Milena Popova

I’d previously read a version of one chapter in Porn Cultures on Omegaverse, aka “dogfucker rapeworld.” Another interesting chapter is on arranged marriage plots in fanfic and what they suggest about how social and legal power structure sex (and pleasure and love); another is about hockey RPF dealing with a rape allegation against the celebrity corresponding to a popular character. A lot of interesting stuff here. One passage that really struck me: “There is a dominant view in our society that the only act that ‘counts’ as sex is penile-vaginal intercourse. This is so pervasive that even feminist researchers and activists working on consent negotiation define intercourse as the only act that requires consent. They conceptualize actions such as kissing, touching, and undressing as expressions of consent instead.” I didn’t find the treatment of consented-to-but-unwanted sex as coercive all that convincing—it conflated sex pressured by social conventions with sex to please a partner who might just have a higher desire for sex—but then again fanfic is not known for presenting some of these scenarios that are common in the real world (I love my partner but am not sexually attracted to them anymore is the one I read in a lot of the advice columns) which is indeed part of its charm. I think a more productive approach would be to acknowledge how consensual sex can also be bad sex in various ways, and how consent is not the same thing as pleasure.… (lisätietoja)