springgreen | Kinks and squicks and all the spaces in between

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Kinks and squicks and all the spaces in between

This is partly informed by

nestra's recent post on kinks and squicks, but it's also informed by the SGA AU fic race debate (scroll through), by the SPN incest debate that happened around the same time, by a very interesting dilemma in

rachelmanija's LJ, by Strikethrough 2007 and Boldthrough 2007, and by lots of other things floating around.

It's also inspired by many conversations with

vom_marlowe largely concerning manga tropes and Cool Bits, especially since I have been promising her to post on this for months and months.

I've been thinking a lot about kinks and squicks and personal politics in the past few months: the (sometimes) uncontrollable nature of what turns me on and squicks me out, the way institutions of oppression can play into these personal turn-ons and turn-offs, how my own squicks and kinks have changed over the years, and the responsibilities (if there are any) of the reader/viewer/consumer of texts.

As such, this isn't specifically a commentary on racialized fantasies or SPN or manga or any one thing, though it'll probably touch on a lot of them.

I've never quite grokked the notion of a bulletproof kink -- not because I don't have kinks, but because I have yet to find a kink of mine that cannot be ruined by bad characterization and horrible grammar. I don't doubt that other people have them! It's just when I have a kink, I can tolerate more bad writing, but it's not bulletproof.

Also, another bit that influences my own take on bulletproof kinks is that I have had my "bulletproof" kinks change on me. Sometimes it happened because I read too much of a specific trope. Sometimes it happened after experiences in RL. Sometimes it happened because my personal politics changed or grew stronger. And some kinks and squicks didn't change on me at all.

For example: I love romances between a cold, emotionally cut-off person and a love interest who gets that person to warm up a little. I like the powerplay involved as well. Some of this is personal projection; I am not the warmest of people, though I've gotten better over time. But I think most of it is just plain kink, and psychoanalysis only goes so far.

I read a ton of romances through the years which starred your standard cold, emotionally cut-off alpha male. Usually he had a broken heart due to some nasty woman in his past and had sworn not to love again. Naturally, Our Heroine would melt his icy exterior, despite all his anger (even when directed against her, which was often). True love prevailed. I cannot tell you how many romances have this as a standard plot; it is that standard. I can tell you that very, very few romances have a cold, emotionally cut-off woman who has sworn not to love again but is perfectly fine with casual sex and a meltingly nice hero. Sometimes you get the cold heroine. But nearly always, the hero is also domineering in some way.

I loved these. LOVED. Ate them up with a spoon.

And then something changed. I don't remember when or why or how. I suspect it was many things. It was me growing up a little emotionally and learning to interact with people, it was realizing the gender imbalance in the trope, it was reading so many of them that I could predict every single step of the romance. It may have been other things as well.

I still have this kink, but it's a little different now -- it's a romance between a cold, emotionally cut-off woman (preferably an assassin!) and a love interest (male or female). But if the love interest's male, he has to be more like your standard romance heroine, whereas if the love interest's female, I'll probably be happy with anything. And if the cold, emotionally cut-off person is male and in a romance, I usually end up rolling my eyes. Sometimes BL or slash stories can pull it off, but not when the love interest acts like a romance heroine.

Another example: When I was first getting into anime fandom, I read a ton of yaoi (slash); it was a little odd at first, but I got used to it fairly quickly. Then some of my friends found yaoi and were really squicked out, and through many discussions, I got around to believing that seeing yaoi in non-yaoi texts was not right, and as such, I got more squicked by yaoi.

I avoided yaoi and slash for many years up till my recent fall back into anime and manga fandom, partly out of habit, partly because I gravitate toward female characteres, and partly out of homophobia.

Now, I read a lot and I even write some, and it doesn't feel odd any more.

I use these examples not to say that these specific kinks or squicks should change, or that kinks and squicks in general should change, but that they can change. And my conclusion is not that all kinks and squicks can change, but that some kinks and some squicks can change, sometimes. I'm fairly sure if I read more RPF or non-manga incest fic, I'll eventually get used to them so that I don't feel that squick; witness how I am now used to manga incest. On the other hand, I am fairly certain I will always have a kink for relationships that are textually portrayed as being incredibly dysfunctional. I'm also fairly sure I will always have a squick for love triangles that involve betrayal or sneaking around.

I also don't think fantasy should be policed, particularly the fantasies of people who are historically the objects of fantasy or have historicaly been objectified by fantasy. I do not even think the fantasies of people generally in power should be policed, even though many of these fantasies may really, really, really bug me on a personal level.

I'm not sure what my conclusion is or if I even have one. I know that the more politicized I have become online, the less tolerance I have for skanky isms in my fannish texts. But I also know people who choose to be politicized in RL and come to fandom for a respite. I also know I am less disturbed by fantasies of people who I know are on the same political scale as me, even if those fantasies are politically disagreeable to me.

But.

None of that means people who disagree with me should not speak or fantasize or talk about said fantasies, much less change said fantasies. In my moments of pettiness (and trust me, there are a lot of them), I often wish people wouldn't speak about them, particularly when it's in the comments of my LJ. On the other hand, I also want more people to watch Honey and Clover, for more crossover between my media fandomverse and my anime/manga fandomverse, for less women to die in TV shows, and a pony. In other words: my pettiness about my LJ comments is in no way a statement of how people should think or behave.

What I'm really interested in aren't bulletproof kinks or squicks per se, but the areas in between, where kinks change and squicks disappear, where something that didn't squick people before starts to, and all the questions that come with these areas. Can non-bulletproof squicks and kinks change? Should they? When? How? Why?

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This is a really interesting post; thank you for writing it. Also b/c I am sure there are a lot of people, like me, who have been too nervous/ashamed/etc. to talk about this stuff before, wrt our own kinks. Eeep.

I also know I am less disturbed by fantasies of people who I know are on the same political scale as me, even if those fantasies are politically disagreeable to me.

Meeeee too.

I'm gonna come back later & check what comments other folks are leaving, b/c I don't have anything more concrete to say right now. Just thanks for writing this.

Yeah! I am never that comfortable talking about my own kinks, which is partly why this post is on my fandom LJ, heh.

Thanks for reading!

This is stuff I think a lot about too... You actually

I was nodding along with most of this, so much so that I feel compelled to comment but don't have much to actually say. I especially agree with this:

I am less disturbed by fantasies of people who I know are on the same political scale as me, even if those fantasies are politically disagreeable to me.

For me... I absolutely believe that we shouldn't police our fantasies. We can't stop things from turning is on; it would be futile to try. But it's also so imperative, to me, that we think about what they mean, and that's where politics inevitably comes into it for me; where the level of self-analysis I can assume to be going on makes a difference. We don't exist in a vacuum, our fantasies have causes and effects, and those can be transformative and amazing as well as oppressive and disgusting and we need to acknowledge both. Fandom makes a big deal out of the former (with good cause, I really think, a lot of the time; I've definitely benefitted from that aspect of fandom) and tends to skip lightly over the latter, and that's a problem...

I don't know what to do with the fantasies that aren't clear-cut politically awful or happy and harmless; that's where a lot of chanslash comes in, for me (I'm neither turned on nor horribly squicked by most of it). I think that demonizing desire is dangerous (whee, alliteration!) and I absolutely think that it's a good thing to have a space where that stuff can be owned and articulated; but I don't quite know how to approach it ethically and politically.

And now I have deviated from your post into an obscure land of psuedointellectualism, and I need to go to bed, so I will stop. But excellent post.

Um, consider that first line deleted.

Hee! Will do ;).

Also, yes to the analysis of fantasies! I mean, I do not think that all fantasies should be self-analyzed and gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Nor do I think all fantasies should be politically perfect. But I think there's a difference between the unthinking acceptance of a fantasy and the acknowledgment that a fantasy is problematic but that it's still your fantasy. Ok, part of why I say this is because I personally enjoy looking at problematic gender and race issues, but I keep running into discussions in which people are critiquing problematic aspects of text and hit the "But I like it!" reaction.

I think that demonizing desire is dangerous (whee, alliteration!) and I absolutely think that it's a good thing to have a space where that stuff can be owned and articulated; but I don't quite know how to approach it ethically and politically.

Yes, definitely! And I run into even larger problems when it comes to authorship, since I generally come to things as a consumer, not a creator. Because then you get into muddly issues of intent and if that intent should be stated (I generally don't think it should have to be) and then what about times when the intent is there, but the execution fails, and etc. And of course there's all the larger context of fandom being a female space but not always a feminist one, of the demonization of desire and sexuality (particularly female desire) in most spaces, with the fetishization of some race/gender combos (black men, Latin@s, Asian women) and the desexualization of others (black women, Asian men).

Oof. Still thinking about a lot of this ;).

I have that same kink about a cold, emotionally cut-off person and a love interest who gets that person to warm up a little, also getting it from romance novels. I think perhaps that's why the KuroxFai relationship in Tsubasa is so interesting, because which character you think fits each role early on turns out not to be the case. It looks as though Fai is the stereotypically feminine one who warms up cold Kurogane, but then it turns out Fai's emotionally-connected manner is a front for some deeply repressed emotional baggage, and Kurogane, who seems to be the too reserved masculine partner, is the one who's really doing the emotional work in the relationship and trying to connect to the other one.

Mmmmm Kurogane/Fai. Very yes to how it plays around with the standard tropes, which is part of why I am reacting so strongly to it. Also, because of said romance trope, I'm now a total sucker for men who seem to be the reserved partner but are actually going for emotions and connection.

I've gotten hooked on KuroFai fic, but I find that the characterization of Fai makes or breaks the fic for me. Too many fic writers treat him as an uncomplicated emotional type, all smiles and goofball nicknames, without the deep-seated psychological issues just a millimeter below the surface. The best fic writers balance the two aspects of his character.
I was watching the dub of the anime the other night, and I was interested to see that in the Chunyan arc, the dub signals that Fai has a harder edge than one might suspect. He refers to torture at one point, while the subtitles only have him mention taking a hostage, and gets a reaction from Kurogane.

Ooh, I can see how that'd be really annoying.

Re: the dub. That's interesting! I'm really looking forward to more vols. of Tsubasa in English coming out to see how the translation goes.

I think there are some kinks that you sort of grow out of. That isn't to say that everyone that has a specific kink is embryonic in some way, but that person by person there are kinks that really speak to you for a while and then they don't. I think a lot of it IS personal change, but also, as you say, just reading so damn much of it. I used to have a bit of a kink for BDSM, and there are personal reasons that I stopped being quite as interested in it, but also CSI slash—well, I want to say "beat it out of me" but what a horrible pun! Still, there is a LOT of BDSM in that fandom, and some of it is hot, and some of it makes sense for the characters and the situations, but some of it errs not on the side of "you're just doing this for the thrill" but rather "this has become way too procedural." Like, long discussions about contracts and super slow builds that never climaxed. I remember reading some story that got to 20 quite short chapters and they still hadn't had sex! There had just been a lot of inner dialogue about what it meant to be a "slave" or a "master" and it's like, you know, I like some foreplay but this is ridiculous. It really took the "kink" out of the whole thing for me, in a lot of ways, and I lost any affinity I had for it, and put away something I'd been working on for HP fandom.

As for your yaoi experience, I think that there are some things, and some groups of people, where it isn't socially "okay" to have that kink or read that fanfic. Fandom has such a sense of itself as being so weird and always being afraid that the "mundanes" will think we're crazy that there is a lot of posturing within fandom: "I'm not crazy because I can recognize that that person over there is crazy. I'm not crazy because there are (arbitrary) lines that I will not cross." When I came into fandom it was the middle of the LotRPS craze and there was a lot of prejudice in HP fandom against RPS. And now I'm writing all this Idolslash and I'm fairly unrepentant about it and those who are squicked by it don't have to read it.

But I think there's a difference between being squicked by something and feeling that it's "wrong." I'm squicked by affair fics, by unknowing beards in slash, by Snape as a sexual being, but I don't think any of it is wrong. The people you were talking to implied that yaoi was wrong, and that led to your squick, but you weren't really squicked, so when you stopped thinking it was wrong, you stopped being squicked. I'm not sure I want to say that the point is to stop thinking certain things are just "wrong" because that could be my bias, and I'm not even sure if the whole phenomenon of the longer you're in fandom the more tolerant you become about these things is actually good or not, but I do think that the need to show that you are sane by pointing out someone else's crazy isn't good for fandom, even if it has been around since the very beginning.

"I'm not crazy because I can recognize that that person over there is crazy. I'm not crazy because there are (arbitrary) lines that I will not cross."

Ooo yeah. I didn't follow Strikethrough or Boldthrough very closely, but I do recall seeing some of the "Ha! They're crazier than us!" or "How come LJ isn't going after [insert group]?"

But I think there's a difference between being squicked by something and feeling that it's "wrong."

*nods* Yeah, I think that's a very good point. Sort of off topic from your remarks, but I do think there is a difference between squicks that are not politically loaded (or not as politically loaded) and squicks that are. Because even if "Teal'c having sex" were a personal squick, that's a really problematic one when it comes to politics! And that's when I do start to look at a person's political beliefs and their LJs and stuff, because it's one thing if they write lots of COCs having sex and just not Teal'c vs. somehow not being into all COCs having sex.

Um anyway. Fandom and "wrong"-ness! Like you, I have a hard time with the notion that we should stop thinking certain things are wrong. Because on one hand... there is my personal experience with yaoi and homophobia. On the other hand... there are areas that I am not sure about, like incest and chan, and I do think some of it has been getting more mainstreamed because of specific fandoms. This is not to say that it is the fault of those fandoms; I think if another YA book/series had been a huge fandom before HP or if there were another popular show with brothers before SPN, the same thing could have happened. And of course, it's a whole 'nother ballgame for anime/manga.

Yay!!!! You posted about it!

I had never thought about falling out of love with a kink before. I've been thinking about my story reading habits and there are some I've had and lost. I used to read lots of dog stories, but I finally stopped because it seemed like so many of them would pair the kid and dog together, then once they were a true team, in order to prove that the kid could handle LifeTM, the kid had to lose the dog. Blech. For some reason, the horse stories don't seem to go this route. I wonder why.

I also used to read Arthurian legends like mad. I'm not sure why I stopped reading them. Maybe I burned it out, maybe I liked my internal version better, I'm not sure.

I used to be terribly squicked by RPS. I don't read it now, and probably won't ever, but the idea of it squicks me less on a visceral level. I do generally feel less self conscious about enjoying a story kink story with a kink I disapprove of but cannot seem to shake, if the storyteller is one I trust with the politics of things. I've been mulling this over for a while, and will have more thoughts later.

The dead dog syndrome, omg yes!

I used to love Arthurian legends and Faerie as well, but I also ended up burning out on those. I also wonder a bit how adolescent reading contributes to falling out of love with a trope; I know part of my eye-rolling at epic fantasy and vampires in love is directly related to how many bad ones I read as a teen.

I do generally feel less self conscious about enjoying a story kink story with a kink I disapprove of but cannot seem to shake, if the storyteller is one I trust with the politics of things.

*nods* Yeah, me too. I do think it's a very different thing to generally be a feminist and talk about feminism and turn toward comfort reading with skanky gender issues because you just cannot fight everything all the time, versus not paying attention to gender issues at all and consuming lots of media with skanky gender issues.

Would love to hear any more thoughts you had ^_^.

I totally agree with you that some kinks/preferences/fetishes change. So I have a hard time when someone says, "This is just what I fantasize about, I have no control over it!" Some of what creates a kink is outside our control, but some of it isn't, and, well, I have issues.

So much of fandom is about catering to the id, unthinkingly, ignoring any other messages we're actually receiving or perpetuating. A lot of it is harmless, depending on the context. Some of it may not be, again, depending on the context. But "kink" is privileged in fandom so strongly that even raising an eyebrow at it gets you the stinkeye in some quarters. Because having an opinion means I'm oppressing someone's exploration of their sexuality, you see.

Argh.

Because having an opinion means I'm oppressing someone's exploration of their sexuality, you see.

Hee! And often it's the context -- I can totally see why people react like that when there are so many encounters with "Ewwww, slash!" But it's also completely possible to explore your sexuality while inadvertently perpetuating another form of oppression, and I think it's important to look at that. And the conclusions may be very different from different people, but it's the looking that I find important.

Mmm, thank you for posting this.

It's hard to talk about personal kinks and fantasies in public! For me, I've had to do a lot on figuring out my own kinks and learning to fantasize... like I just didn't learn how in puberty when it seemed everyone else did, and I'm at least a decade behind.

I still struggle with what fantasies I would "allow" myself. I haven't had race issues come up, maybe because I'm not good at picturing appearances during fantasies, but I have felt bad about the frequency with which my fantasies head for power imbalance territory rather than equality (such as master/slave dynamics, and not necessarily "safe, sane, and consentual").

In real life I try to be feminist, anti-racist, anti-abuse, and generally work towards equality, so I tried to resist those power-imbalance fantasies for a long time, but I made more progress overall when I decided not to feel guilty about it or actively avoid them, but rather try to also sometimes fantasize about more equal healthy relationships -- *also* rather than instead being the key.

I do really enjoy *reading* about equal healthy relationships, and I have a very good one with my partner, it's just that my own imagination doesn't seem to be as keen on them. Which is frustrating.

Not much squicks me, other than certain medical procedures which I have had to work hard to overcome a full-blown phobia of. But there are plenty of things on the kink/squick scale that I get incredibly annoyed about if they're not done well, particularly genderfuck -- probably because it's too personal (being an androgynous-identified transgender person). But when it's done well (according to my subjective and very high standards), I adore it.

I still struggle with what fantasies I would "allow" myself.

Yeah, me too! I have this huuuuge kink for stories about courtesans and prostitutes and looooove, and I know it's hugely problematic given the general romanticization of prostitution and the prostitute with heart of gold trope and the state of sex workers in real life.

I like your focus on "also" instead of "instead"! Because I generally think guilt about fantasies doesn't work very well and just leads to self-hate, which is not helpful! And it sort of ties into the idea of patterns and politicization, how if someone writes or reads a lot of stuff in which the woman is the subordinate, it's very different if said person also reads and writes stuff with powerful women of all ages and sizes, versus if that person only ever reads or writes about men in power.

That's how I've been trying to tell if I am unconsciously biased -- do I just not like this particular black character? Or do I somehow manage to find reasons not to like all black characters?

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Kinks and squicks and all the spaces in between

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