This sequence, which I titled "Don't Ride with Strangers," is a remake/reimagining of a much older piece of mine by the same name. It was the most recent feminization piece I posted to deviantART, but I took it down it a few months after the fact because I feared that someone in charge might have taken issue with the age of the guy in it or might do so in the future, even though as a cartoon drawing, I don't think anyone could definitively pinpoint whatever his age is supposed to be. Ironically, part of the reason I decided to redo that earlier piece is because, aside from thinking I could do a better job now, I was concerned that I'd given the guy in it a much too youthful appearance the first time around and wanted to make him older, but due to some complications, I thought there was a chance he might still not look old enough for someone's liking.
I wrote about this at length on dA, but I'll try to give a more concise account of events here.
In September of last year, I received a notification from deviantART informing me that the account I'd created for my fetishistic work had been suspended and was in imminent danger of being deleted unless I removed certain artwork that was supposedly in violation of that site's guidelines. Frustratingly, when I pressed for clarification, I received an unhelpful form reply stating that they were unable to cite specific examples, forcing me to guess which images had landed me in hot water.
Although this situation was annoying, I can't pretend like I had absolutely no clue as to which pictures of mine had potentially been deemed objectionable. I've done a number of femdom drawings of young male teens being feminized and/or spanked, etc. This kind of thing is not uncommon in petticoating art and the like, and while I personally see it as relatively harmless, I can understand why some people might have a problem with it.
Honestly, I think pretty much all my erotic fantasies have problematic elements. While it's obviously important that anything sexual in nature in the real world be done between consenting adults, I can't remember the last time I experienced arousal by fantasizing about something totally "vanilla" or doing something entirely voluntarily, which is why nonconsensual femdom and forced feminization appeal to me.
When I first started exploring erotica on the internet, some of the earliest femdom stories that resonated with me were ones in which the male protagonists were not yet full-grown adults. For one thing, at the time, I was much closer to the ages of those characters, but even now, I feel like I relate more to characters who are more immature, naive and inexperienced. I just find it more exciting when someone like that is thrust into a sexy situation. Also, from a logical perspective, when the activities in question are nonconsensual in some way, if the protagonist isn't yet an independent adult, it provides a handy explanation as to why he simply doesn't walk away.
One of my favorite stories by Bea may be "Maid Machiavelli," which is about the secret relationship between a guy and his stepmother's dominant maid, who the narration states has been sexually controlling him since at least the time he had hit puberty. The word "groomer" gets bandied about way too loosely nowadays by bigoted conservatives, but if we were to apply real world standards, what occurs in that story is textbook grooming. In reality, that maid would absolutely deserve to go to jail. Still, I can't help finding it hot... as fiction, that is. Then there's Bea's longer story "Aunt Fanny's Girls," in which the protagonist ends up in a sexual relationship with his high school guidance counselor. There are possibly other examples that aren't coming to mind now. Since I can differentiate between fantasy and reality and have no problem saying that there's certain content that I enjoy in stories that I would condemn in real life, I don't feel an excessive amount of guilt over what turns me on, especially since I don't fantasize about hurting anyone, but rather imagine being the submissive/victim in any given scenario.
That said, I do have qualms over the rare stories Bea wrote in which he inserted female characters who were uncomfortably young. The reason I don't have an issue with femdom art or stories with male characters who haven't yet reached adulthood is because I believe the purpose of such characters is usually to essentially serve a surrogate for the author/artist and the male fans of such work. On the other hand, if the author/artist is involving female characters who are on the overly young side in their work, I'm afraid it does make me wonder a little about them. Sorry, Bea.
After I thought I'd sorted everything out with deviantART and my account had been reinstated, I received another notification a few days later letting me know that a moderator had deleted an installment of an incomplete feminization comic of mine. They claimed that the male character in it was under eighteen. What made that decision so baffling was that, not only was there no visible nudity, sex or even touching of any sort in it, I hadn't even intended the male to be below under eighteen in that case. It seems that someone simply saw that he was shorter than the female character and automatically declared him to be underage, which is utterly absurd, but I had no way to prove what my intentions were. I think taller women are sexy; so sue me. I may need to put a disclaimer in all my art from now on that all the imaginary participants are above the age of consent... assuming I ever find the necessary drive to get back into drawing.
8 comments:
As a fan of Bea’s work, I still stop by this site occasionally, looking forward to contributions from you, Carrie, Rosie and other artists who express similar themes in their artistic expression. As to the appropriateness of the themes, unfortunately, it is a fundamental premise of our culture today that every issue must be reduced to its simplest point to make it seem “black and white.” This eliminates debate, allows a label to be placed on each position, heaps on presumptions based on the label, and allows one to hate anyone who does not “share the same values” as your side. Considerations that are nuanced, well thought out and impressively expressed, like those contained in your blog post, tend not to be given the time of day in a society in which thinking for oneself and respecting the positions of others is becoming more and more uncommon. It is much easier to focus on something objective, like age, then jump to conclusions about it. Even if the conclusions are hurtful, unfair, and inaccurate, when put under the umbrella of protecting children, they tend to be easy positions to defend.
This is my way of saying that there is an audience for your work of people who think like you, enjoy your expressions, and pose no danger to anyone. Out of anyone, you would have hoped and thought that an entity that calls itself deviantArt would be more of a champion for us, but please don’t let their failure stifle your creativity and willingness to share it.
Thank you,
Jnynj
Thanks, Jnynj. Sadly, deviantART has been driving away people for a while now. First, there was a very unpopular site redesign, and more recently, they stabbed a lot of artists in the back by allowing their work to be scraped for the purposes of AI "art" generation.
I don't mind saying that I feel very threatened by so-called AI. Its increasing prevalence is one of the reasons I've been feeling more discouraged when it comes to my own art. I felt as if I was having a mental breakdown being forced to see AI images flooding my recommendations before I learned that dA had at least provided an option to filter much of that lazy crap out.
It's really unfortunate that deviantART has damaged its reputation so much, because there's still no other site out there that I'm aware of that is as useful for sharing and viewing art. However, they've always had certain guidelines, and I really don't begrudge them for that. On the other hand, what's really maddening is the poor communication.
I described my ordeal at the time as literally Kafkaesque, because they refused to let me know exactly what I'd done that had violated the rules. Another comparison I made was the Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat," where Mr. Burns hires a bunch of professional baseball players for his softball team, but repeatedly yells at a confused Don Mattingly to shave his nonexistent sideburns until Mattingly totally shaves the sides of his head in frustration and still gets kicked off the team for noncompliance. I mean, I never would have guessed that the sequence some dA mod deleted on their own might have been one of the pieces to which they objected. As I said, I never saw that guy as being underage, so if my page had ended up getting removed over that, that would have been incredibly unfair.
Anyway, I appreciate the comment and encouragement.
Hi Dave
I empathise with your predicament. The male character in the material I write is – in my mind’s eye- in the late teenage early 20’s range and I am always vague as I do not want to come anywhere close to underage. It’s probably worth noting in many countries the age of consent is 16 so your drawings are well within that range. The difficult part about this type of erotica, as you have pointed out, is the consensual aspect and why doesn’t the male character just walk away. Again, as you have mentioned, being young, inexperienced, naive etc provides the reason, particularly if faced with a mature, confident and assured dominant woman.
It is worth mentioning that France’s President Macron was 15 when he first encountered the woman who was to become his wife- she was 40 at the time. I don’t know when the sexual relationship started but would imagine it was well before he was 18/19
Your point about young female characters is spot on and most people tend to know where the line is. Personally, the involvement of girls of a similar age to the male character holds no interest whatsoever for me.
JNYNJ’s reply puts the case far better than I could and is 100% correct when he says your art poses no danger to anyone. I have never seen anything remotely offensive or objectionable with regard to your characters. Your work is excellent and don’t allow this to bring you down.
Carrie
Hi Rocket
I am waiting for deviantart to do the same to me and my Andy and Aunt Jane art. They have already got the wrong end of the stick when they took down two completely innocent images of a grown up Andy, in a loving relationship with Will,posing hand in hand with their two adopted children. These two pictures where totally without sexual overtone and where designed to capture a totally inclusive and loving world. I can’t help thinking it was the bots doing the moderator roll, noticed two children and went into panic delete mode.
I could have questioned it, but heck the images can all be found on my own blog, so stuff deviantart.
I love your clean and simple images, this was always a favourite of mine, your art is so much better than any Ai, Ai is so cold and emotionles, whereas yours has some much heart.
Please keep creating and maybe we can fight back against the Ai invasion
Xxx
Andy
Thanks, Carrie and Andy. That means a lot to me, and not just because it's coming from creative people I respect.
I can concede that there were probably at least one or two pics of mine that may not have been appropriate for deviantART, but it's really unfair that they'd go after you for a couple of totally SFW pics, Andy. You are quite possibly correct about bots being to blame. I'll guarantee that was the case when, on a different site, I got a message informing me that the avatar I'd been using had been deleted because it contained an image of a weapon, even though it didn't and was just a closeup of a face like I use here or on dA, etc. It's safe to assume that no human being evaluated that image. Then there was the time I tried sharing a G-rated pic on Discord and got an automatic notification that it couldn't be posted because they'd (erroneously) detected that it might be adult in nature.
This type of thing seems to be turning into a regular occurrence, at least with me. Just last week, I received a warning from Amazon over a review I'd written. As with deviantART, they didn't tell me which post it was or what I'd done wrong. Through the process of elimination, I'm sure it was a review I wrote a couple months ago for an ebook. Admittedly, it was a work of erotica, but I tried to be genteel in my language, so I'm afraid something I wrote may have been misinterpreted... unless me saying that the women in the story apparently had no conception of a refractory period was over the line. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have written that the story reminded me of fantasies I'd had as a kid, because someone at Amazon could have falsely inferred that I was saying that the book contained an underage character or characters, which was very much not the case. Most troubling to me was the discovery that none of this author's ebooks are available through that site anymore. I feel terrible if careless wording on my part accidentally sabotaged this person's writing career, though it could be a coincidence for all I know.
I don't think I knew that about Macron and his wife, Carrie; that's pretty intriguing.
Well, I do have a few ideas for future artwork, none of which involves persons under 18, so hopefully I can motivate my lazy self to sit down and do some more drawing one of these days.
Oops, I just realized that in my last response, I meant to start it out by writing "Thanks for the positive reinforcement." That's probably implied, but I wanted to be clear. I had to compose that post twice because I got an error message the first time I tried submitting it, and some details slipped my mind.
It is a shame Dave that a certain school of thought may find your lovely sometimes funny art objectionable due to "age restrictions" in the US the age of consent is 18yrs,UK is 16yrs which personally believe should be 18 a more mature age.
Thanks for commenting, juliadomna47.
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