Ethical Dilemmas in “Diana” – A Reader’s Response

One of my readers sent me this, the most thoughtful critique I’ve had of a
piece to date. It raises some interesting ethical points, and I thought
I’d share it with you all. ‘S’ requested that his name be stripped from
it, so I have done so. Following the letter is my response (in
italics) and his response to that. You can send S mail care of my
publisher, who will forward it on —
S’s e-mail.


Dear Mary Anne,

I’ve been reading your stories ever since you first started posting on
rec.arts.erotica and am quite fond of your writing. In fact, I believe you
are the overall best and most consistently excellent erotica writer on the
net. Recently I bought your book and reflected on what I thought about
your stories. I really only had a strong reaction to “Diana”. A reaction
that was complicated, and since I was going to have to put my thoughts on
paper to really understand it, I thought I’d pass them along to you since
good writers like thoughtful commentary on their work.

I guess I should preface my comments by saying that I am personally not
fond of horror as genre or of erotica which mixes sex with violence. I
strongly agree with you that fantasies of women enjoying being the object
of sexual violence, in today’s context of abuse and rape of women, are a
Bad Thing. I also have to admit that I find some of the milder
degradation-free femdom fiction to be pretty stimulating.

That said I had very mixed feelings about “Diana”. While I think the story
up to the ending was one of the most perfect erotic stories I’ve ever read
(and that’s quite a few), I think fundamentally I was disturbed by the
story’s ending because of the supposed premise that killing can be erotic.
And moreover, that the absolute most erotic experience (a “godlike” one)
is inseparable from killing as part of the act. I’m guessing the premise
is that no mortal man has sex with Diana and lives, it’s part of her
unchanging nature as a goddess.

Now I’ve read enough about war to know that killing and violence can
indeed be erotic for some people. And I can’t argue there’s a similar
physical responses to extreme fear or power to sexual arousal. So the
premise may be true in for some people in a few cases. The problem I have
is the uncritical, at times celebratory exploration of the premise.

Let me make a quick aside about why I think it’s fair to label “Diana” as
violent. Obviously there is question of whether what resulted between
Diana and the hero is a murder or the acting out of a tacit agreement
between a god and a mortal where the mortal exchanges his life for a brief
but deep contact with the divine. The way the hero’s mind considered the
options while bound to the tree seems to indicate that Diana was indeed
doing her best to make him realize, if subconsciously, what the
consequences of his choices would be. But the line at the end about him
being dead as soon as he happened on the clearing can be interpreted one
of two ways. Either she was going to kill him anyway because he saw her–
no matter what he asked for–or no mortal man when given the choice the
hero was given ever chooses freedom and life. I believe you mean the
second. But if you didn’t I’d like to know. In any event there seems to be
an absence of free will on the hero’s part in if his decision doesn’t
affect the outcome or he is powerless to choose other than he did. This
makes the distinction between murder and an agreement difficult to see.

The problem with society is not just that men too often feel free to
violently use women as objects without acknowledging their humanity. The
problem is also that people in general do not value human life enough. The
killing in “Diana” celebrates self-negation to the point of death in the
pursuit of the divine and the ultimate sexual experience. That may be an
interesting and historically precedented reason for celebrating such self-
negation to the point of death. Old romantic tales and religious myth are
rife with such stories. “Diana” offers a *relatively* more interesting and
positive reason for celebrating a violent death than the much more
pedestrian modern-day message that human life is worth nothing or killing
is fun to watch. But your story, like the subgenre of vampire erotica,
celebrates and eroticizes violent death and self-negation of victims just
the same.

And I think there’s too much of that in the world already. Whether it’s
some teenager volunteering to go off and kill and die for the
aggrandizement of his ethnic group or a widow in rural India throwing
herself on a bonfire, extreme self-negation is a serious source of what’s
wrong with the world. Perhaps that’s why hard S&M fiction disturbs me so
much, its celebration of self-negation and participation in the self-
negation of others.

The very fact that your story is so good disturbs me too, because I wonder
whether the pleasure thousands of others gain from reading it will
transfer to their feelings about the story’s premise regarding the value
of their own or others’ lives compared with attaining transcendent/peak
experiences through real life things like dangerous extreme sports, rough
sex, religious fervor, or drugs.

There is a movie about a group of twentysomething junkies called
Trainspotting. I think that movie is a pretty fair treatment of total
self-negation in pursuit of pleasure and the consequences thereof. The
opening monologue about the inanity of unquestioningly accepting the
limits of a bourgeois life makes a fair, if glib, case for rejecting that
existence. And indeed “Diana” does that too, in a way. But the movie goes
on to honestly explore the full consequences of choosing to reject
normality by taking up the life of a junkie, pursuing extremes of pleasure
at all costs. And, importantly, has its hero “choose life” at the end on
his own terms rather than simply acquiescing to it. [[An aside: Bruce
Sterling did an article for Wired on the Burning Man festival which
repeatedly discussed the ethos of “living life like it was a conscious
decision” which is relevant here.]] The fact that “Diana” doesn’t explore
the consequences of not choosing life is mainly because to explore the
effect of the hero’s death/disappearance on his friends and lover would be
totally unerotic. Thus, I think stimulating and enjoyable erotica cannot
deal with killing as part of the sex act in constructive ways. And I wish
people would quit making such erotica.

All that said, I do see how some female readers might find the story
empowering. The goddess Diana is basically omnipotent and the hero
powerless. The outcome of the story is uncontrovertible evidence of her
power. Her unearthly beauty has the power to make many man sacrifice
himself for her. She can kill with impunity and is (largely) free of a
conscience that would punish her where mortals could not. While I don’t
think these are good qualities to celebrate, the idea of the female being
in utter control of the fate of others rather than being the object of
control–as they all too often are in fiction and life–could be
liberating for women readers. Thus my condemnation of the story’s internal
moral universe has to be softened a tiny bit. Nevertheless, I know It’s
possible to write empowering role-reversal fiction (“Fleeing Gods”)
without resort to violence. Similarly, it’s possible to address self-
negation’s relationship to desire in a way that doesn’t celebrate it
(“Suicide Letter”). And even if you disagree with everything I’ve said I’m
sure the majority of your fiction will do just that, and that the world
will on balance be a better place because of your writing.

ps. Was the exchange of email in “Jinsong” fictional or real? I noted that
Jinsong has a Univ. of Chicago address. If it’s fictional, you and the co-
author are amazing at evoking a realistic tragedy. If it’s real, you and
the co-author are both emotionally tough and open about your pasts’ beyond
belief. I’m inclined to believe it’s fiction just because of the
foreshadowing and the “neatness” of the exchange.

pps. If you feel like sharing this with other people please remove my name
first. Thanks.


My response:

> That said I had very mixed feelings about “Diana”. While I think the
story

> up to the ending was one of the most perfect erotic stories I’ve ever
read

> (and that’s quite a few), I think fundamentally I was disturbed by
the

> story’s ending because of the supposed premise that killing can be
erotic.

> And moreover, that the absolute most erotic experience (a “godlike”
one)

> is inseparable from killing as part of the act. I’m guessing the
premise

> is that no mortal man has sex with Diana and lives, it’s part of her

> unchanging nature as a goddess.


You got most of it. I should perhaps clarify. In the old legends, no
mortal man could even see Diana naked — that was instant death. I
decided to continue that in this story, but with a twist. She is a cruel
and somewhat capricious goddess, and she has him marked for death. He
can’t avoid that. BUT, he doesn’t know that. She plays a game with him,
offering him illusory safety or certain willing death. He doesn’t know
that it’s only a game, though, and thus his choice is free. (I realize
this is somewhat arguable, but I was raised Catholic, and the long
discussions about predestination vs. free will are still with me :-). If
he had chosen safety, she would have had no mercy on him, and would have
simply killed him out of hand, most painfully, as is the ancient
punishment. By choosing her freely, he pleased her, and she steps outside
her own parameters (we never know why he moves her to this) to grant him
sex, a deeper communion, etc.

I think I could/should have made all of the above somewhat clearer. I was
strongly echoing a portion of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry, in
which a mortal chooses sex/death with a goddess for a greater good, but
using the Diana figure twisted the tale in what I hoped were interesting
ways. The rather spare style I was attempting did keep me from explaining
in full the above reasoning — I probably should have worked harder on
that section. I’m still not quite happy with the line, “Only that, love,
for the right answer”…or whatever it was exactly. I think I tried to
pack too much into it.

I didn’t really intend the killing to be erotic, though once you point it
out, I can see how people could take it that way. More — unimportant?
He’s chosen something for which he is willing to leave all of mortal life
behind. The death becomes incidental to him — which is part of the
reason I didn’t linger over describing it.

> ps. Was the exchange of email in “Jinsong” fictional or real? I noted
that

> Jinsong has a Univ. of Chicago address. If it’s fictional, you and the
co-

> author are amazing at evoking a realistic tragedy. If it’s real, you
and

> the co-author are both emotionally tough and open about your
pasts’ beyond

> belief. I’m inclined to believe it’s fiction just because of the

> foreshadowing and the “neatness” of the exchange.


Almost entirely fictional. It grew from “Confession”, which was a real
poem I posted to rec.arts.poems and Cecil’s first response to it — he
sent me back the next poem in the story. Sometime later I realized how
perfectly those could fit into a story, and I wrote the story, soliciting
further poems from Cecil and asking his advice on the male voice in the
prose sections. I enjoyed working on it very much.

A later response from S:


>She is a cruel

>and somewhat capricious goddess, and she has him marked for death.
He

>can’t avoid that. BUT, he doesn’t know that. She plays a game with
him,

>offering him illusory safety or certain willing death. He doesn’t
know

>that it’s only a game, though, and thus his choice is free. . . . If

>he had chosen safety, she would have had no mercy on him, and would
have

>simply killed him out of hand, most painfully, as is the ancient

>punishment. By choosing her freely, he pleased her, and she steps

>outside her own parameters

This is simultaneously more and less disturbing than my original
interpretation of what was going on. More disturbing because Diana is
substantially more evil than I had originally thought. Murdering all
mortal men who see her naked is different than genuinely offering every
one of them a deal of close contact with the divine for a very high price.
Which makes the story’s celebration of her power more troubling. While I
don’t expect women will read this story and suddenly feel better about
murder, I suppose it could make exercising power without conscience a bit
more seductive. And while while women should be given more opportunities
to feel comfortable exercising power, a more important goal is that power
should never be seperated from conscience. I won’t go into it here, but
early on in Plato’s _Republic_ there’s a very relevant discussion of why
gods should never be described as doing evil. And in case you wondered,
unlike Plato/Socarates, I don’t advocate censorship as a way of achieving
that end.

But the interpretation you intended is less disturbing because from a
consequentialist point of view the protagonist actually made the best
choice he could given his true options (rather than those falsely offered
to him). The fact that he was dead no matter what makes his self-negation
*in this instance* beside the point since it didn’t result in any worse
consequences for him or those who survived him than choosing life would
have.

But I’m not sure how committed I am to such a strict consequentailism.
There is a story in a book called _Just and Unjust Wars_ about a german
soldier in the occupation of the netherlands in World War II. Aparently
some resistance fighters had done something to the germans and the germans
were getting ready to kill a lot of innocent dutch in reprisal. But when
the firing line formed up, one soldier decided he could not, would not,
participate. This led his captain to threaten him with throwing him in
with the dutch to be shot unless he followed orders. Much loud argument
and high emotion ensued but in the end the soldier wouldn’t obey, was
thrown in with the crowd and killed.

If I was really a dedicated consequentialist I’d probably be ambivalent
about this soldier’s act since it isn’t totally clear if the suffering his
sacrifce cost his family and friends was worth it for the power of the
symbol of human compassion he created which may have influenced some
unknown others later. But I’m not ambivalent. That man was one of the real
heroes of the war and I wish there were more people like him.

This of course gets back to my comments in the first message about
celebrating self-negation to the point of death being bad. It occured to
me as I wrote that that there are plenty examples of sacrificing one’s own
life for another, or maybe even some causes, which might be worth
celebrating, or at least memorializing. But I think there’s a difference
that seperates these from the sort of self-negation I saw in my initial
interpretation of your story, in widows who immolate themselves, in
junkies, and in those who join a war motivated by hate.

Namely that sacrificing one’s life because the thing being sacrificed for
is so important to that person’s life (respecting other human beings,
protecting loved ones, etc.) is very different from sacrificing one’s life
in the pursuit of intense experiences because one finds one’s own life
tedious, empty, and unimportant. I guess I’m a humanist deep down and find
self-destruction in the pursuit of the transcendental to be wrong for
the priorities such a project implies.


>I didn’t really intend the killing to be erotic, though once you point
it

>out, I can see how people could take it that way. More —
unimportant?

>He’s chosen something for which he is willing to leave all of mortal
life

>behind. The death becomes incidental to him — which is part of the

>reason I didn’t linger over describing it.

I think that’s more accurate than my initial reading. It’s not so much
that I found the kill*ing* be portrayed as erotic but that a kill*er* is
portrayed as erotic in substantial part because of her power to take life
and make others sacrifice theirs. I just discovered Diana is a killer at
the moment the killing was taking place and confused the two. Again, the
role of utterly self-negating victim is eroticized as well as part of an
inseperable pair. Both are roles that have horrible consequences outside
of fantasy and seeing those roles celebrated is troubling.

We live in a culture where women try to marry serial killers like Ted
Bundy on death row, people root for the protagonists of the movie Natural
Born Killers, and some wear T-shirts with pictures of Charlie Manson on
them. So now is probably not a good time to eroticize killers and
victims.

A final response — to me, Diana is amoral — I was working with the
old Greek paradigms, in which the morality of humans simply doesn’t apply
to gods. I was messing with Diana enough as is — to really give her a
conscience would have not only been to create a different character than
the original goddess, but to undermine the potential for change inherent
in the last paragraphs of the story. So to me there is no ethical dilemma
— her actions are simply not supposed to fall into the realm of the
ethical/moral. I can understand S’s reading though, and I do remain
somewhat concerned by the question of what other readers will see in
this. (S’s final (?) response follows — he wanted the last word.
🙂

Some day after I get enough mail from people who disagree with me, I may
write up a summary of some of their arguments. I suspect right now one
frequent argument will be that those fond of violence fantasies (even
amoral, immoral, and sadomasochistic violence) don’t have to apologize for
what turns them on, and what they feel like reading and writing, any more
than other fetishists do . . . as long as they personally keep it
affecting the way *they* treat other people in real life.

And I think there’s a grain of truth in there somewhere. Although such a
narrowly individualistic code of responsibility disturbs me.

I’d guess there’s an argument to be made too about celebrations of
evil/amorality and human fragility being cathartic, safely letting people
explore their dark impulses and thereby gain a better understanding and
control of them. But that’s another argument I personally don’t resonate
with, so I’ll let someone else try to elaborate on it.

Finally, as to Diana being amoral and it being sort of unfair to judge her
by human morality. That’s sort of what I meant about being a my being a
humanist. Yes, I can well imagine that someone with the powers and body
of experiences of a god would probably have an alien moral code that
doesn’t value human life as much as the typical human does. And I can even
imagine, as P.J. Farmer did in a weird little coda to the novel _Stations
of the Nightmare_ (title?) that if gods existed, they could be no
different than what their believers conceive of them as, and thus gods
would not really be responsible for their acts. And yes, there might be
very interesting stories to tell about the interaction of these
frightening gods with mortals. But I’m more concerned about the the effect
of the story on the human world around me than the aesthetic quality of
the story itself in this case.

Of course I have the bias of being a critic and philosopher, not an
artist.

The reason Plato/Socarates gives for banning myths of gods doing evil is
that people admire gods for their superhuman status, they want to be like
them, even if the gods are evil. A mythos of purely good divine beings
might well make for aesthetically/psychologically weak and unsatisfying
myths. (Indeed I think “Diana” is a more aesthetic story than much of
your other fiction including “Suicide Letter” and “Fleeing Gods”) But
aesthetic quality is not Plato/Socrates’ concern, managing human desire so
that we can live togther well is. And that’s a concern I happen to share,
even if I have a few reservations with such a utilitarian concept of what
art is supposed to accomplish. – S