I'm massively annoyed. I used to think women didn't watch porn, but it seems the ubiquity of online porn (i.e. children being shown porn by their classmates at school) has reached absolutely everywhere. Because while men do write fanfic, they don't write so much, and they certainly don't write most of m/m fanfic.

Now, I know that smutty fanfic isn't the height of art, but it used to be way less porny. Oftentimes, it was innocent virgins describing sex the way they hoped it would feel, and there was nothing at all wrong with that, imho.

But now, it is getting increasingly influenced by male-targeted porn.

It began with descriptions of moaning ... fair enough, some people really do that a lot, I guess, though it does seem a bit over the top to me. The gay male sex written by women seems to have become more realistic, as far as a woman can tell ... nothing wrong with that, in principle.

But now I've begun noticing "praise kink" cropping up, and while theoretically, there's nothing wrong with wanting compliments, people calling their sex partners "good boy" like they're dogs is just ew.

Also, "daddy" is now considered a dirty word. (Worst offender was a fanfic where a wood elf blushed after the protagonist told him that he must be very used to being called "daddy", with explicit reference to it being dirty - like even people living far removed from human civilisation would somehow have seen incest porn and found it a turn on. In a world without TV or internet, mind.)

There's also this thing with the male telling the female (or submissive male) partner how pretty they are, incessantly, during sex. I don't know if that is a porn trope (part of the praise kink?), but I kinda feel like it must be, because I cannot remember it having been so common before, and also I don't like it. It feels ... male-gazey. Nothing wrong with compliments in theory, but the extreme emphasis feels like women should feel turned on by how pretty the man finds them, and not by how hot he is ...

Lots of more things (like more graphic descriptions that look like the writers copied from each other) and much weirder fetishes, but the things I described seem to be the new mainstream.

Has anyone else noticed this? How long has it been going on? (I only really noticed it once I ventured into video games fanfic, which probably draws a younger audience.)

Smutty fanfic used to be by women and for women. Now ... it does not feel like it is that, anymore.

It angers me. Can women have nothing to ourselves? Why are women ruining things for each other?

(There's also the thing with all those trans characters, but that's enough for its own rant. As is the "It is bad to have sex with someone who does it in order to get something other than pleasure in return - except when that someone is a prostitute, then it is totally okay" thing. 😬)