WELL FUCKING PUT.
Addendum: coercive disclosure is not the only reason itās a terrible idea to draw a line in the sand between survivors and non-survivors liking darkfic. Fiction is a way to explore various aspects of a theme or situation in a controlled, safe environmentāincluding aspects that could never be explored in real life without harming real people. Itās a way to explore, dissect, understand, and rehearse traumas that could befall anyone. For those whoāve actually experienced something similar, it can help them process it, or be an outstretched hand and a voice saying āyou arenāt alone; either I know that feel, or I can imagine having that feel if I put myself in your shoes.ā For those who havenāt, itās an outlet for anxiety, a mental preparation, a āwhat if?ā and a āhow might someone react toā?ā And even the most twisted, fucked-up darkfic is usually an exercise in empathy: empathy for characters we already care about thrown into terrible situations, and also a space outside of actual RL horrors where we can take a deep breath and attempt the kind of radical empathy that lets us understand what drives people to do abhorrent things. As far as the first one goes, I certainly donāt think anyone should be compelled to partake if it distresses them, but I do think that actively discouraging and shaming people for trying to empathize with anotherās sufferingāeven if they go about it badly or the execution is shoddy and distastefulāis utterly toxic behavior. As for the second, the kind that consists of trying to imagine your way into a perpetratorās shoes: it may make you wildly uncomfortable, but understanding the reasons for a thing is among the best tools for recognizing and preventing real-world evil. Beyond that, dehumanizationāeven of villains, bullies, and abusersāis a dangerous impulse. No oneās required to empathize with the people whoāve hurt them, but making a fucking policy out of attacking everyone who tries only plants the seeds of further evil and abuse.
And we need these stories. Desperately. One of the reasons noncon/dubcon fic in particular has such a staggering variety of weird, fucked-up, iddy tropes and clumsy/insensitive/offensive executions is that weāre fucking marinating in rape culture and have very few scripts or outlets to talk about it. All of it. Even the ugly, unsavory parts, the impulses we know are wrong, the desires we hate or feel guilty about and canāt discuss without being accused of straight-up validating whatever heinous cultural messages planted them in our subconscious. Even the dumb, unrealistic power fantasies of fighting off rapists, taming rapists and making them love and respect you, walking away unaffected and being able to laugh it off as a wacky misadventure, being comforted by someone whose love (and/or healing cock) will magically fix everything. One personās insensitive is another personās escapism; one personās offensive is another personās āthank god, Iām not the only one broken enough to have that awful thought.ā Fictionāparticularly the communities that have formed around fanfictionāis one of the very few no-holds-barred places where we can Fucking Talk About It, without the pressure to speak only in hushed tones and behind closed doors where decent people wonāt be exposed to it, or to uphold the image of a perfect model victim who never has ugly, unacceptable thoughts about the ugly mess left behind by an unspeakably ugly act. When you shame and police darkfic in fandom, you are taking that space away from the people who need it the most. You are telling them to their faces that theyāre filthy, abnormal, tainted and contagious, and that they need to either shut the fuck up or keep it in the shame closet where it belongs instead of sharing it in public with other people who might understand. You are, in other words, doing the exact thing thatās tied with āI donāt believe youā for first place on the list of What Not To Say To A Survivor Opening Up About Their Abuse. Survivors arenāt the only ones with a tangle of conflicted thoughts, feelings, and neuroses about sexual violence and rape culture who benefit from exploring it in fiction, but you can be damn sure theyāre a major constituency. The absolute last thing they need is some white-knight āantiā bullying them into silence with concern-trolling about whether their ācoping mechanismsā are āhealthyā or whether theyāre setting a sufficiently good and wholesome example for teh childrens.
The āonly if youāre a survivor using it to cope!ā bullshit is also noxious because fiction lets us handle difficult issues through several layers of distance and displacement, isolate particular aspects, transpose them into different but related situations, etc. Just because someoneās not a survivor of the exact thing theyāre reading or writing about doesnāt mean they donāt have very real pain theyāre trying to process. And again, empathy. I donāt give a shit what your sexual-assault history is; if you read my fucked-up Hydra Trash Party porn about Steve Rogers getting gang-raped by Crossbones & co and staggering away still shouting āFITE ME U PATHETIC ASSHOLESā even though he wants to die inside, and it hits you where you live, Iām fucking glad you found it. If I read your fucked-up Hydra Trash Party porn and hit a line that makes me feel like youāve plucked something ugly and painful and private directly from my brain, frankly Iāll be even more impressed if it turns out you were extrapolating rather than writing from personal experience. And if your badwrong noncon porn is directly at odds with everything Iāve experienced re: rape and its aftermath? I donāt live inside your head, dude. I donāt know what youāre drawing on or what demons youāre exorcizing. I donāt even know whether youāre writing from firsthand experience thatās dramatically different from mine. All I know is that whoever your target audience is, it aināt me.
One final note on noncon fic specifically: it works on the exact same principle as consensual nonconsent play IRL. No, the character(s) didnāt consent; neither did the persona being acted out by someone playing the victim in a con-noncon scene. The consent that distinguishes it from real-world violation isnāt between the characters in the fantasy; itās between author and reader. The back button is the safeword. And in contrast to one of the dangers of IRL con-noncon play, itās a safeword the author has zero power to override or ignore.
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