I actually didn't find any underlying questions in the essay itself, aside from a lot that were more world-building prompts and less discussion points -- unless the essay itself was meant to be more along the lines of "let's have a worldbuilding brainstorming party", but it really doesn't come across that way. There are a lot of interesting questions that the existence of the whole A/B/O thing brings up. But I haven't actually seen people genuinely ask them in the open, though I have seen them be implied and even even answered implicitly.
As far as "A/B/O doesn't have to be full of consent issues", I think that really depends on what you're referencing when you refer to A/B/O. If you mean "A/B/O as an abstract concept", sure! That's true. That's entirely possible. There are fics that don't touch on several problematic elements of the universe. But they are in the minority and they have always been in the minority.
If you take into consideration the original prompts from the SPN fandom and the general trend of the A/B/O works base, the underlying themes have in the vast majority of the time been those of consent issues, with further worldbuilding usually incorporating rape, sex pollen, internalized and biologically encouraged sexism/misogyny (with emphasized rape culture being an element of this), and some degree of slavery. And of those themes, they do tend to be written in a fetishized/eroticized way.
That is how the universe has developed in its infant stages, guided in that direction by its earliest prompters and writers. This is the core aspect of the universe that differs it from other alternate universes. I'm not making a moral judgment here, but the A/B/O universe is very fundamentally about rape, rape culture, and the fetishization of quite a few elements of misogyny.
To acknowledge the strong trend that A oftentimes contains B (often by definition, as in the cases where the prompter specifically requests B), so strongly that when the average person sees A they expect to also see B, does not imply anything about about those who are aware of that pattern, and I'm... not really sure where you're getting that from?
The question is, then, and the question that I want answered is:
What is your argument? What are you saying?
Are you saying that when people expect an A/B/O fic to contain dubcon/noncon, or when a writer writes an A/B/O fic and expects their readers to assume it's going to contain consent issues, they are buying into rape culture?
Why?
I mean, I think it's pretty annoying and a little rude that people don't also tag their A/B/O fics with dubcon/noncon when appropriate. Sometimes people don't know what A/B/O is and sometimes people want to write or read A/B/O without dubcon/noncon. For the latter group, it seems pretty ridiculous that there's no way to easily tell (aside from the summary, but those are hardly standardized) if an A/B/O fic doesn't contain dubcon/noncon.
But I don't really see why that means the author or reader is buying into rape culture.
Also, if you're interested in talking about it, I'd love to know why you think there's a problem with writers writing about or including rape culture in fics! If someone wants to write that (or read that), especially in a kinky or otherwise eroticized context, is there a reason they shouldn't?
no subject
As far as "A/B/O doesn't have to be full of consent issues", I think that really depends on what you're referencing when you refer to A/B/O. If you mean "A/B/O as an abstract concept", sure! That's true. That's entirely possible. There are fics that don't touch on several problematic elements of the universe. But they are in the minority and they have always been in the minority.
If you take into consideration the original prompts from the SPN fandom and the general trend of the A/B/O works base, the underlying themes have in the vast majority of the time been those of consent issues, with further worldbuilding usually incorporating rape, sex pollen, internalized and biologically encouraged sexism/misogyny (with emphasized rape culture being an element of this), and some degree of slavery. And of those themes, they do tend to be written in a fetishized/eroticized way.
That is how the universe has developed in its infant stages, guided in that direction by its earliest prompters and writers. This is the core aspect of the universe that differs it from other alternate universes. I'm not making a moral judgment here, but the A/B/O universe is very fundamentally about rape, rape culture, and the fetishization of quite a few elements of misogyny.
To acknowledge the strong trend that A oftentimes contains B (often by definition, as in the cases where the prompter specifically requests B), so strongly that when the average person sees A they expect to also see B, does not imply anything about about those who are aware of that pattern, and I'm... not really sure where you're getting that from?
The question is, then, and the question that I want answered is:
What is your argument? What are you saying?
Are you saying that when people expect an A/B/O fic to contain dubcon/noncon, or when a writer writes an A/B/O fic and expects their readers to assume it's going to contain consent issues, they are buying into rape culture?
Why?
I mean, I think it's pretty annoying and a little rude that people don't also tag their A/B/O fics with dubcon/noncon when appropriate. Sometimes people don't know what A/B/O is and sometimes people want to write or read A/B/O without dubcon/noncon. For the latter group, it seems pretty ridiculous that there's no way to easily tell (aside from the summary, but those are hardly standardized) if an A/B/O fic doesn't contain dubcon/noncon.
But I don't really see why that means the author or reader is buying into rape culture.
Also, if you're interested in talking about it, I'd love to know why you think there's a problem with writers writing about or including rape culture in fics! If someone wants to write that (or read that), especially in a kinky or otherwise eroticized context, is there a reason they shouldn't?