Powerful women made dumb, weak and powerless through hypnosis/brainwashing
It usually goes something like this “he smirked at the empty stare of his former boss. She’d always looked down on him, he’d thought of her as a complete bitch until he gave her the headphones that reprogrammed her mind. Now she wasn’t going to tell him how to do his job and he could enjoy his dumb drooling bimbo whenever he wanted” a crude example but I’m sure if you’re into hypno and brainwashing kink you’ll know what I mean.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the powerful turned powerless thing and obviously I love brainwashing… but still I can’t be the only one that gets a bit turned off by the amount of stories that centre around a strong female character who does nothing wrong except being “bossy” or “bitchy”, being fixed by a male character who doesn’t like the fact that she’s his boss… In the real world women have a significantly more difficult time making it to the top than men do, and the traits that in men are deemed “powerful” and “assertive” are flipped as “bitchy” and “bossy” for women.
So for all the people that write hypno and brainwashing smut (which obviously I love, hence why I come across it so often) can we move away from the misogynistic overtones please? I understand some are into bimbofication but there must be a more creative way of doing this… Take the same two characters but in this story the guy brainwashes his powerful sexy boss because he knows she needs to unwind… or maybe we could have a woman ‘tist controlling her male boss from time to time… be creative folks!!!
Just a thought! Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?
Been saying this for YEARS (along with “why is submission called weak?” but that’s a derail). YES. YES.
i agree with this completely.
i know a few people who are into bimboification, and it works for them, but it’s not my button. i just wish there were more EH writers who explored other aspects.
I personally hate that aspect of the stories where women are broken into dumb sex slaves because they deserved it, for whatever reason.
i love women-turned-into-bimbo stories, along with dark destruction of the personality stories, and other stories that – without the sexual element – would clearly be horror stories.
But I love it when the woman is the hero of the story (and they lose anyway). When the author clearly is not judging the character of the woman – and maybe it’s her strengths that are the reason for her downfall. When what is happening is not fair, or “deserved”.
But too many stories are as the OP describes, women being put in their “proper place” because “they deserve it” and always for misogynistic or anti-feminist reasons as described by proudlionessofthewolf. I’m not saying the (usually male, usually “dom”) authors of these stories are anti-feminist, just that they are unconsciously reinforcing misogynistic stereotypes, mainly out of laziness. (Though of course, some number of them do believe women are actually inferior too.)
Many of these stories have no characterisation of the women victims – they are just “bossy bitches” and then “sluts” and the writers describe what is done to them and not what they feel or experience.
I think its totally possible to have stories where strong, powerful, assertive women are reduced to submissive slaves, and avoid falling into those lazy stereotypes. But you have to recognise what you’re writing is essentially a horror story (albeit an erotic one), and is not something to aspire to. You have to acknowledge the person responsible is the villain of the piece. It’s just a story where the bad guy wins.
<3 Thanks for enunciating this.
Misogyny kink bothers me deeply, and yeah though I understand it’s some folks’ thing, it’s very not mine. I also am not ever sure how deep that goes – like, are they just aping those ideas for smut, or do they actually think them? Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it not being obvious is kind of the point, but… yeah, very not my thing.
It’s a difficult line to thread, for sure. Generally, in my writing, I’ve dealt with it by using a lot of victim POV (which, given my particular kink is more about altering thoughts and feelings than D/S dynamics, is hotter for me anyway) and making the controller straightforwardly villainous (which isn’t really hard, given that mind-controlling an unwilling subject is textbook villainy).