Sex Negative Fandom
What’s a Nice Kink Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
I recognize that this one is a little disjointed. It’s more stream of consciousness than much else.
Welcome to Fandom. It’s a place where all your wildest dreams can be realized in the form of fanworks such as art, fiction, and other media made by people who are just as weird as you are…but… There’s a caveat to everything isn’t there? Fandom has, for the most part, been the haven for many minority groups who find common ground relating to others who are interested in the same media they are. This means that you can connect over just about anything, from how you interpret the themes of Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame to how you thirst over the sexy daddy that is Claude Frollo…but… Fandom has had, especially in the last few years, an issue with sex-negative ideologies and specifically kink-negative ideologies which may stem from multiple social and political factors outside of fandom. An examination of our broader cultural values and environment may shed light on why this is and what we might be able to do to combat it.
Who doesn’t have a fetish? Most everyone does; we’re surrounded by fetishes and the result of those fetishes every single day of our lives. Lingerie, high heels, fast cars, action movies, and other such innocuous things we don’t even think twice about are spawned from the fetishes to which they’re closest. Feminine sexuality and masculine power fantasies are some of the most common fetishes known to the western world. They’re so common that we don’t even recognize them as fetishes anymore—they’re just a natural thing that exists around us that we don’t offer much thought. Fetishes are what drive human beings toward sexual gratification. Studies have shown that they’re often developed in childhood and are simply an “innate part of a person’s sexuality” with no recourse for which to remove them from the psyche.
Small but loud groups involved in fandom, especially on Twitter, have started using the word “fetishization” as a bad word. The fetishization of men who love men, the fetishization of women who love women, the fetishization of racial attributes and cultures. Is this real? Maybe. But more likely it’s just that the diverse nature of fandom works compared to mainstream media content is jarring to people who are used to one kind of fetish being thrown at them constantly; they’re not used to a whole lot of other kinds mashed up in the mix as well! Believe you me, a Hallmark movie is depending on fetish a lot harder than these folks think they are, it’s just that those fetishes are within the social norm of a society outside of fandom. Fandom’s “norms” are nothing like mainstream media and some folks have a hard time adjusting.
Fandom attracts people whose fetishes are boldly outside of mainstream acceptance, catering to a variety of strange tastes because there’s no vetting process to create works—it’s all from the heart and it doesn’t have to make money. Not only this, fandom provides a place where fetishists can find each other and accept their identities, finding out that their fetish isn’t ultra-weird or a sign of deteriorating mental health, it’s just a normal thing that people have and likely there’s somebody out there who has the same one and is writing fic just to indulge in it. This can be an incredibly life-changing event for someone who might be concerned about what their fetish says about them.
Identity development is critically important for sexual minority mental health. Failure to overcome stigma, and especially internalizing that stigma, can lead to anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Studying the identity development of kinky people can help us to better understand how kinky people develop resilience in the face of a world that often thinks of them as, at best, a joke, and at worst, violent criminals or mentally deranged. - Samuel Hughes for Psychology Today
The introduction of kink-shaming into fandom has been devastating for the mental health of those struggling with kinks that developed during childhood that are simply impossible to remove. The current state of studies reveals that kinks are not simply something one can hypnotize away (though you could try) or force away with enough willpower, they’re stuck in the brain and are not chosen as is evidenced well with nontraditional kinks such as balloons, feet, dolls, etc. Fandom’s near-obsession with “call outs” especially among younger fans which serve most times only to highlight what kind of kink material someone is engaging with on their platform has done a number on the ability of teens and adults to come to terms with their kink identity. Accepting your fetish and making certain that no one is harmed in your engagement with it is paramount to the sexual health of human beings.
Some fans in fandom seem to be under the impression that kink material will harm them or people around them. Not likely. In fact, someone’s fetish or kink material they’re engaging with is none of your business unless you’re having sex with them and even then sometimes it’s a need-to-know basis. The idea of a woman writing a story about a man who fulfills her sexual desire isn’t at all strange to most of the kink-negative members of fandom until that woman veers off into fetish territory. But what if that’s just what she needs? What if her childhood and teenage experiences imprinted within her sexual titillation over the fantasy of a strong, virile, capable man…who happens to wear women’s underwear? Who happens to be older? Who happens to wear a uniform? What if we took it even further? What if he happens to be Black? Happens to be abusive? Happens to be a Nazi? Does this fetish relate to her personal morality?
No. That’s right. Again I shall say it: No. It doesn’t. No matter how you might kick, scream, cry, and insist, a fetish is merely just that and no more. Sometimes the backlash against a fetish might lead someone into spiteful attachment to the idea espoused by it but for the most part, fetishes are entirely innocuous and utterly none of your business. So many people are shamed into disliking their fetishes within fandom spaces, posting long apologies based on how many fanart pieces they retweeted featuring choking (or whatever) and for what? To hide a piece of their innate sexuality because someone else (who had no business even commenting on it) thought it was weird? Living in a sex-negative society and by proxy a sex-negative fandom space is exhausting. Why do we have to not only deal with the alt-right and their political cronies trying to police sexuality but also our own damned fandom buddies who seem chronically unable to just live and let live?
A multitude of tweets taking aim at individuals over their fetishes are made every single day and usually, it’s over “easy targets” such as those who engage with ultra-popular media enterprises such as Stranger Things and Genshin Impact. The way individuals engage with any kind of media is up for judgment as soon as they have a “weird” response to it or a “bizarre” fetish that they happen to see working out with those characters in mind. Fandom has what amounts to a small contingent of conservative evangelical activists who utilize the narrative that “children are not safe” in order to shame and bully kinksters out of fandom spaces.
Why? Because fandom is a tiny duplicate world playing out in a smaller scale and parallel with our social stigmas and pressures we see outside of it. Conspiracy theories about grooming and pedophiles rampant in the news media? Count fandom in for those conspiracies! Libraries are being used to groom minors and there’s child porn everywhere. We have to cleanse our libraries of disgusting content that will warp children’s minds with filth and lead them down the path to sin. Religion-based verbiage is common among fandom purgers as they often tell you: “none of those words are in the Bible” and “Hell is hot” for the simple crime of having a fetish they find to be “gross.” The worst part about all of this is that they use the conservative playbook so perfectly. Who, after all, has patience or sympathy for someone that has been labeled a “pedo?” Welcome to Fandom. It’s a place where all your wildest dreams can be realized…as long as you don’t mind being sent gifs of someone shooting a person in the head because you mentioned your uniform kink one time.
Still, it has to be stated that it is possible to fight the stigma against kink in fandom spaces and in the world beyond. The simplest answer is the best answer: make more sick nasty twisted gross disgusting kink art. Make as much of it as you can stand. Make it and flood it into the world. Make it and share it in those lovely adult spaces with those lovely adult people who know you well and support you in your sex-positivity. Make it and ignore the haters, protect yourself by using kradeelav’s cancellation guide, and shout from the mountain tops that kink art is good art! Find a sex-positive therapist, chat about kinks in healthy environments and make sure that you’re indulging responsibly (not to the standards of dumb children and conservatives on the internet but to the standards of normal human ethics). The best way to combat this shit is to make sure that you’re representing it so that others might feel brave enough to accept their own kink identities. The more people who can come to grips with themselves through watching others come to grips with themselves, the more allies we’re going to have in the fight against censorship, obscenity laws, and plain old nasty little goblin bullies online.
So fight the good fight, fandom. Keep kink strong. You can do it. I believe in us.