(Untitled)

[slob_child]

So, while scrolling through some fic that had the whole 'sex slave' schtick going on, I couldn't help but be struck by the glorification of what was rape - a trope most wildly popular fiction engages in when it deals with that issue; that if it feels good, it isn't a bad thing to be forced into sex; that if the rapist is kind and gentle, the

Comments

[anorthosite]

Wow! This is a great story, just as is. The sketchy-ness of it, the outline feeling, is a good structure, actually. It has more of a prose feeling, and is stripped down to the specific powerful emotional moments. I'll admit my bias - that I was pleased that the controlling force/person gets it in the end. And it is wonderful irony that that person is so 'bonded' to the 'first' that it does not matter if it was a murder or a suicide, nor on whose part, that the act kills them both. Very compelling read.

"insistence that I made promises on which I failed to deliver (promises I don't remember making, when I was fourteen, to a man who was in his late twenties - so very not cool; I feel unclean just remembering it)." I have GREAT ANGER towards this person who has made you feel this way. Just to let you know, this other person is the one who is unclean, not you. Any promises at any age notwithstanding, this is psychologically transparent - under duress is under duress. Coercion is coercion. Emotional abuse and manipulation is poison.

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Stress Cat Says - "I am seriously pissed off."

[slob_child]

I'm so glad you enjoyed this~! It was a very spur-of-the-moment write; Potatoe had sent me the link to a original fiction fantasy series that dealt semi-seriously with the sex slave aspects but made the rape okay, in a sense; made it permissible because of a handful of different rationalizations, and it was almost as bad as reading a blatant sex-slave story. Something in my head went all, "Wait, but no..." Part of the reason why I decided to write this story from the perspective of the 'owner' of the sex slaves was because the most common viewpoint in the other stories I've read containing the sex slave trope has been that of the sexually exploited, how that individual(s) makes him/herself complicit, makes the rape okay, twists the narrative around and around and tangles the issues of consent and ethics. I sort of want to write this really epic sex slave story that doesn't glamorize, that does confront the fact that no, whenever there's issues of ownership, true consent cannot exist. But... I'm lazy, and I don't like too much to the dark places.

And yeah - that was a crazy-weird experience for me. I tend to attract the creepy ones, I guess. I just don't know. He lives several provinces away, I met him at a friend's party; I thought it would be okay to be friendly, because it was a social situation, and I wasn't going to see him again after that night. But nothing happened! We talked, we hung out, we had fun. And then he got my number from my friend and wouldn't stop phoning me, even when he'd gone back home... and he made all these insinuations (and more than insinuations, after a while), and was so mad at me for the fact that I was uncomfortable by his explicitly sexual attention. I'm just glad that there was enough distance between us that I didn't have to seriously worry about my physical safety - but he was definitely psychologically damaging. I didn't date at all in high school - not completely due to this one guy's un-welcome attentions; I had a neighbour stalker that freaked me out, too, and weird family problems that came from dealing with a family member's terminal illness - but he definitely did not help with my trust issues. *shudder*

I like to think I've grown up a bit since then, but I still take a very very long time to actually become friends with guys; and if a guy shows interest in me, I get freaked out and run away. I think it's because I've had guys who start out very nice and decent, and quickly degenerate into the scary man I don't want to be in the same room with.

I think part of it is how girls in general (myself included) have been socialized to react to attention - we're supposed to be flattered by sexual attention, of any kind; it's supposed to be a compliment. And so there's that expectation of, if a guy expresses his 'appreciation' of your physical attributes, you should respond favorably, and if you don't, you're a bitch - and to be a bitch is to be bad, branded negatively, someone who doesn't partake in the whole sexualizing and de-individuating process. Yet when women do respond in the way in which they're 'supposed' to, they're blamed for making themselves vulnerable to rape and/or exploitation - if she's wearing a skirt, she's asking for it, etc. So it's all her fault for having been attacked.

Society makes me angry, most of the time.