Counting sheep...

I write fiction that has explicitly nonconsensual sexual elements occurring between fictional characters. This is actually fine, because these characters are not real. They do not exist. These events didn't (and in some cases literally couldn't) occur in reality. If a character in my story appears to be experiencing trauma or pain, that is only because I am an evocative writer.

I have no interest in engaging in or being subjected to any of the acts that I depict in these stories in real life. I've been sexual assaulted twice, and that's more than enough for one lifetime.

But in almost all cases, rape is about power. It is most commonly done by a person the victim knows personally and has some form of societal power over. (For "rapist in the bush" scenario, that power is usually misogyny combined with physical strength).

People who commit rape usually don't have a rape kink, just as I was molested as a child by my mother who wasn't a pedophile from medical perspective - I was just a convenient sexual object after my father died, that she had power over.

The kink puritanism only serves to obscure real origins of sexual violence in our society - ironically by victim blaming, as it's well known that noncon kinks are very common among women from the submissive side - something anyone can plainly see by going into comment sections of any piece of noncon erotica on Rule34 or ArchiveOfOurOwn.

And hell, while men commit around 90% of all rape, rape prevalance among men is still around 10%, two-three times smaller than for women - but that is still one man in ten.

And I don't know if this number includes 'socially acceptable' sexual violence men do to each other, like 'jokingly' exposing one other or shoving genitals into a sleeping persons mouth, or people being sexually tortured by military or law enforcement - I guess as long as the rape isn't done ostensibly for reason of sexual gratification then it's fine, right?

People with power abuse others in traumatizing ways to satisfy their needs and humilate them all the time, but we're told it's uniquely evil when it's ostensibly sexual. I say ostensibly - how many cops get off on beating people up? How many CEOs get off on working their employees half to death? How would we even know?

People are being told that its our fetishes and "perversions" are the reason for the sexual violence we face, rather than fundamentally unequal society.

And a lot of them are aware of this (like we are when we make these “humans are space orcs” stories)

Maybe one species enjoys getting bit by something equivalent to mosquitoes. Maybe one actively avoids the hospitable places on their planet because it’s boring without a challenge. You get the gist.

I want to see a bunch of aliens (+humans) sitting around a table talking about how their own species is a bunch of freaks

Best possible addition. This is a top-tier insight

@prokopetz proposed that humans ought to get something special of our own that isn't just "We are the bestest and specialist in some generic way that feels like a vague and unsettling metaphor for American superiority and manifest destiny amidst all the other cultures of the world," and settled on space orcs because "Pursuit predators with freakish endurance" was the ecological niche we occupied during our own evolutionary history up until we started doing the civilization thing. The assumption from the start was that every other sci-fi or fantasy species would each be freaks in their own way, and the point of humans are space orcs was to let us be our own sort of freak, too.

People who expanded on the humans are space orcs stories immediately turned it into a reason to write little stories where humans are the biggest freaks or the only freaks and we are, in fact, the specialest most manifest destinyest je ne sais quoi-laden metaphors for the superiority of American culture over all the other cultures of the world. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

The idea that humans are doing something bizarre Way Over There, and none of the traits that humans see as central to our sentience or advancement or ability to explore space actually are shared by other species, is pretty fun.

It's also an opportunity to reflect on the ways that, among creatures of Earth, humans are not the default or the average way to be a creature, and in fact we are weird outliers in our own ways.

We are gigantic megafauna compared to most animals on Earth. We live on land where most of Earth is a water world. We eat everything from leaves, to fish, to insects, to glandular secretions of large mammals, to seeds, to fungi, to algae, including many plants that are toxic to other creatures, and we have all kinds of ways of rotting and heating food items to change them chemically and make more food items. We are ecosystem engineers. Our complex calls have thousands of individual regional varieties that are completely mutually unintelligible. We keep our skeletons on the inside.

𝒁𝑨𝒁𝑷𝑰𝑨𝑲 𝑩𝑨𝑻

The Seven Provinces are One - Map of the Basque Country done for the Monstro Fanzine, a reinterpretation of Basque mythology and a testament to the queer cultural scene of the Basque Country directed by Patxi Arsa. Patxi is a young Basque/French singer, and the zine has 180 pages and features 40 artists, including me ! There is tons of content with photographs, illustrations, interviews, etc... It's 25€ + shipping costs, and if you are willing to add 5€ you will have additional stuff, like a fold-out version of this map !! You have until the 10th of May to order it on Ulule :