If you have delved into the depths of AO3 and Wattpad, you may have come across the infamous smut. Be it Drarry making out in the 3rd-floor bathroom or a self-insert of Harry Styles showering (no pun intended) the reader with love or Eren Yaeger having a different kind of rumbling in the survey corps’ dorm.

But the popularity of these smut fanfictions doesn’t primarily depend on the fictitious people about whom the stories are written (except Harry but the chances of getting him are less than zero so we might as well), there is something more to explore between the lines that quiver loins.

And that’s consent. More importantly, explicit and mutual consent. With characters asking for explicit permission like ‘Can I kiss you?’, ‘Is this okay?’, ‘We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to’ or just a simple ‘May I’, tells the reader that consent isn’t a unicorn and saying yes or no is a concrete option. Moreover, that choice is accepted and respected. Furthermore, saying no doesn’t end up in the characters getting angry or leaving, rather, it leads to a healthy and mature conversation or perhaps trying out something else.

Now if we look at porn, while most cases seem consensual, there is a lack of explicit verbal consent or even gestures that show that it’s okay for one person to toss around or even bend that other in positions or play out certain kinks and fetishes. But that’s not the end of the grey area of consent in porn. With the power imbalance, the top seemingly makes all the decisions, porn has effectively created a misrepresentation of kinks such as dom/sub and the consent in such relationships. On the other hand, smut, while emphasizing the power dynamic, doesn’t let that take away from creating a safe and consensual space for the submissive.

Unlike porn, smut underlines in red safe words and doesn’t shy away from actively using them. This plays an integral role for people suffering from trauma to navigate sex better and create a safe space for them to understand their fantasies and sexuality.

For decades, smut and fanfiction have served as a space for people, especially women and the queer community to explore their fantasies and understand their sexuality without feeling ashamed. Be it verbal consent or simply implications by looking up and waiting for the person to say yes or just fiddling with their partner’s shirt until the latter agrees to it. Through smut, the so-called “taboo” or “weird fantasies” normalize these as just kinks and fetishes that sexually excite people, while also simply saying, ‘Hey, you like this? That’s great! Here are seventy other fanfics with just that.’

Smut doesn’t see sex as sex, it sees it as a form of pleasure wherein both (or more) parties benefit mutually. Sex is still, across many countries, a taboo subject where it’s seen as a tool to make babies or exists only for male pleasure. However, smut breaks down these notions with one female orgasm after the other. In a world where consent sits like an urban legend, smut allows women to not just pleasure themselves but also tell them that healthy sex involves sex from both (or more) parties and that they deserve to feel good.

Nonetheless, with smut, discovering fantasies doesn’t come with heavy discretion and warning tags so that people who aren’t comfortable with certain kinks or roleplays don’t indulge in them. This is crucial for people suffering from trauma to understand what they want from sex, boundaries and consent to navigate this space.

So a simple way to differentiate smut from porn and why is it preferred by a majority of women and the queer community is because it’s written from a female gaze that focuses on female pleasure or pleasure where masculinity isn’t toxic and fragile like their dicks and strong enough to last for more than 3 minutes.