Big Ed's Place

Often, erotica is shoved into a ‘taboo’ corner where it’s unacceptable to be openly consumed or created. Magazines and books don’t come in plain brown wrappers any more, but erotica and porn companies still use neutral sounding monikers for billing and shipping. Due to the opprobrium, most erotica writers use pen names. Additionally, both porn and erotica exploded when it became easy to consume them in the privacy of one’s home. VCR’s meant that people didn’t have to get caught going into adult movie theaters, or endure an unpleasant environment while they were there. Similarly, the internet dramatically increased porn consumption, with porn leading the way in many developments.

One unintended side effect of the disdain and marginalization of porn, however, was that it created a world with almost no limits. It has been like the traditional Japanese concept of shame. Once a Samurai brought shame on himself, well, it didn’t matter how much shame. There wasn’t a gradation going from “bad” to “worse” to “awful.” The line had been crossed and that was it.

But if the line has been crossed and it doesn’t matter, why not take it to the limit? What difference does it make, really, to cheat on your wife twenty times instead of five? Or to spend three days on a drug induced binge instead of one? There are obviously some celebrities in the news recently who’ve made that calculation.

Similarly, porn saw the rabid push to the limits. Rule 34 is proof of that. So is the explosion of some of the most tasteless boundary pushing porn imaginable. If being taboo or being shocking is all you have to differentiate yourself, and there’s no social penalty for being shocking because you’re already across the line, why not go for it?

So… cue the problem with where the line gets drawn. There is a movement in many quarters to bring quality erotica out from behind the line. Or to move the line so that “erotica” doesn’t have the disdain in popular culture. Of course, that’s much of the basis for the erotica vs. porn definition fight. Erotica is on the “acceptable” side of the line and porn is on the other.

Now rather than wade into that fight in this particular musing, I want to go back to my original metaphor and ask–is there really only one line? Or is there more than one? Or is there really a gradient?

And I’ve come to believe there are really two lines. The first is when something gets looked down on socially. The second is when it motivates a section of the population to actively go after the producers.

That second line, in porn, is clearly child pornography. I’ve discussed my views on it previously and don’t wish to repeat myself about how it should be treated. Instead, I’d like to steer into the area of fictional child porn.

In written erotica, or cartoon erotica, there are no actual child victims. It all comes from the creator’s imagination. As such, I believe it should be harmless and, in America, protected under the First Amendment.

But what I think doesn’t matter. I know of several erotica authors who have run into legal difficulties as a result of using pre-teen characters. Red Rose accepted a plea deal after facing criminal charges for obscenity. Frank McCoy chose to fight his, even though it meant traveling from Minnesota to Florida to defend himself. Dorsai was contacted by authorities and warned but not charged. I know of a handful of other cases that have other complications as well (like the authorities actually finding child porn on the author’s computer). All it takes is a prosecutor out to make a headline or acting out of personal moral revulsion to make someone’s life hell. It’s not necessarily a consolation to win the legal case if you’ve been dragged through the mud along the way.

This is, surprisingly, not purely academic for me. I recently had an opportunity to do graphic novel scripts for a new website for pay. Anyone who’s followed my Deep Dish discussions here knows that I would love to do more graphic novels, but having to pay an artist is holding me back. However, the website was going to allow comics that had pre-teen characters involved in sexual situations. Even if I was willing to be associated with a site that allowed that from a personal taste and morals standpoint, the legal jeopardy is too much to risk.

That’s what made me aware of this second line. Post-puberty teenagers–okay, that’s a grey area since the age of consent varies so much. Pre-puberty? Line. Big Red and flashing, for those who see it. And for me–I’m not going to cross it, even by second hand association.

So it’s time to talk about Child Pornography, or Kiddie Porn. It’s one of the few remaining enforced taboos in America, both legally (since possession of kiddie porn is a crime) and in popular culture. Want to have a kick the dog moment in a crime drama? Have the cops discover kiddie porn in the bad guy’s apartment. On the flip side–want to have the ultimate lure of the taboo? Include some underage sex, particularly incestuous underage sex. Kiddie porn is an easy gut wrench.

But is it reasonable to be such a taboo? I think yes, but not in the way it’s too often applied. The problem is that it’s seen as an evil in and of itself. There are arguments that it’s a slippery slope to child abuse, but solid reputable research backing this up is difficult to find. After all, people aren’t automatons where viewing something immediately leads to trying to duplicate it.

But what is reasonable for its opprobrium is that the act of making child porn is an act of rape. The child cannot consent to posing for nudes, sexually suggestive pictures, or, at the extreme, pictures of them engaged in sex (which they also can not consent to). I believe that consent is paramount and fundamental to sexuality and my political world view stems in a great part from that (see here).

So why not treat it that way?

Pictures of a rape are, legally and morally, not distinguishable of pictures of other crimes. Consider snuff films, depicting a murder, or crime scene videos, depicting a robbery. If these come into someone’s possession, they have a moral and legal responsibility to turn them into the authorities so that they may attempt to catch the criminals. Failure to do so is withholding evidence; i.e. aiding and abetting the crime. So how about prosecuting the person who possesses kiddie porn as an accessory to the crime, rather than with possession?

Doing so would have some substantial benefits. For one, it would focus the attention on the actual crime. As long as ‘possession’ is the crime, it’s too easy to conflate having kiddie porn with ‘possession’ of pot, or ‘possession’ of an unregistered firearm. Possession crimes are frequently not seen as morally problematic so much as a disagreement with the government. Prosecuting for ‘accessory to rape’ moves the focus back to the victim–it’s not the state vs. Joe Porn Addict. It’s the state going after John Rapist and prosecuting Joe Porn Addict for not helping.

Which of course is the second benefit. If someone happens to find or come across some Kiddie Porn, they’d have a lot more incentive to turn it in. There’s no crime if they make a good faith effort to help catch the rapist. The potential plea bargaining options are also obvious.

Now that said, note that ‘accessory’ can still carry serious prison time, if it’s warranted. There’s even a case in Colorado where a woman got life without parole for failing to tell the police where her boyfriend was (just before he killed a cop). There’s also a current case in Wyoming where a guy duped another man into raping the first guy’s ex-girlfriend. Even though the first guy didn’t do the rape, he’s looking at serious hard time.

The point is, we already have experience in the legal system using accessory charges to separate the bad guys from those just caught up in something they shouldn’t be.

The third benefit is that it stops the criminalization of porn where there is no victim. This post in part is inspired by the Chistopher Handley case where a guy got six months in jail for buying ‘obscene’ cartoons.

Cartoons.

Where is the victim in a cartoon? Where is the child that could not give consent? And how much money and effort are we spending going after someone when there is no victim (to the expense of going after others)?

Furthermore, it’s clear that kiddie porn gets used as a ‘camel in the nose of the tent’ argument by those who wish to control the sexuality of others. As long as we concede that there exist materials–cartoons, writing, etc–that are ‘obscene,’ then all we’re arguing over is the definition of obscene. That argument, of course, cannot be won, as it ultimately comes down to Justice Potter’s line, “I know it when I see it.”

But prosecuting kiddie porn possession as accessory to rape eliminates the entire obscenity argument. Now obviously as a writer of erotica, I kind of like that because I’m less likely to be on the wrong end of a prosecution. But the obscenity argument can go the other way too. Imagine a photographer who takes Mapplethorpe style pictures of a 14 year old, but gets a judge or a jury to agree that they’re beautiful and therefore have artistic merit? That means they’re not obscene and this fictitious photographer, plus all the people who own copies of the picture, go free.

But if we bring Child Porn prosecutions back to what they really are–accessories to rape–this does not happen. Instead, it all becomes simple. It’s simply about the crime of doing something to someone who could not give consent.

Now I’ve gone through this entire post focusing on the legal prosecution, but I want to also point to another novel way to deal with child porn and the real crime involved: suing possessors. A woman is suing individuals who download pictures of her abuse (here). I agree with the article that the legal grounds for collecting from someone for additional victimization are new terrain. As a result, I am troubled by the possibilities of where it could go. However, I like the idea for two other reasons. First, there really is a victim here, so we’re not talking about a hypothetical case or obscenity issue. The very nature of the suit forces the case to focus on that fact–that a crime was committed. Second, I like the implied ownership of the images aspect. Since she didn’t (and couldn’t legally) sign a model’s release, she’s implicitly asserting claim to ownership of the photos of her. This makes it an ownership case as much as a criminal damages case.

But civil or criminal, we’re doing ourselves a disfavor as a society to get all worked up about ‘child porn’ as something nasty and evil and obscene. We’d be far better served going after the real crime–the rape involved in creating it–and leave the rest to the side.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m on Nick Scipio’s reality team. What that means is that I see and comment on his drafts before they are released.

When Nick sent me the draft for Chapter 11 of Book 4, I argued that it didn’t make sense for Paul and Leah to be excluded from swinging with their parents completely—that there would be times when Sean wasn’t around. Nick disagreed, but we continued to discuss the idea. In particular, I felt that the adults wouldn’t cut Leah and Paul off unless something had happened. I suggested a ‘something’ to Nick and he told me to go write the story. It became Bent.

This one was a challenge because, while the plot was minimal and it was reasonably short, I was playing with many more of Nick’s characters than I did in Dealing with the Devil and I had to make them seem like the same people. Fortunately, Nick helped out and I’m reasonably satisfied with the result.

I also wanted to tackle the incest taboo in a slightly more realistic manner than most of the stories on the internet. Nick’s universe is one of the few on storiesonline where characters engaged in incestual encounters actually have second thoughts about them. I believe the struggle between the lure of the taboo and the recognition that it’s fraught will peril is important to capture. While I didn’t spend a long time with those internal struggles (Chris isn’t David, after all), I hope I did realistically show how the slippery slope of allowing rules to be bent can lead to them being bent more than ultimately desired.

So I’ve discussed how including taboo in a story will increase the readership on storiesonline and other free sites. I’ve discussed how I believe part of that is the nature of the brain chemical speedball we get from the taboo. But those arguments are general, and there’s one taboo that seems to stand above the others in online erotica: incest.

Heck, the whole point behind my story 9.7 was how story codes influenced ratings. And it’s not “beast” that’s driving stories to the top. So what specifically makes the incest taboo so attractive?

My opinion? First, besides the speedball, I think that taboo has an inherent sociological lure. There’s a rush with “being bad” or stepping across the boundaries. It helps reaffirm that we’re not staid boring old farts. We can flirt with the places where there be dragons! If you can’t head for the physical frontier, you can find the sociological frontier.

I think that incest is a particularly good “frontier taboo” because it’s understandable. Not a lot of people can image why scat or bestiality would be arousing, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that an attractive woman has the name “mom” instead of “Susan.”

I also think that many guys remember those early years of puberty when the hormones were in complete control and any woman looked attractive. Boys peeking on their sisters or mothers is pretty common. Many incest stories tap into that and take it to an idealistic fantasy conclusion.

Aside: I think MILF fantasies come from that same era in a guy’s life. He was ignorant but full of hormones. Wouldn’t it have been great to have an older woman teach him all about sex? Maybe not in real life, but the fantasy has some serious grounding in past experience.

There’s of course the Freudian explanations for sexual attraction to our parents. I’m not sure how much I buy them myself. Is it possible to add a sexual attraction to an existing love interest? Sure, but it doesn’t seem causal. Besides, it’s fairly clear in hindsight that a lot of Freud’s theories were because he just couldn’t face the fact that there was a fair amount of child sexual abuse going on by the fathers in his social class.

But that, I think, is where the reason for the taboo shows up. Fantasies, and reading fiction however unrealistic, are one thing. Engaging in the act is another. While I believe that consenting adults should have wide latitude in their private sex lives, consent becomes trickier in familial relations (and note: “consenting” and “adults” are key parts of that sentence).

This is in large part because I’ve never seen a family that didn’t have underlying power dynamics. Even when all parties are adults, the ability to say yes or say no to one’s parents or siblings can be fraught with emotional baggage. My personal example is my grandmother–when she said “you’ll come over Sunday”, it wasn’t a request and all her kids, even the ones in their 50′s, showed up. Even near-age siblings can have such dynamics, making it dangerous water to add in a sexual component.

Which I think is the final part of the attraction. Not many of us grew up in families that were open enough and healthy enough about sex that we could walk into the living room, say “I’m really horny, what should I do about that?” and not freak out everyone else in the family. So the incest fantasy appeals not only for its sexual taboo elements, but for the idealized family elements.

Now, obviously, these are only my opinions and speculations. I’ve never engaged in incest and the overwhelming majority of the people I know personally who have report that it was ultimately damaging for them. But fantasies usually aren’t about the realistic. And in the online world, the ideal, when mixed with a speedball, seems to draw the readers.

Lost Girls, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, is beautiful, thought provoking, and a bit disturbing. A very thick graphic novel, it’s not cheap nor, surprisingly, a quick read.  The basic premise is that Wendy (of Peter Pan), Alice (of Wonderland fame), and Dorothy (of the Wizard of Oz) all stay at the same hotel in Europe in 1914.  It doesn’t take long for their paths to cross and then… things go through the metaphorical looking glass. read more »

In my last musing, I wondered about whether there was more taboo porn available as a result of the internet. I mentioned the ‘jolt’ that the taboo can give. I figured I should expand on that.

There’s a rush that comes with arousal and, eventually orgasm, and there’s there’s a rush that can come with sex. In particular, mixing adrenaline and testosterone (or estrogen I suppose, but being male I have no point of reference). Sherri refers to this in Chapter 26 of Friends and Benefits: “That creates adrenaline, which is a powerful cocktail when mixed with lust. It’s kind of like a speedball of heroin and cocaine.”

Now, I didn’t come up with the analogy–I stole it from Spider Robinson. But in my experience, it fits. The rush or jolt that happens when arousal is mixed with adrenaline is pretty damn potent. I’d even argue it can be addictive.

So–how does one generate that ‘speedball.’ Well, “new” sex often does it–the trepidation and uncertainty of trying something one hasn’t (or someone one hasn’t). So does bdsm, in many scenes and scenarios. Risky sex, like being in public where one could get caught certainly qualifies. And so, I believe, does playing with a taboo.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean crossing the line and engaging in the taboo. Simply flirting with it or getting it secondhand may be enough. I think simply considering the forbidden can often be enough to add to the rush.

A great example of this, I think, is interracial sex. Now I grew up in the American West in an almost completely white suburb. Of course the few blacks and other minorities at my high school dated whites–there wasn’t anyone else for them to date. And so it really wasn’t considered a taboo. Contrast this to the American South, where a county clerk recently turned down a license for an interracial marriage. It could certainly be a taboo for Southern white women, particularly those that are older. And there’s certainly a genre of interracial “big black stud” porn that seems to have some demand. Is that because it’s a taboo turn on for some? I suspect so, even though it doesn’t do anything for me.

So, is taboo porn popular because of the speedball? I think partially. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it just is what it is. No better and no worse than the rest of human sexual experience.

One of the side effects of story codes (blogged about here), I believe, is the growth of stories with taboo elements in them. I’m primarily referring to incest, bestiality, and rape stories here, since necrophilia and the various scat type stories still seem to occupy a very small niche. The reason is, as I mentioned previously, is that it’s now easy to search for codes. So if a reader gets a jolt from a taboo, they can easily find a lot more stories with that same taboo. Therefore, in a classic feedback loop, if a writer on a free site wants more readers, they need to incorporate the codes that people are searching for.

I.e., more searching for the taboo leads to more stories with the taboo.

Now erotica about these taboos is certainly not new. Bestiality, incest, and rape can all be found in Greek myths, Victorian era porn, and the various underground porn comics and novels available for most of the 20th century. Heck, your local adult news stand probably has letters magazines devoted to incest and Penthouse Variations even published some woman-dog letters in the mid-70′s.

So did the internet change anything? Yep. Availability.

Porn on the internet is easy to find these days. It’s easy to get just about any variant of porn with judicious googling or a willingness to wade through spam and sleazy sites. Heck, someone’s been googling “toddler erotica” and turning up my site (there’s an old blog post about me having a toddler that’s turning up and my stats tracker tells me how people get here). Furthermore, it’s easy to stumble across new types of porn. You don’t have to be looking for stories about the taboos to find them on the free sites.

So… those women-dog stories I stumbled across long ago and couldn’t find again if my life depended on it? Well, anyone can find a few thousand woman-dog stories with a few clicks of the mouse. And so if someone gets turned on… we’re in that feedback loop again. The internet will provide that for which people seek.

This is, of course, not limited to porn. The internet makes all niche areas easier to access, and communities easier to form. If you’re into yak herding or flying experimental helium balloons, you’re much more likely to find information and community online than in your local physical neighborhood. This is, in general, a good thing.

So… is the availability of taboo porn a bad thing? On the one hand, there’s an argument that increased exposure desensitizes. We’re less likely to be outraged over taboo acts if we’ve read a hundred stories involving them. Also, the constant “hit” can be addictive for some people (and that’s for a future post).

On the other hand… most people are perfectly capable of separating fantasy and real life. They can handle the idea of being turned on by a taboo and still never want to do it in real life. I’m also very suspicious of those who want regulations or laws that restrict the ‘most’ for the few that have trouble separating fantasy and real life. As soon as we move into trying to restrict the market and exchange of ideas, we’re perilously close to creating ‘thoughtcrimes.’ It’s not too far a slide down the old slippery slope to move from trying to criminalize discussions of rape fantasies to trying to criminalize discussions of fantasies about killing politicians to trying to criminalize fantasies about opposing politicians. Ask the Dixie Chicks what they went through for opposing Bush, and imagine the force of law and police behind it. As I wrote in my first post, freedom really starts in the bedroom. And that includes the freedom to fantasize.

Furthermore, I suspect the lure of the taboo porn will also prove to be somewhat cyclical. A lot of the attraction (discussed in a future post) is because it’s new. Based on my own experiences and those of people I’ve discussed porn with, it’ll fade. It doesn’t take too long reading those hundreds of taboo stories to realize that most of them are crap, and then to reach the point where quality is more important than the story codes.

At least I hope so. Because in my writing, I (generally) want to be realistic and capture sex as it is or could be. While I will occasionally touch on a taboo, it’s because I want to play with some related aspect of sexuality, rather than the taboo itself. Does that mean that I too am increasing the amount of taboo porn on the internet? Yeah, I guess it does. But maybe by having quality writing that also goes into the implications of the taboo, it won’t increase the desensitization. We’ll have to see.