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Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr (CC BY-SA) Remix by Ana Valens
My sexual fantasies have gotten much darker over the past couple months. I find myself gravitating toward Domination and submission with far more intense power dynamics. One fantasy involves me being a succubus in disguise who tempts another woman (usually a relatively pure girl, maybe fresh out of college) into sexual depravity, revealing myself to her before corrupting her and making her obsessed with what I can do to her body. It’s part pred/prey dynamic, part transformation kink, and a whiff of monster girl fetish with blasphemy kink for good measure. And it’s super fucking hot.
While I’m no stranger to being horny on main, I don’t share these fantasies publicly. Delighting in sadism and fetishism as a trans feminine person tends to result in allegations of being a male in disguise, a secret predator, an antagonist to sapphic purity, or some sort of he-she devil that embodies all three. But like it or not, these quarantine-induced sexual desires are not abnormal. I’m just exploring consensual nonconsent in the safety of my own home.
torbakhopper/Flickr (CC BY)
Sexography’s Rachael Hope calls consensual nonconsent “a type of BDSM play in which the participants engage in play that mimics nonconsensual behavior.” CNC is wrapped up in consensual power exchanges and makes a mutual engagement in nonconsent an erotic experience. In other words: CNC is hot because everyone is agreeing to act out nonconsent, and consenting to nonconsent is sexy (whether for the recipient, the giver, or more often than not, both).
There’s a lot of confusion around CNC, so allow me to unpack the complexities. First off, consensual nonconsent relies on boundaries that communicate all play members’ limits while fulfilling their sexual and/or erotic needs. These boundaries may be strict and wrapped up in constant check-ins. Or they may not. Some people prefer CNC with far more subtle boundaries: ever-present, but largely invisible until needed. Both of these forms of CNC are perfectly fine, as are those that fall in between. What’s important is that the CNC play space is delineated and consented to in ways defined by the players.
CNC may be play, but it is not carefree: real feelings can bubble to the surface that are difficult to unpack or explore in words alone. For some (but not all), that is part of CNC’s appeal: consensual nonconsent taps into our traumas, breaks them loose, and gives us control over them. It can be healing, it can let us accept difficult parts of our lives and let us work through them, or it can let us fuck around with our bodies’ physiological responses (e.g.: fight or flight) for our own erotic pleasure.
However, CNC isn’t innately about trauma, nor is CNC only legitimate or valid or whatever if you’re playing with your traumas. Sometimes, CNC is just super fucking hot for its own sake and makes us feel amazing with the partners we choose to play with. To the same extent, CNC’s appeal comes in all sorts of intensities and philosophies, just like any other form of kink. Some people are into heavy, borderline trauma-triggering CNC, while others prefer a lighter touch. Regardless of what we do, how we do it, and why, CNC always has one key theme: it is communicated, discussed, understood, and negotiated before play.
The way I describe CNC is broad enough to include whatever CNC participants want it to include. I’ve done this on purpose. A lot of backlash against CNC has its roots in a watered-down, respectable form of BDSM that insists there is One True Way to Fuck. These days, that’s commonly carried out through a strict adherence to “SSC,” or “safe, sane, consensual,” a BDSM mantra that emphasizes enthusiastic consent, safety, and low risk among participants. Ironically enough, SSC did not start out this way, and it became a tool for respectability politics around kink over time. Gay Male S/M Activists committee member david stein claims he coined the term in 1987 as an inclusive description of BDSM play that practices informed consent, from light scenes to 24/7 total power exchange. The phrase’s core values were simple: "have a good time, but keep your head,” "don't end up dead," and don’t hurt or kill anyone else, as he writes in his 2000 essay "Safe Sane Consensual.” Gradually, he writes, SSC morphed into a slogan that wipes away all of its nuance.
“[GMSMA] knew that the full range of real-life S/M—briefly defined as sexual arousal or gratification through the infliction or suffering of pain, bondage, or humiliation—can embrace much that is unsafe, insane, and nonconsensual by anyone's standards,” stein writes. “S/M involves powerful emotions and intense vulnerability, and it can be scary stuff. This must not be forgotten or swept under the rug in the quest for social acceptance.”
I don’t discuss CNC much publicly because I might face harassment for enjoying it. That’s partially because I’m a switchy femme-leaning trans woman who likes to top, but it’s also because CNC is widely misunderstood. Non-kinksters and newcomers to the scene may perceive CNC as being far less negotiated (and far less consensual) than it really is. Folks who do not enjoy CNC may not understand its appeal, or may find themselves squicked out by it. Sometimes, this goes from ignorance to malice: sexual authoritarians and puritans (SAPs) love to tap into squicks to try to convince people that, say, their squick is a moral cause. And given misconceptions around CNC are at the root of the public’s perception of BDSM, SAPs and their compatriots may purposefully depict CNC as abuse in order to manipulate people over to their side.
But consensual nonconsent cannot exist without its first word: “consensual.” It involves erotic play partners coming together and agreeing to the confines of a play space, then rolling the dice and seeing what happens. It’s no different than a bunch of people agreeing to play “tag”: everyone agrees one person is “It,” and everyone who is not “It” tries to avoid being tagged. You might become “It” without particularly consenting to getting tagged, but you consented to the rules and the play space that could lead to you getting tagged as “It.” That’s what makes “tag” so fun: the risk of getting tagged, and the thrill that comes with tagging another person.
Like all games, CNC is fun because it’s play, not in spite of it.
Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr (CC BY-SA)
So how does all of this relate to sexual fantasies inside my head?
One of my long-time favorite fetishes is giantess vore: a giant woman consuming a smaller person. In order to create and play out a “scene” where I become a giantess and devour someone else, I have to imagine my own reality, inside my head, completely controlled by me. Every character is a projection of myself, taking on values, ideas, and images that I choose to give them. That’s just how imagination works. So if I fantasize about becoming a giantess and eating a train full of people, I’m not harming anyone. I’m just creating a fantasy that involves me engaging with myself. Everyone consents because there is only one person: me. And I’m having a blast.
If fantasies are just stories we play out in our heads for erotic or sexual pleasure, then isn’t a fictional story just the author projecting ideas, values, and perceptions of reality onto imaginary characters? I think so, and that’s what makes fiction so beautiful: we use our life experiences to inform our characters and their behavior. We are in total control. By extension, dubcon and noncon erotica are innately forms of consensual nonconsent for the same reason my sexual fantasies are: there is only one person that needs to consent, and that’s the author.
Granted, adult content can be embedded with misogynistic values around, say, how women should have sex with men or whether rape culture is good or bad. Narrative themes can send reactionary messages. And there’s a difference between imagining a sexual fantasy with fictional characters and creating erotica with real-life people who do not consent to their appearance in your work.
But when queers and feminists sit down to write CNC fantasies, they are not literally saying “sexual assault is good IRL” or “everyone should seek out dubious sexual situations.” They are celebrating fictional erotic and sexual interests and acting them out through characters of their own design (or in the case of fandom, interpretation). They are just depicting imaginary people engaging in imaginary acts. Even if those actions involve force or deception, no one is being harmed, because nothing is happening in real life: and if you don’t like what you’re reading, you have the right to just close the tab and walk away.
There’s so much shame around noncon, dubcon, and anything in the general realm of CNC play. That’s because CNC gives us space to reclaim power and dictate how it’s designed on our bodies. When done right, it can give us a sense of dignity. And that, my friends, is a power that cannot be taken away once a marginalized person owns it.
Special thank you to Louise Ashley Yeo Payne for your generous Sex-Haver contribution.