Dubcon

Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent

How the treatment of sexual consent in erotic fanfiction functions as a form of cultural activism.

Sexual consent is--at best--a contested topic in Western societies and cultures. The #MeToo movement has brought public attention to issues of sexual consent, revealing the endemic nature of sexual violence. Feminist academic approaches to sexual violence and consent are diverse and multidisciplinary--and yet consent itself is significantly undertheorized. In Dubcon, Milena Popova points to a community that has been considering issues of sex, power, and consent for many years: writers and readers of fanfiction. Their nuanced engagement with sexual consent, Popova argues, can shed light on these issues in ways not available to either academia or journalism.

Popova explains that the term "dubcon" (short for "dubious consent") was coined by the fanfiction community to make visible the gray areas between rape and consent--for example, in situations where the distribution of power may limit an individual's ability to give meaningful consent to sex. Popova offers a close reading of three fanfiction stories in the Omegaverse genre, examines the "arranged marriage" trope, and discusses the fanfiction community's response when a sports star who was a leading character in RPF (real person fiction) was accused of rape. Proposing that fanfiction offers a powerful discursive resistance on issues of rape and consent that challenges dominant discourses about gender, romance, sexuality, and consent, Popova shows that fanfiction functions as a form of cultural activism.
"In the new book, Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent, writer Milena Popova shows how these fanfiction sub-communities play with power rather than eliminate it. Stories of “dubious consent, or “dub con,” as it’s called, recognize that inequality sometimes implicates consent, making it not-so-clear-cut, 'not a matter of ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” In the real world, writes Popova, it’s questionable whether “partners are free to know and express their own desires and limits without any external pressures or power structures.'"
Jezebel
Milena Popova is an independent scholar, activist, and consultant working on culture and sexual consent and the author of Sexual Consent, a volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.
1 Introduction 1
2 Thinking the Unthinkable 15
Interlude: What We Talk about when we Talk about Fanfiction 31
3 "Dogfuck Rapeworld": Sexual Scripts and Consent in the Omegaverse 35
4 Rewriting the Romance: Emotion Work and Consent in Arranged-Marriage Fanfiction 63
5 Blurred Lines: From Fiction to Real Life 91
6 "Tab A, Slot B": Lived Experience and Knowledges of Consent 117
7 "Living Our Values": A Praxis of Consent 141
Epilogue 165
Acknowledgments 177
Notes 179
Index 203

About

How the treatment of sexual consent in erotic fanfiction functions as a form of cultural activism.

Sexual consent is--at best--a contested topic in Western societies and cultures. The #MeToo movement has brought public attention to issues of sexual consent, revealing the endemic nature of sexual violence. Feminist academic approaches to sexual violence and consent are diverse and multidisciplinary--and yet consent itself is significantly undertheorized. In Dubcon, Milena Popova points to a community that has been considering issues of sex, power, and consent for many years: writers and readers of fanfiction. Their nuanced engagement with sexual consent, Popova argues, can shed light on these issues in ways not available to either academia or journalism.

Popova explains that the term "dubcon" (short for "dubious consent") was coined by the fanfiction community to make visible the gray areas between rape and consent--for example, in situations where the distribution of power may limit an individual's ability to give meaningful consent to sex. Popova offers a close reading of three fanfiction stories in the Omegaverse genre, examines the "arranged marriage" trope, and discusses the fanfiction community's response when a sports star who was a leading character in RPF (real person fiction) was accused of rape. Proposing that fanfiction offers a powerful discursive resistance on issues of rape and consent that challenges dominant discourses about gender, romance, sexuality, and consent, Popova shows that fanfiction functions as a form of cultural activism.

Reviews

"In the new book, Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent, writer Milena Popova shows how these fanfiction sub-communities play with power rather than eliminate it. Stories of “dubious consent, or “dub con,” as it’s called, recognize that inequality sometimes implicates consent, making it not-so-clear-cut, 'not a matter of ‘yes’ or ‘no.’” In the real world, writes Popova, it’s questionable whether “partners are free to know and express their own desires and limits without any external pressures or power structures.'"
Jezebel

Author

Milena Popova is an independent scholar, activist, and consultant working on culture and sexual consent and the author of Sexual Consent, a volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 Thinking the Unthinkable 15
Interlude: What We Talk about when we Talk about Fanfiction 31
3 "Dogfuck Rapeworld": Sexual Scripts and Consent in the Omegaverse 35
4 Rewriting the Romance: Emotion Work and Consent in Arranged-Marriage Fanfiction 63
5 Blurred Lines: From Fiction to Real Life 91
6 "Tab A, Slot B": Lived Experience and Knowledges of Consent 117
7 "Living Our Values": A Praxis of Consent 141
Epilogue 165
Acknowledgments 177
Notes 179
Index 203