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The Crux of the Issue
5 years ago
Further to my last journal, here's my first attempt to communicate my issues with adult content in the fandom better.
A big part of it, for me, is that porn is, by its very nature, exploitative. It exploits our natural sexual drives, it exploits the sexualised cast society has given to our bodies, the female body especially, and it exploits the characters depicted in adult work.
Why does this get to me in particular, to the point of flaring up my anxiety, like it has today? Partly because I don't see the human body as inherently sexual. I certainly don't see the female body as inherently sexual. In fact, that we sexualise the female body so much more readily and extensively than the male could be described as discriminatory, in that women are more demeaned and objectified than men. To be clear, though, this last is a widespread issue, not just a fandom one.
What is a fandom issue is that these problems seem more pronounced here, in that porn is more prominent in general, more graphic and extreme in nature, and nudity is almost always bundled in with it. The fandom also appears notably more keen to sexualise famous characters, especially female ones, like Krystal and Renamon; for example, an FA search for them with General and Mature ratings selected, but not Adult, will still produce far more sexualised, objectifying and fetishised work than work that actually treats them as they are.
There's so much more that can be done creatively with nudity and sexuality, so many ways they can be depicted and explored, and I don't doubt there are fandom artists doing just that, but they're rare, since things are so polarised and stigmatised (clean, porn, next to nothing in between) and thus near-impossible to find amongst the ocean of porn. Put it this way: it's a genuine struggle to find a simple nude pin-up on FA, now, and worse, artists that create those things rarely stay creating them. And actual naturist pieces, not ones that misuse or misunderstand the term, are practically non-existent.
That's particularly tough, for me; finding an artist that draws tasteful/erotic/characterful work, only to watch it grow less and less so. Today I encountered the most extreme example of that: I found the Twitter accounts of an artist (who will remain unnamed; I have to respect their choices, however much they disturb me, and avoiding potential conflict is key to that) whose clean work I admired for a long time, until they left FA.
One account remains clean, but the other, more active, one isn't just porn, it's full porn: nudity exclusively as titillation, almost everything paywalled, just all-out exploitation. It's so jarring, so extreme a change it's hard to put into words. It's triggered my anxiety because a formerly fixed, reliable point of quality art is now cheap and tawdry, to me, and that's hard to cope with. Anxieties are not fun, believe me; everything bothers you far more than it should.
Anxiety, to be honest, is probably the main reason I react with such strong negativity to porn. I worry about watching an artist only for them to turn to porn; worry about becoming attached to a character only to find them in a virginity auction (aside: why? Just why?); worry about browsing any furry art site, not just FA, because there's no way to see tasteful nudes without being exposed to sexualised work as well; worry that my own erotic work will be misinterpreted, cheapened, demeaned.
The thing is, there's nothing I can do to change this. The fandom won't change, the sites won't change, and my anxiety certainly isn't going away. Do I keep soldiering on in the faint hope things might actually change, or do I finally admit this fandom, that isn't anywhere near as creatively open and diverse and free as it touts itself to be, isn't a place I can belong?
Do I finally give up and walk away?
A big part of it, for me, is that porn is, by its very nature, exploitative. It exploits our natural sexual drives, it exploits the sexualised cast society has given to our bodies, the female body especially, and it exploits the characters depicted in adult work.
Why does this get to me in particular, to the point of flaring up my anxiety, like it has today? Partly because I don't see the human body as inherently sexual. I certainly don't see the female body as inherently sexual. In fact, that we sexualise the female body so much more readily and extensively than the male could be described as discriminatory, in that women are more demeaned and objectified than men. To be clear, though, this last is a widespread issue, not just a fandom one.
What is a fandom issue is that these problems seem more pronounced here, in that porn is more prominent in general, more graphic and extreme in nature, and nudity is almost always bundled in with it. The fandom also appears notably more keen to sexualise famous characters, especially female ones, like Krystal and Renamon; for example, an FA search for them with General and Mature ratings selected, but not Adult, will still produce far more sexualised, objectifying and fetishised work than work that actually treats them as they are.
There's so much more that can be done creatively with nudity and sexuality, so many ways they can be depicted and explored, and I don't doubt there are fandom artists doing just that, but they're rare, since things are so polarised and stigmatised (clean, porn, next to nothing in between) and thus near-impossible to find amongst the ocean of porn. Put it this way: it's a genuine struggle to find a simple nude pin-up on FA, now, and worse, artists that create those things rarely stay creating them. And actual naturist pieces, not ones that misuse or misunderstand the term, are practically non-existent.
That's particularly tough, for me; finding an artist that draws tasteful/erotic/characterful work, only to watch it grow less and less so. Today I encountered the most extreme example of that: I found the Twitter accounts of an artist (who will remain unnamed; I have to respect their choices, however much they disturb me, and avoiding potential conflict is key to that) whose clean work I admired for a long time, until they left FA.
One account remains clean, but the other, more active, one isn't just porn, it's full porn: nudity exclusively as titillation, almost everything paywalled, just all-out exploitation. It's so jarring, so extreme a change it's hard to put into words. It's triggered my anxiety because a formerly fixed, reliable point of quality art is now cheap and tawdry, to me, and that's hard to cope with. Anxieties are not fun, believe me; everything bothers you far more than it should.
Anxiety, to be honest, is probably the main reason I react with such strong negativity to porn. I worry about watching an artist only for them to turn to porn; worry about becoming attached to a character only to find them in a virginity auction (aside: why? Just why?); worry about browsing any furry art site, not just FA, because there's no way to see tasteful nudes without being exposed to sexualised work as well; worry that my own erotic work will be misinterpreted, cheapened, demeaned.
The thing is, there's nothing I can do to change this. The fandom won't change, the sites won't change, and my anxiety certainly isn't going away. Do I keep soldiering on in the faint hope things might actually change, or do I finally admit this fandom, that isn't anywhere near as creatively open and diverse and free as it touts itself to be, isn't a place I can belong?
Do I finally give up and walk away?
On emotional grounds, I need stories like other people need fap fodder - this is no exaggeration, it appears that the need to create internally-consistent plot continua appears to have overpowered or possibly co-opted my sex drive, which has led and probably will continue to lead to strange consequences (I can stomach a lot of degeneracy in Rule 34 so long as it operates within the rules of the setting including characterisation, and I've sunk more money than I care to admit into anonymous commissions of the "porn with plot and romance" variety.)
With that in mind, I had once given up and walked away on emotional grounds. Since I've not become a total recluse, leaving for supposedly greener pastures and the resultant disapointment have only made me more jaded, hateful and cynical as I've repeatedly grown attached to other characters I found outside of the fandom, then made the mistake of looking for pictures or stories. Some - the clean ones, of course - were good, but the overwhelming majority was more of the usual.