[norms] That's Fucking Adorable, Slate

[stopitsomemore]

So the contrary delights over at Slate discovered a trove of smut ebooks available for the Kindle. There are a couple of reasons this is totally precious, including but not limited to the fact that they seem to view this as a revelatory thing -- which dovetails nicely with the whole BREAKING: LADIES — SOMETIMES TWO LADIES — WATCH GAY PORN thing we discussed earlier. Also, the titillation factor here where they're discussing some of the stories that show up is kind of fantastic:

Take, for example, a novel called Office Slave, in which an attractive female CFO is found to be embezzling from her manufacturing company. Rather than go to prison, she agrees to her boss's demand to become the company's sex slave. She is forced to wear slutty (or no) clothing at work; he films her in intimate acts; he instructs male coworkers to beat her physically for perceived transgressions; and she has sex with everyone imaginable, including factory workers (to reward productivity gains), prospective customers (to secure new contracts), a coworker (as a retirement gift), teenage boys (who deliver lunch to the office), etc. And—whaddya know?—no matter how physically abused and mentally degraded she is, she finds she actually enjoys it.

I think there's the possibility that fandom has permanently rewired what my brain interprets as socially acceptable, because I read that description and my knee-jerk response was something along the lines of, "Yeah. So? There're like, 58 J2 AUs like this posted yesterday."

The more intriguing bit, I think, is this:

Presumably, some small percentage of women might be attracted to this material. But much can be adduced from reader comments, such as, "I don't see how any woman could enjoy this ... just seems like every man's fantasy."

Is it really? I see so many stories like this, or more graphic, floating around fandom, and the majority of the people reading, commenting, and going into the vapors or retreating to their bunks after reading are women. Is smut of this tier truly something that most women don't enjoy? To take a casual survey of fandom, we'd think this shit was as normal as a heady teenage romance. Is that just us? Or is this just Slate?

Comments

[anatsuno]

It's just Slate.

[ella404]

Yeah, it's slate. Or Buffy fandom was ALL A DREAM.

[christycorr]

Definitely just Slate, God.

[norabombay]

I almost signed up for a slate comments account, just to point out that they were wrong on the internet, than decided I had better things to do with my life.

But WTF do they think is the selling point of a kindle if not 'reading fic on a nice screen in public'?