How do we dream freedom from a world that orders our dreaming?
I’ve been really stuck on a concept from this summer, introduced to me by Johanna Kluger, one of the panelists at the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance’s (IASPR) 2025 conference: the idea of coercive worldbuilding. Kluger, in her research, traces the “mate or die” trope present in many alien or science-fiction romance novels, particularly the TikTok-viral series Ice Planet Barbarians. Kluger essentially argues that in the writing in these novels, consent is made wholly unavailable, because the survival of the female main characters necessitates their engagement in sexual and romantic relationships; in other words, these fantastical, intergalactic worlds are intentionally built coercively. These novels, although undoubtedly problematic in myriad ways, cast a mirror on the coerciveness of our own world; consent, offered up as a saving grace for sexual liberation, is an ill-constituted paradigm in a world structured by coercion, and I believe coercive worldbuilding reveals the fallacies of consent and choice.
In Jennifer Armentrout’s romantic fantasy novel From Blood and Ash, the female main character (FMC), Poppy, and the male main character (MMC), Hawke, begin a multiple-book-long romance. One plot point in this book is the appearance of another male character who antagonizes Poppy, often forcing her into unwanted sexual scenarios and generally disregarding her personal autonomy. However, I find it interesting that Hawke does nearly the same things as this other character, who is painted (rightly so) as completely evil—Hawke touches and kisses Poppy without asking, consistently sexualizes her, etc. But because Poppy feels good about it and is attracted to him, it doesn’t feel, to the reader, like dubious- or non-consensual behavior. Although From Blood and Ash doesn’t have exactly the same kind of coercive worldbuilding that Kluger spoke of in her talk, it feels like the narrator is almost imbuing a sort of authorial omnipotent agency into female desire as a coping mechanism for the FMC’s general lack of choice and agency. It is important to note that Poppy, in the books, is the kingdom’s “Maiden,” a pure, chaste figure of the realm, fiercely desired by nearly everyone. She is kept covered and out of view, and her sexuality is made into a tantalizing, forbidden force. Her eventual sexual relationship with Hawke becomes construed as her overcoming and resisting her social positioning, reinforcing the narrative agency imbued in her desire. I am still undecided about whether this authorial choice sends the right message or not, but it definitely rearticulates the messiness of consent and sexual desire in a patriarchal world.
Coercive romantic worlds seem to, for me, dramatize the conflict between our heightened awareness of consent and the utter dearth of autonomy and agency for so many people. This conflict always makes me return to the reproductive justice critique of choice rhetoric in the reproductive rights movement. Reproductive justice is a framework that has been built off of critiques, primarily from Southern women-of-color activists, of the reproductive rights movement, arguing that instead of an ideology centered around bodily choice and rights, we should center reproductive health around ideas of access and agency. Reproductive justice activists argue that choice is a limiting concept in a world in which not everyone has equal access to choose. These activists highlight historical and contemporary realities like the Mississippi appendectomy, the forced sterilization of Black women throughout the South in the twentieth century (one of many forced sterilization projects enforced due to eugenics and racism), and the obscenely high maternal mortality rate of Black women (three times higher than than of white women). Activists generally critique the pro-choice focus on abortion, arguing that reproductive health, especially for women of color, encompasses much more. SisterSong, one of the most prominent reproductive justice organizations, defines reproductive justice broadly as the “right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” Although the switch from reproductive rights to reproductive justice may seem, on the surface, like merely a semantic shift, it is a vital and groundbreaking movement, and, once again, highlights the limitations of thinking about the world purely through the lens of choice and consent, particularly for Black women.
Frank Wilderson, in his essay “Reciprocity and Rape: Blackness and the Paradox of Sexual Violence,” further emphasizes the impossibility of consent in a world wholly constructed by the denial of humanity to Black people. He begins by underscoring how people—especially white people—assume that consent is an “immaterial inheritance,” inherently (105). However, using Saidiya Hartman’s theorization on Black subjugation, Wilderson argues that “consent is not constitutive of Black subjugation; ergo, the sexual violence against Black women cannot even be theorized as a violation. What happens, then, when Black women (and men) are raped if Blackness and consent cannot be conjoined?” (107). And, furthermore, he posits that, “Black women have no ontological capacity to be considered as subjugated in a world that necessitates their nonbeing” (108). While Wilderson operates entirely in an Afropessimistic theoretical mode, and is often dismissed because of his extreme pessimism, he raises a vital point. What becomes of consent in a world that ontologically constructs Blackness as Other, in opposition to the category of Human? Wilderson demonstrates that the coercive worldbuilding of Kluger’s romance books, seemingly far away and fantastical, is really just a reflection of the coercive logics of our own world.
In a class semester, we unpacked Wilderson’s essay. I struggled with his seemingly uncompromising dismissal of the possibility of consent for Black women, as it felt almost like permissiveness for sexual violence, since everything’s already a wash. My professor hmm’d at my comments and questions, before delving into a far more generous reading of Wilderson’s work than I had originally allowed. He argued that the important thing was to focus on Wilderson’s argument about how the world is constructed around these categories of Human and nonbeing, white and Black, and how that impacts consent, rather taking his words as permitting violence. Furthermore, he explained that Wilderson is worrying over the same issue as I was—if consent is impossible for Black women, how will they be protected from sexual violence? Wilderson, however, does this by exposing the fallacy of consent as a natural inheritance. Regardless, we must continue to exist within these coercive worlds, deal with the murkiness of consent (or the lack thereof), and go on to dream another world. My professor’s words took me back to Kluger’s talk, and eventually to the writing of this essay, here.
However, how does one dream of another world, one not constituted by racism and violence and subjugation? Even when authors write romantic fantasy novels, they exist within the prison of coercive worlds. We can’t even conceptualize another world, because our world is wholly ordered by these coercive logics. So, I return to the question posed at the beginning of this essay: How do we dream freedom from a world that orders our dreaming?
To answer that particular question, I bring myself back to yet another talk that has stuck with me. Imani Jacqueline Brown, this past November, gave a talk at NOLA Freedom Forum entitled Ecological Solidarity. She walked us through Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, a strip along the Mississippi so toxic from industrial plants and oil refineries that cancer and disease is rife. Brown took us back centuries, showing the slave plantations that chillingly mirror the industrial plants along Cancer Alley. She said: If toxic air is a monument to slavery, how do we take it down?
Brown explained to us how she traced the locations of enslaved people’s burial sites through archival maps and photos of old plantation sites, finding small copses of trees among otherwise monocultural fields. She found that below these sacred gardens laid the bodies of enslaved Louisianian ancestors, their corpses literally nourishing the land above. She wanted to protect these enclaves from the encroachment of the oil industry, the evil force that has already undone so much of Louisiana. These industrial facilities are not allowed to be built on top of graveyards, so these sites remain safe, for now, because of Brown. After the talk, a Palestinian woman in the audience tearfully thanked Brown. She said that Brown was a testament to the importance of intergenerational solidarity. She said that Brown was evidence that as hard as the state may try, someone will remember. Someone will always remember. We will not let our family be buried under the rubble, for resorts to be built on top of their bones, to be forgotten, she said. It may be years and years later, but someone, somewhere, will map the contours of their burial sites, will find the leaves that grow from their skin. Brown, she said, gave her hope.
Another person asked Brown how she worked, doing this expository research within an institution of higher learning that she opposed on many fronts. She said that she was in the belly of the beast, but, she said, the belly of the beast is my home. And, she said, I will let no one take it from me.
To begin and end her talk, Brown showed a map of all of the oil plants throughout Louisiana. The dots of Chevron, Shell, BP took over the screen. Then, the map behind turned black, and glowing white lines began to splay out between the dots. Slowly but surely, the ugly display of greed and demand for capital became a stunning constellation, glowing bright. Brown said, to us, we must invent new cosmologies.
This coercive world is our beast. And here we sit, warm and tight and constricted, in its belly. This is our home, and I, like Brown, will let no one take it from me.
Maybe this world orders our dreaming. Maybe we cannot escape its coercive logics. But maybe we can. Maybe we need to dream constellations out of oil maps, trees out of death, and freedom out of coercion. And maybe, just maybe, that freedom’s already there, and we must dare to find it.
Works Cited
“Mississippi Appendectomy: Research Starters: EBSCO Research.” EBSCO, http://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/women-s-studies-and-feminism/mississippi-appendectomy.
“Reproductive Justice.” Sister Song, http://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice.
Wilderson, Frank B. “Reciprocity and Rape: Blackness and the Paradox of Sexual Violence.” Women & Performance, vol. 27, no. 1, 2017, pp. 104–11, https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2017.1282122.
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