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SurvivorCopeFiction7 karma

Hello, this account is a throwaway.

I'm a child sexual abuse survivor, and I am involved with writing and reading "dark" erotic fiction/fanfiction - erotic horror, rape fantasy, etc. Right now there is a lot of controversy about this in fan communities online. People who are anti this kind of work claim that it "romanticizes abuse", sometimes to the point of thinking people who produce or consume this kind of content should be socially shunned or even legally prosecuted. On the other hand, defenders point to free speech, creativity expression, lack of harm to real persons, and coping mechanisms.

For me, I don't deny that my early grooming and sexual abuse had profound and lasting effects on my sexual tastes, but what I think antis don't understand is that when I read a story about a fantasy rape, which is written to appeal to it as a fetish, first, I'm imagining myself in the role of the victim, second, there's a built-in "safeword" for the scenario, which is closing the browser window. And when I write these kind of scenarios, I'm ultimately in 100% control of the entire scenario. And what it comes down to is that even after years of therapy there is a part of me that is ashamed to feel sexual pleasure that isn't forced on me, so these fantasy scenarios allow me to imagine that I'm being forced so that I am free to experience orgasm.

Anyway, this topic seems tangentially related to your research. Do you have any thoughts on survivors creating and consuming abuse and rape-related erotic content? Do you think it's harmful, harmless, something in between?

SurvivorCopeFiction2 karma

Thanks very much for your reply. I appreciate your input very much. I think there's an unfortunate "slactivism" aspect to a lot of the shaming of production/consumption of this kind of content. Everyone hates child abusers and rapists, but by their nature, actual child abusers and rapists are either covert and unknown, or known and being legally pursued, and in neither case can individuals do much about them. People writing rape fantasy fiction or incest fantasy or whatever are an easy target.

You can go onto websites like Tumblr and find rampant cases of people telling people who write "disturbing" fiction to kill themselves, or equating writing about fictional child abuse to being an actual child abuser. I am a relatively strong person and I have had time to wrestle with my morality on this issue, but for others who are more vulnerable, to be told "writing rape fiction means you're as bad as a rapist!" can be so devastating. I wish people understood that even though they intend to defend victims, they're actually causing more harm to some victims.