hydratrashmeme | Chatter post

I want to know what's the sentiment behind the worst thing happening to characters having to be rape. I know it has to do with violation and losing power, etc., but for a trash meme it seems that everyone steers toward sexual violence as the worst that could happen to a character. There doesn't seem to be a lot of variety here and all the prompts are various flavors of gang-banging, etc.

My second question is why most vehemently defend the HTP as not fetishsizing rape, when almost all of the rape prompts are met with applause and people drooling and openly stating that they want it? Why not simply admit it's a kink? Even if it's as a coping mechanism, just admit you enjoy characters being put through trauma. It's a harmless kink and the only harm done is by people unwittingly reading it, which hardly ever happens since there's tagging. Do some not want to admit it's a kink because they feel it makes them dirty? Why not embrace your rape fetish?

Please don't take this as an attack. I'm really curious as to why this is the general theme among people that enjoy HTP.

Words like kink and fetish implies it is sexual, that I get something sexual out of it. I really, really do not, so I have nothing to admit or embrace, and rather resent the implication that I should. It is not a sexual thing for everyone.

Often the reasons for why people think rape is the absolute worst tends to be pretty personal in nature.

What I mean is that rape is synonymous with trash on this meme. Might as well have been named Hydra Rape Meme. There's a few dismemberment and mindfucking, but most of the stories still go back to rape after all of that.

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-29 17:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:21 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-29 17:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:22 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 15:06 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 16:43 (UTC) - Expand

+1 I'm not here for the kink aspect of it, not that I mind that there are others who are. "Rape fetish" takes all the nuance out of why a lot of people are here for a lot of different reasons, and I resent being told by antis and trolls that obviously the only reason anyone would read it is for perverted kink purposes. If it is a kink, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's also not just for kink.

The general theme of htp IS non-con. If you read the rules/top level posts or the fanlore page, you can see the basic idea of it was based on this. I personally enjoy some of the non-sexual stuff, but I have to admit it's an offshoot of the original idea. That's why it makes up the minority of prompts.

As for your second question, I don't really see people acting the way you're saying (i.e. denying it's a kink). Also, whether the prompts are about rape or something else wouldn't define whether people have a kink.

(OP) Ah I get it. The htp IS mostly meant for non-con. I just hoped there would be more than only the little non-con there is.

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:24 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 15:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 20:17 (UTC) - Expand

I for one am completely comfortable with saying that rape fantasy, and fantasies about powerlessness in general, are sexual kinks of mine. I'd say so are most people I know personally in this fandom.

From what I've seen though, whenever someone accuses us of "fetishising rape" they collapse the distinction between fantasy and reality to give their argument more emotive power, claiming we're getting off on the real trauma of rape survivors. We're not. We're getting off on fantasies. I've been raped twice and I can promise you I didn't enjoy it. When I argue that I'm not fetishising rape, I mean that ACTUAL rape is not something that gets me off.

(I also personally wouldn't say I have a "fetish" for fantasies about powerlessness because the term "fetish" often entails connotations of pathology. Occasionally getting off on rape fantasies does not cause me any psychological distress, or negatively affect my relatively vanilla sex life.)

As for the first question, I'm not sure I accept your premise that most people here believe sexual violence is the worst thing to happen to a character. As a couple of others have said, we focus on sexual violence here because that was the context in which the community was originally created: the idea of Party Favour Winter Soldier, being passed around among Hydra goons at Hydra Trash Parties for sexual exploitation. It's expanded a bit to include other kinds of dehumanisation and violation, but sexual violence was always the trashy core we built ourselves around.

^^^ This. People are not getting off to rape. People are getting off to rape FANTASIES.

I have never met any HTP member (and I've met some, on and offline) who's not horrified by the thought of real rape. FICTION IS NOT REALITY.

Really, it's like a BDSM roleplay – how can you (or any anti who's not against BDSM) be ok if me and my partner think up a story about, idk, a pirate captain and their prisoner, but not if it's a super soldier and a HYDRA agent?

Honestly, it baffles me so much. It's the exact same thing.

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:26 (UTC) - Expand

(OP) I really appreciate you answering. Thanks.

for a trash meme it seems that everyone steers toward sexual violence

This meme was established as a space for fic about "violent sex and sexy violence" -- I don't know why you'd think the focus on rape here is out of place. That’s like going to a steakhouse and being confused as to why everybody’s eating beef. You’re right, there’s not a lot of salmon on the menu … because it’s a restaurant that specializes in steak. It says so right on the door.

Why not embrace your rape fetish?

Publicly? It's an anon meme because, as I'm sure you've noticed, some people in fandom act like assholes when other people like things that they themselves do not like. I manage to keep my seething contempt for Coffee Shop AUs under wraps because I'm polite and have good impulse control. I recognize that my complete lack of interest in that genre is irrelevant to everybody who isn't me, that random strangers are not interested in the many ways in which I think Coffee Shop AUs are harmful corporatist bullshit that spoon-feed pablum to the masses in the name of ~relatability, that they completely ignore the characterizations of canon in order to generate another paint-by-numbers romantic comedy that lacks both romance and comedy. However, many other people on Tumblr are not interested in civility and, when confronted with people who like things that they don’t like, instead choose to act like complete fuckheads. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that waving a red flag in front of an asshole who’s demonstrated that they don’t give a shit about other people isn’t a constructive move.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of variety here

Do you even go here? I could say exactly the same thing about 99% of the Steve/Bucky fic I see on AO3. It’s all the same derivative crap. Back to the steakhouse metaphor: just because your palate can’t differentiate between a porterhouse, a flank steak, a striploin, or a T-bone doesn’t mean that the rest of us aren’t enjoying a wide variety of satisfying meals.

Why not simply admit it's a kink?

Where are you seeing people who say that reading and writing fictional stories about non-consensual sex is *not* a kink? That comes from the critics who want this entire genre, and all of the people in it, to disappear — it doesn’t come from the authors themselves. Rape and rape recovery are very commonly-written narrative tropes across many, many fandoms, and have been for as long as fanfic has existed -- including way back in the day when it was printed on physical paper and mailed to your house (see: Kirk/Spock) — because rape kink has been a thing for a very, very long time. There’s rape kink in the Christian Bible, for fuck’s sake. HTP did not invent darkfic or rapefic, nor did it somehow magically popularize it beyond its prior existing popularity. You'll find rape and rape recovery very obviously listed on Fanlore here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/List_of_Fan-fiction_Kinks,_Tropes,_and_Clich%C3%A9s and in every other fan space that discusses the history of fandom. I'd write more, but I don't see the point, as it's been thoroughly covered in this post: http://whatisthehydratrashparty.tumblr.com/why

"Even if it's as a coping mechanism, just admit you enjoy characters being put through trauma."

Yes, I do, and so does pretty much everybody else here on this meme -- just like everybody who enjoys reading hurt/comfort, or angst, or pining, or recovery, or pretty much any other genres of fic apart from short, plotless AU fluff. The fact that I enjoy reading stories where some of that trauma is of a sexual nature is because, in the world I live in, *very often* I encounter trauma that is of a sexual nature. Fiction reflects reality. Why would I avoid writing about ideas that examine, dissect, explore, and discuss themes that have so much real-world relevance to me?

"the worst thing happening to characters having to be rape"

Is it, though? Is that what you see when you read HTP fics, that the only bad thing, or the worst bad thing, that happens to them is rape? Because what I see is very often, the worst thing that happens to characters is the thing *leading up to* their rape -- their betrayal by other characters, their dehumanization, their exploitation, their imprisonment, their torture, the callous cruelty with which they're treated. Sexual violence is both the outcome of, and only one facet of, all the different kinds of violence that are visited upon characters here.

Honestly, five seconds browsing the tags and comments on this post makes it pretty obvious most writers enjoy doing terrible things to their faves in fanfic: http://runningwolf62.tumblr.com/post/135371138433/lovelysuggestion-treat-yourself-like-you-would

*sniff sniff* Mmm, gotta love the smell of bait in the morning. Found anything that'll look bad out of context yet, or are you gonna keep fishing?

But while we're doing straight-faced, earnest questions about each other's deep psychological motivations for activities the asker can barely conceal their contempt for: why do you assume that a focus on sexual violence means we all think it's the worst thing that could happen to a character?

And why have you dichotomized the issue of kink to the point of reading the numerous, impassioned testaments to what people get out of HTP besides kink as denials that there is a kink component? Not for everyone, as several nonnies have stated above, but hey guess what: it's possible to get valuable insights or reassurance or catharsis or whatever out of something that also gets you off. It's even possible to get off on something that helps you work through your rape trauma. I've seen antis so fundamentally unable to wrap their heads around the "both at once" concept that they tried to use "you've admitted to getting off to rape fantasies" as a refutation of "this has been an integral part of my healing process." Or at the very least read "this has been an integral part of my healing process" as "my interest in it is Pure and untouched by sexual gratification," and thus something that could be refuted by the exact type of admission of sexual gratification you're fishing for here.

And I'm genuinely curious--why? Why have all the responses to the constant accusations of "you're only into it to jack off" registered to you as denials that any jacking off is involved at all? Since you're making an effort to tamp down your rhetoric, convince us you're not a troll, and even pay lip service to the ideas about kink/harm/tagging/etc that you then try to undermine with leading questions, I'm going to assume that this is a genuine psychological blind spot rather than a deliberate "have you stopped beating your wife?" type question. So what's up with that? Is it about sexuality being incompatible with serious issues, and cheapening anything it touches into mere fetishization, even the fallout from the intersection between sexuality and violence? A need to separate "people who respect the seriousness of this subject" from "people who treat it in a way I find disrespectful and distasteful," to the point that anyone claiming a legitimate seat at the table in Group #1 sounds like they're implicitly denying any activities that'd qualify them for Group #2? Why are you so interested in whether we feel dirty for enjoying something you can barely conceal your distaste for, and in the course of trying to suss out the problematic motivations for our problematic kinks, did it occur to you to examine your own thinking for internalized Madonna-whore issues?

Just curious. While we're having a civilized conversation and all.

I mean yeah, this is a good point to make too. I've been getting off on what I now recognise are rape fantasies since I was four years old, and I get off on uncomplicated exploitative rapefic as much as the next trashbaby. But I've also prompted and filled multiple fic(let)s here that were explicitly intended to challenge and unpick myths and boundaries and complications of consent. And the reason I've been able to do that here is because as a community centred around fictional depictions of sexual violence, the trashmeme is by necessity openly, actively and explicitly consent-aware. Even when we're getting off on rapefic.

Perhaps more importantly though, even when Serious Consent Questions are not the focus of something I'm writing - even when I'm writing pure trashy PWP - I'm still bringing my understanding and experience of rape culture and its effects to my work because, well, all that baggage is an integral part of how I relate to the entire topic of sexual violence.

None of us is writing trashporn in a vacuum. One of the trash party's all-time classic gangbang rapefics, Blood from a Stone, also brought us the most powerfully political fic I've ever read in this fandom, The Interests of National Security. The former is 12k of brutal noncon Steve whump. The latter is an entirely non-sexual but deeply powerful juxtaposition of that violation with the routine violations of privacy and bodily autonomy we've come to accept as normal for the sake of Stopping The Terrorists. They're written by the same author, and (implicitly) set in the same universe.

So as above: This isn't an either/or situation. Yeah, many of us get off on rapefic. But we don't - can't - separate our interaction with noncon in fic from our lived experiences of rape culture and sexual violence. Sometimes those experiences just manifest as background noise which informs how we write characters. Sometimes they play more explicit roles in the story. Sometimes navigating them is the entire point of the story. None of those things is mutually exclusive with getting off on the noncon content of the story.

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:42 (UTC) - Expand

(OP) Not bait. Also not sure why you want me to identify myself when we're all anonymous on here. I'm not shaming anyone for liking it either. I read and write dark fic of all kinds and was only asking because it sometimes reads as people trying to pose excuses for what they like. They can like what they like without feeling bad. No one is doing any of that in this thread, but I have seen it elsewhere where people have been made to feel guilty to the point where they don't want to write or read these kinds of fic either when they shouldn't feel bad at all.

Not understanding your whole tone to my post either.

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:34 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 13:14 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 14:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 16:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 16:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 14:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 20:10 (UTC) - Expand

Given how much trolling we get here, OP, it would do a lot for your credibility if you were willing to approach us under your own name. For all we know, with the way your questions are phrased, you could easily be one of our regular bullies looking to stir up wank here now that everyone has blocked you on tumblr. Personally, every time I've had someone approach me claiming to want to better understand, it's gone sour faster than you could say 'bad faith'.

In the meantime, a couple of things that might help you better come to grips with what we do here:

1) The Hydra Trash Meme is not a unique place. Fandom kink memes have been around in this exact format for ages, and almost without exception they centre around sex and kink. If you can understand that huge numbers of people enjoy taboo, shocking, 'naughty' sexual fantasies - and that a lot of fandom infrastructure exists to let fans indulge those fantasies - then you're already most of the way to understanding the HTP.

2) If I want violence, I can turn on the TV. If I want to watch Bucky get non-sexually tortured, I can literally just play The Winter Soldier on my blu-ray and skip forward to the bank scene. Sex is generally far more taboo than violence in modern Western culture, and the places where violent sex is portrayed (notably mainstream men's pornography) tend to be the kind of creepy I don't enjoy. I'd rather make my own space with like-minded people - and a lot of others felt the same, and so this meme came into being.

I hope that helps.

"the places where violent sex is portrayed (notably mainstream men's pornography) tend to be the kind of creepy I don't enjoy"

A-fucking-men to this. Even compared to most other fandoms I've been in, the HTP has been a breath of fresh air. Here I don't have to worry about stumbling over fics that romanticise or gloss over situations where consent is undermined or absent; rape is always recognised for what it is.

Re: Seriously curious - not trolling

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-30 11:40 (UTC) - Expand

(OP) Thank you for answering.

I don't have a rape fetish. I like hurt/comfort. I empathise with fictional victims of abuse because I myself have experienced abuse, and I feel good when reading descriptions of my favourite characters healing physically and emotionally from the trauma they experienced.

(OP) Short answer, but really makes sense. Thank you for answering.

“Not fetishizing rape” as it’s described in HTP means that when rape occurs in works posted here it is clearly acknowledged/labelled as rape, e.g. “non-consensual sex”.

This is done in order to contrast HTP works with things like 50 Shades of Grey, any of a thousand “bodice-ripper” novels for sale on the drugstore paperback bookshelf, Twilight, and other works that do *not* show clearly in the narrative of the work, or through clear labelling/warnings, that the relationships and sexual contact they describe are non-consensual (or at least of dubious consent, or having serious consent issues that are not discussed or acknowledged in the text).

You seem to be confusing the rule of “not fetishizing rape” in its specific form here on the meme, with the idea that that means people on meme aren’t interested in (or won’t “admit”, to use your words) rape fantasies as a sexual kink. Those are two different ideas, even though they both use the word “fetish” in them.

SA I want to add that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking 50 Shades of Grey or other works in that vein, or in not wanting your fantasy rape kink to include a clear condemnation in the narrative that it’s a bad thing. Rape-to-romance is its own genre of published fiction and in fan works, that has a legitimate right to exist on its own and is enjoyed by many people -- just like any other kink.

But just like a/b/o, mundane AUs, soulbond AUs, and other tropes/genres (see the front page of the meme for the full listing), rape-to-romance isn’t of interest to this specific anon meme space. Hence the "no fetishizing rape" rule, that you seem to have misinterpreted in a very literal way as somehow banning rape kink.

Ehh I think here on the meme we usually call that "not romanticising rape", but I also think this reply demonstrates that even within this community we interpret "fetishising rape" in different ways. Certainly not all of us would interpret "fetishising rape" in the way OP does, which appears to be "having rape fantasies as a sexual kink".

To avoid the semantic confusion, I'd say:

:: This community is definitely cool with rape fantasies as a sexual kink, and plenty of us will happily acknowledge that we have such kinks and fantasies.
:: We don't allow romanticising rape here because we don't want to inadvertently contribute to confusion about and misrepresentation of what consent is and should be.
:: None of us likes or gets off on actual rape. I'm amazed this even has to be said but Tumblr gonna Tumbl.

Maybe it's not the same thing for different people?

I'm one of the ones who does ave a rape kink, but even I don't read all the stories here for sexual gratification. I'm heavily into the recover factor as well. I can only describe it as being similar to going into a rollercoaster, screaming because you're scared, then getting the elief of being safe. It does things to your brain.

I think sexual violence is very visceral (but I in fact enjoy non-sexual violence too, and pre-htp I basically enjoyed post-torture fics).

I can't honestly say the sexual aspect doesn't do anything for me, but that's far from the main reason I'm here. I mean, sure, I get off to rape fantasies occasionally, but I'm here for the emotional aspect. The part of this meme that I love is the way a character slowly breaks down (or doesn't) under duress until they're a shadow of what they were before. The way uncertainty and self-loathing worms its way into their heads and the defense mechanisms they try to find to hold on. The way even after it's over they're still broken and they know things won't be the same, and the horror of that inevitability and trying to cope with it. I love this in fiction because it's a concentrated dose of what I find myself going through in real life. It helps me cope, and it comforts me. And I'll take it any way I can get it, including sexual violence.

Honestly, it's easier to get hold of stories about rape than about torture or slavery or other kinds of human rights violations. A few years ago I tried to avoid rape stories entirely (I was also underage a few years ago so there's that) but I eventually realized the only consistent way to get my "break a character down and watch them suffer" fix was to read stories about rape.

Also, I don't know if the idea is that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a person so much as that it's a separate kind of terrible. Because it takes something that is supposed to be pleasurable and uses it against the victim, something that's supposed to be intimate and, since it's not done with someone the victim trusts or wants to be close with, violates that intimacy. (That's just my understanding of it; I've never been raped but I've been sexually harassed and that was the aspect of it that was most terrible for me.) It's not so much that rape is in necessity worse than death/dismemberment/torture, but whereas those take something already terrible and heap it on, rape takes something that's supposed to be nice and makes it terrible.

TLDR; for me it's more the emotional horror rather than the sexual aspect; if I could find non-sexual violence fics in either the number or quality that I find sexual violence fics I would be reading those in addition to or instead of the latter, if I could find an audience I would definitely be writing them instead (I've actually never had sex do you even understand how hard it is to write sex when you've never had it), and sexual violence is in a different category of violence from other kinds of violence.

DA, and agreed. I'm mostly here for the emotional aspect.

Actually, let me be a little bit more specific:

I've always gotten off to bondage and power play, ever since I was a wee child and didn't know why I kept having funny pants feelings when I got to the part in books where someone was captured and tied up and rendered helpless. So, there's always that. Good D/s relationships where the power differential is highlighted gets me there, as does stories with rape fantasies, or really anything that highlights the pure helplessness of the situation.

That said, I can get that elsewhere. *waves at hentai*

What I find in this trashpile in highly concentrated dosage, is dehumanization (and, ideally for me, re-humanization.) And that's what really gets me, emotionally. Dehumanization can take many forms, from sexual ("haha it's like masturbating or fucking and animal") to non- ("it obeys every command, do you think it ever thinks about how many people it's killed?"). And I love ALL of it. The "let's torture you to remove your agency" is as good as "let's fuck you to remove your agency." And then, the RECOVERY. With Bucky (or Steve, or Sam, or Wanda, or whoever) surviving that and dealing with it and saying "no, I *am* a human being, I *can* move onwards and be alive and do good." That's what really gets me going, emotionally, and is a much longer high than the sexual kink stuff.

It just so happens that sexual violence happens to kill two birds with one stone: both the quick jerk-off and the longer emotional high. So... expediency?

That said, I'm all for more non-sexual de-/re-humanization fics! Bucky grappling with all of his actions as being a weapon of HYDRA. Steve reclaiming himself from the dehumanizing burden of being Captain America. Natasha finding herself after the Red Room and SHIELDRA. But... probably not on the trashmeme, eh?