One of my favorite movies is the 1950s classic Friendly Persuasion – starring Gary Cooper. The entire movie is based on people trying to motivate the Quakers to take part in war. The movie dissects the ethical considerations for various members of one large family. (It also has a great theme song - Thee My Love by Pat Boone.)
We have recently discussed forced fem stories.
I belief that forced fem stories are perfectly acceptable reading material, if the persuasion is friendly. More accurately, the persuasion should be ethical. To be ethical, the protagonist is coming under the influence of another person to either take an action or to avoid an action. It is only ethical if the result is in the protagonist’s best interest. Further, I believe it is only ethical if you would not have taken that action or avoid an action unless you were “forced.”
It seems we are faced with deciding whether the person has been motivated or manipulated. Motivation means persuasion to your benefit. Manipulation means persuasion to someone else’s benefit.
Obviously, there are grey areas.
Whether or not a story is acceptable to you is entirely up to you. My characters can force someone else to become feminine against their will. There is no conceivable way I can force you to read that story.
Jill
Comments
Only in the protagonists best interests
That is something that can only decided by the protagonist. The phrase "this is for your own good" never rang true to me. persuasion, bets or tricks where the protagonist can still say no work for me. Drugging, including secretly feeding hormones, kidnaping and torture do not. To say that person the doing the forced fem knows what is best and should act on it seems to me as valid as the claim by slaveholders that they gave their negroes a better life than they would have had in Africa and took care of them. Most slaves disagreed. Most people subjected to force fem even if they are attracted to feminine behavior would object.
Things have changed
I can remember how my parents would tell me that a spanking was for my own good.
It wasn't.
There's NO excuse for hitting a child.
I early on decided not to use corporal punishment. It seems to have worked out just fine.
I don't advocate everything I write about.
What seems like a biography, isn't.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
May...
Love, Andrea Lena
And With Thy Spirit
Pax tecum.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Nothing wrong or unacceptable with forced fem stories
This is only the opinion of a 60 plus year old white guy, and other opinions are just as valid as mine are, but I don't think that there is anything "wrong" or "unacceptable" about forced feminization stories unless possibly the author is trying to convince someone to try it in real life. Personally, I think that the most of those stories are personal fantasies of the authors about how they would like to be treated. Nothing wrong with that. That being said, however, most of those stories are not to my taste. If the main purpose of a story seems to be to see how much abuse the protaganist can take, I won't enjoy it. Unless the story ends with the poor victim getting even somehow, which rarely happens. On the other hand, I will enjoy stories where the forced crossdressing or feminization does not lead to public humiliation. I really love Mary Beth Sanford's stories, for example. Most of them involve forced feminization or crossdressing of some kind, but not the hard core humiliation and abuse that other stories have.
The bigger issue is your target audience. How many readers have similar tastes to mine compared to the number of readers who like more "hard core" forced fem? If you're just writing for your own pleasure and posting here to share, then it doesn't really matter. But if you're writing to make money, either for yourself or for BC, then you need to keep in mind the number of readers your story will attract. Ditto if you're concerned about read counts or kudos. I kudo every story post (solo or chapter) I read to completion. But I also empathize with the characters, and if I find myself getting seriously angry at what's happening to the "poor victim", I usually stop reading at that point and if the story is a serial, I won't even open the following chapters. That's especially true if I find myself fantasizing about the victim killing his tormentors while they are asleep :). That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the story or the author, or the people who like reading it, it just means that I don't care for it.
All of that being said, I've purchased seven of your Kindle books and enjoyed them, although some more than others. I'll probably buy more. I enjoy your work and appreciate you making it available here.
Well Stated
I share your opinions. However, I believe a story has to develop and sometimes you have to trust the author.
Thank you for buying my books. As you might know, I don't take any of the revenue -- allowing what I normally would have received, to help cover expense for this website.
Another blog today spoke of this site's publishing arm having 17 of the top 100 books on Amazon in a specific genre. Five of those were mine.
I don't expect everyone to love every book I write. I love them all but I'm bias.
Thank you for your comments.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Life's about choices.
That was my high school civics teacher's favorite thing to tell us, at least once a week. He was also a phys ed teacher.
I have a lot more I could say here, but it's all things I've said again and again in the past on other blogs about this kind of thing :)
In the end, you said it yourself: people have the choice of what they read. Just like writers have a choice of what they write. Just because something doesn't speak to you, or is uncomfortable or even vile to you, doesn't make it bad: heck, even the gentlest of trans stories are considered vile pornography by some folks, all because of that trans element being part at all.
So long as it's not hurting anyone else, people are free to be into whatever they want, especially when it comes to fantasy.
Melanie E.