In the real world:
- Yes
In fanfiction:
- No
‘dubcon’ is a fic genre where a victim’s consent to a sexual situation is questionable. Tropes that fall into this category include: sex pollen, ‘aliens made them do it’, drunk sex, fics that start out noncon but the victim enthusiastically consents partway through, and many others.
In a real world situation, if a person is incapable of consenting or doesn’t agree to a sex act the whole way through it, it’s rape.
While ‘dubious consent’ cannot possibly describe a real life situation of any kind, the word ‘dubcon’ has very specific connotations within the realm of fanfiction. Like its close sister ‘noncon’, it is a safe word used to describe a variety of rape fantasies without using the word ‘rape’, which both protects the creators of these works and protects survivors who are looking for these kinds of fics from having to look at a word with such strong connotations.
‘why not just call it all noncon then?’ because dubcon communicates one or two very specific mindsets of the victims:
- their mind is altered by some outside force to cause them to desire participating in sexual acts
- during the sexual situation they are in a state of consent
The situation may not be real-world levels of consenting, but the victim is not perceiving themselves as a victim; they desire the sex act. In noncon, the implication is the opposite: the victim is not desiring the sex act. Being able to tell the two genres of fictional rape apart is extremely important for anyone looking for a fic in that genre to read, particularly for survivors. Knowing the mindset of the victim(s) can be the difference between a safe fantasy and a triggering (or perhaps just squicky) experience.
‘Dubcon contributes to the mindset that victims can be ‘made to like it!’’ No: it’s a safe way to interact with a concept that real world rape culture forces on all of us. It arises from the same narrative, but as the situation is entirely fictional, it actually returns the power to the reader to choose whether or not they are enjoying it. And by openly acknowledging that the situation is not truly consensual, the label ‘dubcon’ actually increases awareness of this gray area’s moral and real life implications.
If you don’t like it, that’s okay: nobody has to like anything. Many people are squicked by non- and dub-con works. But words are important, and very specific warnings and tags protect people from harm. And isn’t that all we all want?
tl;dr: dubcon doesn’t exist in the real world, but it’s an important label for fanficcers and their readers everywhere.
After reading dubcon fanfic, I went looking for it in mainstream erotica and found there was no dubcon tag or label. It was not until I started reading paranormal romance (which is traditional romance with vampires and were-people) that I found a closer parallel.
Lbr a lot of mainstream romance books and movies feature dubcon without making this distinction – they act like dubcon is normal and romantic and nbd, and that is way more morally dubious than a lot of things read in fanfic
Tagging makes all the difference in the world. If you’ve tagged something “dubcon” or “rape/non-con,” that means you know the actions portrayed are morally bad, and you’re making the reader aware of it, and aware of the fact that you know. Horror movies are called horror movies because we all know the depicted events are horrible; no one assumes that horror movie fans endorse torture and murder. Tagging conventions make explicit the mutual understanding that we – a community mostly of women and/or afab folk – are often turned on by fictional scenarios that are morally bad, and that would be completely horrific in real life. And maybe it’s because of conditioning by rape culture, and sometimes it’s a coping mechanism for survivors, or maybe it’s just because human sexuality is really fucking weird (pun sort of intended).
The assumption of anti-kink culture is (as I understand it) that dubcon/non-con and power-exchange kinks are symptoms, expressions, and perpetuations of rape culture. Even if that’s true, and all kinks would disappear once rape culture was abolished, it would do a lot more good and less harm to address the problem at its source – by promoting widespread education about consent; by fighting mainstream depictions of dubcon and the predator/prey model of sex and romance as normal and desirable – than to attack a small, vulnerable population whose (supposedly) twisted predilections reflect the way they have been indoctrinated into a system of which they are the intended victims. Kinky fanfic and fanart are not the problem; they are, if anything, symptoms of the problem, and according to their own ideology, anti-kink people are blaming and attacking people for being sick rather than fighting the actual disease. Which is, as you know, the standard right-wing approach to homelessness, poverty, and racial oppression.
Loki is the Philosopher King 