How fan fiction is filling in the sex ed gaps
Since its conception, fan fiction has garnered so much influence that it now affects the source material from which it was inspired. Celebrities with particularly passionate followings often reenact scenes from fanfics they unknowingly star in on live television; the third season of BBC’s Sherlock opens with a teenage girl describing a kiss between the famous detective and his nemesis.
Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the titular character, came under fire a few years back for being condescendingly critical of fics where Sherlock and John Watson are “f***ing in space on a bed, chained together.” Many were quick to defend fanfic and its authors and readers, which are largely women and LGBTQ+ people.
Elizabeth Minkel of New Statesman wrote, “Does it matter that middle-aged men with very large platforms were sitting at a table pathologizing teenage girls’ sexuality – and making a whole load of potentially harmful assumptions about a topic they know literally nothing about? Absolutely.”
The ethics of erotic fanfic — especially those starring real people — has always been gray, and many psychologists are wary of its sexual nature considering many of its readers are younger. Clark was around 14 when he got introduced to EXO fanfic; particularly smut, a genre characterized by sexually explicit content.
The disproportionate emphasis on erotic fanfic’s deviance conceals the fact that it’s merely a symptom of a bigger problem: mainstream representations of sexuality often cater only to straight men, and fanfic serves as a retreat for people outside that identity.
Perhaps it is this moral ambivalence, along with the fact that its creators and consumers are mostly adolescents of marginalized identities, that make fanfic prone to dismissal: historically, any deep devotion felt by people other than cisgender heterosexual men get distilled as hysteria; women’s art is relegated as hobbyism, fandom is scoffed at as uncontrollable and shameless.
While male fans express their dedication through encyclopedic memory of canon, female and LGBTQ+ fans — often unable to see themselves in the art they admire — gravitate towards revision, taking the thing they love and expanding it, keeping it alive.
The disproportionate emphasis on erotic fanfic’s deviance conceals the fact that it’s merely a symptom of a bigger problem: mainstream representations of sexuality often cater only to straight men, and fanfic serves as a retreat for people outside that identity.
A study in 2018 revealed that a whopping 96 percent of fanfic readers said fanfic not only influenced their knowledge on sex, but also broadened their awareness of existing sexual realities that would otherwise be invisible. These readers’ sexualities are culturally so suppressed that they must project it onto others — usually men, who are structurally more powerful — just to express it; and even then, it is still trivialized and pathologized.
The widespread suppression of sex doesn’t stop young people from learning about it; it only pushes them to discover it somewhere else.
This is especially resonant in the Philippines, where the rollout of comprehensive sex education in schools has been slow, and the Commission on Population and Development attributes the alarming rise in teenage pregnancy to the failure of the religious sector to encourage abstinence among youth.
“At worst, there are times where the perpetuation of stigma and shame tactics about sex was allowed within classroom settings, most likely in an effort to curb students’ sexual curiosity,” says Kiel, a 20-year-old student who graduated from a Catholic high school. Kat, a 26-year-old writer, agrees: “I think we learned more about sex (and how evil it was) in religion classes than in science or health classes.”
The widespread suppression of sex doesn’t stop young people from learning about it; it only pushes them to discover it somewhere else. Clark, who got introduced to sex through fanfic, says that he found himself enjoying fanfic more than porn, because the latter seemed too transactional. “I learned more about consent at ano yung dynamics pagdating sa ganung activity. I told myself if I were (having sex), I would want something like that.”
“Perhaps the biggest takeaway I had from reading fanfic was that women are allowed to enjoy sex,” says Kat. “Learning about sexuality in the relatively safe and contained environment of fanfic was definitely beneficial for me, personally. I discovered what I liked and what I didn’t, so when the real thing does happen I have at least some grasp of what boundaries I have.”
It is in this extent that the existence of fanfic is revolutionary, but also unfortunate: fanfic is born out of the writers’ and readers’ own pleasures, reimagined outside the exploitative ogles of the male gaze — but it’s unfortunate that mainstream culture is systematically so sex-averse that one’s free expression of their pleasure is considered radical.
For Kiel, who’s a bisexual transman, fanfic also played a big part in his understanding of queer relationships, and, consequently, his own sexuality and gender identity: “It introduced many concepts I would have shied away from or became ashamed of.”
While fanfic is undeniably wider in breadth than current mainstream representations of sex, it is not an apt alternative to actual comprehensive sex education in schools.
Sex education — if it is even implemented — tends to be heteronormative, simply brushing over concepts like the gender spectrum and sexual orientations. Even mass media often treats LGBTQ+ characters as afterthoughts, or worse, subtext. The most popular fics on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a website housing millions of fics and fanwork, usually center on male-male pairings from gay-coded shows, like Sherlock and Supernatural.
Over the years both shows have received some backlash for continuing to imply romance between its male leads despite having no intention to actualize it. Through fanfic, disappointed fans can take the subtext and bring it to center, giving themselves and their readers an opportunity to see themselves in the stories they love. Koehm explains, “By rewriting these stories, fans are saying that they deserve a spot in that culturally important space.”
Perhaps fanfic cultivates such a safe space to discuss diverse sexualities and concepts like consent because of its lack of censorship. Virtually anyone can publish a fic, with platforms like AO3 and Wattpad equipping fans with writing tools and a community sharing their passion for their beloved text.
Anyone with an internet connection and an interest in Star Trek can find themselves amidst Kirk/Spock and the healthier depictions of relationships and sexuality found within many of its stories. Clark thinks it’s because fics are made by fans driven by passion, not profit; he adds that when he was writing fanfic himself, he had no other motivation besides getting inspired by the characters and wanting to expand their story.
While fanfic is undeniably wider in breadth than current mainstream representations of sex, it is not an apt alternative to actual comprehensive sex education in schools.
“Fanfic is reliant on your imagination. What happens if you misinterpret what happened (in the fic)?” Clark asks. Kiel adds that in his experience, “Fanfic is particularly lacking when it comes to topics like family planning, sex- and reproduction-related diseases and conditions, and reproductive health in general.”
That said, the abstinence-heavy sex curriculum Kiel experienced also fell short in teaching him about these topics. “Fanfic may very well be the best form of sex education I could have gotten,” he says. This is a testament not just to fanfic’s transformative nature, but also the insufficiency and impracticality of more formal channels of sex ed.
Banner photo Art by Wira Dosado