šš END STAGE DISCOURSE!! END STAGE DISCOURSE!! WE HAVE ARRIVED AT "FICTIONAL SEX IS COERCIVE BECAUSE CHARACTERS ARE BEING FORCED TO DO THINGS BY THE AUTHOR"!!!! šš
My favorite professor, shout out Glenn, would interrupt students who were saying "Well XYZ clearly felt--" and go "No, backtrack, scratch that. They are a character. Not a person. They don't have any thoughts other than what the writer clearly specifies on paper they have. Don't give agency to nonliving things, they are not real, they never were real, and it is dangerous to lose that line."
He was a sweet man and raised in the Midwest so interrupting people hurt his very soul, that's how dangerous he felt the idea of losing the line of fiction was.
He notably also taught a course called Bible in Lit which I took and those lines came back a lot.























