Fan fiction and feminism

[Endofthedays]

A thread for discussing fanfic.

Thanks for starting this! For those not involved in fanfic, it's notable in that it's largely a female community with writing by and for a female audience - and yet there's (IMO) all sorts of internalised misogyny there (hardly surprising I guess given that internalised misogyny is everywhere, and all of us have a hard job throwing it off).

For context, I'm going to post what I put on the kink-shaming thread - apologies, bit of a wall of text. It's about women having rape fantasies, as expressed through fanfiction.

I've been involved in the fanfic scene for some years now (more from a perspective of wanting to write and explore the fictional worlds and characters that grab me perspective rather than indulging kink - I do, however, write vanilla sex scenes on occasion). This has led me to give a lot of thought to why a quite substantial proportion of women genuinely like (however much that liking may be socially conditioned) rape fantasies, given that I cannot get my head round why any woman would.

There's what I call the Libfem analysis: rape fantasies are either a metaphor for overwhelming passion, or they stem from women's internalised suppression of their sexual urges in a society that divides women into "virgins" and "whores" (on this analysis, rape fantasies are the only way "nice girls" can have guilt-free fantasies, because the choice to engage in sex has been taken away from them). I've talked to enough American women shaking off the chains of Evangelical Protestantism and an abstinence only upbringing to know that there's some truth in this as an analysis of the "why", for at least some women. I still don't think it makes it healthy.

Then there's what I think of as the Radfem analysis: rape and sexual assault are ubiquitous in our culture, and pretty much decriminalised (rape convictions are now in the low single digit percentages for reported rapes - and when you consider that most rapes are unreported, this effectively means men can rape with impunity). This leads to a sort of society wide form of Stockholm syndrome: if you can't do anything about the chances of being raped, then (cognitive dissonance as coping strategy) you might as well accept the male gaze and the way male writers/film makers/pornographers eroticise rape. It's like the date rape victim who then has a one or two week attempt at a "relationship" with her rapist (not an uncommon response) in a desperate attempt to normalise what's been done to her and pretend it was just "bad sex" rather than rape. For me, this analysis holds more water (I don't think the two explanations are mutually exclusive - both could explain different parts of what's going on).

(There's also the issue of rape victims using narrative to reframe their experiences and take back control of the narrative.)

What I have no time for is the shitty patriarchal analysis (often dressed up in the pseudo scientific terms of evolutionary psychology/sociobiology) which says "What rape fantasies show us is that rape is natural and even women like it really." And the whole crap about "don't kink shame me" comes dangerously close to this - that enacting any fantasy is okay if you find someone who supposedly consents.

For every woman re-enacting a 50 shades fantasy of rape in the bedroom, there's a man in that bedroom role-playing being a rapist. And for me, the line between role-playing being a rapist and actually being a rapist is so wafer thin it might as well not be there.

Now, do I c&p my response, or do I throw myself into the ABO link and doubtless disturb myself? There used to be the odd mpreg fic around (I should know; I lampooned enough of them) but it sounds like things have taken a turn for the decidedly-weirder since I fell out of fandom on account of having zero time with a small baby around.

I think it's worth highlighting and repeating, though: rape fantasies aren't about rape. They're informed by the eroticisation of power-imbalances, and by women's sexuality being moulded to conform to the male gaze. The principal thing, in my experience, that separates rape fantasies from actual rape is that, in the fantasy, the person being "raped" actually wants it aka is consenting-but-pretending-not-to - and the person doing the raping doesn't get the luxury of inverted commas around the verb because they don't give a shit whether consent is there.

It's not a fantasy about being raped. It's a fantasy about it not actually being rape.

It's not a fantasy about being raped. It's a fantasy about it not actually being rape

That is a brilliant way of framing it (and such a useful way of getting to the bottom of why this stuff isn't the fault of the woman having the fantasy - the unhealthiness is rooted in the surrounding culture).

Yep - because why do we have this urge to reframe non-con as not-actually-rape? Where does that psychological need come from?

I'm going to hazard a guess that it comes from the cognitive dissonance of being gaslit by 99% of the world about what rape actually is.

This should have been on the other thread!

I'm going to c&p one of my posts from the other thread, as it's relevant to the general topic. Because it's either that, or share my immediate response to that alpha/beta/omega thing, which can be summarised as "what the actual fuck happened to fanfiction while I wasn't paying attention?"

Seriously, that is all kinds of messed up and so very blatantly informed by porn tropes. And also by pon farr, which I am now going to have to reassess my understanding of.

the "your kink is not my kink and that's okay" meme was bullshit

Actually I think it's a brilliant example of how reasonable and tolerant attitudes get perverted by the sociocultural context.

The underlying idea, as I understood it at the time, was: different people want to read different things, and that's okay. I'm not wrong or morally deficient for wanting to read about the tragic doomed love between Remus and Sirius, and you're not wrong or morally deficient for wanting to read about McGonagall and Snape making wild monkey love in the Room of Requirement.

But then you send that idea out into the wild, and it gets absorbed by people who've internalised all sorts of damaging and fucked up ideas about what constitutes healthy sexual behaviour - because they've been saturated in a culture that normalises damaging and fucked up ideas about what constitutes healthy sexual behaviour.

Back then it was also a handy way of saying "don't ask me to concrit your hetfic; I'm a slasher and I can't do it and I don't feel like being judged for that right now." Nowadays I look back and think "I was a slasher because I couldn't handle the inherent power imbalances in het relationships."

Tyro I hate the non-con/dub-con flags on AO3: they should read "rape" and "rape with a side order of gaslighting."

I have never heard of this before. Is it well written? Who are the most eminent authors? Thanks.

I have been writing fanfic for about twenty years.

I currently RP ABO. I’ve been writing my current rp for about five years. My main character is an alpha. I would consider it very much an exploration of how people function within societal Stockholm syndrome, and if it is possible to love someone within that society.

I Don’t know why that political consideration is so emotionally compelling.

Immensely variable in quality, woman. The best stuff can be very good, the worst is truly terrible, though sometimes unintentionally funny with it. There's also some very funny parodies, some of them of the original source material, some of them taking the piss out of bad fics, some sending up the recurring tropes of fanfic itself.

Some of it is smutty, some of it isn't (there's an age rating system on most sites). And there's some incredibly weird stuff.

People tend not to do it by author, but by source material (Star Wars, Marvel, Lord of the Rings etc). The biggest website is probably Archive of Our Own (AO3).

Agreed, Barbara. But again, I think it's an example of the kernel of a good idea going horribly wrong.

There needs to be a tag indicating "this fic contains sexual content without consent" and I can understand why the phrases noncon and dubcon were invented. If you have to tag your fic "rapey as all hell" then you have to accept that the erotica you've written features 'that thing we all recognise is a heinous crime'. Much easier to use a different word, to distance yourself from the reality of rape and tell yourself that's it's okay really because it's just a story.

Dubcon I think is conceptually linked to rape fantasies. There is no explicit consent, there is an appearance of the lack of consent, and yet both parties interpret the experience positively.

Once again I'm realising that the way I personally understood and used these terms was somewhat out of sync with the way many others used them. I understood them as a necessary warning which allowed me to protect myself from reading material I would find distressing.

That might be how the phrases started, but they function to normalise rape by not calling it rape.

I would consider it very much an exploration of how people function within societal Stockholm syndrome, and if it is possible to love someone within that society

That's interesting. I think in philosophy there might be some overlap with what I'm interested in: my main fandom is a kind of quasi medieval, feudal and hence overtly patriarchal world, so I explore women within that world, partly as a way of exploring indirectly how women can function within our less overtly patriarchal world (but still patriarchal enough to screw them over while pretending it isn't doing so).

One thing I find fascinating is this: my main fandom seems to have a lot of middle aged women like me doing much the same thing: using fanfic to explore how women can push back against patriarchy. But my other fandom, which is a sci fi universe, hence should be amenable to be being reimagined as a world without patriarchy, seems to attract quite a lot of women who want to write Mills and Boon in space.

More on tags - since the purpose is to both help people search for their niche interests and avoid stuff they find upsetting, there really needs to be a distinction between "rape because the author has sexual fantasies about it" and "rape as part of the story, because bad shit happens out there and the author wants to process it."

The only fic I ever read these days is set in a medieval/feudal patriarchy too. When done well, it's an excellent setting for exploring the idea of women and girls navigating the constraints of patriarchy while retaining agency.

When done poorly, though...

I don’t know much about the content of non con and dub con, but there is also a category which is just called rape. I assume that there is a kink difference between rape and non con rather than a moral one?

I would assume that non con covers a range of activities that are broader than rape.

In terms of Stockholm syndrome, it is important to me that the sexism is explicit rather than the huge level of gaslighting that exists in the real world. I’m also open to the idea that I might write ABO because I actually am a bad person. I don’t want to dress it up with any kind of lib fem defence.

there really needs to be a distinction between "rape because the author has sexual fantasies about it" and "rape as part of the story, because bad shit happens out there and the author wants to process it."

This.

I'm perfectly happy to read something in which a character is dealing with having been raped (so long as it's well-written and sensitively handled). I don't want to read erotica-with-rape. Hell, I don't want there to be erotica-with-rape, because it's not coming from a healthy place and the effect on the reader is not benign.

See id bloody love to get into fanfic but whenever I dabble it just seems like a load of incel wank fodder and wading through that to find anything good feels like hard work.

On topic, I think some people (all of us?) want to lose control in a controlled environment and that’s got re-named/adopted and moulded into ‘hey, hey women like rape - cherkiiiing’ by (spoiler) men!

Okay I was a bit harsh about ABO on the other thread because the stuff that is badly written in that genre seems to be a celebration of very regressive and at worst rapey attitudes to sexual relationships: one partner as naturally dominant, the other as naturally submissive and sexual urges as something which cannot be resisted (which I presume is the author's kink coming through).

But I have read the occasional ABO fic where the point seems to be to use the constraints of the genre to explore where beliefs about dominance and submission come from, whether in an imagined world where they were strongly "biologically" driven they could nonetheless be resisted on moral grounds, whether "natural" omegas could be leaders or heroes in such a world. (I read one recently where the new queen was an omega which was seen by the country as a blessing because she wouldn't be a war monger).

I may be really going off the point of feminism here, but I am all for the uncontrollable urge in fanfic.

But the uncontrollable urge should be to be very sexual, not to force that sexuality on to an unwilling partner.

More like ‘I can’t go to work for the next three days’ not ‘I have to rape you.’

BarbaraStrozzi Thanks, I've never been able to get into fantasy fiction, but will try again.

No, I think that's very much to the point. A lot of rape in fanfic is actually a combination of lazy writing coupled with being so steeped in the male gaze the writer doesn't even realise what they're writing.

I'm a big fan of overwhelming passion expressed as "I can't get out of bed long enough to do the stuff I ought to be doing."

I'd say don't force yourself, woman. If a genre doesn't float your boat, there's no point ploughing through it.

There's one set of fantasy novels I love, but most of them don't do it for me, specially the willy waving Conan the Barbarian type novels: "Graarg son of Fartersonn raised his mighty sword Crotchtickler and smote the Brobdingnagian warrior before him."

Ah yes, the idea that women think nothing for themselves, that they're blank canvases, as innocent as children, until they 'internalise misogyny'.

Pretty much all the longer ABO fics I've read have been about exploring gender politics. Sometimes that's done in a romance novel way, with an alpha/omega couple challenging the expectations of society, but one of main fandoms is hockey rpf, and there it's often used as a way of highlighting the huge differences in the way that make and female athletes are treated by taking a real-life successful male athlete and hampering him with the various impediments that talented female athletes have to deal with.

Barbara Didn't Lessing and Le Guin write good feminist fantasy novels, or were they fan fic? I like you Brobdignag one......

And actually, now that I think about it, fanfic is the place where I read the most explicit scenes of discussing and negotiating and defining consent.