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A. Vivian Vane Talks Dirty

A. Vivian Vane Talks Dirty

Tag Archives: fantasies

Fetish Acceptance: Taking the Worse with the Bad

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by avivianvane in Sexuality and Culture

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bimbo, bimbofication, fantasies, fantasy, fetish, fetishes, kink, porn, pornography, sex, sexuality, Tumblr

I saw and shared an exchange on Tumblr a little while ago in which a young woman reblogged a dominant’s fantasy guide for training submissives into eating disorders to keep them thin.

Cue the outcry: “Girls, don’t fuck up your health,” “Don’t fuck with the heads of impressionable teens,” etc:

I love how he manages righteous indignation while simultaneously admitting that he holds the ridiculous beauty standards that are driving her fantasies.

Don’t you love how he manages righteous indignation while blithely (and crudely) espousing the ridiculous beauty standards that are driving her fantasy? He talks so loud because the cognitive dissonance is so deafening…

Now, for most of us, I assume the idea of controlling another person’s diet at all would be seen as the stuff of abusive relationships. Doing so with the deliberate goal of causing physical and psychological harm? That’s absolutely something we respond to with social opprobrium, and that’s a good thing!

But context is everything. This conversation was occurring on a Tumblr devoted to extreme female submission themes, at the request of a woman whose fantasies center around being trained and changed into a mindless sexual object, and whose readers seem to love the hell out of that idea. Until, somehow, it involves unhealthy eating habits.

Which, like…guys, you’re sitting there holding your dicks and cheering when she does the whole “tee hee, I should be studying for class but I’m just sitting here watching porn and edging my wet little pussy” thing, but suddenly “OMG I want to be starved thin” is too much for you?

It’s the same fantasy. It’s the same idea. Same stuff as the bleached hair/bolt-on tits “look what a bimbo I’ve become for you” schtick; the “fuck me rough until I think abusive sex is normal” posts. This is someone who gets off on the idea of deliberately making “unhealthy” choices and prioritizing sexual gratification over other life goals to an exaggerated extreme (and who clearly likes having an audience for that process).

Not exactly an uncommon subject in erotica, I assure you.

Not exactly an uncommon subject in erotica, I assure you.

And you know what? It’s okay to find that stuff hot! A lot of people get off on the idea of extreme transformations, mental and physical, and the idea that the person being transformed somehow can’t help themselves — either because it’s forced through bondage, law, or brainwashing, or because they’re just such a natural inferior that they’re helpless to resist social conditioning — is often a big part of that fantasy. And yes, some people do live it out, in greater or smaller ways, by altering their appearance or their behavior or their lifestyle to more closely match their fantasies.

I would encourage anyone who looks at sexual fantasies or discussions and thinks “that’s a bridge too far!” to very closely examine what they think isn’t a bridge too far, and see if it’s actually all that different. Because in this case (and in many I’ve seen) it’s less a matter of separating the “good” fantasies from the “bad” fantasies, and more of not realizing that the “bad” fantasy is just a slightly more extreme version of shit you get off on, taken to a logical extension.

I don’t love the idea of an eating disorder fantasy. But I do see how it ties into the same theme of prioritizing your looks/sexualization over what we think of as mainstream “healthy” goals, and that’s a very common fantasy for both men and women (the men usually observing/controlling the transformation; the women usually undergoing it). If you like the idea of training your slutty slut-slut to wear high heels and giggle a lot, you probably don’t have a lot of moral high ground for shying away when she talks about puking herself thin so she’s a twiggier fuckstick. Same fantasy; crazier exaggeration.

TLDR: Stroke happy, children, and don’t hate on others for doing it too.

Socially Problematic Porn: A Safe Space for Introspection

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by avivianvane in Sexuality and Culture

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

erotic writing, ethics, fantasies, fetishes, porn, pornography, safe space, social justice

I like the slogan over at One Handed Writers, where I blog once or twice a month: “Changing the world…One orgasm at a time.”

It implies a sort of activism, or at least influence.

Self-gratifying? A bit. We are erotic writers; it’s hard to get away from that masturbatory influence entirely.

But I do genuinely believe that porn has a role as a teaching tool.

And I don’t just mean hyper-feminist, queer-friendly, social justice indie porn, although I love that stuff. I think there’s value to be had in things that are off-beat, extreme, and maybe even a little fucked-up.

Porn that’s based on real-world harms or social injustices can be hard for ethical people to swallow. If you are aware of and opposed to things like institutionalized racism or rape culture, an erotic work based on racial stereotypes or sexual assault looks an awful lot like part of the problem.

But I would argue that the nature of truly pornographic works — single-purpose sexual fantasies, isolated not just from the real world but even from other, non-erotic fiction — makes them a better place than most for attitudes and actions that would otherwise be considered offensive. Because they’re not just fiction, but also “dirty” fiction, they come with a pre-made assumption that the themes and ideas aren’t supposed to be okay. The not-okayness is part of the point.

~

A lot of what gets people off is stuff they’re unwilling to talk about or even admit to liking in public. Pornographic works provide a safe space to have that conversation with the self: a way to open up internal dialogue and say “wow, I really like thinking about women being savagely beaten and raped by their relatives” (or whatever).

Outside of an erotic setting, it’s almost impossible to come to terms with that kind of interest without inherently categorizing it as a “problem.” A very brave person might still talk about it with a close friend or a psychiatrist, but it would be a confessional act by default. You don’t admit it without making it an admission, and that’s inherently negative.

Flipping open or turning on a pornographic work and enjoying some self-gratification lets people acknowledge what turns them on without all the bad feelings — and if you want someone to actually think about something, that matters a lot. If you’re unable to think about an issue without feeling miserable, you’re unlikely to think about it much at all.

For people whose fetishes tend toward the socially problematic (rape, incest, pedophilia, racism, misogyny, etc.), an erotic portrayal is probably the best object lesson out there that the fascination is sexual. It isn’t because the fantasizer is a rapist, or a child molester, or a misogynist. It’s because the wrongness of the actions that make people into those things is in and of itself titillating.

You can’t separate interest from impulse unless you’re willing to do a little introspection. And the frank reality is that most people don’t have any real-world social setting where it’s appropriate to ponder a question like, say, “Do I want to go out and fondle strangers on public transit without their consent, or do I find thinking about it more gratifying than the act itself would be?”

Porn is the place where people can come to terms with those interests without fear of judgement. If anything, it’s an affirmation that someone else out there (the writer, or at least his/her intended audience) shares similar interests — and is, presumably, a normal, healthy, functioning human being as well.

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