Now that I'm writing all this gen, I'm thinking about non-con

[rivkat]

Note: of tangential relevance at best to the general warnings discussion. Rather than engaging with the dos/don’ts, I’m talking here about the meaning I give to particular terms, mainly “dub-con” or dubious consent. I’m interested in others’ definitions and usages, but it is unlikely I will stop enjoying dub-con in fanfic and I value having a way to distinguish a dub-con story from a story in which either the character or the author defines what happened as rape.

I understand why people object to distinguishing rape and non-con as labels. I have only the most tenuous of distinctions for them in my mind (mostly having to do with what the characters themselves think happened and/or fic community practices, and I see why that’s confusing). On the other hand, when we’re talking about “how to find what I want to read,” then in my experience the choice between one and the other is usually correlated, however imperfectly, with the story content, so maybe the dual terms are helpful to readers and authors, at least when paired with a summary.

Where my thoughts are most confused, and also most passionate, is dub-con. The fact that dub-con is non-con to many readers matters; my understanding of the point is that if the events happened to people and not to characters most if not all dub-con would be rape because of an inability to consent or uncertainty about consent. I agree with that premise but think that dub-con serves a valuable signalling role in fiction, perhaps even more valuable than non-con. Because the line between non- and dub-con differs for different people, having all three terms available seems like the best compromise I’ve seen. At the same time, it leaves open the possibility that someone will want a warning for non-con or rape and the author will disagree that that's what happens in the story.

I think of dub-con as “issues of consent,” actually, because issues of consent are where my fannish id lives and breathes. I love characters whose screwed-up-ness leaves them with trouble defining consent as it should be defined (according to Overlord Me). I love situations where normal human rules don’t work. I love situations where at least one character misapprehends the facts, or is out of control: amnesia and sex pollen and mistaken identity and golems shaped like people and and and. I love stories where Sam wants Dean and Dean gives in because he thinks it’s the only way to keep Sam; I love them whether or not Dean learns to stop worrying and love the bomb. I expect that my spectrum of “dubious” overlaps with the average definition, but only overlaps. Working with cliches is, I hope, a little protective here, because I expect that if you see “sex pollen” you will automatically presume that there are issues of consent. But I’ve been wrong before.

A ton of the het romance I read growing up I would now call dub-con. Did I notice it then? Not consciously. Did it shape my fantasy preferences? Quite possibly, and definitely living in a society that’s screwed up about, specifically, when women consent to sex also shaped my fantasy preferences. I still like some het dub-con now, but I’m more easily thrown out of it. I like a higher percentage of dub-con in slash because it feels like I can get the thrill of issues of consent between two people who are attracted to each other but have various barriers to acting on that attraction without the misogyny, or at a minimum accommodation to the strictures of heterosexism, that regularly accompanies this trope in het (note that I am not saying slash escapes or is more likely to escape misogyny, I am saying that slash dub-con more readily gets me hot without my inner censor telling me I am a bad feminist, and that I value this effect in particular cases while remaining concerned about it in general).

As for what I write: I write a lot of issues of consent. The first two that come to mind are: (1) I fell in love in Hell and it is simply so distressing, in which the issue of consent is, I flatter myself to think, a real issue: what does it mean to be capable of consent?  Not for nothing, that's also the twist of the story. (2) An Act I Would Enjoy, the sequel to Filthy Mind.  It was important to me that neither Sam nor Dean used the term “rape” in Filthy Mind, because of what it would have meant to them to say it even though they both knew what was happening. Filthy Mind is about rape, whereas I think the sequel is plausibly dub-con, though I didn’t label it as such because I wanted to leave the matter unclear. Sam--rather willfully in my opinion--refuses to engage with the real question, which is about Dean’s consent to sex with Sam in the first place, and not about Dean’s interest in particular scenes/props. Now that I’ve written this out, I see that these stories are both about the same issue, which is similar to the basic feminist question so painfully raised by Catharine MacKinnon: in a world that has done so much to crush your freedom of choice, to what extent can you choose to have sex, especially heterosexual sex and/or sex that eroticizes power disparities? (As I said above, this question is so excruciating that I find it easier to explore at a distance, through slash. And angels.)

But that’s not all dub-con is to me. I’ve written numerous other variants of dub-con, where it’s more about rejecting (often well-justified) constraints on desire. Dub-con can mean passion, passion so great that one character will sacrifice everything else in the world to satisfy it. I find that extremely hot. (But I still worry about contributing to various pathologies of desire, because what’s good for characters is often bad for people, and narratives are really powerful.)

In the end, I’ve got only this: I'm not done thinking about this, and I would like to talk about how we signal that issues of consent are important to a particular story, once we've decided that rape is not the right label.  (Someone could convince me that rape is the right label, certainly in particular cases and possibly even in general, but more likely I'm going to want to keep dub-con.)

Comments at DW; comments at LJ.

Comments

[cesperanza]

In my head, the difference between rape and dubcon is very clear, just in terms of theme. If I see rape, I assume that the story is about one of the characters having experienced what I--and more importantly, they--would understand as a rape: someone on a military mission is captured and raped, for instance; a serial killer rapes Blair Sandburg; someone we like under the influence of some (overtly evil) substance (NOT drink or drugs in the typical way) rapes someone else: a story of rape and (often) rape recovery and/or h/c or (and I read few of these, but I know they're out there) grovelfic and/or punishment fic.

Dubcon to me signals something else: that the story is about whether or not--or to what extent--the sexual actions were wanted: in other words, may deal with sex under various sorts of pressure or less than ideal circumstances or characters misunderstanding or fucking up or acting impulsively or giving in against better wishes or with wrong information etc etc etc. Or there's some other question of consent: were they awake? was it really them? were they possessed at the time?

Noncon is maybe the trickiest: the first thing I think of is, say, a story where someone HAS to be raped as decreed by an evil person, and Person A, who loves Person B, volunteers to be raped (or is picked to rape them) as an act of love within the horror of the scenario. Also, noncon signals to me rape!kink, where the plot's going to be centered in some way around forcible sex but we're being told in some way its okay to enjoy it: the narrative of the story is not "When does Character screw up his courage enough to go to the cops, come out of therapy, learn not to jump at shadows" but more--you did that to me and I liked it. There's a whole new world open to me now: I didn't KNOW I had a think for being handcuffed in a dungeon and whipped. This is sort of fake literary rape--genre rape that's like TV violence--where somehow going through a day with John McClain from Die Hard turns you into a confident adventurer rather than leaving you crying in a hospital somewhere.

Anyway, these may be very idiosyncratic definitions, but they're probably what I'd go with.

[rivkat]

They're very similar to my own definitions, for what it's worth.

[jadelennox]

I personally don't distinguish between non-con and rape. I don't even see how they could be two different things, although I have no issue with people who do.

Dubcon, for me, indicates issues of consent that our internal rather than external. For example, if John were to blackmail Rodney into sex, that would be non-con. If John were to give Rodney sex pollen, that would be non-con. But if John were to have sex with Rodney while Rodney is (with or without John's knowledge) so fucked up as to be unable to make informed consent, that's dubcon. If Rodney doesn't want to but is being blackmailed by somebody else, and John doesn't know about it, that's dubcon.

This actually means that a lot of crack stories that other people wouldn't even think to warn about because they are crack push my non-con buttons. To me, if two people who do not have an explicit or implicit prior sexual arrangement go out into the world and one of them gets hit by sex pollen/slave magic and the other one doesn't but knows about it and has sex with the drugged person anyway, that to me is non-con. That is no different than having sex with somebody who has been roofied.

The tricky one for me is "aliens make them have sex", in which both characters are being raped but not by each other, and I don't know how that should be warned for, really.

I also read a lot of historical romances as a child and teenager with all of these issues of consent -- rape was incredibly trendy in the historical romances of the 1980s, and thank goodness that trend has ended -- and what it actually gave me was a vast squick for the idea that as long as you end up enjoying coercive sex and being in a happy relationship because you were coerced into sex, it's not right. There's a Catherine Coulter book which has become something of a joke in my home because the character feels like what he did to his (coerced into marriage) wife was really close to rape. It wasn't actually rape, because he used cream! But it was close to it, he feels, and that makes him sad. Still, it was the only way to break her PTSD, so it's all okay. And he keeps doing it.

[rivkat]

Thanks. This is where fan lawyering takes over: suppose X knows about Y's exposure to sex pollen and believes that Y will die/attack someone else if X doesn't have sex with Y? To me that tips it into dubcon, because X isn't just taking advantage and is operating under constraints of his own, though I'll admit that I like those stories much better when X's motives are mixed and his reasons for acting are somewhat less solid than he makes himself believe.

You said a lot of crack pushes your non-con buttons, which I understand. So my question is: do "sex pollen" and "aliens make them do it" serve, in themselves, as sufficient signals so that you can decide what to read/avoid? I really hope they do, because I don't think I can reliably distinguish between non-con/rape and dub-con in a way that correlates with what other people think of the terms, though maybe in this discussion I will learn how to do so.

[kass]

Noncon is maybe the trickiest: the first thing I think of is, say, a story where someone HAS to be raped as decreed by an evil person, and Person A, who loves Person B, volunteers to be raped (or is picked to rape them) as an act of love within the horror of the scenario.

I think here of one of astolat's old Sentinel story, "Control," where Lee Brackett makes Blair fuck Jim across a table. The horror of the scenario is mitigated by the subtle connection between Jim and Blair throughout; it's obvious that Blair is initially appalled by the demand, but Jim manages to convince him that it's okay. Now that I look back on it, ten years later, it seems to me that this is really a story about how Lee (the bad guy) allows Blair and Jim to get what they both secretly want but had never admitted (certainly to each other; probably to themselves) that they wanted. Which is a very powerful fantasy element! Obviously in RL, if a crazed mass murderer threatened to kill a bunch of people unless one guy fucks another guy for the mass murderer's sick benefit, that would be rape. But because we, the readers, know that Blair and Jim are secretly yearning for one another, and because Jim gives Blair these sweet little asides which let Blair know that it's really okay, I'm able to read the story for the frisson it gives me without feeling as though I'm countenancing something dreadful.

[jadelennox]

I think I agree with you about about that messy border between non-con and dubcon. Still, I'm always surprised when somebody calls a blackmail story or an explicit and intentional use of sex pollen "dubcon".

Oh, and absolutely regarding labels! I am very wary when I see a story labeled "aliens make them do it" or "sex pollen"; I will often only read the stories if I know and trust the author very well. While I am extremely pro-warnings, I am also very good at finding peritextual information to clue me in the stories aren't something I want to read. It probably means I miss a lot of good stories, but that's fine with me, because it avoids setting off my squicks (which are absolutely just squicks, not triggers).

Thoughts on consent and fiction labels.

[facetofcathy]

I often find stories about issues of consent interesting reads. I really liked Filthy Mind and it's sequel for the aspects you talk about in your post. Depictions of sexual assault or aftermath fic are not things I seek out.

I split my labels between Sexual Assault and Issues of Consent, not that I need them very often. These are the only things I promise to warn for in my journal.

I think the line between the two is often clear, but nothing is ever always obviously fish not fowl. Where one or more parties has not consented in their mind and has stated that fact, unless they cannot, is obviously sexual assault. That one's easy. When one party is unsure if they consent or not, or one party never asks, or a bit of both, it gets grey.

The idea that one party consents, verbally and in their mind, to sex they don't actually want or desire is a really tricky question. I'm not sure I would label that as an Issues of Consent. I mean, that covers both the actions of sex workers and Dean having sex with Sam to keep him close as well as a whole lot of other things too.

I believe that AMTDI is Sexual Assault. Sex pollen is an Issues of Consent, and I would label a story that way with a link to fanlore's page on sex pollen for the random person who doesn't know what it is.

My terminology choices:

I don't like the word rape in this context because in a lot of minds it specifically and only means forced penetration. I think using the word can minimize the gravity of sexual assault that does not involve penetration.

I don't like the words non-con and dub-con because they sound jokey and jargony to me. This is very much a YMMV thing, and I'm not so sure very many people would willingly label their fic as containing depictions of sexual assault.

[rivkat]

Thanks. Because the edge of consent is what interests me, I would be willing to call a blackmail story dubcon under certain circumstances, though I wouldn't call a deliberate use of sex pollen by the person who wants to have sex with the person under the influence dubcon: I'm with you, I'd label that rape. Hm, now I need to think more about the blackmail scenario: I think of Lex Luthor as a person who defines consent as anything done by a non-altered-states person without the threat of force, so he'd be fine with blackmail, which is the scenario I've kicked around in my head.

Re: Thoughts on consent and fiction labels.

[rivkat]

That's really interesting, thanks. Above there's already some discussion of sex pollen as rape/non-con, reaching somewhat different results--which to me highlights the utility of identifying "sex pollen" as a trope, so people can apply their own standards. (I understand your point about jargon, but I actually find jargon really useful in its appropriate specialized context, and for me fandom is that context. It conveys a lot of information really fast.)

Apparent consent is a hot-button for me in all sorts of ways. To me it connects to that big question: when is sex ever voluntary, in an unfree society? Even if we're always somewhat subject to coercion, we can still distinguish between degrees of freedom, and lots of them are worth identifying to the extent we can. We usually do identify fic in which main characters are sex workers in the headers, for example. So we're using tropes/cliches like hookerfic to signal something about the extent to which the sex is consensual, though we don't often make that explicit--probably because we'd have huge disagreements about how to categorize sex work within the consensual/dub-con/non-con continuum.

Re: Thoughts on consent and fiction labels.

[kass]

Identifying, say, sex pollen as a trope so that those of us who dig it can seek it out strikes me as one of the most useful functions of what I'd call labels or tags -- not warnings, per se, but identifying information. I remember arguing this in a panel on this subject at Escapade years ago: that what I look for, as a reader, is the equivalent of genre information. At a book store, I know that poetry books are in the poetry section; in a fanfiction archive, there may not be an "AMTDI" section, but I know that a story with that label or tag on it is likely to be one which will pique my interest.

This is why I think the AO3 is going to be a real boon for folks concerned with this issue; all stories are labeled either with an appropriate warning, or with "choose not to warn," or with "none of these warnings apply," which serves as a great filtering mechanism for readers who want to avoid things; and the tagging system is a great mechanism for readers who want to seek things out.

Re: Thoughts on consent and fiction labels.

[rivkat]

One of the most complicated practical things about the warnings debate--and I am really trying not to make any slippery slope arguments, just think about what I should be doing given my own dub-con preferences--is that I think it may be ok to let "sex pollen" stand in for a more general warning about consent, and may even be more useful, at least to the fan who knows what "sex pollen" means. This is because sex pollen and similar tropes seem to generate a lot of divergence about whether they're dub-con or non-con, so if I picked one label I might be sending the wrong message for the average sex pollen story (though I can definitely imagine one I'd also warn for non-con on).

This is also, by the way, why I think the AO3 is not going to be a perfect solution: dub-con is, by design, not one of the required warnings (if you choose to warn). So you may still get dub-con without a warning, and if you disagree with an author about the difference between non-con and dub-con, there may still be trouble, though hopefully the freeform tags can mitigate that.

Re: Thoughts on consent and fiction labels.

[kass]

You raise a good point about dub-con. I don't think of most sex pollen or AMTDI stories as being non-con (or even sometimes dub-con), but that's in part because I tend to read pairings where both parties are clearly (in my mind and in the mind of the writer) yearning for one another anyway, so the pollen becomes the device that gets them into bed at last -- it's not actually forcing them to do anything they didn't already want to do. But that says something about the fandoms I frequent and the authors I most often read, and of course not all sex pollen stories fit into this pigeonhole.

Where I think the AO3 is helpful is that it allows readers who need warnings to know which stories are "choose not to warn," and to use that to make an informed decision re: whether or not to click on a link. But you're right that dub-con isn't a required warning (how could it be, when I'm not sure any two fans agree on what it means? *g*) and that that could be a sticky wicket. Hm.

[amalthia]

loved your post.

[rivkat]

Thanks! I am learning a lot.

Re: Thoughts on consent and fiction labels.

[elf]

I wish AO3 had a way to add more warnings that weren't also general tags--with the possibility of some terms going in both spots, but not requiring that.

I could see a fic that warns for BDSM, but doesn't include it in the tags, because it's a minor enough part that it wouldn't be a draw for BDSM fans, but might trigger someone who really can't handle the concept of spanking. Or a fic that warns for death but doesn't tag for it, 'cos it's part of the background story only. Or one that warns and tags for fisting 'cos it wants to draw people who like it and avoid people who don't.

Or warn for dub-con on the grounds that someone could think of it that way--but not tag for it, because the author doesn't think of it as a dub-con story. Those who want to skip warnings could still see tags, and know what the author is advertising, without seeing the full list of everything the author believes might be triggery or even squicky.

(And on the insane AO3 wishlist, I'd like to be able to turn off *specific* warnings... "never show me warnings for death, chan, or incest, but I still want to see warnings for scat and AU.")

[morgandawn]

when tagging I finally gave up trying to distinguish between noncon and dubcon stories. Too hard for me to apply consistently.

and yet....in my head there is a difference and I read them for different reasons/reactions. I like the bright line that facetofcathy drew above: sexual assault vs issues of consent.

Interestingly, when searching among erotic fictions/romance fiction outside the fannish context there is no equivalent label for dub-con. This leaves us wandering lost among stories of the graphic sexual assualt and the ones falling in love with the hero who forces his way into your boudoir while you weakly protest.

so even if the distinction between non-con and dubcon is hard to find, I am thankful we have the term to use. Otherwise, how will I know what to read and when?

[elspethdixon]

It wasn't actually rape, because he used cream! But it was close to it, he feels, and that makes him sad. Still, it was the only way to break her PTSD, so it's all okay.

o.0 In my reading of Catherine Coulter as a teenager, I somehow never came across this particular book. Now I know where the sarcastic comments about "cream" in Beyond Heaving Bosom's come from, though.

if John were to have sex with Rodney while Rodney is (with or without John's knowledge) so fucked up as to be unable to make informed consent, that's dubcon. If Rodney doesn't want to but is being blackmailed by somebody else, and John doesn't know about it, that's dubcon.

I like that definition. My fictional "Yes, that. That's what I'd lable dubcon" template is a scene from a piece of published fiction where a male character who's going through some pretty sigificant emotional misery has what's essentially comfort sex with an ex girlfriend... except that unbeknownst to him, the bad guy has brainwashed her into having much more intense feelings of romantic love/desire for him than she actually does. The guy thinks she fully consented (she may actually have even initiated the sex -- it occurs offscreen so the reader doesn't see that part), but she wasn't acting under her own initiative or of her own free will. Would she have slept with him in that scene if she hadn't been brainwashed? Maybe, but the reader and the character herself can't *know* that she would have. (and then she gets pregnant, gets kidnapped, and is brainwashed about three more times, and then loses the baby via being stabbed in the stomach and is *then* brainwashed into forgetting the whole thing ever happened, but that's another issue involving women, comic books, and refrigerators and this particular author's brainwashing kink that's only tangntial to the discussion here).

[boogieshoes]

here from metafandom.

what i did in my warnings policy post was to define what i meant by the terms i was using to label stuff. i've raised a few eyebrows from time to time over definitions from other parts of fandom, so i figured this was the best way to label stuff. short-hand on the fic, and a link to the policy in case they want to make sure of what i mean. at any rate, i'll just post the link so you can see how i define rape, non-con, and dub-con...

http://boogieshoes.livejournal.com/143978.html

-bs

[annabeth_roses]

I somehow doubt you actually want to read the Catherine Coulter book, but at a moment's notice memory (which may be completely wrong) I believe the book referred to was The Rebel Bride. And I never wanted to re-read it again because that it was meant to be a love story when he essentially raped her never sat well with me.

[elspethdixon]

Personally, I can handle rape between the romantic pairing in a story if the relationship is suposed to be fucked up and wrong and it's treated like the serious offense and betrayal or trust that it is (otherwise, I couldn't be a Spike/Buffy shipper), but it skeeves me out when rape is supposed to be romantic, or it's "not really rape" because "he loves her!"/"she needed to be tamed!"/"she secretly wanted it!" or some other lame excuse.

[rivkat]

Thanks! I'm really fascinated by differing classifications of the standard fandom sex cliches like aliens made them do it, which I would often put in dub-con. This is why I prefer to use the cliches as disclosures, and then if people consider them non-con and want to stay away (or, hey, want to read, as I do) then they can.

[boogieshoes]

which totally makes sense, but i went the other way as the fandoms i get the urge to write in don't have aliens, by and large (Mag7, Sentinel, occasional Highlander piece, yeah, i'm old skool, heh!).

plus, older fandoms get those odd re-influxes of new people who aren't aware of the cliches fandom comes up with. the one thing i've learned from being around since 1995 (!) is that fandom's memory is rather sieve-like and weird. there's a lot of meta-work on fandom, but i suspect fan-history is a lot more chaotic than anyone's managed to chronicle. thus, i've set my definitions in stone, with the hope that at least people down the road can read it and know where i'm coming from.

vain hope, maybe, but c'est la vie.

-bs

[stungunbilly]

I really enjoyed this post; it sparked a great discussion for me.

We talked a number of angles of the concept over for a long time, with many digressions. Eventually, the SO and I came to the conclusion that, from a biological perspective, all issues of overpowering arousal are questionable as regards conscious consent. With, of course, a tip of the hat to that interesting politician who has been sharing details of his romance with his soulmate lately.

[rivkat]

I'm glad you found it of interest. In the end, I think we have to treat most people as capable of consent under most circumstances, because otherwise we're denying them the basic dignity of being treated as people with free will. But that doesn't mean that most sex is freely chosen or would occur in a just world, and it really doesn't get me much closer to figuring out the proper way to think about my porn, unfortunately for me.