The wrong flavour of vanilla

[sqbr]

Two posts about the way "vanilla"/kink-free sex/romance/etc is as much a kink as anything else:
Gacked from Thingswithwings about kinkfreezone
Vanilla is not normal. Vanilla is a kink.

EDIT: It's been pointed out that I've conflated BDSM and unhealthy power imbalances (I do know they're different!) I can't fix my comments but will try and fix the post, sorry for being an ass.

Something the latter helped crystalise for me is the reason I get so irritated at a lot of romance stories. (EDIT: I'm not really talking about the whole kinky sex vs non-kinky sex thing in this post, that's just the topic that got me thinking)

I would not think that my tastes(*) are all that odd: I like romances to be between two people who I am convinced genuinely care about each other who take a while to realise they like each other and have an equal healthy relationship.

Most of these are either part of typical heteronormative expectations (eg the "two") or are popular enough to turn up most of the time (eg the "they tale a while to realise". I encounter "love at first sight magical soulmates" fiction rarely enough not to mind too much) The fact that a lot of romance novels seem to care more about sexual compatibility than romantic is a little annoying but hey.

But the thing that is surprisingly hard to find is the "equal". Even though I'm happy enough with stories where one partner might be more powerful etc in some ways, as long as there's some ways the other is more powerful and roughly speaking it all cancels out. EDIT: Of course there's no reason D/s relationships can't be entirely equal, but they set off my "not equal" squick regardless. Which... HMM.

On the one hand there's heteronormative conventional stories where the Man (or male figure) is big and dominant and powerful and older and the Woman is small and weak and submissive and innocent etc. A lot of people criticise this for feminist reasons, but there's sort of an assumption that that's what everyone wants deep down.

On the other hand there's deliberately kinky stories. There's the ones which are meant as fantasy and depict unhealthy or at least problematic relationships with a heavy power imbalance, which the reader is (one hopes) not supposed to think is actually ok. There's those which depict a realistically healthy D/s relationship. I am squicked by both sorts of stories, but the latter are less likely to push my "This is sexist" and "These characters are not happy" buttons. As with any anti-kink I take more convincing that the characters are happy doing it than with more conventional relationships/sex, and hey maybe that's something I should poke at.
EDITED to hopefully fix me conflating the two and being overall crap.

There's feminist deconstructions and stories which aren't about hitting people's buttons so much as just exploring two complex 3D characters, and I am totally a fan of those sorts of stories, but if they manage to be romantic by my standards it tends to be as an accidental byproduct of the deconstruction and sometimes I just want a satisfying romance dammit.

Anyway, I don't really have a point, I just felt like thinking aloud (this started as a comment but I decided it was too long and self indulgent to force on others).

(*)And I want to emphasise that this is about taste, I'm not judging people who like polyamorous D/s soulmates stories etc :)

Comments

[flamebyrd]

I think I'm missing a fundamental assumption here - is the argument that "vanilla" refers to sexual relationships that are invisibly skewed to having a dominant partner and a submissive partner (as opposed to having the partners visibly make that choice as in D/s fic)?

The second essay is an interesting read but I'm a little confused because it's not at all new to me. At some point in yaoi fandom at least 5 years ago I became completely fed up with the seme/uke dynamic. I guess I'm surprised (disappointed?) that it's still so much of an issue.

kiyoshi_chan has commented before on my fondness for writing 'long courtships' in my original fiction, and it's really because I hate to write a romance that hasn't given the characters any time to get to know each other. (Even in the couple I've written where the character thinks they're instantly in love I try to show that there's more to it than just sex.)

In summary: I like your taste.

[sqbr]

Well, I'd say that it's more that most romance/erotica etc that doesn't have a D/s or similar dynamic on purpose has heteronormative power imbalances which function much like a kink, including both vanilla stuff and stuff which is kinky but not in a D/s way .

Pointing out the unexamined seme/uke etc thing isn't new, it was just the way she compared different types of stories helped me realise there's more to me being bugged by that dynamic than the fact that it's unrealistic/sexist/unhealthy etc.

[flamebyrd]

I didn't so much think that it was new to you as I was surprised that this issue was raising its head and provoking discussion again. (Although I see that that post is from June.)

"there's more to me being bugged by that dynamic than the fact that it's unrealistic/sexist/unhealthy etc"
Not quite understanding this - do you mean that the issue of equality doesn't fall under those criticisms of the dynamic?

I often hear "because the relationship is equal" lobbed around as a justification for slash, and it's a pity that a lot of slash fiction just... doesn't actually qualify.

On a slight tangent re: magical soulmates fic, one of my favourite tropes is "characters are unexpectedly soulbonded and don't actually like each other but slowly fall in love". *coughs* (I strongly prefer the soulbond to not require a sexual component, however.)

[sqbr]

It's fanfic fandom, everything cycles :)

Not quite understanding this - do you mean that the issue of equality doesn't fall under those criticisms of the dynamic?

No, that I dislike it for taste reasons separately to any feminist etc objections (which I also have) It's like, with stuff like RPF or non-con or BDSM people (in fanfic fandom) may argue that some stories are JUST WRONG but there's still a general attitude that "We're all here to satisfy our ids and have kinks and squicks that mean not everyone will like every story" and some people saying "Well, I don't like it, but whatever floats your boat".

...I was going to say people don't make those sorts of comments about non-BDSM heteronormative romance, but you're right they do when they talk about why they like slash. But I can't think of many people discussing it as a simple taste issue when selecting het (fanfic or original)

*is not sure this is any clearer*

Non-romantic soulbonding making the characters spend time together and organically fall in love is totally different :)

[sami]

Man, signed.

The only way I can ever have Established Relationships in original fiction is if, in my head, I nonetheless have a massive backstory explaining their relationship already.

Like, there's characters from Veterans who appear in one line and yet, Dean and I have detailed backstory information for them, just because that's the way we know what their relationship is and why.

[sqbr]

..huh.

My one established relationship in original fiction? Has a massive backstory. As in, I wrote chunks of a 15 year flashback going through from how they met to the start of the story proper.

Then again I have fairly massive backstory for the non-romantic relationships too. If I was a more prolific writer (ie I ever finished anything) I'd probably put out terrible based-on-my-notes prequels :)

[bunny_m]

I'm not judging people who like polyamorous D/s soulmates stories etc :)

Okay, I find myself suddenly and unexpectedly squicked by that thought. o.0

[aris_tgd]

By poly D/s soulmates stories?

[bunny_m]

I *think* it's the D/S - soulmates juxtaposition that messes with my head. The poly bit is just icing on the cake, really.

[sqbr]

Obviously I don't think there's anything with not being a fan of those things in a story, but I don't know, it feels like you're verging into "These thing are bad and creepy" rather than "this is not what I feel like reading".

[bunny_m]

Then I have a heaping dose of teh dub today, 'cause I definitely didn't mean 'This is bad and wrong!', just that it doesn't work for me.

[sqbr]

Nah, it's probably just me being over-cautious. And as has been pointed out, in my post *I* was conflating "I don't like it" and "this is wrong". So, yay me :/

[aris_tgd]

Heh, well, I suppose I could see "squick" being used to describe "D/s soulmates"; I've seen some squicky implementations of the concept, myself. I just have a hard time seeing poly as something to be squicked by.

[bunny_m]

Being somewhat poly myself I am totally not squicked at all by it. I think it was mainly the way I think of/compartmentalise D/S and 'soulmates' that was the problem really.

In other words, it's just a mismatch with how *I* see things, not a judgment call on anyone else's world.

[aris_tgd]

No problem. And, y'know, a squick is a squick and you shouldn't have to defend it anyway; I was just wondering what about it was particularly jarring because like I said, I've found some implementations that didn't work for me, but I would never have thought to blame the specific combination, just some of the other baggage the writer brought to the concept.

[aris_tgd]

Er, and by "blame" I mean "assign what I found uncomfortable about the story to". If that makes sense. I don't think you're blaming anything, much less unfairly, as that sentence construction might have implied.

[bunny_m]

=)

[ardhra]

Would you define a D/s relationship as unequal, unhealthy, or where the partners don't genuinely care about each other? And would you say that fanfic (for the fandoms you're interested in) is different from life, in that respect?

[sqbr]

Crap! I totally conflated real life unhealthily unequal relationships, real life (healthy) D/s relationships, and fictional depictions of either of those. Once I've woken up some more I'll go poke at the post and try and edit it to better reflect my point, which is not to say they're all the same, just that I am squicked by any relationship where one partner is dominant, whether or not it's healthy, and whether or not that dominance is part of a negotiated D/s thing. Said squick being separate to the "That's objectively bad" response, which only applies to the bad ones.

I need to get a better understanding of the whole D/s thing, BDSM in general really. It's not my thing, but I don't want to go around saying offensively ignorant crap that hurts those whose thing it is.

"They genuinely care about each other" is unrelated though, same as "take a while to realise they like each other" and "two". They aren't necessarily correlated, I just like those stories where they happen to all show up at once.

[sami]

I don't know what it says about me, but I tend to love the most those stories which involve characters who are broken, and relationships on equal terms.

This is why I loved Janeway/Seven in Voyager fandom so much. For me, it *worked* from the perspective of existing character dynamics, and there's no way either of them would actually be subordinated.

You might like Veterans, by the way, though it's low on het content. Very much with the "different, but equal", etc.

[sqbr]

I'm ok with non-het :) Isn't it Wincest though? That does squick me, even in an AU. (It's annoying, the no-incest/no-RPF squicks cut me out of a lot of interesting looking stories, especially in SPN!)

[sami]

Well... yes and no.

In theory it's an RPF AU, but since the characters are referred to throughout as Jen and Jay, you could pretty easily pretend it isn't. That's sort of what I do. ;)

In my head, it's a science fiction story, with a cast list drawn from a wide range of sources. Some of the cast are fictional characters, including a couple from anime and video games, which makes it easier for me.

So, yeah. Depends how profound your squick is, I guess. The "real" names are used, I think, once for each of Jen and Jay, total, and you could do a search/replace for their surnames and not change the story even slightly.

[sqbr]

HMM. Well, give me the link and I'll give it a go, and if I don't like it you have a very good reason not to see it as a reflection on your writing ability :)

[sami]

Heh. :D

Veterans!

Link is to master post, comm also has a deleted scene and, well, eveeentuallly more stories, but as you know better than most of our readers, real life has been known to get in the way just a tad.

[sqbr]

*clicks*

Ahhh...now I remember why I didn't read it: I don't like post apocalyptic stories (I am so picky!)

[ex_peasant441]

OK, well obviously this post has been rather reworked and it's hard to tease out exactly what you are saying/thinking about so I'll just riff off some general thoughts and hope I don't offend by my assumptions.

Kink is one of those topics which a lot of folk seem to struggle with if they don't happen to have what are commonly called kinks. Indeed such is the slightly odd nature of our fandom society that I even see people who basically consider themselves vanilla talking as if they felt somehow looked down upon for not having kinks - and they try to describe all sorts of very vanilla things as 'my kink' to try and join the club or something.

Basically I would define a kink as anything that you would be ashamed to admit to your mother. (Obviously some people have unusual mothers so they need to substitute 'the vicar' or whatever at that point.) And the basic rules about kinks are:

1. There are common tropes but no two people have exactly the same kink.
   
2. Kinks are very, very specific.
   
3. You will never understand the full underlying motivation for any scene with a kink component unless you happen to share that kink.
   

What this means when de-constructing from a feminist/whateverist standpoint is you can't really judge whether something was intended to subvert or affirm a power dynamic unless you happen to pretty closely match the kink of the writer. In which case you will be biased anyway.

I know people who write superficially similar kinky stories as a way to deal with the aftermath of physical abuse, as a way to get off, as a way to express their underlying insecurities about themselves, as a way to get revenge on other people, and just about every other motivation under the sun. And the readers will come with an equally diverse set of expectations and interpretations. To try to then sort them out into sheep and goats based on whether you think the story somehow reinforces a societal power dynamic is not just impossible, it's irrelevant. All you can ever say is what the story makes you personally think about - which is true of any story.

Generally when it comes to kinks, I reckon the only way to proceed is YTINMTBTOK. Anything else is trying to pass judgement on someone else's tastes, which We Do Not Do.

OK, no idea if that was just agreeing with what you said, disagreeing, or entirely irrelevant, but it was what your post made me think.

[sqbr]

Hmm. Well, as I said at the top I was inspired by conversations about kink but they weren't really the topic of my post. But since what you've said is interesting anyway...

Are you saying it's kind of like everyone has a sexual orientation, but it's only the non-heteronormative ones which are queer? But that's very context specific, I'm sure there's stuff that's considered run of the mill here and now which would be considered incredibly kinky a hundred years ago. Is there a term that covers all intense sexual preferences which would be considered a kink in those contexts in which they are non-normative, whether or not they're considered kinky in the context at hand? There's "turn on" but that seems a bit vague. I guess the thing with kinks also is that afaict the transgressiveness is often (but not always) an important part of it.

Whether or not and when it's reasonable to criticise a fictional work which is possibly intended to satisfy a kink or fantasy is something I'm still struggling with. I think you can criticise a work for the overall effect it has regardless of what was going on in the author's head, though. Which is why I'm much more open minded about fanfic with explicit disclaimers than I am about mainstream fiction.

[ex_peasant441]

Are you saying it's kind of like everyone has a sexual orientation, but it's only the non-heteronormative ones which are queer?

Yes. Not just 'kind of like', even - exactly alike. Being turned on by the pretty body of someone of the opposite gender is just as specific as any kink, the only difference is the label society gives it.

But I don't think you should worry about looking for a different term, because even though the 'only difference' is the label society gives it, in the real world that difference is all that matters.

Everyone has a mental image of 'normal' sexuality, which we build collectively as a society, and anything that varies from that is a kink, to be treated with amusement, disgust, horror or whatever. I don't think that sense of normality has actually changed much over the last few hundred years - vanilla heterosexual sex has always been pretty much the same thing.

What has changed, hugely, is how tolerant or intolerant we are of different forms of abnormal sexuality. So, to give an obvious example, homosexuality and paedophilia with under-age girls have pretty much changed places in terms of societies reaction - from utter 'let's raise a lynch mob' intolerance to 'an uncommon preference but not actually wrong' and vice versa. But they are both still considered unusual, deviations from society's mental picture of 'the norm'.

And in purely statistical terms they both are deviations from the norm, so 'abnormal' is a pretty sensible word choice. Society has after all got a perfectly sensible basis for its notion of what is and is not unusual/weird/kink/disgustingly deviant - it's just a basic measure of 'are most people doing this?'. So pretty much the only thing that can - and will - effect that is the sense society has of the numbers involved. That is where the internet is playing a huge role, opening up contact between folk with different preferences and everyone else. That really will change people's sense of what is normal in a way that hasn't happened for hundred's of years. But it hasn't quite happened yet, so for the moment it is still mostly tolerance/intolerance of the abnormalities that matters.


Whether or not and when it's reasonable to criticise a fictional work which is possibly intended to satisfy a kink or fantasy is something I'm still struggling with. I think you can criticise a work for the overall effect it has regardless of what was going on in the author's head, though.

I think there are two separate things. Firstly there is criticising something in the English Lit graduate sort of way - essentially analysing and de-constructing the constituent parts, whether that be through a feminist lens or any other sort of lens. And secondly there is criticising in the 'the author should not have written this because it does harm' sort of way. The first is essentially a game, and since English Lit grads (and amateurs) seem to enjoy it, they might as well be left to get on with it. The author though is well advised to ignore the whole pack of them for the sake of his own sanity. The second is very far from a game, and I reckon should only be done with extreme caution and only under the most extreme of circumstances.

[sqbr]

Hmm. I still think the definition of kink has at least shrunk a bit over the past, say, 50 years. But my grasp of that sort of history is too vague for me to say so with any certainty.

Firstly there is criticising something in the English Lit graduate sort of way - essentially analysing and de-constructing the constituent parts, whether that be through a feminist lens or any other sort of lens. And secondly there is criticising in the 'the author should not have written this because it does harm' sort of way.

I do not see these are entirely separate. I imagine most feminist deconstruction is done with at least some thought to the effects of the work on society, even if there's also an element of intellectual exercise to it. (In the same way as I enjoyed the "game" aspect of analysing healthcare data in my old job, but also did it to save lives) And I don't see why it should be avoided, it's something I do to everything, if only to the extent of going "Oh look, it's a black person in a horror story. I wonder if they'll be the first to die? Yep, there we go again" etc. And it's not "The person should not have written this", at worst it's "They should not have written it quite that way" and generally is more about pointing out broader patterns and trying to get writers to at least consider the costs and benefits (eg in this context, satisfying a kink vs going against sexist tropes, both of which are valid but not always compatible goals)

[ex_peasant441]

Ah, I think I've just worked out what you are actually posting about! You are wondering why there are relatively few 'equal' relationships in fiction.

Yes?

The answer to that is simple - such stories would tend to lack conflict and thus be too boring to write down. The only way it can work is if the equal partners get their conflict externally - so they are fighting against some outside pressure that is tending to keep them apart. Romeo and Juliet is the archetype. That is OK as far as it goes, but it has been done so much that most authors and readers find it dull. But add a little inequality between the partners and things become immediately far more interesting. Most stories will have both of course.

Actually this sort of thing is a good example of why feminist criticism is only ever a game and not real world relevant - stories are constructed in a particular way for particular reasons, they can't and don't mimic or influence the real world directly because of those constraints, so to criticise a story for not being feminist enough is to criticise chalk for not being cheesy. You can use feminism as a toolbox to unpack a story, just as you can use science, or psychology, or knowledge of the 1936 Ashes series, or anything else, but it doesn't mean anything in a real world sense because the story is and always will remain a story, and the rules of storytelling transcend everything else. So the only meaningful way to de-construct a story is in storytelling terms.

However, doing it the other way round and using stories to unpack a culture - that is meaningful. I think. But I may be biased by my education.

[sqbr]

Equal does not mean the same or in agreement. There's lots of stories about characters who are equal but in conflict with each other, eg every buddy cop movie ever.

And the point of my post is that separate to any feminist argument, I do not enjoy romances about unequal partners (or at least, not as much as ones between equal or equal-ish partners).