I think that all is in your use of the word "awareness".
It's not a question of morality, globally we aren't less morale than others just because we are perverts. It's not either a question of knowledge, we know what rape is, what it imply, and that "it's bad". But there's a difference between knowing and being hit in the face by the reality.
And it's what #MeToo did. It hit us right in the face with a reality that for once wasn't reported by some third party, but by the victims. A reality sometimes expressed in a so raw way that it became for us the crude reality it is for them. And all this said with their words, therefore with their suffering, their trauma and their cries.
Take what Evan Rachel Wood said, way more than once, by example. I'm fully aware that conjugal rapes exist, and I know well that it's not because she stop resisting that it's not a rape ; it's self preservation, since there's clearly no way to escape this terrible fate, let it end as fast as possible and with the less possible physical damages. But reading all she had to say on the subject, suddenly I questioned myself about what rape can be ; I don't talk here about the act itself, but its premises, its context. And, more important, its context as seen from the rapist side. What I mean here, is that the victim can be totally under your control. Intentionally, or not, brainwashed, letting you do whatever you want, not because she want it, but because she think that she have to, that she need to.
Take all those female fans that "throw themselves in the bed of their favorite singer" by example (the quotation marks being here to describe it as it was perceived for decades). They have the chance of their life, their idol agree to met them in person. Think about it, imagine that you're in your teenage or young adult years, and the person you admire more than anyone else agree to met you face to face in private ? Would you say no ? Obviously not, and neither they did. Then come the moment where this idol start to go too far. How many of those fans were, at the moment it happened, lucid enough to see it as what it was, an aggression, and not as something you've to pass through, some kind of mandatory price to pay for this opportunity they had ?
Therefore, how many of them have been "raped with their consent" (please women, excuse-me for this really disturbing, to write and surely even more to read, expression) ? Because it's what happened, they didn't wanted to have sex with this person, still they weren't in a mental state where they could have denied it. They didn't said "no", they didn't tried to resist, at no time they said or did something that can be seen as a deny of consent ; yet they don't wanted it, they would have preferred for it to not happen.
And when you realize this, when your awareness arise, you start looking at games with other eyes. You start, consciously or not, to feel uneasy when the game you play don't express some kind of consent. And I don't talk about a verbal consent, but when the girl let the MC have sex with her, and seem to fear the MC in any other situation, it start to be really unwholesome.
I have nothing against corruption, rough sex and all. I corrupted by wife, or perhaps is it her who corrupted me, but whatever the way I treated her during sex, at the end we were both happy, lovely, and full tenderness with each other. It was clearly and truly what she wanted, and I think that it's what #MeToo is changing in the scene. We don't care how dark can be the sex in the game, as long as the story show us that it's truly what the girl want. But if there's too much doubts, or if it's clearly not what she want, then we are disturbed, and decide to play something else.
Not just because we understand that something is wrong, but because we've read victims talk about it. It's something to know that "it shouldn't happen like that in real life", but it's another thing to know it
and to have, in a part of our unconscious memory, those words we've read about it. #MeToo increased our empathy. We don't anymore have a blurry idea of what rape is and what are the consequences, we have precise description of both...
In the end, the scene is just adjusting itself. There will still be corruption games. There will still be hypno games. There will still be hard BDSM, sex slavery and all. But the way they'll be presented will change, and is even starting to change. Outside of these corruption, hypno, whatever, scenes, the girls will be seen as happy, as really loving the MC. Yes, we are corrupting them. Yes, we are playing with their mind, but we are doing it in a healthy way, we are improving their life, and not turning it into an unsaid hell.
OP named
Midlife Crisis as a game having a Male Dominant MC, seeming to oppose it as the reluctant MC he talk about in the start of his comment. I have to fully disagree here. The MC is a pervert, and he don't hesitate to assert is dominance
if it's what the girl want, like he don't hesitate to corrupt his wife,
because he know that she want it.
But in the same time, he clearly fall on the "reluctant" side. There isn't a release where he don't insist to remember to the girls that at anytime they can say "no", and that, then, he will immediately stop. He always ask before doing something new, or at least let to the girl the time to decide if she want it or not.
In a way, he is the archetype of the future MCs in corruption games. They'll not hesitate a single second to corrupt the girls, but they'll do it only if the girls effectively want to be corrupted.
