high, particularly in relation to what might be expected given observed power. It’s important to point out that most existing techniques for publication bias have a high false negative rate, particularly in large sample studies with small effect sizes. Thus, it is possible more publication bias exists than was found here."

If so, it's still irrelevant to the question that matters here: does erotic fiction cause harm? I see no evidence that it does. Vix cited no such evidence. What we do know is that in the last 25 years, violence against women in the US has dropped a lot while access to pornography and erotic fiction has increased dramatically.

Nobody here is making the blanket claim that "erotic fiction causes harm". (It certainly has been claimed elsewhere, but not here AFAIK.) That's not what the discussion is about. If you still don't understand that, there's really no point in continuing this.