Problematic codes;
or, An ode to “squick.”
Monday April 22, 2002
So I should warn you off the bat I’m double-dipping: this has been posted as a response in an ongoing debate on coding over at alt.sex.stories.d (the d, you see, is for “discussion”). But it ended up being a reasonably good (I think) if strongly worded statement of why and how I’m coming to think what it is I’m coming to think on the subject, which pertains (quite a lot) to the idea of writing and reading and talking about pornography, so. I’ll strip out the unnecessary personal stuff (I like teasing my sparring partners in a debate; keeps things light-hearted and cheeky) and clean it up a little and hyperlink it a bit, and hey presto! A new entry, on-topic, with little muss. —Plus, it’s an ode to one of my favorite words. Added bonus.
First, a little background for those who may perhaps be unfamiliar with some of the conventions of freely distributed prose pornography on the internet: it’s a common enough practice to label or code the stories using a variety of abbreviations, some more self-explanatory than others, to both a) attract people who are drawn to whatever fetish or quirk is highlighted and b) warn away those who are repelled or squicked by what’s going to be indulged. An admirable intent, if somewhat clunky in practice: Mf teen rom is, perhaps, readily parseable (but! Is it Romeo & Juliet? Or Lolita?), but MmF FMg Mggg anal toy inc Fdom mc cbt is, if ridiculous on the face of it, nonetheless not too far off as an example of how good intentions (to say nothing of pornographic scenarios) can spiral out of control. —But that’s my opinion. Here’s the most comprehensive FAQ there is on parsing these codes, maintained by the redoutable Uther Pendragon; the FAQ on codes for authors covers much the same ground in more detail, with some attention paid to theory and practice.
But enough. Let’s give thanks to Frank Downey, whose post was the immediate spark and proximate cause, then rifle through for an appropriate quote from, oh, say, Susie Bright, and get this show on the road:
What a turn-off! I feel like I’m looking at a soup can. And it’s so disingenuous. If you see, “oh my goodness, this has a rape in it!” you get the thrill of being titillated and maybe simultaneously offended. Or maybe you just keep reading to see if it fulfills its dire warning.
•
So: yes. I have squicks. And I don’t have to “imagine” what it’s like running into them without warning: I know. Okay? Shall we get specific? —Scat and watersports. Oh, there’s other things that will make me stop reading: highly stylized B&D, sappily romantic dialogue where every other word is “love” or “dearest” or “darling,” intense humiliation, lovingly clinical accounts of insemination, second person present tense monologues that ooze purple prose all over the intersection of pain and pleasure—a well-travelled thoroughfare, I must say, for such a deviant idea. But that’s not “squicky.” Shit, piss, torture and snuff give me that queasy feeling in my stomach. (Also pedophilia—as [decidedly] opposed to hebephilia—which I didn’t even think to include until reading this back over.) The stuff that makes me on some level say to myself: Self, this isn’t right. Let’s not go there. (We’ve all seen pictures by accident, surfing the web, that we really didn’t want to see. Right? Shudder.)
And yet: you know what? Some of my most intensely memorable reading experiences have come from confronting those squicks—either stumbling over them in a context where I hadn’t been expecting them, or deliberately going in to see what I can see. Emily’s Sick Family, for instance: an ongoing project I commend to the interest of anyone who’s curious about what new forms and shapes this stuff can take (Vinnie’s called it a new kind of epistolary novel, and he’s got an excellent point), and what kind of games one can play with what’s real and what isn’t when you’re serious about it, and which is full of enough cheerful depravity to test the limits of all but the most committed smuthounds: you will find something that squicks you there, I practically guarantee it, and—though technically, her writing is flawed (some grammar and spelling and structural concerns; she’s a maths teacher, as she keeps saying, or so she wants us to believe)—her conviction, her voice and her authenticity ring through: if you read what she has to say no matter what, you will come out the other side with something more than what you had when you came in. —And that, end of the day, is pretty much all I demand of art.
But you don’t have to. You can stay away. I’m not saying you should test your squicks directly, not by any means; certainly not. (And anyway, Emily sort of codes her stuff and helpfully compartmentalizes it, though more so you can find what you’re looking for than to avoid what you don’t want to see, but still: antithetical to my purposes in this rant; her blog, willy-nill and all for one with no warning as it is, is better for this. —Their blog, sorry.)
But writers, at least, I think, should try to push their boundaries. “Write what you know,” after all, means go forth and learn, you dumb schmuck. Certainly, I’ve started brushing the realms of humiliation and blackmail in, say, the Cuyahoga stuff, and I’ve got some twinklings that others of my squicks might well be appearing therein. (I think I understand what it is about scat and watersports, on an intellectual level. I get the symbolism, and can even feel a ghost of a tug at my viscera. I can imagine—gorge tickling the back of my throat—what it would feel like. [Taste? We are so not going there.] None of this keeps it from being squicky, though—but the challenge of trying to pull it off nonetheless, in spite of that, tempts. Torture and snuff, on the other hand—but I digress.) Codes tend to reinforce boundaries, calcify genres, compartmentalize sex—good, perhaps, for (some) readers, but bad, I think, in the end, for writers. But we’ll get to that.
•
First, let’s talk about the word “squick.”
There’s a huge connotative, even denotative difference between these two sentences:
That disgusts me.
That squicks me.
And therein lies the value of the word “squick,” one of the most valuable and humane coinages in recent memory. Certainly, without this word, this concept, a sane approach to a multicultural, pluralistic society is impossible. (To say nothing of trying to drag sex open and above-board into the mix.) The word “squick” is what makes it possible for me to have rational, sane, even enthusiastic discussions about sex and eroticism with scat-loving subs who fixate on death imagery and impalement fantasies. —The basic difference, of course, is this:
“That disgusts me” is a moral judgment;
“That squicks me” is an æsthetic response.
oosh, perhaps, may become alarmed at my separation of morals and æsthetics, but bear with me: the more fundamental difference is this: “That disgusts me” casts the onus on the thing in question, and the blame on the person or circumstance that produced it. Even spoken in the mildest tones, it is condemnatory; it can’t help it. It’s in the very bones of the word: “disgust.” Feel it there, in your throat.
“That squicks me,” on the other hand, places the responsibility back on the person who states it. When I say, “Scat squicks me,” I’m admitting that this is a limitation of mine, and I am taking responsibility for it. I’m not saying it’s wrong, immoral, bad, unhealthy, stupid, ugly, beyond the pale, grotesque, unthinkable; I’m saying that on a fundamental level I do not get it—it does not appeal to me—and that does not in any way detract from its ability to speak (thrillingly, powerfully, gorgeously) to someone else, someone who is not limited by my squick (but is, perhaps, squicked by something else, and thereby in turn limited).
But do you see the implications? I am taking responsibility for it by saying “squick.” I’m not demanding special treatment. I’m not striking it from the record, condemning it, judging it. (That’s what we have “disgust” for.) It’s my problem, my limitation, my squick, and I am responsible for arraying and protecting myself when I go out into the wider rough-and-tumble world by whatever means I have to hand. When I stumble over a squick in a story where I wasn’t expecting it, I don’t blame the story. I don’t blame the author. That’s absurd. I might set the story aside (or the photograph, or the drawing, or what have you). I might push on and keep going, nonetheless, in spite of. (I’ve read some good stories with terribly romantical sappy dialogue, after all. Dearest. Lovey. Darlin’.)
But I’m not going to demand the author respect my squicks when writing (or drawing, or painting, or staging a photo shoot). And similarly, I’m not going to ask that they emblazon the “weird” stuff with scarlet letters on the outside (simultaneous warning and advertisement—here there be dragons). I’m the one seeking out their stuff, after all; it’s my own damn lookout.
—Which is not to say that those who engage in the more outré should never be aware of the squicks of others, no. Lord, no. This is an imperfect world, and if there’s one thing I want to communicate in any- and everything I write, it’s that nothing can ever be separated from anything else. It’s all of it mixed up, and “squick” and “disgust” will never in praxis live up to the perfectly iconic polarities their ideal forms lay forth. (All the more reason, says I, to be careful in their usage, and never, ever conflate them, but.) Certainly, we should all support each other in our squicks; just because someone takes responsibility for the things that don’t appeal to them doesn’t mean the rest of us can indulge willy-nill. “Squick” encourages and fosters respect, but respect is always a two-way street.
Now: story codes as promulgated hereabouts certainly seem to be a way of respecting each other’s squicks while still allowing for free expression, and I’m not ready to say they are one hundred per cent bad in all cases and should never be used by anyone. Heck, no. Code all you like. Read only coded stories if that’s how you deal and get by. But understand that some of us chafe under their limitations; understand that there are grave concerns about the effects they have on reading and writing, on the experience of creating and disseminating art, on the culture and community we’ve built around them, and on the very expectations and even definitions of what is and isn’t erotic, sexual, sexy, smutty, pornographic. Respect those of us who are tussling on this plane and articulating these concerns.
•
I first started to ask myself questions about coding when I posted the fifth and sixth chapters of The James Sisters, back in the friggin’ day. Until then, I’d been a cheerful enough user of codes, both as a reader and a writer. (I’d been trepidatious about Chapter 5 of Indigo, not wanting to put off readers who’d come to expect a lesbian costume romp with what I’d seen as a vital Mg scene, but I coded it nonetheless, wanting to be a good member of the community. Willing to let people set it aside unread rather than risk triggering their squicks. —It didn’t seen to hurt the size of my [admittedly tiny] audience, so.) —The sixth chapter of The James Sisters (a little exposition is sometimes a necessary evil) takes place on a grotty little houseboat where youths legal and otherwise get up to many and varied acts of depravity. I’d already decided it was hopelessly foolish to attempt to code everything that goes on or is hinted at (which would, besides, be missing the point), but—still desiring to be a good member of the community—I did want to code the various things my two main characters got up to, that were described in some detail. One of which being a girl using a strap-on to fuck a boy up the ass.
There is no code for that.
Which gave me some pause. It’s a specific enough act, rich with so many gender inversions as to be readily fetishized, and even at the time I wrote the chapter was already making inroads into the mainstream: articles in Salon, jokes in movies, etc.—and since has become even more notable. Women strap one on and tell their boyfriends to bend over a lot, these days—and yet, there’s no code hereabouts for it.
There are, perhaps, a number of reasons for that—but I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student. (Plus, I haven’t checked the codes in a year or so. Maybe there is a code for it now, and would you look at the egg on my face?) Besides, that isn’t the point: I came up with some compromise (fmM anal toy, I think, though it was hard to tell that was all supposed to be one thing) and didn’t even stop to ponder how the cold bare code leached out everything that was going on in the scene—the complex liminal play between Jessie and Carter and the boy between them, and the very muzzy idea of who was fucking whom—after all, the code was merely a warning, in the subject line, to wave off people who’d be squicked by Mm sex (among other things). Had nothing to do with the actual reading of the story. I coded it, and posted it—and got the only nasty negative emails I’ve ever gotten about any story I posted: to wit:
How DARE you put Mm sex in the middle of this story where we weren’t expecting it?
At the time, I threw up my hands and rolled my eyes—people, you know? But I’ve come to think maybe it’s a sign of how codes don’t even do what they’re supposed to do all that well. —Codes are a good enough initial sign and signifier of what to expect: crude, granular, but immediate and obvious and (relatively) easy to parse. But there’s other signs we use to find what we want to read: the author’s name, the title, the first few sentences, what we know about what’s been written so far. Sure, Carter had stated in previous chapters that he was bisexual. Sure, he’s got an ex-boyfriend he’s dealing with rather imperiously. But your face isn’t rubbed into the physical aspects of this, and a fast reading of The James Sisters thus far would lead you to expect young nubile girls and more than a hint of lesbian incest and a narrator’s curious lack of affect at the inherent Lolitaization of it all. So you see the new chapter, and you plunge into it without parsing the codes at all because you think you know what to expect and suddenly there’s Carter on his knees sucking a kid’s cock and what the fuck?
So there’s that problem.
But also, as a reader, I was starting to notice how they made it too terribly easy to limit what I read. —I (like Carter) am bi. I’m drawn towards the liminal borderlands, the admixtures conscious or otherwise of male and female, femme and butch, but I like cock as much as cunt, and a nipple’s a nipple and kissing someone with a cruft of stubble who smells like English Leather is as nice as tasting someone else’s lipstick in a faint haze of Calvin Klein’s Obsession, and you should know I don’t really care which of those is a boy and which a girl. But—for a variety of reasons—I prefer women as the objects of my pornography and erotica; specifically, women in homoerotic contexts. (By “my” here, I’m speaking of the porn I seek out and avidly consume, not the porn I create; that’s another story.) So I latched onto the codes in ASSM and trawled through it looking for the letter “F”: FF, ff, FFf, whatever. And I was finding it a-plenty.
But—though I was getting my rocks off, as it were—I was trudging through a lot of atrociously bad stuff, and missing a lot of good stuff. And while it might be appealing to the prurient, utilitarian side of me, it wasn’t appealing to the artistic side.
So there’s that problem.
But there’s also the simple problem presented by, say, Selena’s story, “Ruthie’s Hair,” which started this whole discussion: the tension of whether or not Ruth and Emma will have sex, or merely a sexualized encounter, is while not the key to the piece nonetheless an important aspect of the experience of reading it. Coding the story FF prevents a sophisticated reader from enjoying that tension, all in the name of protecting someone who is squicked by FF sex from encountering it by accident. —And I’ll say it again: the enjoyment of the one for me (far) outweighs the risk of the other. Especially since there are plenty of other clues in the story itself, and plenty of time to set it down and say “That’s not for me” without condemning the story or the author or wrecking the reading experience for others.
But more to the point—the FF sex is hardly the thrust of the story. Go back and read the dam’ thing: look at the loving (for fuck’s sake) descriptions of the bruises on Ruthie’s body, their color, shape, the effect it has on Ruth’s body and psyche. Think for a moment about the implications of that Biblical pledge between Ruth and Naomi, and look at how it works in this story:
Selena wrote a piece eroticizing a battered woman, for God’s sake! And got away with it, clean!
She beautifully gender-flopped the supposedly female nurturing instinct with the supposedly male white-knight syndrome to come up with a heady, uncertain, ambiguous, wild, untameable, unnameable, practically unspeakable desire, as wrong and fucked-up as it is right and true, and utterly implacable, unstoppable, undeniable—and that, friends and neighbors, is the height of what we’re talking about when we talk about sex around here. How do you code that? Why should you try? —To make people think from the outset that we’re dealing with a couple of lesbians (when we aren’t at all, per se)? To focus on the homoeroticism to the exclusion of the gender play and power dynamics and political issues however glancingly raised? To keep someone who’s squicked by lesbians safe? What about people who are squicked by battered women? Why aren’t we concerned about protecting them, too? Because we hadn’t thought to make up a goddamn code for it yet?
So there’s that problem.
Starting to see what I mean?
•
In the end, then, I’m going to stand by what I said before. In fact, I’m going to make it even stronger. I’m in fire-and-brimstone mode, now, so here it is, on the line:
I write porn, which is also known euphemistically as “adult fiction.” Fiction for adults.
I expect my readers to be adults, then.
Adult enough to take responsibility for their own squicks and limitations, and adult enough to trust me if they so choose, or not, and be willing to take steps into the possibly scary unknown and able to set something down if they decide they don’t like it and don’t want to go any further. For whatever reason: whether it’s my limitations as a writer, in story-telling or characterization or prosody, or their response to the material itself, visceral or otherwise.
Codes run against that grain. Codes infantilize. Codes patronize the reader and distrust the writer. Codes distort and damage the reading experience, and force us writers into thinking within narrower and narrower boxes. Codes try to tame the wild and woolly stuff we should be facing directly and allowing to tangle and snarl the supposedly clean lines of what we think we’re thinking of when we think we’re thinking of sex.
Use them if you like. I won’t stop you.
But realize I won’t, not anymore.
(Except, of course, at StoriesOnline. Where they, heh. Drive downloads. Um. Nicholas, maybe you should come up with a cost-benefit analysis to show how one can recognize limitations and yet still accept them in limited circumstances, informed choice and all that, or maybe you should just let them think you’re a big ol’ hypocrite—)