Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Let’s explore non-con roleplay and tie these things in together.
Because there are too many people out there who really think that if you like non-con roleplay, also known as “rape play,” you would invite and welcome being genuinely sexually assaulted, or that you would even deserve it.
And that, my friends, is kind of fucked up.
Especially when people pushing that on others can cause sexual assault victims to blame themselves, and think there’s something wrong with them and they had it coming.
The major difference between one and the other is consent.
When you engage in a non-con roleplay scenario with someone, the very first thing on the table is consent. The entire thing is a stage play; it’s missing the toxic power drivers that push actual aggressors to commit rape. Your partner doesn’t want to boost their own fragile ego by taking something away from you and proving they can make you hurt.
Instead they’re asking to give you what you want, on your own terms and in ways that won’t hurt you at all.
In non-con roleplay scenarios, there’s a great deal of trust involved—and even if it’s not between two people in love, there still has to be communication and care. It’s so far removed from the actual situation of sexual assault that they’re not even the same animal. Anyone who would sexually assault you doesn’t care about you. They don’t want anything but to exert power over you. And it is 100% understandable to desire the fictional scenario, but want nothing to do with the real one.
For people who like non-con roleplay and other forms of dominance play, it is incredibly liberating to be able to put yourself in someone else’s hands and know they’re going to enact a scenario with you for your pleasure—and no matter what you do to each other, that person cares what happens to you and can be trusted to listen to what you do and don’t want. When you can trust someone to go to such extremes with you, it’s the ultimate in consent exploration—not in violation. And it goes the opposite way, too: if someone is trusting you to do something like this with them, having that trust can be the most amazing sensation, and it’s something people typically don’t want to break.
There’s no trust involved in genuine sexual assault.
And no trust to ever be regained once it’s broken, either.
It can be hard to reconcile that two acts that look the same on the surface can be so grossly, wildly different, so disparate that they aren’t even in the same universe. But one is an act of love; the other is an act of hate.
And it’s harmful to both people who enjoy kink, people who survived sexual assault, and the Venn overlap between the two to pretend they’re one and the same.
Especially when for many assault survivors, non-con roleplay is a way to take back something they lost. Sexual assault can remove any sense of control over your own sexuality and sexual expression; it can taint any attempt to sexually engage in voluntary ways until the shadow of those feelings from the assault always creeps in to make the good things feel bad. Think of what happened when Brendan and Cillian tried the first time, and Cillian panicked. He knew before Oliver Newcomb tried to force him that he wanted to experiment with non-con play.
But Oliver took something that was pleasurable for Cillian and gave it negative connotations, so the first time he tried to take it back…
Something he loved became something tainted, darkened by the shadow of his abuser.
Part of Cillian’s story in this was being able to feel free in his body and in his kinks again, with someone he chooses to trust—Brendan. It’s like this for a lot of abuse/assault survivors; not all, granted, and there are some who would even condemn non-con kink and other forms of more taboo kink play that many survivors engage in as an act of reclamation. For some, it’s just a terrible reminder.
But for others, it’s saying…
I’m taking back what you took from me.
I’m taking this horrible thing you did to me, and I’m making it mine.
I’m taking back power over my body.
It won’t be yours anymore.
It’s an act of defiance against the avatar of their abusers. It’s an act of self-love. It’s an act of strength, to say “I have the power to transform this act of hate into a thing of love, trust, and pleasure.”
It’s not something to be shamed.
And it’s not something that means anyone, survivor or not, “deserves” to be assaulted.
No one deserves to be assaulted.
Ever.
And if you think someone has to maintain a particular standard of sexual purity to maintain the right to bodily autonomy?
I got nothing to say to you but that I hope, one day, when you need compassion…