Any chance we could alias "sleep_molestation"->"somnophilia" instead of "somnophilia"->"sleep_molestation"? That or maybe there are other ways to handle what the problems I encounter below. If not that, or if I'm missing something, then why is it called "sleep_molestation?"
I noticed that it used to be called "somnophilia", and that seems so much more appropriate AND orthogonal AND what I want to search for.
In my mind, "sleep_molestation" = "somnophilia" + "molestation", with "molestation" suggesting non-consent. And if it's in the context of sex (e.g. penetrative), then I parse "molestation" as "rape". And it feels really super awkward to tag something as being rapey when it's probably ambiguous.
Like, I fantasize about getting pounded in the pussy while asleep. If it were possible and circumstances were right, I'd ask someone to do that to me. That's my fantasy. But I'd rather not have some stranger rando drug me and do whatever-the-heck-ever. That's NOT my fantasy.
With the way things are right now, it seems really hard to have anything make it into my strike zone without having "molestation" leering at me. It takes me out of the scenario and then it feels like I'm watching someone get molested/raped. Ewwww. (I mean, that's fine if it's your thing; I completely understand how kink can do what it do. And I can fantasize about being raped too, but it's kinda circumstantial and I'm not always in the mood. Also my get-raped fetish doesn't seem to mix well with the somnophilia fetish either, for whatever reasons.)
From a more mathy perspective:
- "sleep_molestation" is not orthogonal to "somnophilia" or "molestation", but "somnophilia" is orthogonal to "molestation".
- The basis of "somnophilia (on/off)" | "molestation (on/off)" can represent every possible combination.
- The basis of "sleep_molestation (on/off)" | "molestation (on/off)" can only represent 3 out of the 4 possible combinations. Using this choice of basis, it is impossible to represent the "somnophilia ON" with "molestation OFF" combination (specifically because "molestation" is redundant with "sleep_molestation").
I'm one of the unfortunate people that lives in the exclusion zone of that impossible combination, so I'm here to complain about it ;)
I worry that this won't go well long-term, because people tagging will take "sleep_molestation" at face value and neglect to put any molestation/rape/whatever tags in that they might have otherwise, or may even assume it's an implied tag when it isn't. So then searching for "sleep_molestation -molestation" won't work; it'll mostly include a mix of everything because only a handful of people will understand that "sleep_molestation" isn't actually a tag about "molestation". Or, like in a case I already experienced, I'll just miss the "sleep_molestation" tag entirely because I wouldn't have been interested in that. Instead I'd just leave the ambiguous things with ambiguity, because that permits space for my fantasies, but then there's nothing to indicate sleepsex was involved.
To understand the history a bit, I read this 2023 thread about aliasing "somnophilia" -> "sleep_molestation":
topic #24615
That explanation sounds like "it's because pixiv calls it that", but then I go to the pixiv page and it's called "somnophilia" instead of "sleep_molestation". So I can't understand it in terms of the "it's what pixiv does" reasoning, because that seems to go the other way: following pixiv's example (and e.g. for easing tag importing or w/e), we'd show it as "somnophilia".
I'd also like to mention the "consentacles"->"consensual_tentacles" tag. I found that pretty cool. And I don't see any tags for sleep that are analogous (but feel free to inform me if I'm missing something). That said, I wouldn't want to do "somnophilia" the same way...
It feels suboptimal that the "consentacles"|"tentacle(s|sex)" basis can't encode ambiguity as distinct from nonconsent. That's annoying for me, because I'm OK with either ambiguity or explicit consent, but may want to filter out non-consent. The "somnophilia"|"molestation (or rape)" basis can't encode ambiguity as distinct from consent, but that works fine for me because I almost never need to distinguish between ambiguity and consent. I'll just imagine the ambiguity as being consentual in my own head, and that works. Maybe it would be helpful to have some kind of "explicit_consent" tag, but that sounds like a lot of work that I don't want to ask anyone to do, and also a completely separate issue from the "sleep_molestation" vs "somnophilia" thing.
OK OK I don't want to get too distracted with "consentacles" or, uh, trinary consentuality. I mentioned the consentacles because I think they are a good precedent, but also I think that we can potentially do better with somnophilia vs sleep_molestation (possibly just by aliasing "sleep_molestation"->"somnophilia" and using help text for "somnophilia" to encourage people to add a "molestation"/"rape"/whatever tag if it applies?).
Sorry for the longtext. Also please take this as feedback/request; I don't want to tell anyone what to do. Danbo is good, and I will Find A Way, even if suboptimal. Thank you. <3