Not STORY-feedback, but FEEDBACK-feedback ...

[NorthBayDom]

I keep being surprised by some of the feedback here seeming to be... dunno how to put it... willfully obtuse? contrarian for its own sake?

Like, someone who seems they're into patriarchal/misogynist themes who "corrects" in a FemDom category, or someone criticizing rape in stories tagged as NonCon ...

Why...? Why are those folks even bothering to read in those categories?

Given that the authors are posting those kinds of stories in those categories -- and other readers are coming to read it -- do these commentators really expect to get any traction or agreement??!?

Are they just people whose fetish is for Trollery & generally being online-provocateurs? Or...?

 

[Steph_McNeal]

You seem to have a couple of very specific examples in mind.

Got links?

 

[PennyThompson]

I think that some people don't pay close attention to categories or tags when they start a story, and may get unpleasantly surprised by the content of said story. Which is totally on them, but I think that's often what is happening.

In other cases they might have very strong tastes and opinions about what they think should or should not happen within a story category or genre. Loving Wives, for example, where some readers love a reconciliation story, while other readers despise it and view it as injustice or weakness. And since the category has both kinds of stories, both will sometimes get angry comments from the opposing faction!

Other times yes, I do think some people just like to find stories that make them mad

 

[TheLobster]

Other times yes, I do think some people just like to find stories that make them mad

Perhaps they are like these characters from Oglaf:

 

[Olderwiserstillhorny]

Thinking about this and how people don't like something but no one else should like it either.
Its a control thing.

 

[NorthBayDom]

You seem to have a couple of very specific examples in mind.

Got links?

Not at this specific moment; I'd have to go delving into Comment-sections.

It's just a pattern I had seen repeatedly, and finally wondered if others had seen it too, and could help me figure out the why of it.

 

[Ianus4]

You seem to have a couple of very specific examples in mind.

Got links?

I agree; without specific examples, it’s relatively difficult to judge such matters, and in fact, the reason may differ from case to case.

 

[Steph_McNeal]

Not at this specific moment; I'd have to go delving into Comment-sections.

It's just a pattern I had seen repeatedly, and finally wondered if others had seen it too, and could help me figure out the why of it.

Ah, okay. Haven't noticed that pattern, so I don't know...

 

[EmilyMiller]

Its a control thing.

Slightly ironic in the context of stories featuring non-consensual sex, surely.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

I keep being surprised by some of the feedback here seeming to be... dunno how to put it... willfully obtuse? contrarian for its own sake?

Like, someone who seems they're into patriarchal/misogynist themes who "corrects" in a FemDom category, or someone criticizing rape in stories tagged as NonCon ...

Why...? Why are those folks even bothering to read in those categories?

Given that the authors are posting those kinds of stories in those categories -- and other readers are coming to read it -- do these commentators really expect to get any traction or agreement??!?

Are they just people whose fetish is for Trollery & generally being online-provocateurs? Or...?

I think sometimes people think they're helping to de-legitimize the kind of story they don't like.

Specifically the people who read stories in the R/NC section and comment to condemn stories with R/NC themes and the people who like them, based on whatever assumptions they have about what the existence of that section, those stories and those people means.

Maybe they think if enough people do this, people will stop writing them. I've spoken to writers here who are much more hesitant to publish and VERY careful about making themselves unidentifiable precisely because the attitudes expressed in those comments are seen to reflect a broader hostility that might be an actual potential threat in their actual lives.

So if people are writing those comments on R/NC stories, maybe they think they're contributing to a war against the existence of such stories in public and against the public existence of the people who write them.

If that's not the intent, it's definitely part of the effect.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

No one seems to have mentioned yet, the guilt aspect. I think a lot of it is often people who haven't yet developed a healthy distinction between reality and fantasy, or a healthy relationship with their own sexuality. They read whatever category because they find the ideas arousing, but they also feel guilty because 'it's wrong'. And then, during their 'post-nut clarity' (ha!), rather than looking inward at their own guilt, they lash out at the writer for having the audacity to 'feed my evil desire'.
(I also have a suspicion about the gender of most such commenters, but...)

 

[Ianus4]

No one seems to have mentioned yet, the guilt aspect. I think a lot of it is often people who haven't yet developed a healthy distinction between reality and fantasy, or a healthy relationship with their own sexuality. They read whatever category because they find the ideas arousing, but they also feel guilty because 'it's wrong'. And then, during their 'post-nut clarity' (ha!), rather than looking inward at their own guilt, they lash out at the writer for having the audacity to 'feed my evil desire'.
(I also have a suspicion about the gender of most such commenters, but...)

The problem is that the word “fantasy” is often just an excuse.
Someone who fantasies to rape another person, but if they write that it’s just a fantasy (and the victim was wet or erect anyway) then it’s all fine. But this is the case in other genres as well. If an alien were to land on Earth and wanted to learn about humanity from Lit, what would they learn? For example, that a relationship between a black man and a white woman exists exclusively in the context of BBC, BNWO, and cuckolding. Or that BDSM is exclusively about evil, narcissistic, psychopathic dom(me)s subjecting unfortunate people to various forms of torture while humiliating the reluctant victim in every possible way. Or that SPH and cuckolding are mandatory elements of femdom. Or that marriages consist exclusively of unfaithful, evil, and foolish spouses.
The problem is that such stories socialize people and normalize acts, no matter how much many people may dislike this fact.
"What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then?"

 

[TheExperimentalist]

The problem is that the word “fantasy” is often just an excuse.
Someone who fantasies to rape another person, but if they write that it’s just a fantasy (and the victim was wet or erect anyway) then it’s all fine. But this is the case in other genres as well. If an alien were to land on Earth and wanted to learn about humanity from Lit, what would they learn? For example, that a relationship between a black man and a white woman exists exclusively in the context of BBC, BNWO, and cuckolding. Or that BDSM is exclusively about evil, narcissistic, psychopathic dom(me)s subjecting unfortunate people to various forms of torture while humiliating the reluctant victim in every possible way. Or that SPH and cuckolding are mandatory elements of femdom. Or that marriages consist exclusively of unfaithful, evil, and foolish spouses.
The problem is that such stories socialize and normalize people, no matter how much many people may dislike this fact.
"What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then?"

I agree. Which is why I said:

a healthy distinction between reality and fantasy

 

[TheWritingGroup]

But this is the case in other genres as well. If an alien were to land on Earth and wanted to learn about humanity from Lit, what would they learn? For example, that a relationship between a black man and a white woman exists exclusively in the context of BBC, BNWO, and cuckolding ...

I realize this is hyperbole, but for the record: except in my work. Or many others, of course.

 

[liliput1]

I agree. Which is why I said:

Whether you meant to or not you couched it as about the reader and @Ianus4 was talking about the writer. Where I get judgy is the same place other regulars literally reply with “yikes” - this person is describing a scene of violence that has red flags all over it and makes me worry for their neighbors.

As someone put it here a good while ago, the female “rape fantasy” is about desire, and the problematic one is about power. The distinction shows up even in outlines.

Just as child molestation is also all about power, and not welcome here, I’m not going to apologize for drawing parallels between it and some authors ideations which aren’t as strictly prohibited. It’s the same urge with a different victim.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Since it's been mentioned, I think cuck fetishism in porn is generally people - men - eroticising anxieties about their capacity to perform particular ideas of masculinity, and of the role such an embodiment of masculinity is imagined as having in coupledom.

In other words, it's frequently an eroticisation of imagined failures of masculinity within a conservative idea of heterosexual monogamous coupledom, instead of any actual critique of the ideas and realities of such heterosexual monogamous coupledom.

That's often why in such fictions the person doing the cucking has to reflect hegemonic stereotypes of supposedly successful manliness, and, particularly if the porn emerges from the US or is aimed at US markets, the odds are good this will invoke long-standing US racial-sexual mythologies in which black men embodied and embody forms of masculinity framed as a threat to the control and de facto ownership of white women by white men.

To say that this mythology emerged from the specific US history of white supremacy, but also broader colonial ideologies about the need to protect 'white women' from locals or slaves, should be so obvious as to be banal, even if people don't know who Emmett Till was or why the Scottsboro Boys were known internationally during Jim Crow. Suffice to say, these ideologies decorated the discourse of the Klan and informed the carnivals of community togetherness that lynchings could become, at which black men were routinely accused of raping white women, a term that could mean anything from a boy having a romantic relationship with a white girl whose father did not approve, or dancing with a white girl who was 'caught' visiting a black establishment, or being any male black child over about twelve who has been described as insufficiently deferential.

But race and the racial politics of commercial cuck fetishism porn aside, porn isn't usually an attempt to put forward a sexual utopia in any case, but more often an effort to monetize the eroticisation of social and individual anxieties and the range of kinks that often overlap and intersect - as had been noted by others, creating a production process often organised around whatever content is simultaneously what a minority of consumers want a great deal and what a majority of consumers will tolerate.

In life one might hope the anxieties at play in cuck fetishism could become an awareness of the absurdity and counter-productivity of the fantasies of masculinity some men become wealthy encouraging other men to chase, because incels collectively making the next Andrew Tate wealthy isn't a solution for anyone to anything outside of the grifter potentially solving their financial problems.

But in porn and even non-commercial literary erotica I think other imperatives are at work.

I write this as someone acutely aware of the historicity of kinks, the socio-historical specificity of their formation, because of the very evident historical specificity of some of my own.

Where was I going with this again...

 

[TheExperimentalist]

Whether you meant to or not you couched it as about the reader and @Ianus4 was talking about the writer. Where I get judgy is the same place other regulars literally reply with “yikes” - this person is describing a scene of violence that has red flags all over it and makes me worry for their neighbors.

As someone put it here a good while ago, the female “rape fantasy” is about desire, and the problematic one is about power. The distinction shows up even in outlines.

Just as child molestation is also all about power, and not welcome here, I’m not going to apologize for drawing parallels between it and some authors ideations which aren’t as strictly prohibited. It’s the same urge with a different victim.

My apologies. I believe we may be talking past each other. I had taken the NC/R talk as an example, not the main point. I had understood the OP's main point as being confusion over people commenting negatively on story in a category they clearly chose to read a story from, rather than the problems around NC/R specifically. The way I read it, the example could easily have been GM or LS. I don't think we can deny that there are a lot of projected guilt comments, which is all I meant to be commenting on.

In terms of NC/R specifically, I agree that there can be major issues there. I wasn't trying to dispute that, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Since it's been mentioned, I think cuck fetishism in porn is generally people - men - eroticising anxieties about their capacity to perform particular ideas of masculinity, and of the role such an embodiment of masculinity is imagined as having in coupledom.

In other words, it's frequently an eroticisation of imagined failures of masculinity within a conservative idea of heterosexual monogamous coupledom, instead of any actual critique of the ideas and realities of such heterosexual monogamous coupledom.

That's often why in such fictions the person doing the cucking has to reflect hegemonic stereotypes of supposedly successful manliness, and, particularly if the porn emerges from the US or is aimed at US markets, the odds are good this will invoke long-standing US racial-sexual mythologies in which black men embodied and embody forms of masculinity framed as a threat to the control and de facto ownership of white women by black men.
[snip]

Another thing that might be happening is just enjoying transgression of taboos, a big thing in porn. If someone comes from a racist culture (which is another way of saying "a culture"), fucking the "wrong" "race" can be exciting, and for many people any kind of excitement in a sexual setting becomes sexual stimulation. In that way, BBC porn is the same as incest porn or, I don't know, old/young porn--it's something you're forbidden to do (or discouraged from doing) and that makes it exciting.

There's also the n-word phenomenon, or the way the sexually nontypical have adopted "queer" and "fag". Taking the insult and making it yours. I am pale of skin, but I can see Black men adopting the idea of Black superstuds who threaten the less-masculine pasty-white cucks and steal their women as a way to deal with the (horrendous) racism of the original use of that trope. Historically, the Chinese used to have that same racist attitude about the Mongolians, I have read--they were hairy, muscular supermen who could effortlessly attract your wife if you weren't constantly vigilant.

 

[liliput1]

My apologies. I believe we may be talking past each other. I had taken the NC/R talk as an example, not the main point. I had understood the OP's main point as being confusion over people commenting negatively on story in a category they clearly chose to read a story from, rather than the problems around NC/R specifically. The way I read it, the example could easily have been GM or LS. I don't think we can deny that there are a lot of projected guilt comments, which is all I meant to be commenting on.

In terms of NC/R specifically, I agree that there can be major issues there. I wasn't trying to dispute that, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.

I'm trying to juggle too many half-finished threads and I probably lost a bit of the plot.

I don't disagree with your post-nut-clarity thesis, for the record.

There is negativity here in AH about certain themes and definitely combinations of themes, and I was trying to own part of my participation in it. That was my recollection of the start of this thread. I have strong opinions about some other genres that I keep to myself because I'm on shakier ground there and I don't know if that's for me to get over myself or develop more coherent arguments. The line between kink and targeting masquerading as a kink is finer than I care for.

 

[Ianus4]

Since it's been mentioned, I think cuck fetishism in porn is generally people - men - eroticising anxieties about their capacity to perform particular ideas of masculinity, and of the role such an embodiment of masculinity is imagined as having in coupledom.

In other words, it's frequently an eroticisation of imagined failures of masculinity within a conservative idea of heterosexual monogamous coupledom, instead of any actual critique of the ideas and realities of such heterosexual monogamous coupledom.

That's often why in such fictions the person doing the cucking has to reflect hegemonic stereotypes of supposedly successful manliness, and, particularly if the porn emerges from the US or is aimed at US markets, the odds are good this will invoke long-standing US racial-sexual mythologies in which black men embodied and embody forms of masculinity framed as a threat to the control and de facto ownership of white women by black men.

To say that this mythology emerged from the specific US history of white supremacy, but also broader colonial ideologies about the need to protect 'white women' from locals or slaves, should be so obvious as to be banal, even if people don't know who Emmett Till was or why the Scottsboro Boys were known internationally during Jim Crow. Suffice to say, these ideologies decorated the discourse of the Klan and informed the carnivals of community togetherness that lynchings could become, at which black men were routinely accused of raping white women, a term that could mean anything from a boy having a romantic relationship with a white girl whose father did not approve, or dancing with a white girl who was 'caught' visiting a black establishment, or being any male black child over about twelve who has been described as insufficiently deferential.

But race and the racial politics of commercial cuck fetishism porn aside, porn isn't usually an attempt to put forward a sexual utopia in any case, but more often an effort to monetize the eroticisation of social and individual anxieties and the range of kinks that often overlap and intersect - as had been noted by others, creating a production process often organised around whatever content is simultaneously what a minority of consumers want a great deal and what a majority of consumers will tolerate.

In life one might hope the anxieties at play in cuck fetishism could become an awareness of the absurdity and counter-productivity of the fantasies of masculinity some men become wealthy encouraging other men to chase, because incels collectively making the next Andrew Tate wealthy isn't a solution for anyone to anything outside of the grifter potentially solving their financial problems.

But in porn and even non-commercial literary erotica I think other imperatives are at work.

I write this as someone acutely aware of the historicity of kinks, the socio-historical specificity of their formation, because of the very evident historical specificity of some of my own.

Where was I going with this again...

The problem with this is that eroticization is just one step away from normalization. The best example of this is anal sex. It used to be a major taboo (it even has its own category on Lit) but today it has become almost a mandatory element in countless erotic stories, “worth” at most a single tag. Unlike anal sex, however, both BDSM and cuckolding are considered extremely dangerous fetishes that require the mutual consent of both parties, a detailed prior agreement, and serious aftercare. Writers usually leave these out (even though aftercare, for example, can be a great plot element), which is like trying to go bungee jumping without the proper equipment. Without these elements, it all amounts to abuse and endangerment. Worse still, it can create the impression that this is "the" BDSM/cuckold fetish/etc.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

The problem with this is that eroticization is just one step away from normalization. The best example of this is anal sex. It used to be a major taboo (it even has its own category on Lit) but today it has become almost a mandatory element in countless erotic stories, “worth” at most a single tag. Unlike anal sex, however, both BDSM and cuckolding are considered extremely dangerous fetishes that require the mutual consent of both parties, a detailed prior agreement, and serious aftercare. Writers usually leave these out (even though aftercare, for example, can be a great plot element), which is like trying to go bungee jumping without the proper equipment. Without these elements, it all amounts to abuse and endangerment. Worse still, it can create the impression that this is "the" BDSM/cuckold fetish/etc.

Not to disagree in principle with your greater point, but anal sex without proper preparation and communication can be quite dangerous, not just in terms of the very real chance of physical damage but the enormously higher risk of transmitting disease if done wrong (because anal sex damages the epithelial cells and leaves a route of infection). Lube-free, condom-free anal sex is ... not a great idea.

And being annoying science person me, anal sex in my stories has always had both condoms and lube.

 

[lovecraft68]

The problem with this is that eroticization is just one step away from normalization. The best example of this is anal sex. It used to be a major taboo (it even has its own category on Lit) but today it has become almost a mandatory element in countless erotic stories, “worth” at most a single tag. Unlike anal sex, however, both BDSM and cuckolding are considered extremely dangerous fetishes that require the mutual consent of both parties, a detailed prior agreement, and serious aftercare. Writers usually leave these out (even though aftercare, for example, can be a great plot element), which is like trying to go bungee jumping without the proper equipment. Without these elements, it all amounts to abuse and endangerment. Worse still, it can create the impression that this is "the" BDSM/cuckold fetish/etc.

I think ignoring rules of things like BDSM and Cuckolding is the same as not bothering with condoms, having periods, etc, its realistic details that get in the way of the fun.

But I agree that it seems most cuck/hotwife stories are more in the vein of humiliation that the husband being into it, and don't get me started on how much of the BDSM category is really poorly masked NC. Over time femdom has been abused and pushed out in favor of bitch gets hers.

But after the disgusting pile of shit and misinformation known as 50 shades, its hard to blame a flat out porn site for spreading false information, no story here had talk shows praising and discussing it and telling everyone how exciting it is.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

But I agree that it seems most cuck/hotwife stories are more in the vein of humiliation that the husband being into it, and don't get me started on how much of the BDSM category is really poorly masked NC. Over time femdom has been abused and pushed out in favor of bitch gets hers.

Are you thinking of Loving Wives? I just checked the most recent 25 BDSM stories, and about half contain at least elements of femdom.

 

[Ianus4]

Not to disagree in principle with your greater point, but anal sex without proper preparation and communication can be quite dangerous, not just in terms of the very real chance of physical damage but the enormously higher risk of transmitting disease if done wrong (because anal sex damages the epithelial cells and leaves a route of infection). Lube-free, condom-free anal sex is ... not a great idea.

And being annoying science person me, anal sex in my stories has always had both condoms and lube.

You're absolutely right, although in the case of periodontal disease, for example, oral sex can also carry risks.

In one of my favorite stories, the author not only described the use of condoms and lubricant, but also mentioned the sounds produced during this type of sex, and strangely enough, this didn't detract from but rather added to the intimacy of the scene.

 

[lovecraft68]

Are you thinking of Loving Wives? I just checked the most recent 25 BDSM stories, and about half contain at least elements of femdom.

See what the reactions are in the comments, you'll see the OPs complaint in there.

I believe this started in LW, the woman hating BTB faction AKA the most despicable readers on this site-but as time goes on they've spread out. The only place a cuck and femdom story is 'safe' now is in fetish, the category with actual men who embrace their kink.

Having said that, you can still put them out there and some might succeed, but only if you make the guy so despicable even they can't feel bad for him. Like I did in my Pink Orchid entry.

I published my first story in 2010 in BDSM and it was a femdom piece, did okay, but the landscape has changed over time and not for the better.