So, I want to address something that will probably surprise no one:

The erotic mind control community has a problem with racism.

This is a situation that a lot of us have known for awhile, but as the vocal community is very white, many of us had the luxury of not being affected

That's not an excuse. If anything, it's a purposeful "no, we knew, and we thought it was okay to ignore it."

This is not something any of us should be proud of, but, thankfully for me, I had a black member of the community to wake my sorry ass up to the seriousness of this.

She deserved me caring enough to do something about this in advance of being told it was a problem.

She deserved us being BETTER by now.

She didn't get that, but I refuse to let the past define the future, and I am no longer going to be quiet on issues of race in the community.

Why do I bring that up?

Because for a LONG TIME, there've been racist stories on the EMCSA (Erotic Mind Control Stories Archive)/MCStories.

Not stories that explore the difficult themes of race.

Not stories that play with the edge of acceptability.

Racist stories.

These stories have portrayed BIPOC as exotic treasures, or as offensive, hurtful racist stereotypes.

These stories have pushed ideas with their writing that blacks are less intelligent, that asians are hypersexual, so on and so forth.

You don't need me to tell you this stuff.

People in the community being racist/having unexamined racism probably doesn't surprise you.

When I joined the community, it was common on the MCF for men to joke that lesbians couldn't have sex because they had no dicks.

I am not kidding.

We changed that, through effort.

But a lot of us were far too comfortable with the race issue, because it didn't affect us.

We were comfortable, and it was shameful that we allowed stories, such as those posted by one Nick Vegas, to continue to be posted without even blinking an eye.

If, for years...

You mentioned the name Nick Vegas I'd shudder and go "Oh right, the racist."

You'd get that from a lot of people.

Well, recently, I've finally realized that I need to step the fuck up and actually use my privilege to make things better. To make our community safer.

Because even if we write stories about complicated topics... writing noncon is not the same thing as writing uncritically using racist tropes.

The noncon can be framed as bad even if erotic.

The racism subtly tells all nonwhites "you are only welcome if you can accept this"

So there's been discussion of this topic on the Mind Control Literature discord that I run--because we need to solve this as a community.

And an individual stressed that, no, we can't censor these individuals.

If we did that, people would censor all of our content! Oh no!

This is a fundamentally false, and bullshit argument.

All we lose by attempting to solve the community's racism problem is the support of racists--people I don't want to think I support them, and who won't have my back anyway.

We need to push for change.

Together.

This member of the community, Somnophile, who goes by Kimiko Petaway on amazon, has many times engaged in devil's advocacy.

The latest, was insisting we can't censor or remove racist content.

Because we might lose all of our complicated porn.

This argument only silenced>

the voices who were legitimately hurt, and made to feel lesser, by this content existing on the site.

Read Nick Vegas's latest--just a paragraph or two, JUST THE DESCRIPTION, and tell me:

Would you want to be a part of that community, as a black person, now in America?

We owe everyone in our community BETTER than that.

We owe people who are in the community, and outside of the community, to make it so our fetish content is responsible.

Yes, some of it is very triggering to victims of abuse--but it is clearly labeled as such.

Finding abuse erotic in a fictional context is not the same thing as being pro abuse.

Finding violence exciting in a fictional content does not make someone violent, or support acts of violence.

It's the same for fetish content.

It just needs to be handled RESPONSIBLY.

And personally, I don't think that's too much to ask from a community handling dark mature topics--responsibility.

We should be so lucky that's all that people might ask of us.

Because BIPOC don't get asked just to be responsible, but to tolerate outright abuse.

Being okay with these stories would be like being okay with stories that portray trans women as dangerous, deceptive predators who lure heterosexuals into sexual encounters.

That shit has gotten trans women killed, and been used as a justification in court.

It's indefensible.

So, why should the MC community, which is so heavily populated by trans people, not wish for this understanding to extend to race?

We need to be better.

We need to do better.

This has been a long time coming, but can we ignore it now that the issue is so LOUD?

When I was 18, first posting to MCStories, I was clueless about race.

I'm 33, and I still barely understand how all of it works, because I can't understand all of how it works as a white woman who has never experienced racism...

But I have listened.

I have tried to grow.

The only way we can be a community worth being a part of, worth being in, is if we look out for our most vulnerable members.

That means trans people. That means queer people of all identities.

That sure as hell means black people, Asian people, indigenous people, etc, etc etc!

To turn away from this, for fear of 'censorship' is cowardice.

To turn away from this for fear of losing our platforms is cowardice.

If we are not a community that is safe for BIPOC, then we are not a community that deserves respect. End of story.

(Though I have more to say)

So I banned Somnophile.

I don't think they're a racist. I don't. But I think they're comfortable with racism, and they were making the community hostile to those who need change to feel safe.

So... I reached out to Nick Vegas, the writer in question.

There are others. Many.

But I had to start somewhere.

I wanted to start with the author who caused my friend such distress.

And I sent them the following email.

It's probably more respectful than I should have been, but I wanted to be civil. Diplomatic.

I wanted to hope for reason.

Because my own stories haven't always been perfect.

My original draft of "Wherever I May Roam" was, frankly, racist.

I had latinx characters portrayed as super friends level stereotypes in attempting to mimic how my friend Angela had portrayed her character.

I fucked up.

She never said anything at the time--probably because in attempting to critique/point out racism in the past she'd been shat on or lambasted, etc--so I figured it was okay.

I hoped... hey...

Maybe Nick just needs someone to reach out, and say "Please. Let's be better than this"

This was the response that I got.

Look at the pure, unmitigated racism on display here.

"I can't be racist, some black woman liked my stories. A black director of films likes my stories. I can't be racist. Also, hey, BLM is a terrorist organization [not said explicitly]"

In my email I explicitly said I was a white woman who was bringing up not just my own concerns, but the concerns of the black members of our community that do not have the same ability to feel safe bringing up these concerns that I do.

So I did it, because It's my responsibility

He decided that means I'm an SJW.

He insulted the black members of the community's feelings by calling them not real, and insisted worse stories exist, so his are fine.

He called those pushing for justice on the streets terrorists.

He ignored the affects of racist stories.

This is the kind of far right garbage we'd be supporting if we turned a blind eye to racism in the MC Community.

We'd be saying we're okay with this.

We'd be saying we were okay with the sentiments portrayed in this email, and those in the stories, going unchallenged.

No.

I'm ashamed of how comfortable I was.

I'm ashamed of how I laughed Nick Vegas off and did nothing.

And here's the thing: I doubly don't have an excuse.

Sara H brought up this shit years ago, asking why no one was ripping this garbage apart.

We said "we know, whatever"

On the MCGarden, the place that was created explicitly because of straight men being shitty about women's issues and shitty to members of the community, Sara H told us that we needed to do something...

And we basically said "Oh, Nick Vegas?"

"Nobody reads it. It's fine."

It's not fine.

It wasn't fine then.

It isn't fine now.

It will never be fine.

But wallowing in guilt doesn't do jack shit. It won't help members of the community feel safe. It won't help new people be able to enjoy their fetish in a tacitly white supremacist space.

Because white supremacy isn't just waving an identity europa sign.

It isn't just a nazi screaming white power.

It's being okay with things that implicitly advantage whites by making nonwhites feel at danger, disrespected, and unheard.

I didn't respect that fact until... now.

So I banned Somnophile, because if he doesn't want to grow up and help us solve our problem, he isn't welcome in our community...

And I emailed Simon Bar Sinister, because I think unless we solve the problem there as well, we're not doing enough.

And that's unacceptable.

I could go on about how I think Simon is a reasonable fellow, but I went over that in the email.

It's long, but I'm including screenshots of it here:

At this time, I haven't received a response--but I sent it at 4:08am.

It hasn't even been 12 hours, and any response, or actions, that Simon takes could and should take careful consideration.

Not because the side that's right in this matter is unclear, but because>

this issue deserves a respectful, thoughtful response.

It deserves a response that shows respect and understanding for the community.

Simon is a man of few words. I can't tell you the last time anyone had a long, detailed conversation with him...

But this is important.

This is our wake-up call as a community. It's a wake-up call we heard SO MANY TIMES BEFORE.

If there was a canary in this coal mine?

The canary would be desiccated, and maybe the bones picked clean.

Now that we know, we can't remain silent, and we cannot simply shrug and laugh

I will be keeping the community informed of Simon's response.

I really want to hope that Simon will be understanding, and open to this change.

If not, we need to be willing to accept that we will need to find a new center pillar of the mind control erotica community.

This isn't a threat.

This isn't being ungrateful.

Without Simon bar Sinister... Who would even know Madam Kistulot?

Who would care about Silver Girl?

No one, no one, no one.

Simon made me who I am, and helped me find my friends...

But we cannot compromise our morals.

My next move would be to encourage people to educate Simon, to reach out with their own concerns... but I am hoping it won't come to that.

I'm hoping we won't need to relocate, to recenter... but just need to work on purging beyond questionable content.

To stop saying "okay"

If you want to join the conversation, the MCL discord is here: https://discord.gg/JyafaCD 

Racism will not be tolerated.

Supporting a racist status quo will not be tolerated.

Legitimate concerns?

Cool.

Let us work through this, together, and move on to make this community better

I've worked hard to become an important member of this community, with clout, and a recognizable name.

If I ignored the responsibility this held to do right by the people who support my work, and my fellow authors, affected by this racism?

I would be complicit.

No longer.

Please, join me in working towards making a more welcoming, safer, understanding MC community.

We do not celebrate abuse.

We do not celebrate harm.

We celebrate how erotic some things can be when no one is being hurt by them... but racist stories hurt, and justify violence.

This isn't me shouting over the voices of BIPOC, this is me demanding we actually listen to those voices that we have not even helped feel safe enough to speak up.

This is me demanding, using my position, that we make things better, because they shoulda been already.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point, so I'll start wrapping this up.

We've caused harm by allowing this to exist.

We've been comfortable.

We can't allow ourselves to be comfortable.

Allowing racist content will always harm nonwhite creators, and weaken our community.

J. Darksong and Doctor D are members of our community who have given us content despite this problem.

We owe it to them to be better.

We owe it to the many who have been silenced before they even began to speak.

Please use this as a chance to examine this, and other issues>

that you may have allowed yourself to ignore in the past because they didn't seem too big, because they didn't impact you, because no one affected was speaking up.

Maybe they were afraid you'd shoot them down.

Maybe they simply left, angry and hurt and scared.

That's not ok.

Thank you for listening, not to my journey or my point, but to the importance of this issue.

If we can make the community less accepting of this, more safe, more... what it should be, then we can't make up for our silence...

But we can try to make it so that issue wont happen.

I keep feeling like I have more and more to say.

This thread could go on for eons, but I'll end it with this:

No one should feel that a place that should be a space to explore dark fetishes and fantasies is willing to allow fiction that views them as less than human. No one.