Fandom definitions: non-con and dub-con

[ratherastory]

Hola, flist!

Okay, I can no longer claim to be new to fandom (damn, has it really been almost a year and a half?), but there are still aspects that I find hard to define/quantify/whatever.

This has popped up lately because of a problematic fic (which I haven't read, I will hasten to point out), in which there is apparently an issue of consent. Without getting into the actual debate about posting warnings (for the record, in fandom my rule of thumb is "better safe than sorry" and "add warnings if your readers inform you that they found the material triggering"), I would like to clarify the whole notion of dub-con and non-con.



"Dub-con" is something I had never heard of before fandom. I used to be a pretty active member of a feminist group back when I was in university (yes, back in the dark ages), and so as far as I was concerned, until I got into fandom, the issue of consent was pretty cut-and-dried. No means no, is the catchphrase I live by. Being pressured into sex means no. Being drugged unconscious before sex means no. Feeling like you have no choice but to have sex means no. No means that any attempt to have sex with you is an attempted rape. A husband who has sex with his wife when she tells him she's not in the mood is, in fact, committing rape. In short, I err on the side of caution when it comes to that.

Okay, so rape is not a term I see often in the warnings for fic. Rape usually gets translated into "non-con." Which, okay, I can understand, because the term itself can be triggery.

So what, exactly, constitutes dub-con? I figure this HAS to be a grey area, so I'm curious to hear opinions on the matter. Readers, what do you consider dub-con? Writers, when do you decide to warn for dub-con?

Also, if you feel like staying anonymous, that's fine, just keep it civilized. :)

Comments

[faunaana.livejournal.com]

Briefly touching on the fic in question, the writer is being, sorry, a complete douchbag wrt the a/n.

As to dub-con, I think this will vary for many people, but consider the implied sex scene between Sam [Jared] and Gen in last week's episode. For purposes of fic writing, I suspect most people would classify it as "dub-con" - there is a lack of ~force~ and it appears that Gen instigated it. However, for me, it is non-con because she did not consent to sleeping with Sam, she consented to sleeping with Jared.

It seems a murky area, at best, in terms of fanfic, what with the magical healing cock trope, and the "no, no, yes" aspect of some porn.

I don't really have a clear-cut definition in my own mind, so all I can say is, "I know it when I see it."

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

It does really feel like a grey area.

For instance, I would have been seriously squicked by the example you gave, had I actually thought that Sam slept with Gen at any point (which I am firmly choosing not to believe, given body language and verbal denial in the episode, but that's a debate for a different time). I've never liked the trope of someone sleeping with someone because they thought it was someone entirely different, specifically because of the consent issues.

Oddly enough, while I've heard of it, I don't think I've ever read a fic with the magical healing cock trope. I assumed that most of those fics (the 'healing' portions, anyway) were consensual in nature. Am I wrong? Assumptions are not good for me, it seems.

[shinysylver.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about noncon being an umbrella that encompasses all of the iffy situations but I have seen some people include very drunken sex as dubcon. The consent was given but the character wouldn't have if not drunk. Much like some real life drunken sex.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. The "I'm going to hate myself in the morning" kind of consensual sex. Makes a certain amount of sense.

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I could lay out quasi-legal definitions, but some scenarios that often get labeled dubcon:

Sex pollen: neither partner is coercing or manipulating the other, both are affected by an outside influence, they agree, in that situation, to have sex with each other. (I think if you have a conscious agent, rather than sex pollen, forcing two people to have sex, writers are more likely to label it noncon for both parties, even if they both consent to each other within the constraints of the outside compulsion).

Sex between people who habitually have consensual sex, in which consent is given, but where the consenter's -- who is usually also the initiator when this is written lightheartedly -- judgment is impaired by drink or fever or whatever.

Sex in which one partner is not consciously or deliberately manipulating or pressuring the other, but in which the other is giving consent out of a sense of emotional obligation or desperation rather than because they truly, positively want the sex, with the other party unaware that the consent is not wholehearted.

This is observational, rather than analytical.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Okay, I can see that. I was having a lot of trouble imagining scenarios in my head where a "no" of any kind could be interpreted as a "yes," but my imagination was clearly lacking in that regard.

[nwspaprtaxis.livejournal.com]

noncon has always been cut-and-dried to me -- it means, essentially, as you pointed out NO on someone's part.

dubcon kind of means the gray area of is-or-isn't it, where the NO may not seem as clear. I know this is making me sound like a douche, but dubcon is kind of a situation where a person says YES in a situation where it normally would've been NO (much like shinysylver's drunk sex example...)

[nwspaprtaxis.livejournal.com]

or if a person gives consent but judgement is impaired -- de_nugis explains better than I can. And I have no analysis -- just observations.

In an original story I wrote, I had a character give consent while intoxicated -- that is something I'd classify as dubcon because she *did* give consent in THAT MOMENT, even though she otherwise probably wouldn't...

[hereare-mysins.livejournal.com]

Sexual relations where the person refusing to participate ends up saying yes at the end has sometimes been put forward as dub-con, so I agree. I mean, dubious consent means questionable consent, so that's the whole idea right? X is doing it because Y asked enough, even if X didn't want to at the beginning.

Fandom terms are weird to me.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I'm getting used to the terms, but I gotta say a lot of them baffled me for a long time.

[gestaltrose.livejournal.com]

I think that dub-con can be a pov issue. From one persons perspective, they think that the other person agreed to sleep with them. From the other, so such consent was given. So while from the POV of the narrator.... it is consensual, we the readers may have a totally different view. IDK really.

[si-star-x.livejournal.com]

There are so many terms in this fandom that it confuses me to no end. I didn't even know what 'GEN' was when I first arrived on the plane.

[zolac-no-miko.livejournal.com]

Oh, fandom. Yeah, the term 'dub-con' is, I believe, unique to fandom, but the conept is a pretty common one across all kinds of pornography throughout its history. Fandom is a playground, a place to live out our sexual fantasies without consequences. Fantasies involving violence and rape are pretty common.

I think to me 'dub-con' is usually meant to imply that the party in question wants it on some level, or ends up enjoying it, or changes their mind midway through the act about wanting/not wanting it. It's kind of an insidious thing, since one might come to the conclusion that this makes it okay. As far as I'm concerned, dub-con and non-con/rape are flavors of the same thing. It's not my cup of tea, but neither are a lot of kinks, and I'm okay with it as long as it stays in people's heads and no one thinks it's acceptable in the real world.

[mishaphappens.livejournal.com]

This is a great comment, covering all the bases of what I was going to say. I'll just add that dub-con includes outside influences 'making them do it' ie. drugs, alcohol, sex pollen.

But really, fandom is that playground, as you say, in which people can explore those little fantasies. It doesn't mean that it's going to happen in real life ("end up enjoying it") or that having sex with a partner who's drunk is ever okay.

So, in other words: THIS.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

Call me a cynic, but I think the use of 'non-con' is less to avoid being triggery and more to avoid having to face up to writing rape scenes (especially when it comes to rape porn). Dub-con to me is an even further distancing, though I've also seen it applied to "aliens/sex pollen/magic/alcohol made us do it."

So, you know, I could see people dubbing that one skeevy relationship in Wishful Thinking as dub-con, but on the whole, I think I'll fall back on "something people don't want to call rape."

[zolac-no-miko.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the fic in question, but THIS.

[embroiderama]

I've seen the explanation that dub-con exists only in fic, not in RL--as in, if consent is dubious in RL then it's a no-go--which makes sense to the extent that we don't have sex pollen or pon farr or whatever in RL.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

LOL

Pon Farr. I forgot about that. I guess that would be dub-con, yeah.

[jesseofthenorth.livejournal.com]

dub/con is really in my estimation completely open to interpretation.
But Non/con? VERY CLEARLY the inability to give specific consent. I recently came across a story were one party was... incapacitated and beyond ability to give consent. There was a warning of dub/con. This is not dub/con! The the author now has a shiny new note beside their name to warn me ahead of time because I do not want to be reading that sort of situation and frankly I'm a little pissed not to have been warned. Sadly this is not the first time this has happened and I am sure it will not be the last time.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no, that's rape.

[bellatemple]

Oh honey, you'll always be "new" to me. (Hell, I consider myself generally to be fairly new to SPN fandom, still, but ended up on a list of old-guard BNFs for SPN fandom in the anon meme. Okay then!)

As for dub-con (short for "dubious consent") -- it's a fairly new phrase in the fanfiction lexicon, I believe. As far as I can tell, it relates to the idea that someone could answer "maybe" to consenting to sex. Like, they thought they didn't want it but then they do kinda want it. . . . Which wouldn't hold up for me at all in a real life situation ("maybe" means, at best, ask them again later. Enthusiastic consent is the way to go, yo!).

In general fandom terms, it can mean "they thought they didn't want it but end up liking it when forced", which is . . . again, see above re: enthusiastic consent. Yeah. That whole area of fanfic is something I eye with my own "dub" look. Some of it manages to work as fiction. Some of it doesn't. Some of it doesn't get labeled "non-" or "dub-" at all, and yet includes someone being emotionally blackmailed into sex.

My one and only NC-17 fic is labeled as "dub-con". It involves underage ghost sex, in which Dean is at times totally willing (the first time it happens, I'd classify it as non-con, but then he ends up all for it), but does not actually have to capability to fully consent, what with a) being a minor, and b) not actually having full details about the sex that's going to occur. He's enthusiastic about . . . most of it? I don't know. That whole fic is something out of left field for me, anyway.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Yay for enthusiastic consent!

In short, yes, I agree. Fanfic seems to blur a lot of the lines that aren't blurry at all IRL.

[katwoman76.livejournal.com]

Not sure, if we think of the same story. I know that I made a few comments lately on a story that I think is supposed to be con, but reads to me like non-con. Anyway - to your question and my thoughts:

I think I'm pretty much like you in this area.
That's why for me personally it's more difficult to read stories that are tagged "dub-con" than ones that are clearly tagged "non-con".
I like it, if the level of consent is a black or white thing.

A lot of times I have the feeling with "dub-con" that while it reads to me like non-con, the writer might have thought of it as "not really(?) non-con" or consentional.
To name just two examples that I think are often tagged like that (and please, I don't want to offend anyone who might have written something along those lines, I'm just stating how it feels to me personally)
... prostitution - does it count as consent, if the person chose to get money that way, even if they didn't see any other options? Is it really a free choice or does take desperation that choice away?
... stories where someone is kidnapped/abused/raped and suddenly falls in love with the abuser/rapist - to me it cries Stockholm-Syndrome, to some others it still says epic love story.

I don't know...which I guess, is what it comes down to when tagging it dub-con ...suspicion it might not be con, but not sure about it? The grey area.

If we wanted to get really philosophical, we could even widen the consent-theme to not sex related themes. canon even.
Like, angels need their vessels consent to use them as a meat-suit.
But is a YES from Dean or Sam, when given as a result of torture or because there is no other way to stop the end of the world really consent?

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

f we wanted to get really philosophical, we could even widen the consent-theme to not sex related themes. canon even.
Like, angels need their vessels consent to use them as a meat-suit.
But is a YES from Dean or Sam, when given as a result of torture or because there is no other way to stop the end of the world really consent?

Thank you for bringing this up, this is the sort of question that leaves me pondering the 'good' and 'bad' motives of some of my favorite SPN characters on occasion.

Then again, making me think about these sorts of things is actually one of the reasons I like the show.

;)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

For me, I define dub-con as there being some question as to whether the other person consented or not...as in, it's open to interpretation. Like, let's say the fic is told by the aggressor's pov - they could believe that their partner is consenting, while the reader might be thinking "but did they? Or is that just what the aggressor thinks?"

Or, more specifically, it's for those cases, where something starts out as a possible non-con, and then quickly evolves into fully consensual sex. Basically, the person first resisting, but then thinking "ah fuck it, it feels nice and I actually DO want to have sex with this person..." in which case, some readers might still interpret it as non-con, since it was non-con at the beginning, but the characters actually having the sex, if asked afterwards, would say that it was all cool and consensual.

I absolutely cannot stand to read non-con fic, but I HAVE read dub-con and enjoyed it before. I don't write either one though, and I tend to stay away from dub-con given how loosely it is sometimes defined.

[lunasky3.livejournal.com]

If I pick to read dub-con, I usually go in thinking of it in terms of "I/we wouldn't have done it under a normal situation, BUT it was awesome hot and we probably might do it again."

Since it is a fandom only concept, I find it mainly used to create situations where characters who wouldn't normally have sex, have sex, ala "sex pollen/love spell."

For me at least, it's a lot of- will this character be okay afterwards?

BUT I do get seriously pissed off if something is supposed to be dub-con, and is more clearly non-con. Don't get me started on what happens when people turn BDSM into non-con and call it dub con >.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Eesh. From what I've understood, BDSM itself is a pretty tricky thing to write anyway when it comes to the whole consent thing, and runs the gamut.

[alexseanchai]

Dub-con does not exist in real life. I don't warn for dub-con; I warn for consent issues, which include such things as 6.15 Sam/Genevieve, sex pollen, and anything where somebody might think the sex wasn't fully consensual.

[maraceles.livejournal.com]

Huh. I think I might start doing this, too. I think dubcon means rape, but I see here that many others disagree, so I'm just going to warn for consent issues from now on. Seems the best course of action to take.

[tahirire.livejournal.com]

Any time you write a story with a possessed person in it, there is non-con.

Any time you write about, say, Sam fucking a prostitute when he didn't have his soul, there is dub-con.

... I think.

I've seen people label Sam/Ruby dub-con because 'if he had been thinking straight ...' but I don't agree with that. I know plenty of people that wouldn't have gotten married if they had been thinking straight, but it was still consensual. Sometimes you gotta let your characters own their choices.

That being said, of course ... I pretty much only write gen fic.

Says the girl that just published the first 20k of a Gwen/OMC story. *headdesk*

[bornfromthefoam.livejournal.com]

About Sam/Ruby... she coerced him, didn't she? He said "stop" and she kept going. So is that a canon example of rape, then? I mean Show sure as hell doesn't present it that way, but, wow, that just changed my perspective on a LOT of S4.

[sentra04.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna try an explain my stand - hope it's clear....

Non-con is any sexual relationship where is is not consensual. No means No. Period. Even if the chara ends up enjoying it (i hate those). If they said no - i still qualify it as non-con.

Dub-con is where the sex might not be consensual, but the person didn't say no. They haven't done anything to stop it. They haven't made any notion to their partner that they don't want to go on.
It could be because the person is impaired - it could be because there character doesn't know they CAN say no.
Maybe character A really like Chara B - and B wants to have sex. Chara A doesn't - but they like chara B so they do anyway - even if they don't want to.
I also lump into dub-con scenarios where the chara does say yes - but their ability to give consent is questionable - like when minors are involved, or there is an abuse of power - Stockholm syndrome or something - or there's a mental handicap to take into account.

Non-con tends to be an abuse of power. Someone forcing someone else to do something. Not that dub-con can't have that as well - but it isn't always the case.

To gray-out warnings or to not gray-out warnings...

[nwspaprtaxis.livejournal.com]

I was just wondering what you thought should constitute as a grayed-out warning. Should warnings for noncon and dubcon be grayed out? I can understand graying out the word rape and other synonyms because those in and of itself can be triggery, but what about the terms "noncon" and "dubcon"?

On one hand, I can see why they should be -- like the word "rape" -- but on the other hand, part of me doesn't want to hide it behind a cut and to make it as clear as possible so that those who avoid such fics can steer far away without having to highlight the warnings or dig beneath cuts....

Thoughts?

Re: To gray-out warnings or to not gray-out warnings...

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I don't generally grey out warnings. I grey out spoilers (for show and plot, when a potential trigger is also a plot point in my fic, such as character death), and I grey out descriptions of triggery material in prompts, for instance.

Keep your warnings short and to the point: non-con, dub-con, character death, self-injury, abuse of a minor, underage sex, extreme gore/violence, etc.

[mollyamory.livejournal.com]

So I read it, and honestly, I think the problem is that the writing is just bad. (Sorry, I know that's mean.) It's bad enough that I'm willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt, and assume that she really didn't intend to write a story with skeevy consent issues; she just wasn't good enough to pull off what she did intend. Which seems to have been a bizarre little Misha/Dean sex...thing... that led to Castiel putting some extremely toppy moves on Dean.

I hope this doesn't come across as a defense. It just makes sense, given that the story DOES have skeevy consent issues and the writer clearly has no idea. To me, though, the skeeviest part is the first sex scene, where Dean doesn't even seem to fully understand that Misha is fucking him.

Buzzah?

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I honestly wouldn't know. It's popped up on my flist a couple of times (mentions only, not the actual fic), and it's not my cup of tea anyway, so I'm not going to bother seeking it out.

Mostly it just brought to the fore questions that I already had at the back of my mind.

[4thejourney.livejournal.com]

I've often seen underage sex labled as dubcon because of the age of the consentor, especially if the other party involved is a lot older.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

*squirms*

Yeah, see, no. Statutory rape is statutory rape. And if we're getting into things where there's a significant age gap *and* both parties are underage, then... I don't know. It feels very close to venturing into child porn territory, and that's a world of no for me.

[reapertownusa.livejournal.com]

Dub-con and non-con are the majority of what I write in the SPN fandom. I've heard a lot of readers say that they'll read dub-con, but not non-con, though I just see dub-con as a class of non-con.

In most cases it's still rape, it just has more of a mental focus. I think the only 'dub-con' I've written where I wouldn't say it was still rape was a scenario where Sam and Dean had to have sex with each other to stop a spell that would otherwise kill them. Neither of them wanted to do it, but they agreed they had to.

I put the warning of 'non-con' on anything in which Dean is physically incapacitated (drugged, restrained, forced down etc.) and is trying to escape the situation. I use 'dub-con' when it's not something he wants, but he agrees to go along with it under duress (i.e. if he doesn't do it Sam will get hurt). It's still no, it's still rape but in the given scenario he's not fighting it.

So as far as the scenarios you mentioned, I equate the being mentally pressured into sex scenario as 'dub-con' – fictionally speaking of course.

[nwspaprtaxis.livejournal.com]

I was waiting for you to jump in with your personal definition! :)

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

Oy. What a loaded topic! Dub-con is sooooo gray but under most circumstances, I'm perfectly cool with it. Non-com? Just not my thang. I avoid it for the most part, unless it's an important plot-point AND done behind closed doors.

I've got nothing new to add to the conversation except that I agree with the 'better safe than sorry' mantra. Kinda sounds like if there's even a ghost of a chance that an encounter isn't perfectly consensual, label it dub-con to be on the safe side. Not sure it's necessary to gray-out warnings, however. If you can't even look sideways at the mere mention of a particular word, you need to avert your eyes from 90% of life. They're simply words, devoid of context. No one likes the word 'cancer' but you'll have to read it every now and again.

My two cents!

[phx69.livejournal.com]

For me dub-con involves an impairment by one of the participants such as if someone is drunk, high or otherwise compromised so they might not do what they would normally do, and has sex with someone they might not normally consider. IE a drunk straight guy being seduced by another guy, I consider it dub-con. I also consider dub-con if a minor is involved. Basically, I guess whenever there is an issue of consent. It isn't always as cut and dried as someone saying 'no'.

[maraceles.livejournal.com]

Like I just said to de_nugis above, I think both sex with dubious consent and non-consensual sex means rape. Full stop. I agree with you in that consent is cut and dried.

That being said, I think the labels of "dubcon" and "noncon" are used as trope/kink descriptions in fandom, that they clue the reader into what kind of rape is being described.