On Writing Nonconsensual Erotica
Feb. 23rd, 2017 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowyn[ Content note: this is about written kink and rape scenes. Contains nothing explicit, however.]
I was talking to a friend of mine about the distinction between "rape written to titillate" and "rape written to be unpleasant/traumatic". (I am sure this is a totally normal, everyday topic, and there is nothing weird about discussing it. At least not when one is writing BDSM erotica.)
I am in kind of a strange position on this topic. I enjoy kink, including rape fantasies, but my tastes in written erotica are finicky enough that I don't look for stuff that satisfies it. I say "finicky" because it's not that my tastes are particularly bizarre, it's that it's hard for me to gauge what will appeal to me versus what will squick me. I have engaged in some BDSM, both online and RL, but not a great deal. So while I'm not totally hypothetical about the subject, I am nothing like an expert.
My experience, such as it is, is that there are two separate axes: "Do I, personally, find this erotic?" and "Is this designed to titillate?" I may regard something as titillating even if it doesn't appeal to me personally, and I may find something erotic even if I am fairly confident it's not intended to be.
This is not quite the same as "author intent". For example, someone can intend to write a rape scene as a horrific event, but end up writing it as erotic because that's the only way they know to describe the action involved. But I suspect it's pretty common for the way the author feels about the action to affect the way it's portrayed.
But I do have a lot of trouble articulating what exact qualities differentiate "this is not designed to titillate" from "this is".
To return to the specific issue of rape: I can easily name some examples of "non-titillating rape": Captive Prince (the first book, not the series) and Even the Wingless both contain scenes of rape, and in both cases I not only felt revulsed but felt that the scenes were written to evoke revulsion. I have a harder time naming examples of titillating rape, not because I've not read it, but because what I've read is all unpublished. Either it's stuff I wrote myself, or scenes I watched or took part in on a MUCK, or material from forums or archives I browsed many years ago. Oh, wait, I read a lot of rape in historical romance when I was a teen, except that it was supposed to be romantic so they never called it rape. The Flame and the Flower is a good example of that.
It is not as simple as "is it told from the victim's perspective or the assailant's?" or "does it emphasize the assailant's pleasure or the victim's misery?" Because a rape scene written to be erotic can still be from the victim's perspective and be about how much pain the victim is in.
I think one quality of titillation is the way the action and the victim are described: titillation will emphasize the sexiness of the body and use sensual language. Certainly some tropes are common only to erotica and porn, like the rape victim who comes to enjoy being raped. But it's hard for me to say what exactly distinguishes "this is fetishizing pain" and "this is depicting pain to make the reader feel tortured". I am put in mind of the Supreme Court justice who declined to define what he meant by "hard-core pornography": "I know it when I see it".
Anyway, I write this entire long-winded piece because I'm curious if other people share this same sense, that writing kink erotica is not a matter of what one describes as much as the way one describes it. And, if you do ... how would you describe the difference between the two?
I was talking to a friend of mine about the distinction between "rape written to titillate" and "rape written to be unpleasant/traumatic". (I am sure this is a totally normal, everyday topic, and there is nothing weird about discussing it. At least not when one is writing BDSM erotica.)
I am in kind of a strange position on this topic. I enjoy kink, including rape fantasies, but my tastes in written erotica are finicky enough that I don't look for stuff that satisfies it. I say "finicky" because it's not that my tastes are particularly bizarre, it's that it's hard for me to gauge what will appeal to me versus what will squick me. I have engaged in some BDSM, both online and RL, but not a great deal. So while I'm not totally hypothetical about the subject, I am nothing like an expert.
My experience, such as it is, is that there are two separate axes: "Do I, personally, find this erotic?" and "Is this designed to titillate?" I may regard something as titillating even if it doesn't appeal to me personally, and I may find something erotic even if I am fairly confident it's not intended to be.
This is not quite the same as "author intent". For example, someone can intend to write a rape scene as a horrific event, but end up writing it as erotic because that's the only way they know to describe the action involved. But I suspect it's pretty common for the way the author feels about the action to affect the way it's portrayed.
But I do have a lot of trouble articulating what exact qualities differentiate "this is not designed to titillate" from "this is".
To return to the specific issue of rape: I can easily name some examples of "non-titillating rape": Captive Prince (the first book, not the series) and Even the Wingless both contain scenes of rape, and in both cases I not only felt revulsed but felt that the scenes were written to evoke revulsion. I have a harder time naming examples of titillating rape, not because I've not read it, but because what I've read is all unpublished. Either it's stuff I wrote myself, or scenes I watched or took part in on a MUCK, or material from forums or archives I browsed many years ago. Oh, wait, I read a lot of rape in historical romance when I was a teen, except that it was supposed to be romantic so they never called it rape. The Flame and the Flower is a good example of that.
It is not as simple as "is it told from the victim's perspective or the assailant's?" or "does it emphasize the assailant's pleasure or the victim's misery?" Because a rape scene written to be erotic can still be from the victim's perspective and be about how much pain the victim is in.
I think one quality of titillation is the way the action and the victim are described: titillation will emphasize the sexiness of the body and use sensual language. Certainly some tropes are common only to erotica and porn, like the rape victim who comes to enjoy being raped. But it's hard for me to say what exactly distinguishes "this is fetishizing pain" and "this is depicting pain to make the reader feel tortured". I am put in mind of the Supreme Court justice who declined to define what he meant by "hard-core pornography": "I know it when I see it".
Anyway, I write this entire long-winded piece because I'm curious if other people share this same sense, that writing kink erotica is not a matter of what one describes as much as the way one describes it. And, if you do ... how would you describe the difference between the two?
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no subject
Date: 2017-02-23 04:06 pm (UTC)it's that it's hard for me to gauge what will appeal to me versus what will squick me.
This is definitely the case for me, and I do have a fondness for non- and dubious-consent.
I think it's definitely how one describes it, but some of it is also going to be in the eye of the beholder.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-24 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-23 11:37 pm (UTC)Like if the protagonist is being tortured; how do you differentiate between a torture scene intending to be horrific and a torture scene intending to be... tittilating is probably the right word here too. It's non-consensual, like rape; it's a thing that in real life is horrible, like rape; but I am particularly fond of it in fiction.
Honestly I can't even start to think of how they might be represented differently in the two situations, and I think that's partly because it's such a fringe subjective thing. Say, if you enjoy reading rape kink, the Venn diagram of the parts you like in fiction and the parts that make it horrible in reality is very likely near a circle.
I know that if I, personally, wanted to write something like torture or rape to be horrifying, I would aim to use a clinical tone with graphic description because there's a tonal dissonance there which highlights the actions.
But - and I think this is why it's so hard - both writing to horrify and writing to tittilate have, in a sense, the same goal: to incite a strong emotional response. So I think that it would be very difficult to objectively differentiate between the two, because they both are going to be using strongly emotional language about an objectively negative situation. And if you're not trying to portray the negative situation in a positive light - which I think most people writing genuinely non-con kink aren't going to do, but I could be wrong - then all you have to work with is the flavor of negative emotional language. Which is just as likely to vary with personal writing style as with goal in the scene.
Ultimately I think it has to come down to context and purpose of the scene, if it's going to be identifiable at all.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-23 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-23 11:54 pm (UTC)In traditional media, there's the Action Hero torture, and I think that's meant to be titillating in a way, but perhaps not the way you mean. Action stories use torture to show how bad-ass the hero is (he can take any punishment without breaking!) or to show the lengths he's willing to go to stop evil (he's not too squeamish to torture the villain to find out where that bomb is!) And the audience is supposed to get a thrill out of the scene, rather than cringe and be miserable.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-24 01:29 am (UTC)Lyn and I have talked about it a bit in the context of Hurt/Comfort fic; I like the hurt part, she likes the comfort part, and (I think) most H/C is written with the Hurt being the set-up for the Comfort pay-off.
Come to think of it, there's probably a section on AO3 for people who like their favorite characters being agonizingly tormented...
no subject
Date: 2017-02-24 02:10 am (UTC)But liking the "hurt" part makes sense to me. I understand it's not uncommon for people to like BDSM in a non-sexual way -- eg, to want to flog someone or be flogged purely for its own sake, independent of sexual attraction or lack thereof. So I figure it'd be like that? Surely there's a category for it, but I don't know how you'd find it.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-24 08:08 pm (UTC)Trying to tease out 'intent' is inherently problematic. I think maybe the _Wingless_ example helps here. What is the structural purpose of the scene within the story? Is it integral to the arc of the characters?
I think your musing about focus is close, though. What aspects of the scene are dwelt upon, where does the 'camera' linger? Possibly more significantly, where does the scene end, and how?
no subject
Date: 2017-02-28 01:24 am (UTC)I don't know. The distinction between "it's prurient" and "it's needed to effectively convey what happened to to tell this story" is a weird and subtle thing,