Recently I was strolling around on youtube, when its recommender system showed me a preview video of a young woman (18, maybe 20?) promising reviews of the latest „dark romance“ novels. The girl was cute and sounded smart, like the cool daughter I never managed to have (one of the few things I missed out on in life, what I actually regret a bit). And then I was also curious: what do young people read today? I was actually told they don’t read at all anymore.
So I clicked and started to watch her full video in anticipation. She summarized the story of the first book. Several times she used the word „spice“, like „the spice is well written“. I guessed that she used this word for the erotic scenes. But why not just say „sex scenes“, why so secretive? But soon her language got even more puzzling: „You should take the trigger warnings really seriously, because the dub con is seriously dub!“
What???
For a moment I felt really bad, somehow like the old man I actually am. There was this „kid“ talking about simple romance novels and I couldn’t understand a damn word.
I don’t like to feel so stupid, so I immediately fired up google and asked it to enlighten me quickly. I learned that „dub con“ means „dubious consent“ and that there was also a „spicier“ variant of it called „non con“. So ok, she was talking about forced sex. Now I got even more curious, so I googled the book titles she was mentioning in the video. On a dedicated review website I learned about their typical content (more about this soon). There seem to be hundreds of such books. Some of them have over 100’000 (!) reviews on Amazon. So this was definitely not a niche phenomenon but a sizeable publishing industry serving a huge market probably consisting of many millions of (almost exclusively) female readers.
I decided to order such a „dark romance“ book and studied the reviews of a couple of them. One book had the following remarkable sentence in its first review: „This one was definitely a bit too much for me, but of course I had to read it, because everyone else has read it“.
I felt that this book must be the perfect choice for me.
I found it in my letter box after a few days and I started reading the same evening. For the first hundred pages nothing spectacular happened to my slight disappointment. The main characters were introduced, carefully and in great detail. But I felt that all this seemed to serve a single very specific purpose: to pile up tons of „wood“ for a monumental emotio-erotical bonfire.
And indeed, at some point in time the bonfire was finally lit. And, oh boy, oh girl, the flames soon were blazing high! The book described over about a dozen pages how (do I have to scream „trigger warning!“ now?) the MMC (male main character) (censored word here) the FMC (female main character) savagely. There will never be a movie adaptation of this book because it would be clearly illegal, even on a triple-x site. If you hope now that all this was written (and read) with the intention to conduct psychological studies, I have to disappoint you. And the fact that the emotions of the characters were described in great detail when, let’s say, the MMC cut the FMCs panties with his knife, doesn’t really help much either.
In this „spicy“ chapter, the pages on the left side were intentionally left blank to allow the reader to hold the book with only one hand (not true, haha, but I had this Idea while reading and thought that patenting it could finally make me rich).
Are such books evil? Should we forbid them or blame and shame the women reading them?
I’m not a very moral person, so I’d answer all these questions with no. No women were harmed in the writing and reading of these books.
But I found the whole phenomenon extremely interesting nonetheless. Why would a generation of younger women enjoy this kind of content in a world where the events described are considered a crime and are also a major social problem? A world where such things actually happen regularly and the victims never enjoy them.
What then exactly is the difference between „non con“ (hot!) and rape (horror!)? Is it really only the obvious fact that the former is only imagined and the latter is real? Let’s study this in more detail.
First I was thinking „this book is simply p0rn. You can‘t take this seriously“. Yes, but it’s definitely not simple porn. I realized how infantile visual porn for men actually is. It’s like reading a crime novel in the most stupid way possible: immediately jumping to the last page to read how the story ends. Of course, it’s a great relief to know a few minutes after purchasing the book that it was the gardener who killed the landlord and that the butler is innocent. But this habit unfortunately also completely ruins the fun of reading the whole book. There is still much to learn for us men, but this is not the topic of this post.
So what’s in all these many pages before „it“ happens? They are basically required to show that….
- … all the MMCs are very attractive (Yes there can be more than one. Women call this „reverse harem“. If you are - like me - a brute male, just think about our rough equivalent, the „gang bang“ and you get the general idea).
- … the MMCs desire the FMC madly.
- …the FMC is very smart and extremely hard to get. And that the MMCs have to be also extremely smart and hyper determined to finally get what they desire.
Therefore in these books it is never some unattractive men taking advantage of a weak woman they actually don’t care about in a dark alley.
Ok, this is a somewhat useful first result. But still: why this desire for something harmful?
Maybe we can transfer some insights from another domain. Why do we crave sugary sweets so much? They make us fat and ruin our teeth. In this case the answer is quite simple: before the invention of refined sugar (about 500BC in India) food extremely rich in calories was very hard to come by. Many animals would compete with humans for ripe fruits. If our ancestors found a source of such food, they would immediately fill their bellies to optimally take advantage of their luck. But today, sugar is dirt cheap and this - once useful - behavior is only threatening our health.
Could it be that a man who is able to outsmart and overpower a strong, healthy woman in her functioning social environment was once a rare occurrence? Something so special that a woman needed to immediately take advantage of her luck by conceiving a strong baby with him?
Indeed: a long time ago women confidently ruled the world. I described earlier how women lost their natural superiority („A short history of women‘s power“). Their mind, shaped by evolution to rule, is a reminiscence of this long-gone time.
But we can mostly only guess how human society functioned 15‘000 years ago. It’s easier to look into the animal kingdom of the present. At species which live mostly in the same way today they lived millions of years ago. Like certain species of dolphin which show a behavior called male alliance coercion: several males trying to isolate a female, aggressively prevent her escape and force copulation. It seems to be a normal and common mating strategy and not an anomaly. For us this quite clearly looks like rape. But is it really the same thing we mean when we use this word?
What „decisions“ could lead evolution to allow the development of this kind of mating behavior? To understand this, we have to understand the challenge the dolphin females are facing. First of all, in the small groups these cetaceans live, genetic variation is rather small (i.e. all available males are quite similar). Which means that in equilibrium (i.e. if the environment has not been changing dramatically for long time) all available males show very similar features. Or in other words: most males must appear almost equally attractive.
Under such circumstances, the strategy of female choice works only very poorly: which male to choose becomes a really hard to solve problem [2]. That animals can easily differentiate between „weak“ and „strong“ members of a group is a myth disseminated by a certain kind of politician who doesn't actually understand evolutionary theory [1]. To be a „beta male“ in a group is an as promising strategy as being the alpha male. Social rank does not necessarily determine long term biological success. This for several reasons:
- To be the alpha male ist extremely energy consuming. Not to be burdened by this offers substantial advantages for the beta males. Being an alpha is as much a compromise as being a beta male.
- The current alpha male might dominate the present. But this only a limited predictor for his performance in the future as the environment could change anytime, favoring other traits present in one of the current beta males.
This is also the reason why females willingly mate also with beta males (e.g. when the alpha takes a nap or is hunting). They are genetically not necessarily inferior. Anyway nature allows only a very small amount of inferiority. Also, every creature is necessarily a compromise, with little space for extremes (and this includes things like exceptional „strength“, „size“ and „intelligence“). Only the long future ahead of us can reliably decide if we were successful (by the criteria of biological evolution) or not.
Now what to do if all the males are more or less equally very attractive? Observing them once in a while how they gulp down some food does not offer insightful clues regarding possible subtle differences in fitness. So why not „organize“ a little race to test the candidates? A race which requires many different skills like motor control, strategical thinking, social coordination and communication. All the female has to do, is to first tease the males (if required), then resist any of their advances fiercely and let them try their luck and demonstrate their skills. And if this kind of thing happens all the time for millions of years, why should evolution make it unpleasant? This would unnecessarily increase (the anyway hard to avoid) stress even more - without any benefit. And this is why dolphin females only suffer in this whole game when the males are lazy and make insultingly lame efforts.
And now we recognize in the dolphin example the situation described in many of the „dark romance“ books: an abundance of very attractive and determined males (the „reverse harem“) and the replacement of the „choice“ strategy we are so familiar with with the „organizing a competition“ strategy.
But why does all this not work for humans in real life? Because we have created a strange society which works completely differently. Youtube is full of manosphere videos where men complain about „stupid“ women who are using dating apps. They present statistics showing that women are only interested in the top 5% of most attractive men and ignore the rest. But unfortunately this behavior is far from stupid but perfectly rational: in a winner takes all society it doesn't make sense to have a child with anything less than the winner.
Which, as a direct consequence, means that sex with normal men becomes extremely undesirable.
Do women prefer this situation? No, definitely not. Having to choose means limited supply, because only a fraction of all men are suitable partners. Women are well aware of the fact that they have to compete with so many other women for a few men they can consider viable. This is very stressful. The „dark romance“ stories on the other hand are ultimately sexual fantasies of an unlimited supply of amazing partners.
Hard to imagine today that this was once as normal for humans as it is for dolphins today. The male behavior has not changed much since this prehistoric time: always eager to procreate and willing to race. But today male advances have become a constant nuisance for women even in their most tame form of „can I have your phone number?“. Instead of interacting with interested men, women prefer to watch videos of their male idols on social media (which, as mentioned before, sadly makes perfect sense).
From the popularity of this „dark romance“ fantasies we can deduce that the winner takes all society is not really natural (in the sense that very different social circumstances dominated most of our prehistoric past).
What went wrong?
Before the invention of agriculture, our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in small nomadic tribes. Due to their isolation from other tribes, genetic variation was small and the fitness of all tribe members high (because of the constant survival pressure from nature). Because of their traveling lifestyle, people could own only a few small items.
Compare this to our great „modern“ world today, where a billionaire can offer a woman a million times better chances to secure a promising future for her children compared to a man living in, let’s say, a suburban slum of an asian megacity. It would be naive to believe that such dramatic changes have no impact on our sexual behavior [4].
Now you might say: what you say here is still terribly euphemistic: dolphin females often show bite marks and other (small) injuries after the attacks of the males.
Yes, this is indeed scary. But how does the male side of the coin look?
In one of my favorite cartoon movies, „Who Framed Roger Rabbit“, a good part of the (great!) fun comes from how relaxed and indifferent Roger behaves in the presence of his ultra bombshell [3] wife Jessica Rabbit. Every man knows that in real life such an ultimate femme fatale would scare the shit out of him and make him blush and stutter all the time. We all know that women can (and often do!) „eat men for breakfast“. That they have enormous power over us, because they are ultimately our only way to find purpose. But does this stop us from approaching them? Sure not. No (heterosexual) sane man would say no to a real life Jessica Rabbit. We would all more than happily and willingly walk into our certain doom.
Are men stupid then? Or are the women who crave „non con“ in their fantasies stupid?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant formulated important foundations of moral theory still widely praised today. One of the formulations of his categorical imperative goes like this:
When the kingdom's individuals live together by the categorical imperative—particularly Kant's second formulation of it—each one will treat all others as being ends in themselves, instead of mere means to achieving one's own pursuits. This systematic whole is the Kingdom of Ends. (Wikipedia)
Now this might work well in many cases of human social interactions. But it surely should not be applied to sexuality. Getting used is the whole point of sexuality. This is the consequence of the finiteness of our lives: we must sacrifice our own existence to create new, future life. And nor women nor men can do this alone. We must find someone we can use for the purpose of defeating death, someone who is willing to get used by us. Of course we also hope to get used skillfully in return by a competent partner.
But we have become, over the millennia, unaware of all this. This is why we - the „smart“ monkeys creating artificial superintelligence very soon - have created a bizarre Absurdistan of a society where behaviors which were normal and good fun for millions of years have become immoral or even crimes and we replaced them with super weird social habits like marriage and female genital mutilation.
Both sexes are unhappy and feel that something is deeply wrong and blame the other sex for it. Men do it in rampant misogyny (unknown to the allegedly „rapist“ dolphins!) and women more and more in an angry feminism. Women believe only men have power and should be blamed for the misery (which is true on a more superficial level). Men are confused and frustrated because they instinctively feel that ultimately the power is in the hands of women („all we do all our life is to try to catch a fine woman by fulfilling all her wishes!“). This is also true, but there are two problems with this: 1. men have - in a desperate attempt to distribute the increasingly scarce resource of female desire „fairly“ - created a patriarchal system which treats women like cattle 2. women have, after so many years of living a cattle life, completely forgotten about their true power. Men use the little power they have stupidly and women don’t use their superior power at all anymore.
But the most absurd thing is the fact that we look at dolphins and use their way of sexual entertainment as a proof that humans are „evil by nature“ („see, even animals are evil! Therefore evil must be a fundamental principle of nature“). This is truly ridiculous. Don’t worry, all is good in dolphin world, these animals are completely fine and are having a great time (apart from the fact that we don’t leave much tuna to eat for them in the oceans these days).
It's only us who messed up completely. Rousseau was right so early: evil is a human construct.
Unfortunately, the way out of this huge messy maze is not easy to find (here more about this serious problem). But we should start walking anyway, it’s going to be a long way back home.
PS:
If you, dear reader of my blog, now have the impression that I condone rape, please read my post carfefully again. I really don't! True, I'm not on your side. But I'm also not on anyone else's side either. I really hope the ideas presented here are novel and might help us get out of the mess.
[1] Of course, they count themselves always to the „strong“ group, demanding „natural“ privileges for themselves. A behavior which did great damage to the reputation of the theory of evolution.
[2] The problem is in fact so hard that many species don’t bother much trying to solve it. Like the bonobos which use frequent sex with many partners for group cohesion / social communication.
[3] The ultra bombshell is only possible as a cartoon character. In real life she would represent very unbalanced genes. For example, her extreme attractivity would create more problems for her than benefits and her physical features (like the super thin waist) would be impractical in many real life situations. To be exceptionally attractive is a specific strategy which also has drawbacks and needs to be in balance with other traits.
[4] throughout their long history, humans adapted to a wide range of environments which required different behaviors.
Image: quickly made by author
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