fridgepunk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fridgepunk) wrote2009-06-28 01:20 pm
fridgepunk) wrote2009-06-28 01:20 pm
On the Problems I have with Pon Farr and contemporary slash fiction
I've used "rapefic" in that last post as though it's far more expansive than it usually is taken to be, this is because all of the behaviour that is getting all sorts of fancy eupahmisms thrown at them is rape.
I know people prefer "dub-con" or "non-con" or even "abduction" but the proper term for what occurs in these fics is "rape".
I understand that there's a point in distinguishing between "dub-con" and "non-con" and "delayed consent" in the context of rapefics as a whole, but I must disagree with Vsome reader and writer in the extreme on the issue that, in the context of fics in general, calling rapefics "non-con" and asserting that it's a valid term that describe how "its not really rape" because it's a "fantasy" and "porn" is bullshit - it's like calling bondage "phys-const" (short for "physically constrained") and then saying that it's not really bondage because it's "just" fantasy.
the main focus of dub-con and non-con fics is rape, and together they are types of rapefics, and I was under the impression that that was a given among fanficcers and fen, aside from theferret of course who lives the bud-con dream I'd guess, but apparently reading the various other terminological defenses this is not so.
Knowing now that the writers of many slashfics don't quite grasp that rape is in fact rape, or at least do not consider the fictional accounts of rape they write as rape takes some of the joy out of those fics for me.
I personally don't read peter F hamilton because his routine habit of producing narratives in which creepy as hell sex is treated as fine and normal (see The reality dysfunction in which women can only achieve anything by engaging in prostitution or sleeping with a man, yet this is presented as empowerment of women in an unironic fashion and in which it becomes clear that peter f hamilton does not get how a sex scene in which a ridiculous passive 16 year old girl being pawed by his 20-something attempted han-solo-style space hero and his nanotech-assisted-wang is astoudingly nauseating) and I have real problems seperating narrative from author, in so far as half the fun of a story is based on an interpretation of the text that occasionally has stuff the author did not even mean to put in there, or the easter eggs and ant speak the authors may engage in.
By that I mean that sometimes a story will have a bit which, when interpreted in one way is fine and good, but which suddenly takes on a very nasty appearance when you find out about the author's politics and what they meant to say with that section, and once I learn about the author's politics I cannot read past the crappy intent back to the original reading I had of that passage or section or plot point. All those "imminent race war" novels that got produced en mass during the 60's and 70's in britain and america are a good example of this - a nieve reading might give the impression that the narrator and protagonist, who is generally an obnoxious, woman hating, idiot with no real redeeming aspects unless they're a strawliberal (in which case they will get swept up in the race war and become irredeemable gits after suffering personal tragedy and taking up the gun in defense of white people), might have been conceived as an ironic commentary on the sort of people who honestly believe that the immigrant brown folk are going to start a race war and kill all the white men and rape all the white women - however the author honestly does not get how much of an obnoxious and unlikable bastard their protagonist is (after all, they're generally mary sue self inserts to a small extent) and the authors honestly thought that the bits where the protag puts a white feminist in their place with a bit of slut shaming made the protagonist look good and sympathetic.
Similarly, I now have to face the problem that when many slash writers write about pon farr'd spock violently raping kirk, and then getting all apologetic and ashamed about it in the afterglow and have kirk forgive spock for his trespasses, that this is not supposed to be an elaborate statement on the power dynamic and complexity inherent to the kirk/spock relationship, involving as it does a physically stronger but heirachally inferior spock and heirarchally (and emotionally) superior but physically inferior kirk, but to be how the author concieves all homosexual men having sex with each other to be like to a certain extent! And that the forgiveness shown by kirk at the end is the author trying to show that it wasn't really rape because kirk totally was okay with it in the end! Consent works retroactively right? Right?
Which is a very different story, and one which makes me queesy quite frankly, because it's how rapists think.
No means no.
I know people prefer "dub-con" or "non-con" or even "abduction" but the proper term for what occurs in these fics is "rape".
I understand that there's a point in distinguishing between "dub-con" and "non-con" and "delayed consent" in the context of rapefics as a whole, but I must disagree with Vsome reader and writer in the extreme on the issue that, in the context of fics in general, calling rapefics "non-con" and asserting that it's a valid term that describe how "its not really rape" because it's a "fantasy" and "porn" is bullshit - it's like calling bondage "phys-const" (short for "physically constrained") and then saying that it's not really bondage because it's "just" fantasy.
the main focus of dub-con and non-con fics is rape, and together they are types of rapefics, and I was under the impression that that was a given among fanficcers and fen, aside from theferret of course who lives the bud-con dream I'd guess, but apparently reading the various other terminological defenses this is not so.
Knowing now that the writers of many slashfics don't quite grasp that rape is in fact rape, or at least do not consider the fictional accounts of rape they write as rape takes some of the joy out of those fics for me.
I personally don't read peter F hamilton because his routine habit of producing narratives in which creepy as hell sex is treated as fine and normal (see The reality dysfunction in which women can only achieve anything by engaging in prostitution or sleeping with a man, yet this is presented as empowerment of women in an unironic fashion and in which it becomes clear that peter f hamilton does not get how a sex scene in which a ridiculous passive 16 year old girl being pawed by his 20-something attempted han-solo-style space hero and his nanotech-assisted-wang is astoudingly nauseating) and I have real problems seperating narrative from author, in so far as half the fun of a story is based on an interpretation of the text that occasionally has stuff the author did not even mean to put in there, or the easter eggs and ant speak the authors may engage in.
By that I mean that sometimes a story will have a bit which, when interpreted in one way is fine and good, but which suddenly takes on a very nasty appearance when you find out about the author's politics and what they meant to say with that section, and once I learn about the author's politics I cannot read past the crappy intent back to the original reading I had of that passage or section or plot point. All those "imminent race war" novels that got produced en mass during the 60's and 70's in britain and america are a good example of this - a nieve reading might give the impression that the narrator and protagonist, who is generally an obnoxious, woman hating, idiot with no real redeeming aspects unless they're a strawliberal (in which case they will get swept up in the race war and become irredeemable gits after suffering personal tragedy and taking up the gun in defense of white people), might have been conceived as an ironic commentary on the sort of people who honestly believe that the immigrant brown folk are going to start a race war and kill all the white men and rape all the white women - however the author honestly does not get how much of an obnoxious and unlikable bastard their protagonist is (after all, they're generally mary sue self inserts to a small extent) and the authors honestly thought that the bits where the protag puts a white feminist in their place with a bit of slut shaming made the protagonist look good and sympathetic.
Similarly, I now have to face the problem that when many slash writers write about pon farr'd spock violently raping kirk, and then getting all apologetic and ashamed about it in the afterglow and have kirk forgive spock for his trespasses, that this is not supposed to be an elaborate statement on the power dynamic and complexity inherent to the kirk/spock relationship, involving as it does a physically stronger but heirachally inferior spock and heirarchally (and emotionally) superior but physically inferior kirk, but to be how the author concieves all homosexual men having sex with each other to be like to a certain extent! And that the forgiveness shown by kirk at the end is the author trying to show that it wasn't really rape because kirk totally was okay with it in the end! Consent works retroactively right? Right?
Which is a very different story, and one which makes me queesy quite frankly, because it's how rapists think.
No means no.