Should authors avoid writing about a subject because a minority might emulate it?

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

James, there's a conflict in your two different references. Msnbc that you linked said:

"Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion."

The pro-life website said this:

"Unmarried women and teenage girls account for 80 percent of all abortions obtained in the United States, and 55 percent of all unmarried women's pregnancies end in abortion, as compared to less than 10 percent of married women's pregnancies (see Facts of Life Chapter 19, "United States Abortion Statistics").[121]"

Someone's fudging statistics about teen girls and abortions.

ABORT THEM ALL, LET GOD SORT THEM OUT.

I cited the 2nd source for its citation/reference to my claim that abortions reduce crime. The same citation is used in other sources that have no dog in the fight.

 

[xssve]

The included repudiations are all valid, particularly the one mentioning the crack epidemic, as well as the fact that crime fell first and more rapidly among older cohorts.

For the abortion theory to hold up, you'd need a steady crime rate prior to 1991, and a rapid drop in crime rate among 18 to 24 year old's, which you don't have.

Instead you have a distinct spike starting around the mid Eighties or so, and with some categories of crime in that age group actually defying the trend and increasing.

 

[xssve]

Of course, their conclusion that abortion causes crime is equally unwarranted.

Most of cultural risk theory is based on magical thinking - economics has a much more direct effect.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Incest, rape, bestiality stories are more about jacking off than reinforcing a world view. If rape stories become more popular it's only because there's more jacking off over rape stories, has nothing to do with rape as an act becoming more popular. If there are more bestiality stories and then we ask why and find out bestiality is more prevalent, there's still zero reason to believe the stories had any hand it the real life surge in bestiality.

Well, it's obvious that we take different views of our influence on readers and on the culture in general. I don't think I'm on any sort of cutting edge, but I doubt I'd bother writing at all if all I thought all I was doing was providing transient sexual arousal for people and not offering them something more substantial, but to each his own. You write your stories as if you think they don't matter and I'll write mine as if I think they do. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

But I'd be curious to know just how you think changes in cultural attitudes come about if not through the arts and other arbiters of the zeitgeist. Why should there be a sudden increase in the number of people beating off to rape stories, or bestiality? Just happenstance?

To me, it's probably because someone somewhere has found a new approach to or interpretation of these acts which has sudden appeal, allowing people to understand them in a new way, and most likely that approach or interpretation was arrived at through an act of art. I'm not saying that the stories at Lit are always breaking new ground, but we are chipping away at things.

A lot of what we do is just jerking off, stuff that doesn't add positive or negative value to our lives. Watching college football, or world cup soccer is just jerking off to me. What value is a winning baseball team or state championship high school football team to your life? It's really just an equivalent to the pleasure you derive from jerking off, fleeting, sometimes memorable. Playing in such events, or materially benefiting from such events is of value, but most of us are suckered into believing that if our college football team wins or loses it's of real importance to our lives.

I've read stories on this site since 2001. There have been a few that made me think about things differently, but for the most part the stories were about jerking off. And there's nothing wrong with jerking off, but it's delusional thinking that most of what we take pleasure in has real positive or detrimental value.

See, I don't believe this. I believe that whether you spend the afternoon watching baseball or listening to Chuck Berry records does influence you. I believe that even whether you watch baseball or football influences you, and which one you choose makes you a subtly different person. I'm very McLuhanesque in my views of media and entertainment. The medium is the message. The very fact that we can surf this forum and read happy birthday threads on the one hand and discussions of anal orgasms on the other is still quite extraordinary to me, and is a result of the fact that we all write and are comfortable with porn. The very existence of this site has subtly changed us all.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LIT: The Mayberry of Porn.

It doesnt take much to impress Elliott. But LIT truly is the Episcopal Womens' Club when it comes to sex in the 21st Century. I was reading CIDER HOUSE RULES last night, you know, the popular novel that came out 25 years ago and features teens having sex and an abortion. You couldnt post it here, your panties would catch fire and SR71PLT would spit and hop upon his stump to preach for a week about the sins of pedophiles. Youre Puritans at the Mayberry of porn.

 

[Epmd607]

I do agree with James' last post. What we do here is pretty tame and that's probably why there's such a variety of everyday people talking about everyday things, which happens to include a lot of sex. If this site really did have non-con where the victim doesn't end up taking pleasure, ped and beasti, this message board would have a different character. People wouldn't be posting pictures of their children, would probably go elsewhere to talk about their supreme hatred of anthropogenic global warming.

Dr. M. said:

"But I'd be curious to know just how you think changes in cultural attitudes come about if not through the arts and other arbiters of the zeitgeist. Why should there be a sudden increase in the number of people beating off to rape stories, or bestiality? Just happenstance?"

See, I really don't see much art going on here, even in the stories that I really enjoy. VarianP wrote some of the best sex stories, but they don't hit me like erotic literature such as Ada or certain books from Remembrance of Things Past do. But then it turns into a defining erotic literature kind of thing and that's not a fruitful enterprise.

I think art has always been an afterthought to cultural change. The culture changes on the margins, the best artists realize this and present this marginal character, the artist is ignored until the cultural change becomes mainstream, then the hack artists get popular and make all the money and get credit for the cultural change.

But to me the driver for cultural change is always economics. Money finds what aspects of our society to hi-light, profits and brings the new character mainstream. Naked Lunch and Henry Miller don't drive cultural change in attitudes toward sex, they just reveal that the change has already occured within the culture. The best example is the folk/protest singers, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez have very little to do with bringing protest of the viet nam war mainstream. Once something is on college campuses it's safe to say an idea is mainstream. They just made it a little more acceptable and profited/made careers off it.

The best artists can reveal the changes already occurring and also profit from being one of the first. But initial cultural change usually comes with changes in the socio-economic make up of a particular portion of the society.

But to answer why there would be more beasti or rape stories I can only guess there'd be a lot more frustrated people. Beasti/ped/rape is about power and control. If those stories became the most popular I'd imagine the fantasies of many people involve less sex and more power play. Maybe unemployment over ten percent will lead to more appreciation of rape and beasti fantasy? Ha. I'm only half-kidding.

 

[Epmd607]

Quick note on Chuck Berry and baseball, both things I enjoy.

You could make an argument for almost anything bringing positive value to your life. Like most kids I tried to play a bunch of Chuck Berry songs when I first started playing guitar. You could say he was one of my educators. I also learned little things watching baseball that helped me from Little League until Senior season of high school. But the distinction I was making was between being passive and active. Listening brings pleasure, attempting to emulate brings a new skill set. Writing erotic fiction vs. reading erotic fiction. The passive experience is just jacking off, sometimes a jack off session can be memorable. I still remember jacking off like four or five times one night in high school based on this sweater this girl was wearing. For some reason it was like the perfect storm of masturbatory fodder. haha. But I don't think my life is better or worse because she wore that sweater that night.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I think fashion is what changes culture. Change your costume and you gotta change your accoutrements and accessories to match. The rest of the universe revolves around your wardrobe.

 

[xssve]

The birth rate dropped dramatically after the civil war, precisely the time when reform physiologists were distributing information about birth control - the demand was already there, their popularity was a function of a pre-existing social need.

In most senses, media, including fiction and non-fiction, is still subject to the operation of the free market - leather and rubber fetish, while growing, still remains a distinctly niche market - there probably thousands of magazines devoted to tit's, ass, younger women, older women, hairy, shaved, etc., and at minimum, dozens of variations on each theme, in the broader categories, hundreds - there's only Two I'm aware of devoted to rubber.

Similar in video, basic sex is by far the broadest demographic, the weirder you get, the more limited the selection.

In other words, if there is no demand for it, it's not going have any significant influence - if the market were limited to say one or two, then you might get some sort of distortion effect - the best example of that is actually probably Christianity.

Interesting that Christians flocked to see Christ getting whipped like a side of beef, that was a huge fetish with the Romans which survived well into Victorian times.

 

[xssve]

I think fashion is what changes culture. Change your costume and you gotta change your accoutrements and accessories to match. The rest of the universe revolves around your wardrobe.

Fashion has a lot to do with it, again, it's an aspect of cultural risk theory to some extent, another hypothesis of mine is that it's sort of a test of your ability to keep up with cultural change - unfortunately, like most such things, it's validity is pretty limited, and the value of fashion sense as a test of cultural inclusion and identity is mainly limited to... fashion sense.

In short, it represents yet another mode of the forces of centripetal conformity, it just happens to be one that changes and morphs constantly.

It does, however, keep designers, tailors and seamstresses employed.

In the broader sense, yes, sexual behavior is also governed by fashion, and that too is not always a bad thing - fashion is really a form of play: it reduces your social risks to engage in an outré behavior if it's fashionable, while meantime, a consensus is forming, generally known as the conventional wisdom, which is evaluating the whole thing and formulating social controls to limit the downside. i.e., aspect of it that turn out to pose genuine risks will tend to become less fashionable.

Anal has become fashionable, but enough clumsy and inconsiderate pitchers, and I suspect it's appeal will once more be limited.

Bathhouse culture was highly fashionable in the Eighties, and that ground to a sudden and rapid halt for very practical reasons, but it might have played out differently had the surrounding culture at large not been so obsessed with conspicuous consumption - i.e., mass culture at the time was wallowing in decadence, too much was never enough, the entire notion of modesty and economy was the subject of downright vicious derision.

 

[xssve]

For another example, incest porn is very popular on this particular site, but in mainstream porn it remains a distinctly niche market.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Quick note on Chuck Berry and baseball, both things I enjoy.

You could make an argument for almost anything bringing positive value to your life. Like most kids I tried to play a bunch of Chuck Berry songs when I first started playing guitar. You could say he was one of my educators. I also learned little things watching baseball that helped me from Little League until Senior season of high school. But the distinction I was making was between being passive and active. Listening brings pleasure, attempting to emulate brings a new skill set. Writing erotic fiction vs. reading erotic fiction. The passive experience is just jacking off, sometimes a jack off session can be memorable. I still remember jacking off like four or five times one night in high school based on this sweater this girl was wearing. For some reason it was like the perfect storm of masturbatory fodder. haha. But I don't think my life is better or worse because she wore that sweater that night.

Well see, my contention is that your experience trying to play Chuck Berry, and the experiences you had playing baseball did have an effect on you as a person that went beyond their own little areas of specialization. Everything we do, active or passive, has an effect on us. And you wouldn't have had these experiences if, say, adults had been successful at trying to repress rock 'n roll in the 50's or if Americans didn't worship childhood athletics. You were trying to play Chuck Berry because of the work of Elvis, Little Richard, the Beatles, the Stones, etc, and all the artists who reified and gave context and relevance to what Chuck Berry was doing.

I wrote my first porn piece when I was like 14, put it in a plastic bag and hid it under the overhang of my air conditioner outside my bedroom. I don't recall what gave me the impetus to write it, I mean, why I wrote a porn story instead of just beating the bishop, but I do recall that my language was stilted and highly euphemistic in the style of the time, cadged from the good parts in Peyton Place and Knock On Any Door, which were about the most hardcore things I could find in my parents' home at the time. It was the only language I had for expressing these ideas because it was the only language the culture allowed. The vocabulary, the forms, the styles, hadn't been accepted yet. Such things simply weren't done.

The important point about Lit, JBJ, isn't that it's some sort of avant garde cafe of exceptional and original artists boldly plumbing the depths of the human id. The relevant point is that it's in fact so very mediocre and middle-of-the-road, mega-middleclass. Literotica's importance is its plainness, which means that what's on Lit is a pretty good barometer of cultural acceptance. We're not especially brilliant here or imaginative. What we are is house wives, retirees, working stiffs, teachers: the very bastions of the middle class and guardians of the culture. What flies on Lit is what flies on Mainstreet now. As Lit goes, so goes the conscious of a nation, more or less.

And how did we all come to be here at this time? Through a long chain of change and challenge going back to Playboy, Lady Chatterly, Naked Lunch, Last Exit to Brooklyn, etc. etc. I'm not going to argue whether art steers change or merely reflects it, but it certainly does exemplify it.It tells us where we are and what's acceptable, and I think for that we all have some responsibility.

 

[xssve]

My historical research has led me to the conclusion that nothing much has actually changed - you'll find exactly same obsessions and fetishes in porn written Two or Three centuries ago, you'll find them back as far as ancient Greece in fact.

It's a myth that sexual fetish and "decadence" is a modern phenomena, in fact even the original Puritans weren't nearly as uptight as a the modern variety - I think the restrictionist cause was greatly bolstered by the spread of venereal disease in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, as this constituted a valid threat as opposed to an illusory one.

At the same time, better hygiene, sewers, the introduction of Tea, gaslights and other modern conveniences greatly increased lifespans and reduced the role of desperation in the whole thing - what seems like a lark when you expect to live much past Twenty and life in general, is cheap - looks different when you expect to live twice or Three times as long.

 

[Epmd607]

Well see, my contention is that your experience trying to play Chuck Berry, and the experiences you had playing baseball did have an effect on you as a person that went beyond their own little areas of specialization. Everything we do, active or passive, has an effect on us. And you wouldn't have had these experiences if, say, adults had been successful at trying to repress rock 'n roll in the 50's or if Americans didn't worship childhood athletics. You were trying to play Chuck Berry because of the work of Elvis, Little Richard, the Beatles, the Stones, etc, and all the artists who reified and gave context and relevance to what Chuck Berry was doing.

...

It's not easy forming and following a thread of reasoning on a message board, but I still have a few things I'm curious about in terms of your view of art and erotic stories.

The reason I said passive vs. active was to make a distinction between value vs. no-value experiences. No-value(jacking off) I just mean the brief pleasure you get from hearing a song, reading a story on literotica. The active and valuable would be me trying to learn the style of guitar, the no-value would be me just sitting and listening to the music. We are a culture of sitting and watching, listening. People make arguments for reading being active and television being passive, but I think they're both stupendously passive for most people.

I'm only guessing, but I figure most readers of erotica are not also writers. You think as a writer, interact with many of the stories you read, think about what makes them go. You are in pursuit of something different than the average reader, you want to write better stories, maybe that's even your primary reason for reading erotic stories. Sports events are set up in narratives, meant to elicit a variety of emotions from the spectator. However, just because a viewer laughs and cries during a football game doesn't mean the viewer's life has changed in any meaningful way.

Pornography and fetishism are superficial prods, they can spike an emotion in a highly crafted way, doesn't mean there's anything lasting with the one who's prodded. Incest is just a good example here at literotica. It's one of the most read categories, probably because it's the farthest away from reality for most people. There's nothing dangerous about it, you can enjoy it for its kink value and not actually think about sleeping with one of your own real life family members. Ada or Ardor is artistic erotica because it deals with incest and doesn't elicit emotions superficially and then fade into the next porn story.

I guess my question would be: since you believe you have an artistic role in shaping culture(however small it may be) what is that role and what are your personal responsibilities?

 

[Epmd607]

"It's a myth that sexual fetish and "decadence" is a modern phenomena"

Sexual fetish used to be reserved for the decadent classes. The modern phenomena is very real, in that the lowest and poorest classes of people are participating in all variety of sexual fetish along side the traditional decadent classes. The universality of participation in sexual fetish might be the modern phenomena.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ELLIOTT

LIT is a barometer of what we're comfortable with, but LITs standards are 20-25 years ago. In the Sexual Revolution LIT is a REMF (in the rear with the gear) and sunshine soldier. Even the BDSM folks are weekend warriors.

And thats okay if your bent is wholesome cafeteria cuisine and toilets sanitized for your comfort.

 

[xssve]

"It's a myth that sexual fetish and "decadence" is a modern phenomena"

Sexual fetish used to be reserved for the decadent classes. The modern phenomena is very real, in that the lowest and poorest classes of people are participating in all variety of sexual fetish along side the traditional decadent classes. The universality of participation in sexual fetish might be the modern phenomena.

You're going to have to prove that to me, there are merely better records of what the upper classes were doing - Priapic cults were largely a spontaneous, rural, agrarian working class, phenomena, and often a target for suppression by the status quo.

If anything, upper class decadence often evinces the aura of "slumming" - they are merely able to raise the bar in terms of aesthetic production values; Absinthe and Opium instead of Cheap Gin.

In fact a salient feature of orgiastic rites is their democratic nature - social class is erased and all become equal.

 

[Epmd607]

120 Days of Sodom is still shocking. After reading it there's not really anything that's more shocking. It's poorly written, pure pornography. Every attempt since has been fairly underwhelming, because it represents all that pornography could ever hope to be, pure superficiality.

 

[Epmd607]

You're going to have to prove that to me, there are merely better records of what the upper classes were doing - Priapic cults were largely a spontaneous, rural, agrarian working class, phenomena, and often a target for suppression by the status quo.

If anything, upper class decadence often evinces the aura of "slumming" - they are merely able to raise the bar in terms of aesthetic production values; Absinthe and Opium instead of Cheap Gin.

In fact a salient feature of orgiastic rites is their democratic nature - social class is erased and all become equal.

My argument is purely economic. Poor people don't have the time to explore fetishism until the 40 hour work week appears.

 

[xssve]

Fetishism is more of an upper class phenomena, but it's an abstract emulation of the spontaneous rites of the working class - the fertility cults, the harvest feasts, the Bordello.

With a large dose of Medieval torture fetish injected of course.

 

[xssve]

And, as is often pointed out by conservative pundits, the poor of this era live better than the Kings of previous eras.

Hip Hop Fetishism is pretty big business these days, and it all started with poor kids wearing hand-me-downs three sizes too large.

 

[xssve]

"In fact a salient feature of orgiastic rites is their democratic nature - social class is erased and all become equal."

Which is likely one reason that orgiastic rites tend to be frowned upon by the status quo.

The fact that we're all equal when we're naked undermines the Fashion hierarchy, as JBJ alluded - in fact, the difference between Calvin Klein and Givenchy is a significant one.

 

[xssve]

In short, you are correct when it reaches the level of fetish - latex fetish is an expensive hobby, and these people can be real snobs: not only are the outfits expensive, but they like to attend conventions and significant travel expenses are often a feature of that particular lifestyle.

Still, the designs are inspired by the common corset, the Strait Jacket, etc.

It's the Dionysian-Apollonian dynamic: Dionysian forces are dark, primal, underground forces, transformed through Apollonian artifice into symbolic artifact and ritual.

It's the constant convection current of Apollonian culture feeding off of the underlying roil of Dionysian chaos that provides the impetus of cultural change and progress.

It inspires fear, for it appears a form of madness, but it connects directly to the deeper archetypes of the psyche.

 

[xssve]

I linked to this in the Steampunk thread, but it's salient here: Strategic Illegibility: Celebrating Academic Writing 2; Imperial Leather

The Authors quotation of McClintock:

From Although the fetish is a compromise object, it does not necessarily embody only two options. Fetishes can involve triangulated contradictions, or more than three. Different patterns of consumption or forms of violent political closure may effectively contain the disruptive or undecidable power of the fetish. White male fetishes can resonate differently from illicit black or female fetishes. Considerable theoretical rigor and subtlety are lost if all fetishes are reduced to the magisterial phallus: oral fetishes such as the pacifiers used by men in "babyist" fetishism; breast fetishes such as nipple-clips or fetish bras; imperial fetishes such as slave-bands and whips; leather and rubber fetishes; national fetishes such as flags, team colors and sport mascots; political fetishes such as crowns and coats of arms; religious fetishes such as crucifixes and holy water; authority fetishes such as uniforms and handcuffs.

Instead of gathering these multifarious fetishes into a single primal scene, we might do better to open the genealogies of fetishism to more theoretically subtle and historically fruitful accounts. The fetishes of other cultures might then no longer have to genuflect to the master narrative of the western family romance. Since fetishes involve the displacement of a host of social contradictions onto impassioned objects, they defy reduction to a single originary trauma or the psychopathology of the individual subject. Indeed, fetishism might become the theoretical scene of a renewed investigation into the vexed relations between imperialism and domesticity, desire and commodity fetishism, psychoanalysis and social history—if only because the fetish itself embodies the failure of a single narrative of origins.

What she advocating here basically, is rather than divorce fetish from it's context, that the context is critical to understanding the true underlying role of fetish, as it's meaning tends to be distorted by the Master narrative - fetish rather serves as a symbolic connection between what may be wildly divergent cultural and psychological forces.

Thus, the corset represents not only an object control fetish in the Master narrative, but also symbolizes the the emotional senses of the bound object.

 

[Epmd607]

In short, you are correct when it reaches the level of fetish - latex fetish is an expensive hobby, and these people can be real snobs: not only are the outfits expensive, but they like to attend conventions and significant travel expenses are often a feature of that particular lifestyle.

Still, the designs are inspired by the common corset, the Strait Jacket, etc.

It's the Dionysian-Apollonian dynamic: Dionysian forces are dark, primal, underground forces, transformed through Apollonian artifice into symbolic artifact and ritual.

It's the constant convection current of Apollonian culture feeding off of the underlying roil of Dionysian chaos that provides the impetus of cultural change and progress.

It inspires fear, for it appears a form of madness, but it connects directly to the deeper archetypes of the psyche.

Shout out to: The Birth of Tragedy