"The fine, fine line"

Okay. So. I need to justify myself right now, before any of you (except JoAnn) ever see the stuff I wrote that required this justification. Because, damn it, I'm creeping myself out and it's a topic that I'm all meta on it right now and. It's just something I have to do.

So. Shota.

It's not a kink of mine. Which, I think, is why I've avoided the HP fandom -- especially after stumbling across some seriously graphic Harry/Snape pr0n that read like it was set during Harry's second year. Shota creeps me out because you know what? I don't care if Snape is OMG Harry's Soulmate 4EVAH and it's the "ONE. TRUE. PAIRING." and all that crap. Snape fucking Harry when Harry is 12 and Snape is -- what? 30-ish? 40-ish? -- is just. Wrong. It's child abuse. It's the rape of innocence in a way that is seriously not on. The only way that this could ever be right (with me, anyway) is if the focus wasn't on the sex, but on Harry being a twisted little fuck who has no innocence that could be raped, or how Snape is getting off on the emotional abuse he's committing, how he's enjoying using Harry's desperation for love to get what he wants. If what the author was getting off on was the emotional darkness of the act and not the act itself. Because Shota sex -- sex between a minor and an adult* -- is a dark, dark, act, no matter how you might want to dress it up and make into "spork me in the eyes now" love. Think back to when you were 12. How would you have felt about someone in a position of authority -- someone you trusted, respected, looked up to -- touching you and kissing you and fucking you? If it was someone like your best loved/most hated teacher, your parent, your favorite adult non-relative, a complete stranger?

At the age of 12, I know that I was just beginning to explore my sexuality, to learn the joys of masturbation (and, honestly, at 12, even though I'd heard the terms, I had absolutely no idea what a blow job meant. It came as a real shock to me to learn where, exactly, you put your lips. God, I was such an innocent, once upon a time). And maybe it's because of my personal psyche but there was a certain amount of shame and guilt built in with the whole exploration -- because I couldn't help but feel naughty, like I was seeing something I wasn't supposed to see, like I was stealing the forbidden fruit. And, god, that shame was multiplied a thousand times the first time I had a sexual crush. Because it was embarrassing and it was a little scary to realize that what I honestly wanted from this person wasn't something nice and pretty, but something slick and dirty. It made me uncomfortable, because I had to see this person every day and try to pretend that I wasn't having strange, disturbing thoughts about our body parts and the many ways they might fit together (and I was mostly concerned with kissing and holding hands because I was a sexual zygote). And this was a person my age. If I'd had these thoughts about an adult, I think I would have died. Because I hadn't quite figured out that adults were fallible when I was 12. More than that, I respected adults. I trusted that they weren't going to lie to me (I was sheltered, okay?) -- at least not about the important things -- that they were there for my protection. And if one of those important pillars in my worldview suddenly started touching me, suddenly expanded my really tame sexual thoughts (I got aroused over holding hands, I shit you not. And, in many ways, I still do), did things to me that I hadn't even known could be done -- we're talking like the most simple sexual acts here -- talked to me in a romantic manner? It would have scarred me, broken a part of me. I was only just ready to take on the simplest forms of sex at 12 -- it took me years to gain enough courage to go against a bizarre (yet deep set) embarrassment over sex and explore all my erogenous zones -- and that was as a solo act. I can't even imagine the ways that having an experienced partner might have altered me (none of it would have been in a good way, though).

I realize that not everybody was as sexually repressed as I was at 12. And I realize that children are becoming sexualized by society at a younger and younger age (which is wrong! So very, very wrong!). But sex between an adult and a minor can never be just a physical act the way it can be between an adult and an adult. Built into the act is a betrayal of a social contract that we should have, must have with society: to let our children grow up in innocence -- or, at the very least, to not intentionally and directly contribute to their loss of innocence, to not force our corrupted humanity upon them. Let kids corrupt themselves, they'll do it just fine on their own through living among us. There's no need for us to take the child by the hand and lead him through the corruption.

Right, returning to the point. Shota.

I have no problems with Shota when it's between two minors. Or, rather, the only problem I have is the same one I have with all Shota, and that's if the fic's intent it so be gratifying solely because of the young age of one or more of the participants.

...Okay. So that's not very clear. Look. I can get off on a relationship between a 14-year-old and a 14-year-old that's sexual in nature if there's also the fumbling, the secret delight, the pure joy of discovery, the mix of rank innocence and primeval adultness that's so much a part of sexual discovery. I can't get off if it's just about the fact that they're 14 years old and having sex. Is the difference clear? In the first one, the one I'm okay with, the sex is part of something bigger, some messy, wonderful tangle and it's that bigger thing that's the thrill. In the second, the sex is the focus and the thrill is the fact that the people having sex are 14.

I have to say that I don't get this physical kink. I don't get what's arousing about the pure fact that one of the partners is a minor and the other is an adult. What's hot about barely pubescent bodies? No, really? What's the physical attraction? Because it repels me, disgusts me in a way that I'm sure the thought of having hot, sweaty sex with someone who had cybernetic body parts disgusts people.

Now, emotionally, this kink should be right up my alley. Because it's so loaded with the hurt that I practically have an emotional orgasm over the damage I can do. Because it's all about inequality, and it's about using people and being used, about twisting what love is until it's dark and ugly, about emotional crippling and emotional scarring, about losing innocence and staining, pure white ignorance about how the world really is. And I can so totally get behind that, because. Fuck. I love that shit right there. And, okay, if that's the focus of the story, I can write that. I can go to the scary place, even though I hate myself for doing it (because, honestly, I'm a big marshmallow peep and the thought of hurting children horrifies me in a parallel fashion to the way the thought of, say, eating human flesh, raw and dripping and warm, horrifies me).

But. It's a fine line, I think, between writing the physical and the emotional kink.

Because it's going to be arousing, especially if it's written from the POV of the adult, the one who's getting off on the sex. For that character, it's his kink. It's the fact that his partner is a child that's arousing him. And, if it's well-written, that arousal, the enjoyment of that kink is going to come across -- just the way the enjoyment of the act of rape is arousing to the rapist.

That's the fine line.

At least, that's where it is for me as the author. Because I don't ever want to write something like rape or Shota and have it be read that what I'm getting off on is the physical act. Because I don't get off on that stuff, I don't get off on the sex. Yet, to write the pedophilic character well, to make the darkness (which is what makes me go "Ngh" and enjoy a post emotional-orgasm, metaphorical cigarette) real and valid, I have to write at least a part of it as enjoyment. And I'm just so worried that my skills aren't good enough to make that distinction.

Not that that worry is going to stop me from writing it.

So, to sum up: 1. Todesengel = sexually naïve doesn't even begin to describe it. 2. Shota-sex just for the sex? BAD!

======= *Okay, so maybe I should establish what I mean here when I say minor and adult. Now I know that my ages aren't going to be agreed upon by everybody, but a lot of what I'm basing them on are memories of my own level of emotional maturity. Because, really, when you get up to around age 14 or so it becomes difficult to quantify the wrongness. So, 14, to me, still falls under the heading of minor. As to adult, well, okay, an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old will make me frown in mild concern, which will deepen into serious alarm the younger the 18-year-old's partner gets -- but that's really concern for the younger partner. 18 may be the legal age but, to me, that's not an adult. 18 is part of that nebulous transition phase from child to adult. I don't think you're really an adult until you're in you're mid-twenties. And when you're an adult, you have all of these...emotional/psychological/experiential tools that you don't have as a Transistor (a post-child, pre-adult person) and you can't even conceive of as a child. So, an adult having sex with a non-adult...it isn't just a physical act, it's an emotional and mental act. It's a granting of power that shouldn't be granted. An adult can use these tools (consciously, unconsciously) and slide them into the psyche of the non-adult and break the non-adult in secret ways. An adult is a person with a sense of identity, a person who has lived long enough to become comfortable within his own skin, comfortable enough with his basic sense of "I" that he can ask questions about himself understand his depths further. A Transistor is still searching for that "I", while a child has no real understanding or grasp of this subject. So these non-adults aren't equipped to deal with our natural egoism. They don't have the wall the adults have to brace themselves against, the grounding of self that an adult has. And that's, really, the wrong here. Without that grounding in self, the non-adult is more dependent upon others for navigation and can thus be manipulated by the adult.

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