The term ryona almost exclusively refers to the action of a distressed woman being abused by a man. In a case where the target is male, it is more commonly called gyaku-ryona (逆リョナ, gyaku-ryona, "reverse ryona"), and generally implies content with a female assailant and a male victim. The genre focuses exclusively on fictional characters in these situations. In some cases, the perpetrator could be a monster or other non-human being.
Because the fetish is very broad in scope, it often contrasted with or incorporates other, more common, fetishes such as humiliation, sexual sadism and rape pornography, in that ryona is a complex and nuanced voyeuristic fantasy fetish, a romanticized subgenre aimed at a female target demographic and are almost always of non-explicit sexual nature. Unlike the genre of guro (グロ) or Ero guro (エログロ), ryona never progresses to the point of lasting physical harm or death.
