First of all, let me say that I am against actual rape in the real world. The amount of non-consensual sex in the world should be this: none.
That said, we are not talking about rape in the real world when we talk about rape erotica, we’re talking about fictional depictions of rape.
If you’re against allowing others to write and read taboo erotica, such as rape erotica, incest erotica and bestiality erotica because you think it normalizes rape, that’s fine. Everybody’s entitled to their opinions. But your opinion IS wrong. Here’s why:
Reality isn’t fantasy, and erotica is fantasy. What’s more, most sane human beings know that. Being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy is a condition of sanity.
And almost everyone who reads erotica knows they are enjoying a fantasy, and that the things they’re enjoying in their fantasy are not necessarily things that they would enjoy in real life. They’re just like people who read murder stories, who don’t then go out and get involved in actual murders, because they know that in real life murders are horrible.
Rape erotica demonstrates this phenomenon perfectly. Women enjoyed rape fantasies back in the day when there was very little written erotica being published by anyone. The evidence for that is all the romance novels that came out in the Bad Old Days before indie erotica. Novels that featured storylines about dashing pirates or bold, handsome Viking warriors abducting innocent women and having their way with them without a by-your-leave, and then, of course, falling in love with them.
This probably does not happen a lot in real life, but it doesn’t matter … it’s a fantasy. All the anecdotal evidence indicates that the women who enjoy rape fantasies in romances do not want to be raped in real life. (Plus, common sense if that counts for anything.)
And of course when indie erotica happened as Amazon.com and other online publishers of various sorts got going, there were a lot of rape fantasies written and published, until Amazon started censoring them. It was (and is) a very popular genre. It stands to reason, since most erotica readers are the same women who make up the bulk of romance readers. They’re just getting to read the parts in erotica that were formerly left to their fervid imaginations.
The interesting question is, why is there so much emphasis on censoring erotica when the vast majority of readers are women? Especially considering that there is no one out there that I know of who claims that women are out there trying to tempt men into raping them in real life – much less that they’re doing so because the erotica reading made them want to be raped.
Rapists might conceivably read rape erotica and find that it makes them horny and want to commit rape, but once again, so far as I know, nobody is claiming that a lot of rapists read erotica. In fact, all of the evidence shows that the vast majority of erotica consumers are women. Some readers of erotica are male, but hard numbers are exceedingly hard to come by. Most estimates run from 5 to 25 percent male readership, with 20 percent being the most commonly cited number, but it’s hard to be confident in it.
Men mostly consume porn in video form rather than reading erotica. And the irony of it all is, there’s little or no censorship of rape in porn films, the sexual entertainment that men, who comprise the vast majority of rapists, like to watch.
So, rape content in the medium that is enjoyed by men, where rapists come from, is not censored at all. But rape content in the medium that is enjoyed by women, where rape victims come from, is heavily censored.
How exactly will that prevent rape again?
It makes very little sense, if you accept the claimed motivations of the people who call for censoring erotica at face value. Which is why I can’t accept them at face value.
I think there are just some people, mostly women, who don’t want other women to be free to enjoy sexual fantasies that they disapprove of. That’s all there is to it. They’d like to restrict men’s access to porn in general and rape porn in particular as well, and they’ve tried to do both of these things, but haven’t managed to yet. Good thing because censoring visual porn would very likely increase the frequency of rape in the real world.
The same is generally true for bestiality and incest. There’s just no logical support that censoring the erotica about them will have any effect in real life. Especially the bestiality erotica about werewolves and dinosaurs, which aren’t around to have sex with no matter how good the erotica about it might be.
I’d say if you want to reduce the incidence of rape in the real world, you should try to find some unbiased information about what works best to reduce the incidence of rape.
To that end, when internet access (and hence easy access to internet porn) became widespread on a state-by-state basis (which occurred as America built its cable system) a strange thing happened with rapes. They dropped significantly, in every state in perfect unison with easy access to porn via the Internet.
So widespread access to porn is what people who oppose real-world rape should want, because since 1995 when Internet porn has been widely available in the US, the incidence of rape in the US has gone down by 44 percent.
Isn’t that great? Most feminists should LOVE porn as a proven rape and sexual harassment reducer. But somehow, they don’t. (When I say “most feminists” I mean “most feminists who advocate censoring rape erotica” which is actually, I suspect, a small subset of feminists in general. Feminism is a very big tent.)
Of course, some will argue that this reduction in rape with increased access to Internet porn could be coincidence, not causation, but they are resisting common sense. I mean, say you’re the sheriff of a Western state and fifty banks have been robbed in that state, once a week or so, and Jesse James showed up in each town where there had been a robbery during the week in which its bank got robbed. You might not have proof that Jesse James did it … it COULD be a coincidence. But you’d be a piss-poor excuse for a sheriff if you didn’t take it as a working hypothesis that Jesse James robbed those banks and acted accordingly.
Yes, I’m saying some feminists are piss-poor excuses for rape opponents. If such feminists were serious about decreasing real-world rape, they be PUSHING porn (and rape erotica) big-time. I think their opposition to rape erotica comes from a very simple origin. They think “rape is bad and I don’t like it and it should be outlawed.” And they think, “Rape fiction is bad because rape, and I don’t like it and it should be outlawed.” It’s not a rational process.
In addition to the Internet evidence, some mental health therapists have stated that some sexual abuse survivors may have actually benefited from engaging in BDSM. For example, there’s this research paper which says: “Although the link is unsubstantiated, some kink-identified people who happen to be survivors of trauma may engage in kink, or trauma play, to heal from, cope with, and transform childhood abuse or adolescent maltreatment.” And there’s also this study which finds that BDSM may be useful in psychological harm reduction. And there’s this study which finds that people who engage in BDSM may be mentally healthier than those who don’t.
(I also am aware that the studies cited deal with real- world BDSM play rather than rape erotica, but absent contrary evidence, I’m assuming that what goes for BDSM play in this respect also goes for rape erotica.)
If you read the linked articles, you will know that they are quick to caution readers that none of these studies actually PROVES anything, they’re just data points that indicate that conclusions they indicate MAY be true, pending further study. That’s the way science works, and it’s fine to be cautious in claiming any particular study offers absolute proof of anything. That’s especially true of studies involving the social sciences, including mental health. The weeds grow tall in the social sciences, especially where sexuality is concerned. People are often much more prone to misrepresent, conceal or exaggerate their actual feelings and experiences because of the way the general culture deals with sexuality (i.e., mostly shaming it.)
This is why I give a lot more weight to the natural experiment created by the state-by-state access to Internet than the studies. While it’s correlation not causation and hence not absolute proof, it’s still remarkably accurate correlation, and hence a much sounder basis for conclusions about porn’s effect on rape and sexual harassment than any studies to date.
So I’ll go with the scientists and the mental health professionals here: I honestly don’t think rape erotica leads to rape and sexual harassment. In fact, I think it may actually be helpful and good for people, by creating a mental sandbox where people can safely work out their feelings about power imbalance relationships. That’s why I’m comfortable writing rape erotica and publishing it.
Thanks for attending my Ted talk. You can find signed copies of “Nataly the Violent Virgin” on your way out the door.