Violence
The Prevalence of Aggressive Content in Online Sexually Explicit Fanfiction.
Open Access: No.
Abstract
Fanfiction (literature by admirers of works of fiction that incorporate characters or settings from these stories) has gained growing popularity in recent decades, particularly among female readers. While many fanfiction stories contain sexually explicit elements of the original story, some are specifically written, either partially or solely, for pornographic purposes. However, despite its popularity as an alternative form of pornography, sexually explicit fanfiction has garnered much less research attention than visual mainstream pornography or erotic fiction. We conducted a textual analysis of both the most popular fanfiction stories (n = 525) and a random sample of fanfiction stories (n = 360) from AO3, the leading website for fanfiction. Results showed that about half of the stories in the overall sample were marked with tags conveying aggression, while acts of non-consensual aggression or rape were present in almost 20% of the sample. A verification content analysis of the full text for 60 of these stories further suggests that the prevalence of aggression may in fact be substantially higher. We argue that since fanfiction is mostly read by women, our analysis takes an important step toward shedding light on women’s sexual preferences.
Relevance
The study found “at least one form of aggression was present in about half of the sample (50.4%). The most common aggressive acts were spanking (17.47%) and rough sex (20.43%), with forceful oral sex (including gagging) and biting also appearing in more than 10% of the sampled works. Acts related to BDSM were present in 33.67% of the sample and ones involving humiliation in 26.05% of the works. In addition to the high overall prevalence of aggression, we also found that nearly 20% of the stories in the sample included tags suggesting non-consensual aggression, sexual assault, and rape.” “Themes of incest and pedophilia were less prevalent and appeared in about 10% and 3% of the stories, respectively.”
Furthermore, “we found that none of the specific aggressive or “deviant” acts were significantly more common in the random sample than in the sample of most popular fandoms, but the reverse was often true. Spanking, rough sex, gagging, and hitting with tools or toys were all more common in the popular sample than in the random sample, as were dirty talk, BDSM, and humiliation practices.”
The study also “found that the actual rate of aggression in the full stories was almost double the rate of aggression in tags. Therefore, we suggest that aggression might appear in closer to 90% of the stories containing sexual materials…with aggression being especially pervasive in the most popular fandoms and stories.”
The authors argue that since it is unlikely that men make up the majority of readers and writers of fanfiction, “it is possible that depictions of sexual aggression are enjoyed by at least some women and other readers who are not cis-gender men” but they caution “against concluding that the prevalence of sexual aggression in explicit fanfiction signifies that the readership, presumably mostly women, also desire to experience these practices in their own sex lives.”
Citation
