Consent and mind control

[lovecraft68]

I don't think mind control has to be "100% you are my slave". It can be more subtle than that. Like bondage, just because someone is tied up doesn't make them totally helpless.

I will give you that both 'mind control' and BDSM stories on this site have a non-consent issue. Most of the BDSM stories would result in criminal charges in real life.

First off, your story your interpretation, do as you choose. How people perceive the category is up to them. My point is that to anyone who takes a moment to think beyond they like the kink, there is no middle ground on this. If you feel there is, then maybe try another category because mind control means no consent

As for your comment on BDSM, I appreciate it because it makes a point that I've been saying for a long time. Accurate BDSM is not criminal, because it has full consent. Key word is accurate, because you are accurately pointing out that a large portion of that category on this site has devolved into abuse and rape by people that are either trying to dodge the scrutiny of posting in NC or pushing the disgusting misinformation that BDSM does not require consent. "Bitch get on your knees" is what more and more if it has become and femdom stories now get trashed unless they're put in fetish.

Thanks for that comment regarding BDSM, and also you're dead on with the site having a NC issue-even though it claims it won't accept those stories-and if you think that's bad, try looking at some of the BTB stories in LW that break every rule here, but they get through just fine.

The site is shifting further and further in some categories to the rise of the angry woman hating incel, and it has no problem with it, which should be a problem.

 

[kellyt1994]

I'm writing a story that involves mind control and I'm struggling with making the sex consensual. (Caveat: no judgement. If your kink is reading/writing non-consent stories I'm not judging).

So, the way I see it:
If the mind control makes them a slave, then we lose consent. If the mind control makes them drunk/stoned/unconscious, then we lose consent. If the mind control takes away conscious control of their body, we lose consent. If the mind control gives them child/animal level intelligence then we lose consent.
This makes it so that it's pretty hard to have mind control and sex without the sex becoming non-consensual.

What if?
The subject can end the mind control at any time? Does that give consent back? They are really horny and really want to please their master, but they have the ability to press the 'no' button and end the encounter. Does that fix it or is it just a fig leaf.

I think one angle is that hypnosis could plant such an overwhelming physical response that it overrules the conscious mind. Sort of the opposite of Funkadelic's Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow. Set your ass on fire and your mind will follow. And if you initially agreed to the hypnosis, with some idea of what was coming, that creates at least a grey area rather than straight-up Non-Con.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Full disclosure, I wrote and have since pulled some Non-Con as I didn't like the way it made me feel and have since binned a couple of other WiP.

At the risk of being utterly cringy, I see the question as one of ethics. Mind control, if it leads to sex, is in the end no different than rape. Both feature Individual A forcing Individual B to do something they would not normally do.

Can one get around that? I think so, but it's difficult and limited in scope. I think I succeeded with On My Way Up, but it's not the typical 'You are under my power' concept. It involves an individual with Power who remains basically a nice person, one nice enough to only use it with caution and some fretting afterwards.

 

[SimonDoom]

Isn’t fantasy about exploring things we wouldn’t condone in real life, but still find fascinating? Much of its appeal, especially in erotica, lies in its immorality, illegality, boundary-crossing, forbidden fruit, and all that.

The infidelity fan sneers at incest, while the incest fan clutches pearls over non-consent, each blind to their own camel’s hump.

This has been going on the entire 8+ years I've participated in this forum. The incest folks think there's something wrong with the noncon folks, and the noncon folks think there's something wrong with the incest folks.

My view: stop judging and embrace the naughty. It's SUPPOSED to be naughty. It doesn't have to be, but it obviously is, much of the time, and that's perfectly OK. It's desirable. It's a fantasy, an outlet, a release.

That's the great thing about this erotic fiction space: you are free to explore things you would not actually do in real life. If your fantasies are limited to what you would only do in real life, isn't that a little constricting and dull?

A mind control story necessarily is about person A using some method to take control of person B's mind and control their actions, usually in a sexual way. So there is no way to get around it being nonconsensual sexual activity unless you cheat: meaning, there's no real mind control; it's all pretend. Mind control makes it nonconsensual, period. Otherwise, it's not really mind control.

And that's what makes it fun!

 

[AlinaX]

This discussion is made difficult because people paint NCR as a single unified category and MC similarly. Both in fact represent spectra of subcategories.

In NCR, there is a large percentage of stories that are undeniably stories that glorify rape, some to such a chilling degree that they should never have been published here.

The stories I tend to enjoy most, though, are the ones where the cause/rapist are exterior elements and the story is about the victims surrendering to an unsought, unwanted pleasure. (Don’t tell me pleasure isn't possible; that's a failure of imagination.) Of course, what generally is not included in NCR is the almost inevitable trauma that occurs after The End.

In MC, you are messing with people's heads. The lazy stories are the ones where a young man that could never get a girl gains the power to make girls want him. It's a fantasy of power, and absolutely it's NonCon, but the difference is that the focus is generally on adolescent wish-fulfilment rather than humiliating the victim. (Of course, there are stories that go further. I've written some myself. They leave a bad taste in the mouth.)

Far more fun in MC is to find ways to create balance and give agency to victims.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Maybe one way to write ethical mind control is to make the compulsory behaviors things that the victims intellectually want to do but cannot physically bring themselves to do.

For example, cripplingly shy boy wants to go to the gym, dress to flatter his physique, chat up the cute girl... And then hypnotizes himself to do that. Or, guy theoretically wants to indulge his girlfriend's ravishment fantasy but finds himself unable to maintain an erection when the time comes. Or, premature ejaculator wants to last longer so his girlfriend makes him unable to come until he hears a certain word.

Alternatively, maybe you can turn the tables, which doesn't exactly make up for the initial non con but maybe feels a little more just. Like, guy hypnotizes his girlfriend to be the whip cracking domme of his dreams and finds himself locked in chastity washing the dishes all day.

Thanks for starting an interesting conversation.

 

[TheLobster]

I believe I haven't written any of the standard MC tropes, but I had some success exploring the boundary between mere suggestions and actual coercion by deconstructing the Cupid/Eros archetype in my Valentine Day's contest story.

It wasn't so much about the sheer act of controlling people, but the MMCs reluctance to do it and the reasons why he was being pushed to do it. (There's a bit of sideways musing about the concept of free will in general).
In the end, it definitely does qualify as Mind Control (it would've gone into SF/F if it didn't) from the reader's PoV, but in the story the MMC is placed within a different ethical framework where it isn't so clearcut.

 

[Comshaw]

While reading this, an unbidden scene came to mind:
A handsome but cripplingly shy boy enters therapy, desperate to overcome his social anxiety and gain some sexual experience. His therapist, composed and quietly dominant, suggests hypnosis, and he agrees.

Through a series of unorthodox sessions, she subtly exploits his trust, and the line between professional help and something far more personal begins to blur.

Is it ethical? Hell no.
Would I read the hell out of it? Without hesitation.

Unfortunately, I’m not a writer. But if someone out there feels like writing it, I’ll be the first in line to read it.

I have a storyline I've been working on similar to this. A guy knows hypnosis and agrees to use it to help his neighbor quit smoking. While under hypnosis, he questions her as to what she would like to use to replace smoking. She answers with "sex" and tells him her deepest sexual fantasies. After more questions, she reveals she can't bring herself to do it but she could under hypnosis because she believes when she is hypnotized, he is in total control of her actions. Being the story that it is he instructs her to have sex with him, which she does. But he finds it unsatisfying. He devises a plan to have her begin to dream about sex with him. When she does, he slowly brings her to the conscious realization that she has been and it has been her desire all along.

I think that's as close to consensual mind control as one can get. However, in my mind, it is still non-consensual because she couldn't until he manipulated her to make her do it when she couldn't on her own, even though she wanted to unconsciously.

That said, I can't see any way mind control can be consensual. BDSM is different in the fact that the sub is in control of their mind and can ask, through a safe word, for whatever activity they are engaged in to stop. With mind control, even if one person agrees to and allows another that power, by the very nature of it, they lose free will and free choice, therefore lose the ability to ask to stop.

There is a scene in "Neuromancer" by William Gibson that might fall under consensual mind control. It's been a while since I read it but I believe it was a scene where the protagonists run into a girl in a brothel and mention that she has a "blank stare" because she has an implant that turns her short term memory off so she can serve as a prostitute and not remember what she did later.

That's just my view of it.

Comshaw

 

[AlinaX]

There's a parallel with having sex with someone while they sleep. Even if they agree in advance, there's no conscious consent during the act.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Consent alone isn’t enough. Is consensual incest between adults legitimate? I don’t believe it is. As a society, we cannot accept it, given the profound harm and long-term consequences it may have.

Is consensual sexual contact between a professor and their young student... legitimate? Again, I believe it’s inherently wrong. Their higher position and control over their subordinates create an unacceptable power imbalance, which calls the validity of consent into question.

I find it interesting you mention this example. I am a teacher, and I've had many colleagues and mentors who have witnessed more the opposite of your example: it is the student the one who has power over the professor, not the other way around. Sure, there had been cases of professors abusing their power, but apparently the case around my area is the opposite. I can't go into further details though. Rules.

 

[Baztrachian]

Mind control isn't rape like punching someone in the face isn't assault.

Per Whoopi Goldberg so long as the rape isn't 'rape-rape' it's okay.

 

[Baztrachian]

There's a parallel with having sex with someone while they sleep. Even if they agree in advance, there's no conscious consent during the act.

Yeah. My second wife LOVED waking up to sex. She'd fucking purrrrrr when we did that!

 

[MillieDynamite]

On this site, mind control is an acceptable from of rape. As is a vampire's seduction, a sucubus or incubus fucking you to death, or any other nonhuman form of forced sexual experince. It's all Good, man!

I'm writing a story that involves mind control and I'm struggling with making the sex consensual. (Caveat: no judgement. If your kink is reading/writing non-consent stories I'm not judging).

So, the way I see it:
If the mind control makes them a slave, then we lose consent. If the mind control makes them drunk/stoned/unconscious, then we lose consent. If the mind control takes away conscious control of their body, we lose consent. If the mind control gives them child/animal level intelligence then we lose consent.
This makes it so that it's pretty hard to have mind control and sex without the sex becoming non-consensual.

What if?
The subject can end the mind control at any time? Does that give consent back? They are really horny and really want to please their master, but they have the ability to press the 'no' button and end the encounter. Does that fix it or is it just a fig leaf.

 

[AlinaX]

If you’re going to argue that we shouldn't enjoy stories about bad things, there's a danger we'll be left with only Hallmark Christmas movies.

 

[TheArsonist]

I find it interesting how some people see it in such black-and-white terms. These are categories we have created, a way to simplify and label the infinite variety of experience. In reality there is always a spectrum; there are always borderline cases, both legally, morally and conceptually.

We can have rape by violence/coercion/intimidation, rape by deception and rape by incapacitation, for example, but what threshold do we set to qualify in each case? "Have sex with me or I'll kill you" is clearly rape (in almost every circumstance), while "Have sex with me or I'm not going to come with you to shop for new curtains on my day off" probably is not. But what about "Have sex with me or we're breaking up, and you'll have to find your own apartment"? Not very nice, but is it rape?

Molesting someone who is passed out is clearly sexual assault, but what about making out with someone who has a very slight buzz from a glass of champagne they drank an hour ago? Is there an unambiguous, sharp line somewhere between the two situations, or is it a sliding scale with a lot of gray area in between? Sneaking into bed to have sex with someone who thinks you're their spouse versus having a one night stand with someone you met in a bar and gave a fake name don't seem morally equivalent to me; but what about lying about being in love with someone, or promising to marry them, in order to convince them to have sex? Again, shitty, but would you call that rape?

Similarly, mind control – which has the added complication that the more hardcore forms are not real – can be anything from total enslavement or personality wipe (which clearly negate consent) to post-hypnotic suggestions to "be more assertive." Or what about someone who's on normal medication that affects their mood or sex drive (e.g. hormone therapy)?

The implication of the most extreme "mind control=rape" position is that someone who has at one time been subconsciously manipulated or chemically affected cannot from that point ever give genuine consent, and thus cannot have consensual sex for the rest of their life. As if we are not all constantly under the influence of subconscious impulses and biological processes, which some are seeking to exploit in more or less targeted ways.

"I make my partner their favorite meal any time they reluctantly agree to give me head, in the hope that they'll form a positive association and start to like it" is a very mild form of attempted mind-control using both psychology (Pavlovian conditioning) and bio-chemical means (food). How heinous!

 

[SimonDoom]

I find it interesting how some people see it in such black-and-white terms. These are categories we have created, a way to simplify and label the infinite variety of experience. In reality there is always a spectrum; there are always borderline cases, both legally, morally and conceptually.

I agree, but I also think authors should be candid with themselves that while mind control and noncon stories may fall across a wide spectrum, the whole point of the stories is to focus on the element that takes away volition, regardless of the method or the extent of it doing so. So to that extent, it deals with an unethical subject matter, and it erotically revels in that subject matter. I think authors would be much better off just accepting that it's unethical subject matter but that it's perfectly OK to write a fantasy story that delves into such subject matter than to twist themselves into knots trying to justify to themselves and others that it's really ethical. Be bad and embrace it. It's OK. It's fantasy. Just don't kid yourself.

 

[MillieDynamite]

No, I don't argue we shouldn't enjoy them. I'm arguing we should allow more than they do. I've always maintained some things are bad, but make a story better. A realistic portrayal of rape is better than the candy coated stuff that's published here. It's brutal, it should be shown as brutal. Not for titillation, that's what the candy coating gives you, but show just how terrible bad shit is.

If you’re going to argue that we shouldn't enjoy stories about bad things, there's a danger we'll be left with only Hallmark Christmas movies.

 

[AlinaX]

No, I don't argue we shouldn't enjoy them. I'm arguing we should allow more than they do. I've always maintained some things are bad, but make a story better. A realistic portrayal of rape is better than the candy coated stuff that's published here. It's brutal, it should be shown as brutal. Not for titillation, that's what the candy coating gives you, but show just how terrible bad shit is.

Ah, fair enough, but I don't read NonCon out of a desire to fuel my rage. I get enough of that from social media.

 

[dirk2024]

@BreakTheBar has an interesting take on this. I normally don't read Mind Control stories as I'm not a fan of nonconsent. However, this writer utilizes an App that "modifies" a person who is not the intended target. Hmmm, that's vague.

Let's try this. Person A uses the App to "modify" Person B so that Person C becomes attracted to Person B. Person C maintains their independence, so they can always still say "no".

Check out the series, I enjoyed reading it: https://www.literotica.com/s/ama-the-boyfriend-ch-01-10

 

[filthytrancendence]

I read over this thread because @dirk2024 bumped it, so really this is their fault

Interesting discussion. This post really stuck out to me:

Isn’t fantasy about exploring things we wouldn’t condone in real life, but still find fascinating? Much of its appeal, especially in erotica, lies in its immorality, illegality, boundary-crossing, forbidden fruit, and all that.

The infidelity fan sneers at incest, while the incest fan clutches pearls over non-consent, each blind to their own camel’s hump.

If you’re into mind control, just own it. Twisting it into something it’s not won’t make it right, it’ll just make it less fun.

Anyone looking for ethics, morals, or legitimacy on a sex site is dealing with some serious self-denial.

The way I read it, Noks is talking more from a reader/consumer's perspective here. And from that perspective I don't really have much to disagree with.

The rest of what I'm saying is from an author's perspective, deciding what they want their work to say and be about. And to be clear, I am not talking about non-consent in specific, though I will briefly circle back to it at the end. Noks broadened the topic from NC/R and MC and I am addressing that increase of scope.

Fantasy can also be about exploring things we do condone, but cannot experience in real life. In this way, the appeal inverts from this paradigm. It's not about immortality, illegality, etc.

It can be about manifesting what we view as true morality when the real world foists twisted morality upon us. It can be about imagining a world where unjust laws are not inflicted upon us. Hell, it can be about imagining a world where the laws we are subject to are actually just.

Less fun, perhaps. But self-denial it is not. And just throwing our hands up at ethics and morals just because we're writing erotica is, I feel, missing an opportunity to imagine.

I don't think anybody has an obligation to do this imagining. I expect a lot of people will think I'm an idiot for even arguing the point. But the opportunity is there. And I, for one, am striving toward the goal of imagining something better than the world I live in. Even if most people think it's stupid to do that through the lens of erotica. Even if I personally fuck it up and make a fool of myself attempting something dull and overly ambitious. The only way to figure out how not to fuck it up is to fuck it up enough times to learn.

And to tie this back to the actual topic of the thread, non-consent stories, @TheArsonist's comment is an excellent illustration of the kinds of questions I think are worth exploring in erotica. They did an excellent job articulating the nuances, and I will not re-hash it. But to summarize by framing this as a dialectic:

On the side of hyper-moralizing the category, it's tempting to say, "All NC/R and MC stories are abhorrent"

In the 'morals in erotica are stupid' camp, it's tempting to say, "It's just fantasy, who gives a fuck?"

Somewhere in the middle is the synthesis, "Consent is actually really complex and there are a lot of edge cases and nuances worth exploring within the safety of fiction by anybody who cares deeply about the ethics."

 

[AgentDoiron]

Wow, I didn't think my question would spark this much discussion. The story is complete, submitted, and pending. I'll update when it publishes.

 

[filthytrancendence]

Wow, I didn't think my question would spark this much discussion. The story is complete, submitted, and pending. I'll update when it publishes.

Congrats on getting it submitted!

Such is the way of the AH. If something's even a little bit interesting, it's bound to take some kind of unhinged turn about halfway down the first page.

 

[TheOtherTeacher]

I've only written one mind-control story.

The way I did it was a '1%' rule. If there was a tiny part of that person who wanted to do the action...the mind control worked. But if 0% wanted, it didn't work.

So a super mega lesbian who would never even look at penis couldn't be MCed into straight sex, but her girlfriend who had guys in the past and sometimes misses men would fall for the MC.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I have a little variation on the theme. I like the idea of a person 'falling down the rabbit hole'. He or she makes a decision and it turns out bad. There are all kinds of variations over every genre.
What bothers me is when there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Not say 'happy ending' but no end. I hate to read stories where the person is dehumanized. Or there is no reprieve. his/her life permanently rendered an ash.
Perhaps it is because I cannot see any human (unless they go totally mad) accepting a future with no future. A person without hope would be a very dangerous person. How is that kinky or even remotely erotic?

Even somebody in the worst of conditions has recourse. Think of the character in Shawshank, Andy who is about to be forced to suck a fellow prisoners cock. He tells them he might get a condition where his jaws might lock and rip that cock off (not in those words). He takes the beating.

But we have mind dead/controlled people in these stories dehumanized to the point they have little thought of what they are doing. Where is the eroticism in sex with no thought?

 

[Gamblnluck]

And I will say I write a fair amount in several genres. BDSM or incest or whatever. Most of my characters are not happily going about their daily life. They could get out if they really wanted to pay "The Price." so they stay where they are. But honestly? Once that cost exceeds the benefit, you have a problem.