One last thing before I get to the infohazard proper:
Looking back a lot of the distinctively \u201890s sexual imaginary was basically aestheticized caricatures.
The whole \u201880s S&M thing, Mapplethorpe and Madonna, left us with a strong image of the dominatrix, in black leather/latex wasp-waisted corset and whip. (The outfits in the Matrix were intended for an audience with that figure in mind) The \u201cteen\u201d in cheerleader outfit and pigtails and a lollipop, the bleach-blonde bimbo with breast implants and inch-long painted nails. Even if you did that last one well - Pamela Anderson - it was still over-the-top. They didn\u2019t try to have porn stars act anymore but gonzo hadn\u2019t come in yet so you\u2019d have a movie that was like, the woodsmen in firefighter gear doing it on a firetruck. (With women, I should specify.)
And that stuff was so abstracted from any real referent as to be weightless, cotton-candy fantasy.
You heard a lot about \u201casian fetishes\u201d and I\u2019m sure part of that came from the kids of the \u201870s immigrant wave coming of age but part of that was that Japanese porn was making the American market, and you had hentai with its own over-the-topness but also the live-action stuff hadn\u2019t lost the knack of \u201chere\u2019s the prettiest girl you saw on the street today, undressed, in a tableau that sets up accessible fantasies\u201d.
And it\u2019s striking how the defining fantasy figures of our current moment seem to be running a lot closer to bare metal, and a lot more hostile.
Maybe \u201cstep-\u201c family members who molest you, \u201cdaddy\u201d as a figure who when not your actual father is fetishized as an older and more powerful, controlling man grooming you for his use. Cuckold/bull, \u201cthe guy who steals your girl\u201d. The crazy stalker girl you literally have to fight off (or fail) because she\u2019s trying to get pregnant by you to own you.
Like, these fantasies are all based off the actual dynamics of real people who will ruin your fucking life, and that\u2019s something.
An interesting thing is how softer, more abstracted versions now seem to use a vocabulary borrowed from the Japanese - monster girl stuff tends Fdom as loving GFE,
\u201cstuck in wall\u201d as a weightless rape scenario, ahegao and public use toilet stuff so over the top as to be completely removed from everyday experience.
Some of that\u2019s the \u201cre-enchanting heterosexuality with power dynamics\u201d trend. Like, in an open parking lot, who outranks who, the firefighters or the party girl? That\u2019s\u2026 not even an axis, really.
But a lot of it really seems female-led. Maybe it\u2019s not even so much the girls are into Fsub as they are into eroticizing social power dynamics. God knows that\u2019s the traditional charge of romance novels, from bodice-rippers to whatever the fuck Wuthering Heights was, the value went totally over my head at least at the time.
Maybe I don\u2019t even appreciate how much of that is topping from the bottom. Like when I had been saying \u201cso much Fsub\u201d part of it I had noticed some crossover from ASMR and therapy culture like \u201creassurance\u201d or \u201cappreciation\u201d. \u201cSmall dick appreciation\u201d. Reassuring an anxious guy, a shy virgin. And from my perspective I took that as loving Fsub, but now that I think of it, \u201cappealing to someone\u2019s vulnerabilities, inferior social position and/or mental illness to recruit a sexual bond with them\u201d is kinda ambiguous, isn\u2019t it?
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