Opinion

I saw a tweet the other day that said dubious consent is a misnomer. If the consent is dubious, she said, then it’s not consent. The implication being that it’s rape.

There is outright, straightforward consent, where both the man and the woman absolutely, positively want sex and say so out loud, and never question it throughout or after the act. Then there is outright, straightforward rape, where either one or the other does not want sex, and says so, and fights back, and reports it after as rape. Both of these cases are as clear as day, but there is a whole lot of gray area in between.

For example, what if a woman consents to sex but changes her mind? What if she consents to sex but the man is too rough? What if she never verbalizes the word “no” or fights back, but she is thinking them the entire time? To be honest, most people consider these rape, and I would agree tend with them (though specifics matter too).

It gets more ambiguous. What if a woman feels pressure that she will be physically harmed if she does not comply? Probably that’s rape, but what if the man never really, directly threatens her? What if he does not even realize that’s her fear? Does it make sense to label him a rapist because he’s too stupid to realize it and she did not verbalize her refusal?

Or, if instead of fear of physical harm, what if she is concerned about financial harm? Maybe her kid is sick and she needs the money or maybe she just wants a new Prada bag. And what about blackmail, like to expose someone’s past or dirty pics or whatever, does it count as rape? What if a woman chooses to have sex with her husband every night, though she doesn’t enjoy it, so that her kids will have a roof over her head. It may not be rape, but it definitely counts as dubious consent.

To me this is the biggest grey area of all: misunderstanding. Words of consent or force are not often spoken. So much is nonverbal or built into other words through innuendo. Even the most nicest guy, who would never dream of raping a woman, rarely demands the words “Yes, I want to have sex with you” before going in. No, he relies on cues, which means there is room for error. The tragedy of these scenarios is that the woman may feel violated and suffer shame, and yet the man is not a rapist.

In the prologue to “Yes Means Yes”, Margaret Cho has an essay that is very compelling, but her story is that she was in man’s apartment. In the middle of the night, he came and had sex with her. I don’t want to put words into her mouth, but it seems like it felt like rape to her. As a reader, I got that feeling. And yet, she didn’t say no. How is that different from so many other non-rape sexual encounters, where the woman was a totally willing participant?

One difference is that she didn’t want it. And yet, desire can’t really be used as a litmus test for rape. There are women who’ve experienced orgasms during rape, that doesn’t make it any less so. And conversely, a woman who has no physical desire may consent, and it’s not rape. One does not imply the other, either way.

The thing I’ve found, in discussing these issues, is that every woman falls at a slightly different point, making it virtually impossible to make blanket statements. Now, back to the woman who made the comment about dubious consent = rape, that might be true for her. I’m doubtful she considered all the situations that fall into dubious consent, but maybe she did. Perhaps she looks at every single scenario I’ve described here, and some I haven’t, and feels that anything other than verbal, explicit, 100% consent is rape. That may be true for her.

Verbal consent is a rare thing to give. Who starts off sex with a Q&A session? BDSM does formalize this process, which is ironic since its players are sometimes accused of being rapists. But who among the vanilla folks checks in about consent and limits between the after-dinner coffee and hitting the sheets?

Truth is, dubious consent is more common than not.

I’m at Eden Connor’s blog talking about why I write such dirty, wicked things:

I have always seen the world in shades of consent. When the teenage boy leans in for a kiss, does the girl give explicit consent first? Probably not, so he learns early on to search for clues. Or maybe he learns just to go for it, and deal with the consequences after.

It doesn’t stop there. Even when we’re older, the entire dating ritual is an elegant-awkward dance toward mating. The first date, the third? Wait until they’re married, and then what – is consent implicit?

For me, the issue of consent has never been confined to erotica. It’s in all fiction, everywhere, because that’s the crux of conflict. In fact, I can write in couched terms, pretty it up, and sell it as anything I want. Science fiction, horror, general fiction. It’s only if I want to be direct does it come up, because then I’m writing about sex, which by default of our genre structure makes it erotica, and that’s what’s under fire.

Come by and say hello.

Last week, Paypal sent letters to several small-ish online booksellers, demanding that they cease the sale of certain erotic books. Bookstrand was the first to fold, and they did so with a bang, by removing all or most of their indie titles. All Romance Ebooks re-emphasized their existing terms (though I don’t think they changed them) and did some reorganization to the site, basically hiding the erotica titles. Finally, Smashwords sent a letter saying that they were also complying to the demands.

The subjects that are being banned are barely legal (erotica containing 18-21 year olds), incest AND pseudo incest (step mom/son, uncle/niece, not related by blood, etc, adoption unclear), bestiality for non-natural animals (werewolves, yes, porcupines, no) and rape as titillation.

A 20 year old woman can have sex. She can even appear in and watch pornography. But what she can’t do, according to Paypal, is buy or sell fiction about a 20-year-old having sex. Because THAT would be wrong. So you can actually write about something that is legal to do, but you can’t sell it. What if they don’t like gay relationships, will they ban M/M? What about interracial sex? Can we get a demographic of the Paypal execs so we can see what we’re dealing with here?

A woman can get raped, but she can’t write about it, at least, not if she wants to sell it. Best to pretend it doesn’t happen. Write about knitting or cooking and then the world will be a safer place, right? Even though the people who were buying nonconsent books were women. Just don’t talk about it.

Actually, you can write about it, but it just can’t be for the purpose of arousing. It’s called rape as titillation. But how are you even going to define it? After all, if you are titillated by my descriptions of rape, doesn’t that make you the disturbed one? Not that I believe that, but if you go by their logic…

I have read some seriously hot nonconsent scenes in historicals that have been published for decades by the Big 6 (New York publishers). It’s actually MORE taboo in erotica situations, because consent is so explicit. What about dubious consent, does that count? For example, what if they don’t say the word “no” or they don’t physically fight it. Does that count? What about survival sex, which is pretty darn common in a certain HQN category, does that count? What if they consent but don’t really want it, as is the case in my latest release, Trust in Me, does that count? But by all means, let’s hash this kind of stuff out with a BANK, because they should definitely be calling the morality shots.

Many of my readers have told me that they don’t find the dubious consent situations described in my books arousing. I am fine with that. I did not intend them to be arousing. They don’t turn me on to read them, either. So it’s not, by definition, “rape as titillation” since I am not intending for it to be, nor does usually end up being, titillating. However, they are explicit, and some people find them hot. Does that count!? Wait a minute, if I tell you which Big 6 published books have nonconsent scenes that I find hot, will they be pulled, too!? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Look, anyone who’s checked out some of what is popular will see some crap out there in the Land of Erotica. That is assuming that you don’t think my work is crap, which some people do. But there is stuff out there with crazy covers and no editing and a barely there plot. But that’s a quality issue, not a morality issue. It’s an issue that the market should sort out, not banks. Paypal is the leading vendor for online payments. Their widespread adoption and trust makes switching over very difficult for these small shops. One such store, No Boundaries Press, did step up and switch processing companies and I applaud them for it.

My books were removed from Bookstrand, although my understanding is that they removed all or most indie books. I have also pulled all my books from Smashwords. Only 2 out of 5 of my books would have been affected at all (and as I described earlier, I would argue those), but I was offended by their letter. It started off much more sympathetic than the whole Bookstrand mess, but I expected better of a company that claims to be devoted to indie publishing. While it stated that censorship is bad, the undertone of the letter was “yeah, but I don’t really like those topics anyways, so no big loss,” which completely misses the point. Smashwords had a big opportunity to make a stand against censorship and they folded in like a wet bag.

But all of this is just the opening act if Amazon decides to follow suit. The fact is, pretty much no one was getting rich of Bookstrand or even Smashwords. I certainly wasn’t. Even B&N is hit or miss, but Amazon is big bucks. The Amazon rules related to morality have always been sketchy. No outright (ie. blood related) incest is allowed and, strictly speaking, rape as titillation is not allowed (though they provide a wide berth on that one). If they decided to adopt Paypal’s definition, that would mean a whole lot of books would be unshelved and those authors would lose their major/only sources of revenue. And I think they would have to address the fact that these topics are in mainstream books as well. Maybe that’s an upside.

This round goes to censorship. Amazon, it’s your call.

In the old days, kink shaming was simple. Any woman who read, thought about, or was associated with kink was a dirty slut who should be shunned, or worse. Now, with the proliferation of BDSM romance, that’s not the case. No, at least in the online reader/writer community, it’s cool to be a sub…. but only in bed. And with very hard, very strict limits that never include real pain. And if you mouth of regularly to your Dom/boyfriend, just to show him who’s really in charge. And if you have a kick-ass career that you would never consider giving up for your man.

Because if you do any of that, then you’re one of those women, those slutty, abused women with daddy issues who clearly needs a therapist. That’s all kink shaming, folks. It’s great that we’ve come this far, but we have a long road to walk.