Undersquid asked about consent in size fantasy, and I have many thoughts on this and related issues. As always, this is just how I experience and enjoy size fantasy. You might disagree with some or all of this, and that does not make either of us “wrong.”
I’ve come to enjoy a much larger variety of scenarios than I did when I first started exploring size fantasy, but non-consensual interaction (actual or implied) has always been a part of it. It took me a long time to acknowledge this, and I’m still struggling with self-acceptance. Sharing these thoughts online with other size fantasists and hearing their experiences has been absolutely critical.
As with the “origin(s)” of my size fantasies in general, it’s impossible for me to say which factors are primarily responsible for my enjoyment of non-consensual scenarios. I can only chronicle my experiences as they have accumulated and informed my desires. Are the oldest preferences the most fundamental, or are the newest enthusiasms the most immediate? I couldn’t say for certain. It’s a moving target. Watch your step!
Fairy Tales
Everyone has been a child, and so everyone knows what it is like to have larger beings physically handle them and use their size to impose their will upon them. It’s the original power dynamic, universally appreciated, which seems to be why size difference is so common in fairy tales. Giant creatures are always trying to catch people, usually to eat them. Fairies and leprechauns typically grant wishes when caught, but everyone knows that tiny captives can be used to satisfy baser appetites. These are all non-consensual encounters, exchanges made under duress.
I’m no literature scholar, but I think an attractive element of horror stories is that they allow us to enjoy violations of what we normally consider to be civilized behavior without condoning them. Rape, murder, torture, cannibalism, monstrosities of all kinds—our imaginations cannot let these alone, and we need a way to process them. You know how you feel cheated by a monster movie if no one gets eaten? I feel the same way about a size fantasy if no one grabs a tiny without their consent.
As early as age six, I was enthralled by the idea of physically controlling people small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I knew enough about human nature to appreciate that such a scenario—whether I was giant or tiny—would have grisly results. Nothing seemed more horrific, or more delightful, than a tiny being popped into a giant’s mouth.
“Ravishing”
Just because a practice or belief is widespread, long-standing, traditional, or reflected in cherished myths and stories does not mean that it is acceptable or desirable or worth preserving. Nor should we conclude that, because “everyone does X,” X is therefore “natural.” It is nevertheless a very common theme in our civilization that romance and/or sex consists of one party aggressively pursuing another party, who eventually submits to the aggressor’s desires. It is also “traditional” that a perquisite of success/power is getting your pick of sexual partners, who cannot truly be said to freely consent. Those who are pursued are told to value their ability to “inflame” the desires of predators, that this too is a form of power. This is the eroticization of power differential, and it is inescapable in our culture.
Succumbing to temptation is a nigh-universal trope in romantic fiction. What is more tempting than a tiny person, helpless in your grasp? Many connoisseurs of rape fantasies attest that it is the loss of control, the compulsion to violate boundaries, that makes the fantasy arousing. As some who is constantly tempted, who thinks about taking without asking, it is both comforting and flattering to recognize these desires in someone else. I know exactly what I would do if I had a tiny wriggling in my hand. Looking up into a giant’s eyes and seeing the same appetites, it’s all I can do not to taunt them.
Back when I thought I was the only person in the world with these fantasies, I imagined trying to share them with a girl. The conversation always stumbled when this hypothetical girlfriend asked, “You want me to rape you?” I would have been mortified had a girl told me she had fantasies of me raping her. I was convinced that enjoying the fantasy of rape (from any perspective) necessarily meant I wanted rape to happen in real life. The shame surrounding this lasted a tragically long time, and for years I just told myself that I wanted to be cared for and protected and cuddled, and the whole giantess sex part was gentle and playful. And I simply repressed into oblivion the notion that I might want to put tiny women in my mouth without their consent.
These days, I have a better appreciation of how people (including me!) can enjoy transgressive fantasies without endorsing the same behavior in real-life. The model of negotiated roleplay in the BDSM community is illustrative. Hearing similar experiences from other size fantasists online (particularly women) has helped a lot with accepting these feelings in myself. The wider variety of perspectives on size fantasy that I encounter, the more I understand my own. I remain profoundly grateful for this opportunity.
That’s Big Of You
I’ve often said that aside from the size difference itself, I prefer my size fantasies to be as realistic as possible. That most certainly includes a plausible range of reactions to encountering a tiny person, from disbelief to curiosity to concern to indifference to mischievousness to cruelty. Bullying and abuse of the physically vulnerable is a depressingly common experience in real life, and no one disputes what tinies would be in for in a mixed-size society. Perhaps worse than individual acts of giant depravity would be systemic dehumanization and disregard, “It doesn’t matter, they’re just a tiny.”
Not only does including such abuse make my size fantasies more vivid for me, it also heightens the value of non-abusive size relationships when they do occur. It was something of a revelation when I realized that many of my shrunken-man fantasies corresponded to the classic “damsel in distress” trope. I wanted to be bullied and humiliated and abused and raped, and then I wanted to be rescued by a giantess who took care of me. I later learned about size fantasists who themselves have a rescue fetish, and I wished I had met them a lot earlier in my fetish “career.”
In the case of people suddenly thrust into a mixed-size encounter (recently shrunk or stolen by giants), the slow normalization and acceptance of their subordinate status is something to savor. Getting used to being handled, finding things to do while trapped in a purse for hours, learning how their giant captors like to be served, all these casual degradations are details that help establish a world where I recognize myself and others in all our giant and tiny variations.
As a world-building tactic, using the nomenclature and euphemisms of real-life injustices to describe giant-tiny interactions both drives home the subordination as well as satirizes our actual society (Swift knew what he was about). Mirroring real-life social welfare agencies by describing half-hearted attempts to place tinies in “caring homes” when we all know what can happen in such homes is both poignant and horrifying. Me likey.
Being Giant Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry
Giants upend everything. No rules apply to them. Inhibitions are forgotten. Scores are settled. When they ask a tiny’s permission, it’s almost always rhetorical. Giants are brazen. Giants mock the established order. Gods and worshippers, owners and pets. Just look at them walk (giants never have to run anywhere).
They might have to set a few examples, but sooner or later everyone acknowledges that giants get to do what they want. In time, tinies even come to expect and enjoy being dominated. It might not always be “respectful” or “fair,” but everyone knows it’s for the best. I recognize myself in these arrangements, from either perspective, and I’ve arrived at a sort of peace with why I enjoy it. These parts of me insist on creating room in the universe for themselves, and those creations are my stories.
I love seeing giants awaken to their liberties and lack of inhibition. Transgression, violation of boundaries, is simply thrilling. When it is a result of a sudden transformation, when normal-sized people are suddenly and unexpectedly made dramatically larger or smaller, the shock and forced re-negotiation of relationships is savagely delicious.
The attraction of dominant-submissive relationships is well-known, or at least more well-known than that of different-size relationships. The tastes of control and humiliation are part of our emotional palate. I’m not a practitioner, but I understand that BDSM roleplay relies in part on signifying attire, posture, and most of all language. All of these are used to establish subordination, to show where everyone is in the hierarchy. In different-size relationships, the subordination is self-evident. There is no need for humiliating language or submissive postures; the brute physical overwhelmingness of the giant says all that needs to be said. Just making eye contact puts you in your place.
And that’s how even the most respectful, gentle, protective giants cannot avoid reminding all tinies that domination is inescapable. Even when every tiny is cared for, the threat of giant physical control never disappears. That’s why a giant grabbing a tiny and silencing their protests by stuffing them in a pocket doesn’t feel like assault. It feels like justice.
Anyway, those are my most recent thoughts on non-consensual size fantasy. I’d love to hear what you all think. I’m obviously only an authority on myself, if that. What role, if any, does consent play in your size fantasies?
Originally posted: 19 Apr 2018
El Amante Menguante 