Is it harder to write DEI-focused stories at the moment?

[Actingup]

Let me preface this by saying that there is no whinging about site guidelines, politics or readers in this, and if this post gets a response, I'd respectfully ask that we try and keep it that way.

However, I had a really interesting, positive comment on a story yesterday from @FrenchTomcat, who said, in part, "Densely packed with emotions, growth, politics and eroticism." The story is "What the Maid Saw and Did," co-written with @PennyThompson. I found that interesting because I didn't think that there were any politics as such in the story in the sense of promoting a particular political philosophy. The story does touch on diversity, equity and inclusion issues though, with the lead character being at the bottom of the power chain (she's a cleaner travelling 2 hours each way on a bus to work at a conference hotel), and one of the other leads being non-binary. It made me question whether something that I hadn't regarded as political is suddenly more political now.

(Incidentally, on another story of mine last year, Anonymous wrote "Wokey at times, western cultural artifact ffs, but love the story" - so I guess they were accusing it being too culturally respectful )

So my question is.. are authors (and particularly US authors) feeling any implicit extra pressure to avoid DEI themes at the moment, because of DEI being a hot topic in the USA at the moment and the site being hosted there? Since the story did get published and none of the commentators have been critical, I'm not feeling like there's any explicit pressure, but I'm still curious. As an Australian, it's a bit hard to get a sense of whether the prevailing cultural mood has actually shifted substantially. And @FrenchTomcat is in France (duh!) which of course has created some of the most famous DEI-centric literature in history, so I thought that was an interesting place to make that comment from.

Note that the site guidelines say, in part:

Literotica is a diverse open-minded kink-positive community dedicated to the exploration of a wide range adult fantasies in fiction. We support artists’ First Amendment right to create freely. We also acknowledge publishers’ First Amendment right to create a community accommodating to their specific members.

And prohibit:

• Works that promote or glorify hate, intolerance, or violence towards any person or group.
• Works that promote or focus heavily on politics or religion, or political or religious figures. Lit readers are bombarded with political disputes on other platforms and they prefer to avoid these types of divisive issues in their erotica.

So I think that the default attitude would be to support diversity and inclusion themes, whilst still being respectful of the need to avoid gratutious politics (including in countries outside the USA). And possibly to be aware that it may be necessary to calmly reassert the diverse open-minded thing on occasion.

Interested in other's thoughts? Not about the worth or otherwise of current politicians, but on the reality of whether or not authors are feeling impacts on their storytelling. I hope the question makes sense

Posting with trepidation....

 

[HordHolm]

I would say that you can have 'politics', and 'Politics', and it isn't necessarily clear what is meant. Small 'p' politics can refer to the general conditions in which people live and their power dynamics, rather than big ideas or ideologies implied by that big 'P'.

I'm cautious about going further because I would really rather not cross over any lines in this forum. On the other hand this is a valid question.

I would say, though, as a Brit living in mainland Europe I feel no pressure whatsoever about how I write characters and situations. In a current WIP (set historically), I am going to touch on some class issues and social dynamics, and I don't feel constrained. But, I am also aware that I might not be writing in an environment where I would feel it around me and thus feel affected, or for an audience that is likely to be too bothered about it. Yet.

 

[Bamagan]

Good luck on this not turning into a cesspool.
I don't feel any pressure to either avoid or address the topic, but I'm probably not a great source for data. I don't have votes or comments enabled on Lit, so I don't hear anything good or bad when I include a character whose name is a clear signal of either non-U.S., or at best recent-U.S., origins. All of the hate mail I received before I turned that off was about the fetishy elements of my stories (of which race is actually not one). The closest I got to commentary about anything DEI-related was on another site, asking how a character's name was pronounced.
All that being said, I find the idea of porn, especially written porn, being the next battleground for representation to be somewhat comical, verging on the absurd. I love writing absurd things, so am I now wondering just how far I could push the envelope in Humor/Satire with something titled Vox Populi, Vox DEI...

 

[XerXesXu]

There's nothing unusual in the readers reading being different from writer's intent. A large part of Literary Theory is devoted to this phenomenon. It's an unprofitable field of enquiry.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I think, if anything, the current environment makes people see things like this where they don’t actually exist. Some people are just going to be hypersensitive to it, which is probably what happened here.

That being said, I spend 90% of my time writing in the IR space, and have never had these kinds of comments, even though some of my major characters are diverse and they’re all in very senior positions of authority.

Then again, maybe it’s because of my genre that I don’t see this much - people kind of expect diversity in an IR story, lol.

I have to go check this one out!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It all depends on how you write your story.

Woke is inherently political, but your story doesn't need to be, regardless of whether you include those values in it.
For example, the way I see it, if the focus of your story is the gender of your characters or their sexual orientation, then yes, it's political, which of course doesn't have to be a bad thing if that's what you want to write about. But if you focus on a person, their wants and dreams, and their everyday life, AND that person also happens to be trans or non-binary or something else, then it's not political.

It's a fine line you have to walk to avoid being political, if that's what your aim is. Naturally, there will be those among readers who will see things you never intended to say, and who will consider your story woke-political, or not woke-political enough. That's unavoidable, I suppose, but also not something you should particularly care about.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I suspect people are more likely to comment on anything they perceived as DEI-related, both positively (to encourage you to keep it up) and negatively (because they think there's a better reception for such comments now).

The personal is political.

 

[TheLobster]

As LC68 would be quick to point out, the declared intent of Lit's rules is often far cry from the reality of their enforcement. If the first bullet point you cited as prohibited was true:

Works that promote or glorify hate, intolerance, or violence towards any person or group.

then, for one, most of the BNWO genre should've been nuked from orbit.

As for the second prohibition, I believe "heavily" is the keyword there. Blatant agitprops on behalf of one party or another are what this is seemingly meant to target, not the kind of underlying political themes you'd find in any more complex piece of literature. Neither are the stories which have the political process as the backdrop, e.g., cabinet politics, parliament as a setting, campaign trails, etc. This is all fine.

If you want a litmus test, I'd think it's good to ask yourself whether your story is timeless enough for the political elements, if any, to still be pertinent if it was read a few decades in the past or into the future. The plight of the poor and downtrodden, while political, obviously would be; but the explicit invocations of Orange Man Bad or calling AOC dumb would inherently make the story a time capsule that captures the current partisan politics and thus be out of scope for Lit.

 

[lovecraft68]

then, for one, most of the BNWO genre should've been nuked from orbit.

I don't like to kink shame, and I don't like censorship and anyone deciding what should or should not be.

But BNWO and BTB stories need to have an exception made for them. The same people who talk a good game about how awful hate and various "ists" are, will flock to defend both. Gotta love it.

 

[lovecraft68]

DEI has created all of the "ists" it claims it's against. Which of course was the exact intention. But that discussion is more for another forum here.

Personally, I don't give it the time of day. I see people, period, it ends there. I've always been that way and always will. No one is more or less to me for any reason other than are they an asshole or a decent person. That reflects in my writing where no one is special because of a color or gender or sexual identity or whatever else it is that people keep preaching I should be obsessed with.

Steering away from a topic because people might not like it, is not writing your story, its pandering.

Deliberately putting something in your story to appeal to a political faction's disingenuous ideology as in "Look at me, look at how liberal/conservative I am" is the same.

I certainly understand we live in a society where this is an issue and a topic worth discussing for many, and that's really just sad.

My wife is fond of telling folks "If you look hard enough you are always going to see what you want to see, so maybe stop looking so hard." I wonder if the person who made the comment is guilty of that and really pushing it into the story they read far more than the author intended it to be there.

 

[iwatchus]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is BNWO?

 

[TheRedLantern]

This hits me where I live. Born & live in the US. My home town is a bastion for young, left-wing politics. I'm also not white, and interracial raceplay is the floor, roof, walls, and furniture of my sex fantasies.

I'll qualify this by saying that I'm assuming you mean "DEI" as "having racial and cultural overtones" and not "including characters to tick certain identity-based checkboxes." If you mean the latter, I have no insight.

In my experience, this has always been a difficult topic to discuss. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was underground. Talking about race was subversive and naughty, so I'm not surprised to find myself and other people packing it in with other subversive topics like power and turning it into a kink.

The introduction of intersectionality and race theory (the graduate level legal and sociological concepts, not the stuff that gets raged about on Twitter) expanded the language available to use if we wanted. Privilege. Colonialism. Systemic racism. Oppression. Things I had never thought of were being given to me along with an explicit moral framework that said that these topics were "wrong" and therefore dirty, and so I incorporated them into my fantasies immediately.

But at the same time, the first post in this thread zeroed in on how it's gotten harder. When you bring a real-world idea into your story, you bring ALL of it, not just the part that you wanted. You have to take ALL of the baggage that comes with it because your reader will. You couldn't write a story about, say, Bill Cosby and deflect the inevitable criticism by saying "I meant Bill Cosby from BEFORE he started roofie-ing women." The two things are forever connected.

The other point that I want to mention that was made was the cultural context. I've found a very, very, very, very consistent theme which is that these ideas vibrate differently in the minds of someone from the US vs UK vs Europe vs Australia vs etc. To use an obvious example, there's a TON of context that comes in the mind of a US based reader when the scene is between a black person and a white person. That context is almost certainly different in a culture that hasn't been violently grappling with black-white race relations for more than its entire history. So it's not suprising to me to hear that misinterpretations arise across borders.

Obviously none of what I'm saying is a rule set in stone, these are just tendencies that I've observed over years of conversations with anyone who wanted to discuss race and sex without turning into a giant asshole.

From an artistic standpoint, this is a powerful idea. Powerful like lit dynamite in your hand. If the POV character is white, for example, and he feels attracted to an Asian woman, just mentioning one or two "Asian coded" characteristics lets you tap one part of your reader's brain (the love interest is Asian) and set up other vibrations elsewhere (eg, the mysteriousness of another culture, the millennia-old influence struggle between the East and the West, sexual fetishization of Asian women, etc). If you do that with intention, you can make an extremely subtle point. If you do it without intention ... well you just held that stick of dynamite one more second than you should have.

Apologies that this is so long, This is the main topic I'm trying to talk about with my writing (hopefully my first story gets approved soon), and I wanted to get my thoughts in before this turns into an angry discussion of the "n-word."

 

[alohadave]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is BNWO?

Black New World Order

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't sense a lot of pressure on this issue one way or another at the story level, but I haven't woven these themes into my stories that often, and that might be why.

I would say that in the time I have been here--8 1/2 years--there has been a little bit of an uptick in moral judginess about stories in this forum. The "you shouldn't write that" attitude, and the expression of qualms about story content that might violate current political/ethical norms. But I don't think it's overbearing, not enough to discourage authors from exploring their own views in their stories.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I've included political satire in a few of my stories, usually in a futuristic sense. Things like mentioning in 2032, the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice Brent Kavanaugh made some landmark ruling on such and such. Most readers ignore them, some get a laugh out of them, and one or two may comment on the political aspect without embracing the satire.

 

[Actingup]

Thanks for the really thoughtful responses so far (and I had no idea what BNWO meant either!). @TheRedLantern, I did mean ' "having racial and cultural overtones" - or rather, having a diversity of characters and backgrounds because that is part of an interesting context for a story rather than seeking to 'tick boxes'. And I do try and avoid punching down in my stories, so I suppose that's a bit wokey, but whatever

 

[Voboy]

Honestly, I doubt all that many people truly care.

To the extent that Lit is a representative sample of most of the US (maybe, maybe not; no way to know), there's a very reasonable chance that politics in general and DEI in particular is not of great concern to your readers. Despite stories in the press, daily life in most of America is NOT dominated by constant angst over these issues, and many (if not most) tend to keep their opinions to themselves.

By and large, workplaces are not fearfully plagued by toxic discussions about DEI training. Schools are not cesspools of gender-affirmation against parental wishes. And HR departments are not hyper-sensitive about hair-trigger complaints. Some workplaces, regions, and environments will be worse than others, but my point is that a great many people here simply won't give a shit if their smut contains these themes.

In my own writing, I often treat the current US confusion about these issues in a mildly satirical way. Just yesterday, I wrote a passage in my WiP about a workplace with a memo that had gone around, telling employees to use "unhoused" instead of "homeless." The narrator gives it little attention, but follows it because he's not a boat-rocker; he mentions that a colleague of his ignores it. Then the narrative moves on. I put that in there not because I care about those terms, but because I was trying to make a point about how employees there thought of their workplace and its directives. The goal was not to virtue-signal to my readers; the goal was to deepen their understanding of those two characters.

 

[CliimaxForYou]

[No personal attacks or trolling - including creating accounts for this specific purpose. Heated discussions are fine, even welcome. However, personally attacking / kink-shaming a fellow author or reader is not allowed within the Author's Hangout. Threads which devolve into the exchanging of insults will be closed and repeat offenders will be given a timeout, per the AH rules.]

 

[lovecraft68]

Honestly, I doubt all that many people truly care.

To the extent that Lit is a representative sample of most of the US (maybe, maybe not; no way to know), there's a very reasonable chance that politics in general and DEI in particular is not of great concern to your readers. Despite stories in the press, daily life in most of America is NOT dominated by constant angst over these issues, and many (if not most) tend to keep their opinions to themselves.

By and large, workplaces are not fearfully plagued by toxic discussions about DEI training. Schools are not cesspools of gender-affirmation against parental wishes. And HR departments are not hyper-sensitive about hair-trigger complaints. Some workplaces, regions, and environments will be worse than others, but my point is that a great many people here simply won't give a shit if their smut contains these themes.

In my own writing, I often treat the current US confusion about these issues in a mildly satirical way. Just yesterday, I wrote a passage in my WiP about a workplace with a memo that had gone around, telling employees to use "unhoused" instead of "homeless." The narrator gives it little attention, but follows it because he's not a boat-rocker; he mentions that a colleague of his ignores it. Then the narrative moves on. I put that in there not because I care about those terms, but because I was trying to make a point about how employees there thought of their workplace and its directives. The goal was not to virtue-signal to my readers; the goal was to deepen their understanding of those two characters.

I think your first statement was the norm a few years ago, but I do think in this hyper politized society more people are seeing ghosts where there aren't any and getting triggered by just about anything. I make this point in regard to stories that might push a certain agenda enough to be noticeable.

In your example about the homeless, I call those "drops" where in a story I'll put something that is meant to be a statement of sorts based on something I believe in out there but just leave it there and veer off so I'm not harping on it. I imagine many readers probably miss it entirely. I often put things there to amuse myself.

 

[lovecraft68]

After years of being on Lit, this was the first infuriating post I’ve come across.

Self-promotion. Ick
Masquerading of false intellectualism.
I’d wager that no one comes to a site like Lit to DEI stories. It’s an adult fantasy site for god sake. And then after putting this question out there to everyone, you try and control the responses and feedback?? Seriously…why ask a question if you only want feedback that aligns with what you want? Idiot. Wanker. Snowflake. I’ll be sure never to read any of your stories or posts here again. Just ew.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how you feel about this.

I'd wager that you're right in people don't exactly equate a dirty story site with much other than dirty stories. But I do think once they're here they definitely push their personal views, morals and politics into both stories and comments.

There are some serious moralists in the comment section here, especially on stories involving fictional infidelity committed by make believe people.

This is part of the internet and first rule of the interwebz is "Thou shalt use this platform to tell everyone about yours."

 

[HordHolm]

Idiot. Wanker. Snowflake. I’ll be sure never to read any of your stories or posts here again. Just ew.

Really? Was there a need for the ad hominems? That tells me more about you than it does about the OP.

 

[CliimaxForYou]

I'm having a hard time figuring out how you feel about this.

I'd wager that you're right in people don't exactly equate a dirty story site with much other than dirty stories. But I do think once they're here they definitely push their personal views, morals and politics into both stories and comments.

There are some serious moralists in the comment section here, especially on stories involving fictional infidelity committed by make believe people.

This is part of the internet and first rule of the interwebz is "Thou shalt use this platform to tell everyone about yours."

You raise good points.

For most readers though, (and probably the authors when reading comments), it’s like athletes…no one goes to games to see political displays like taking a knee during an anthem. We go to watch the sporting events. No one wants to pay obscene amounts for ticket prices to be held hostage to your inappropriate displays of personal politics. You’re going to lose your audience if that’s your focus.

 

[CliimaxForYou]

I think your first statement was the norm a few years ago, but I do think in this hyper politized society more people are seeing ghosts where there aren't any and getting triggered by just about anything. I make this point in regard to stories that might push a certain agenda enough to be noticeable.

In your example about the homeless, I call those "drops" where in a story I'll put something that is meant to be a statement of sorts based on something I believe in out there but just leave it there and veer off so I'm not harping on it. I imagine many readers probably miss it entirely. I often put things there to amuse myself.

I smiled at the idea of putting things into amuse yourself. : ). It’s important to have fun with this.

 

[ChuckWolf]

The term, DEI has become hyper-politicized and I think if you reference it in your erotic stories, it'll pull your readers right out of them.

Also, down the road, it'll make those stories look dated.

 

[THBGato]

I would say, though, as a Brit living in mainland Europe I feel no pressure whatsoever about how I write characters and situations.

Interesting you say that. I'm also a Brit in mainland Europe, but the influx of Eastern Europeans (including Russians) fleeing Putin have brought some very reactionary attitudes with them. Many of their kids attend my child's school, where some of them objected to a book on the curriculum because - I kid you not - the author was black! (Weirdly, all the main characters on it were white, and race didn't enter in the story at all - I read it to see what the fuss was about.) Then they got up in arms about the cross-dressing in Shakespeare! Luckily, the school is sticking to their guns so far.

So, yeah, don't get too complacent!