identitty-dickruption:

identitty-dickruption:

like I think it is good and important to be able to criticise porn and erotica for the relationship to the political environment/context of creation etc, but I think that’s not too different from criticising any other art on these grounds. how is the erotica speaking to conventions of the genre? what is the author trying to tell you in what they hold up as attractive? what might the author be saying that they’re not necessarily aware that they’re saying? how does the narrative relate to other dominant cultural narratives? these are all valuable questions to ask and can be answered in nuanced ways that do not involve kink-shaming & do not involve calling people degenerate perverts. yknow.

something I read the other day had a storyline that involved a woman being kidnapped by foreign “disgusting perverts” (<- not supposed to be sexy) so that she could then be rescued by an army general (<- sexy) who had to fuck her as part of the rescue. now it’s no bother to me if someone else gets their rocks off to that, power to them. that said, we can criticise the framing of Woman Ending Up In Sex Trafficking Requires An Army Man To Fuck Her To Safety in the same way we would criticise similar framing in non-erotic contexts. how is this serving the image of the benevolent military? how is it feeding into the white woman’s fear of the other? what is being held up as ‘perverted’ in its juxtaposition to ‘sexy’? etc etc. this was bad erotica but it was also pro-military propaganda and that does mean something

(via juleskelleybooks)

notaplaceofhonour:

notaplaceofhonour:

Erotica & pornography is not sex ed.

The purpose of erotica & pornography is titillating & thrilling the audience, not teaching them how they should/shouldn’t have sex or relationships.

So if anyone is getting their ideas about what healthy/safe sex/relationships are or should be like from the fictional situations in a piece of erotica, they are operating under a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the art they are enjoying. This is user error.

And on the flip side, if you judge a piece of erotic media for depicting dark/unsafe/unhealthy relationship dynamics without the author turning to the audience & telling them “this is bad” within the work, you are conceding that erotic art is supposed to act as sex ed by judging it on how well it does or does not accomplish it.

I cannot count the amount of times I have seen or had conversations with kinky people who love to roleplay (in equal/safe/healthy/consensual ways IRL) scenarios with fictionally unequal/unsafe/unhealthy/dubiously-or-non-consensual power dynamics, but then treat dark fiction depicting unequal/unsafe/unhealthy/dubiously-or-non-consensual power dynamics as “normalizing” [insert bad thing] IRL.

Like, y’all, dark fiction and roleplay are equally just mediums/formats for fiction.

“But me and my partner(s) have open consistent communication & safe words & respect each others’ boundaries, etc. and the characters aren’t doing any of that”

And that’s good that you do that. But you can’t think of the characters as the participants. They’re the roles. The participants are the readers and writer.

when you do a scene IRL, all of the planning & communication & whatnot that goes into making it safe, sane, & consensual generally happens outside of the scene. Why would you expect that to happen inside of the scene in fiction?

All of that is in the blurb/title/foreshadowing (and if you’re reading somewhere like AO3, the tags), and your choice to either keep reading or not. Being an opt-in only medium, literally the only way it can fail to be consensual for you as an adult who is responsible for making your own decisions is if someone Clockwork Oranged you into reading 50 Shades of Grey or whatever. It’s literally safer than IRL BDSM.

If it squicks you, just say it squicks you, no need to make it a whole moral argument.

(via juleskelleybooks)

power-handmaiden:

I still hear horror Tingleverse only readers go “I can’t believe Chuck Tingle wrote these great horror novels!” and… man… I know erotica isn’t for everyone, but I would challenge anyone who can to just read “One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happily Pounded By His Boulder” and see how much of its emotional message it has in common with Lucky Day, albeit in a very different genre. If you just give the erotica a chance it’s actually super easy to believe the same author released both of these works around the same time.

(via drchucktingle)

darlingofdots:

knightsickness:

there’s absolutely something to be said about ‘booktok’ books being largely wattpad quality written erotica i’m certainly not reading them however having seen a guy on tiktok make a video like ‘all the women in your life are READING PORN’ about a book he picked up and read in his FEMALE FRIEND’S HOUSE in a tone of scandalised horror and disgust i actually don’t think men should be making those criticisms. he said he picked it up expecting a romance and was horrified it was GOONER SHIT he said specifically like ‘who are you getting your pussy wet FOR??’ in a tone of revulsion. idk man im not sure shes the weird one. i kind of wish you were dead

“a lot of books that are successful on booktok are not very good” and “people can read what they want and we need to stop being so fucking weird about women enjoying erotica” are both correct statements

(via mothman-etd)

wizardarchetypes:

wizardarchetypes:

was reading a romance/erotica novel a friend loaned me and in the middle of the book the main character is chopping vegetables to prep for a whole dinner party with her friends and the love interest shows up and they hook up & his hands go everywhere you’d expect them to and then afterward while she’s still catching her breath on the floor he’s like “I’ll finish this for you 😏” and he PICKS UP THE VEGGIES and knife with his UNWASHED HANDS and starts prepping. I was floored. I couldn’t finish the book. call me what you will. weak perhaps. but i say to you we need editors with a food handlers certificates. we need line cook beta readers that’s what I believe

i did read on to the next scene and they were serving their friends the salad and i felt like i was watching hannibal. i was like no!!!!! don’t eat it!!!!!!!!!!!

(via nientedenada)