[content warning: literally this whole post is about getting off on the idea of raping people]
So, you get off on thoughts of raping people.
You probably feel guilty. You might worry that you might do something violent in real life. You might even hate yourself.
Those thoughts are normal. If there’s someone who fantasizes about raping people and hasn’t had occasional feelings of guilt and self-hate, I’m not sure if I’ve met them. Whenever I’ve talked about my kinks with people, the discussion has been punctuated with “I’m a sick bastard” and “I’m trash” and “I’m so going to hell”– not in a self-hatey kind of way, but in a “yep, this is fucked up” sort of way.
And if you think about it, having those feelings should reassure you. It means that, despite your fantasies, your moral compass is functioning perfectly! You don’t want to rape anybody. You are horrified by the idea that any part of you wants to rape someone. That horror at the idea of actually raping someone is your best protection.
Being a noncon fetishist is also tremendously lonely. People talk a lot about why people with fantasies of being raped enjoy it, but no one talks about people with fantasies of raping. A lot of times the discussion bottoms out at “I like it because my partner likes it!” and “I don’t enjoy nonconsent, I enjoy my partner willingly handing over power.” And that makes sense: who wants to admit that they get wet when they think about raping people?
But I want to say that there is nothing wrong with having sexual fantasies about raping people.
Rape is wrong because it hurts actual, real, existing people who have thoughts and emotions and preferences. Rape fantasies only hurt the imaginary, fictional people inside your own head. Imaginary, fictional people inside your own head cannot suffer. They do not have qualia. They are not morally relevant.
Having rape fantasies does not mean you are going to inevitably become a rapist. Most people with fantasies about raping people that I’ve interacted with have been, if anything, more conscientious about consent than people without those fantasies. And there are a fair number of rapists who aren’t turned on by rape at all: they just don’t understand why someone not wanting sex means they shouldn’t have sex with them.
Rape is a choice. If you don’t make that choice, you aren’t a rapist– no matter what you think about when you jack off.
I think we should follow the wise rule of the Hydra Trash Meme: “thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor’s kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two.” It’s okay to get off on the idea of holding a guy down and fucking him because you can tell he secretly wants it, as long as in real life you are aware that if his mouth says “no” his eyes don’t get input. It’s okay to get wet thinking about fucking a passed-out girl, as long as in reality you put her to bed and cover her with a blanket. It’s okay to fantasize about violently raping someone, as long as you know it is just a fantasy.
I think that understanding that on a fundamental level is why most people with sexual fantasies about raping people, including myself, have an instinctive revulsion to the idea of raping someone in the real world. We might be turned on by it, but in real life it hurts people! Why would we want to hurt people?
So let’s talk about living ethically with our kinks. A lot of people are going to be upset by our fetishes, many of them survivors of the things we fantasize about, many of them not. I think this is perfectly fine, and it is wrong to talk about rape fantasies in detail without giving people a way to easily avoid the conversation. (For instance: provide content warnings on the Internet; in in-person conversations, check that everyone in the conversation is okay.) If someone has made it clear they don’t want to talk about it, don’t fucking talk about it. I think people shouldn’t go out of their way to be dicks to us, but they don’t have to be comfortable with us. As long as we go our separate ways, it’s fine.
I think it’s important whenever you discuss kinks like this in public to contextualize them the same way I am in this post: this is a fantasy, but in real life it is wrong. This is particularly important for porn: remember that a lot of people get their basic ideas about how sex works from porn. While you might be aware that this is only a fantasy, the fourteen-year-old jacking off to your story might be internalizing “if a man has an erection, he wants sex”. In my experience, fandom takes a really healthy attitude towards this: I remember a lot of discussions about the distinctions between noncon, dubcon, and rape that conclude with “and, of course, outside of fiction, all three of those are just rape.” Of course, fandom obsessively discusses stories (that’s, uh, sort of its defining feature), and I’m not sure how to expand this to porn with less discussion attached.
Thing of Things 
An awful lot of my sexual partners over the years have been pretty submissive. I think being submissive is pretty common in my social circles. So if I find myself getting off on the thought of raping or abusing someone I am always super happy. I would prefer to be able to have a super satisfying sexual relationship with as high a percentage of my social group as possible. Therefore I am always pleased when I have fantasies that are very “screwed up.” Being as flexible a switch as possible seems ideal! (I too get off on some submissive shit).
If anything I feel guilty about the fantasies where I am the one getting raped or tortured. Since I worry that if these fantasies become a “mandatory” part of my sexual life I will be unable to have a relationship with a huge chunk of people :(. I am not really worried about findng people I can pretend to rape. I am however very worried about a lack of people willing to pretend to rape me!
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I would guess that a lot of people are actually fine to adapt parts of their sexual life in order to fit their partners preferences, not unlike the way you describe yourself if I understand it correctly.
Of course, it might be possible that in certain social groups there are a lot of members with very specific, narrow sexual preferences, but it might also be to a large part an issue of expectations: If both partners are fine with a broad spectrum of experiences, their expectations what the other might like, or what role oneself is most comfortable with, will play a huge role.
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This isn’t exactly on topic, but I’d kind of like to hear from some switches about their psychology. I see being dominant as something I am, not something I do. A submissive is easy enough to conceptualize as a mirror image. But do people who can go back and forth see these roles as performative rather than integral to who they are?
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I mean, why is this hard. If you can understand the attraction of topping, and you can understand the attraction of bottoming, why should it be hard to understand a person sometimes is in the mood for one, sometimes the other.
Sometimes I’m bottomy, but sometimes I get into top space. It’s kinda unplanned and organic, depending on the flow of an encounter. So yay.
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I think the fact that you can’t see why I have trouble understanding just illustrates how big the inferential gap is. Being dominant isn’t some thing I have an “attraction” to. Being dominant is what I am. It’s not something that can be turned off when it’s not convenient.
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Doming and subbing are things to do in the bedroom, or sometimes outside the bedroom (if you’re into the in-public thing). But anyhow, I neither dom nor sub my g/f in my day to day. I dom or sub as part of erotic behavior, and if you can wrap your head around bisexuals and other forms of queerness, then being a switch shouldn’t be a stretch. It is simply enjoying both sides of the power dynamic during sex.
If you try to dom people outside of sex-play, then you are an abuser. Don’t do that.
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Hm. There’s a sense in which “submissive” is what I am. I have desires to serve, to obey, to be taken care of; having a partner order me to set boundaries and say ‘no’ worked better than anything else to get me to actually do it. I can imagine a parallel person for whom “dominant” is who they are, and I don’t think that would be inherently abusive, any more than my desire to obey means I’m inherently an abuse victim.
I also like topping in bed sometimes, although not with anyone other than my primary. But then for me the-thing-you-could-call-inherent-submissiveness is… basically unrelated to my sexuality, although closely tied to my romantic desires.
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Dominance is pretty specifically a bedroom thing for me. In life, the schema I usually apply is leaders-followers-hermits/iconoclasts, the latter of which, including me, are people who just don’t want to be part of hierarchies at all. I refuse to apply for management positions at my job, because I would neither enjoy nor be good at directing others, but my current position doesn’t involve much hands-on management of me, and I’m also glad of that.
As an additional aspect, it’s hard for me to remember what my pre-abusive-marriage mindset was. I mean, I was always dominant, but the idea of a woman humiliating me sexually being at the level of “Don’t make angry… You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” rather than just “not my thing” is almost certainly a result of having been non-consensually emotionally abused outside of the bedroom for years.
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Ha, I have the opposite issue — I don’t get people who aren’t even a little bit switchy. If you don’t understand what your partner is getting out of it, doesn’t that interfere with your performance and enjoyment?
I suppose I’m more attached to certain dynamics and experiences, no matter who’s having them, than to a role. (That’s for D/s, though — for pain, giving and receiving feel very different.)
Also, it doesn’t have to be humiliating. Not everyone enjoys humiliation, and that’s OK.
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I was lucky in that I learned rape fantasies were okay before I realized I was having them. Spared me a whole lot of guilt, the same way I lost my hyper-Catholic faith before I realized I was queer. Being the switchiest of switches knocked out any lingering shame – I jerk off to the thought of getting raped just as often.
However, I can’t talk about any of this in most venues, even kink-positive ones, because I’ve expended an exhausting amount of time and energy on getting the world around me to rethink how it treats real rape. If I ever let it slip that I’m turned on by a fake manifestation of it, my credibility will go out the window. That’s unfair – my political opinions are informed by a series of real incidents that happened long after I figured out what gets me hard – but I don’t see a way out of it. It’s a shame because in my peer group I’m valued as someone whose honest around sex and gender have helped other people; now I’m stuck feeling like I’m violating that honesty. I wish I could just get it out there and offer some comfort to the friends of mine who have dominance and rape fantasies…but I can’t.
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Various unconnected responses:
It was anthropologically interesting to read this post, in that it’s very gendered — “makes you wet”; “hold a guy down” — and yet I would assume that rape fantasies as the rapist are much more common among men.
If you think it’s lonely for someone in poly/sex-positive/kinky spaces, guess how lonely it feels when you’re (serially) monogamous and otherwise mostly non-kinky.
I realize Freud is basically discredited, but I think it’s easier to communicate this in Freudian terms than system 1/system 2 terms: My id thinks coercive sex is more appealing than consensual sex.* My superego actually cares about other people. Playing out rape fantasies with a partner who is pre-consenting and has a safeword is how the superego/system 2 mediates the needs of the id/system 1 in a socially and ethically acceptable fashion. (Relatedly: I never, ever, get drunk, because social/ethical disinhibition would be a terrible idea.)
*Thankfully, I still like regular sex. Just not as much.
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‘wet’ probably refers to the … apparatus of the author.
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(I assume)
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I select genders/sexes with two d6s (odd means male, even means female, sums to 11 or 12 means genderqueer).
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This is simultaneously the nerdiest and most efficient thing I have read all day, and I love it.
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So, slightly biased to female when not genderqueer: odds of 2,4,6,8 or 10 are (1+3+5+5+3)/36=17/36, odds of 3,5,7 or 9 are (2+4+6+4)/36=16/36. Is this intentional? If not, perhaps decide that 2 is also genderqueer?
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So I used to write erotica on one of those male-oriented sites, mostly cuz back then I was still pretty deep-in-the-closet about trans stuff, and so writing for a women’s forum would have required a be more out about who I was. I wasn’t ready for that.
But anyway, I was a woman in dude-space, and that was interesting.
It’s like, there were a variety of weird dudes there with weird fantasies, but the funny thing was, *some of the dudes were better than others*, and it had little to do with the extreme nature of their work.
Like, I recall this one guy into horrid non-con pedo vore — so yeah, like in a big way. Hella messed up. And the dude himself was obviously way-out neuro-atypical. I mean, yeah I’m diagnosing over the Internet. But still. It was pretty obvious. His brain did not work like other brains.
And you know, he was a totally righteous guy. Like, I think he understood what a mess this shit was, but he found an outlet through his fantasy. Which fine. Thing was, as far as how he treated women on the forum — and in real life if what he said about himself was true — he was a mensch.
Which won’t surprise anyone here. But at the time it surprised me. I had to learn this dude was awesome.
But there were others, where their fetishes seemed to come from a different place from the first guy. Like, these dudes were *angry at women* — it was really obvious — and that showed up in the stories. It wasn’t just they wrote about raping girls, but they put there every bit of petty bitterness in their work, just mean shit from mean guys with tiny, angry minds.
I fucking hate guys like that.
And telling those kinds of guys apart is kinda hard. So anyway, yeah.
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I’ve noticed this too. It is kind of annoying to be trying to enjoy some good old rape fiction only to have a character mouth off about “the real place of women” or something like that.
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See also: lots of slash fanfiction/yaoi. I enjoy rape stories with all gender mixtures, but my god do the ‘uke raping the seme’ stories gross me out, because I can tell when the authors really believe that’s how relationships should work.
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Sorry, ‘seme raping the uke’. Blargh, wish I could edit.
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You think fictional rape is okay but fictional sexism is bad? That seems weird to me. If rape is an urge that should be tolerated if it’s expressed in fiction, surely sexism counts as an urge that should be tolerated if it’s expressed in a similar way?
Only objection I can think of:
Sexism doesn’t count as an urge.
Rebuttal:
Why not?
I guess I’d conclude by saying that sexism fetishism isn’t different from rape fetishism. Both are only bad when combined with bad beliefs/actions.
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I think because rape fiction is filling an erotic impulse, and I know a ton of people who feel that erotic impulse, but who are really-truly safe people IRL. They know this is fantasy and they channel that fantasy into a safe area.
If that have it hard, they can even do it relatively safely in BDSM. I know tons of folks who do.
But folks who write explicitly sexist material seem to *really believe that* about women. Which is to say, it’s not an erotic impulse, it’s “women are manifestly shit and I’m gonna write about it.”
Which is to say, I’m assuming the average rape-fic person *knows* that rape is wrong, but finds it HAWT and seeks a safe outlet.
I’m assuming the average sexism-fic person actually hates women and will express that anywhere they can get away with it.
I’m sure it’s more complex than this, but I’d say this is a good first approximation.
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The reason people would complain about sexism in their fictional rape stories is… They have a kink for rape, but not for sexism! It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the sexism being presumed more real. (Though that may enter into it too.)
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Here are some alternative hypotheses.
1. Your sample size is unrepresentative by random chance, I can’t imagine that p < 0.15
2. Your sample size is unrepresentative because the people who don't really believe it are too ashamed or otherwise don't appear.
3. You've misjudged a cultural norm and people who you thought were being serious were actually just role-playing.
Another point of interest: if there are people who are interested in their partner being misogynistic but don't really believe it, doesn't that imply the existence of people who like being misogynistic but don't really believe it as well?
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@Flak — Well it’s complicated, but indeed I do try to judge what an author is trying to say. And yes, I often read into their work an underlying attitude toward women.
As a notably obvious example: Thelma and Louise contains tons of sexism and in fact one attempted rape.
But wait!
I mean, the audience damn well understand that the creators of that movie intend for them to despise the sexism and completely identify with the women.
In Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, we again have an author who clearly takes side with female abuse victims. However, feminists are more ambivalent with this film. We can discuss why at length, and you can Google around if you are curious, but there is a sense that violent rape revenge seems more about easing the anxiety of people who are not rape victims than people who are.
Which is a complex topic and many will differ. However, there is something to the idea that “just rape them back” is a peculiar kind of response.
I won’t claim that no rape victim has ever felt thus.
There is sexism in movies that is obviously just the writer reflection the fact they they live in a sexist culture, where they just present unexamined cultural tropes that are sexist. The boss is a man. The secretary is a woman.
We see less of this these days, by which I mean less that is unexamined, because of feminism.
Then there is the stuff where you truly sense that the author knows they are being sexist, and that they mean to be sexist, and that here you go bitches, in your face. This stuff is largely written by-and-for sexist men to revel in their sexism. It’s gross.
You see a lot of that latter sort of stuff on amateur male-oriented erotica forums. But don’t get me fucking started on Family Guy.
No, just don’t.
Anyway, the thing about rape erotica is it can fall anywhere on this spectrum. I have written stories that eroticize rape and extreme sexual violence, but where it was clear that my sympathies were toward the victim. They will always be the point-of-view character.
Now, some feminists will still object to this, insofar as they might object to any sexualization of rape. I respect that, up to a point. I clearly label my stories so they can avoid them.
I’ve seen stories where the point-of-view is the rapist. However, they also run across the spectrum, where some writers give me the sense that this is pure erotic impulse and does not reflect their underlying feelings toward women in general
Which, there is something unsavory about that. But they know it. They’re working through some shit.
I’m basically okay with that, so long as it is labeled.
Then there are the monsters.
#####
Now, I won’t claim I can distinguish this stuff perfectly, cuz I cannot. On the other hand, I expect most people here could just tell that Thelma and Louise was meant to be a pro-feminist movie and that it was meant to center the viewpoints of women, whereas many movies are meant to center the viewpoints of men. I think that at least many of you can see a material difference in how Thelma and Louise handled the topic of rape, versus Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.
That said, this stuff is subtle and disagreement is expected.
“Math” is what we call things when we can give formal models and so on. This is “not-math.”
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The weirdest similar thing I’ve seen is a subreddit (tragically, I forget how I got there or what it’s named) dedicated to antifeminist vengeance erotica. It was populated with a mix of the second group you describe (extreme Redpill types who were clearly savoring the idea of feminists “getting what they deserved” and “being shown their place”) and…. feminist women with rape fantasies. And, I think, a few male authors who were more of the mensch variety and very clearly saw the whole thing as nonendorsed (‘in real life this would be terrible’) fantasy.
The women on there totally understood why the Redpillers were there, and loved it. An actual human being actually hating them and describing in sickening detail what they wanted to do to them… apparently satisfied their kink in a way roleplay couldn’t. I think this fact annoyed the Redpillers quite a bit.
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I really want to avoid spreading these memes, I really want to fill in the gaps in your post. What man could fulfill these two purposes without being torn asunder?
reddit.com/r/breakfeminazis
/r/maledom also has some anti-feminist stuff in it
/r/beatingwomen got closed down
/r/beatingwomen2 replaced it
The story you posted with about redpillers and women makes for a compelling mythology (I’m not implying you made it up as propaganda; I can see how it might seem that way). The submissive women getting the leg up on those redpillers, even in their simulated defeat.
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Okay, I was pretty far off the mark 😛
For the most part, it seems to be safely-compartmentalized fantasy: http://www.reddit.com/r/breakfeminazis/comments/2sg4od/woman_here_just_wondering_why_this_theme_is_so/
I think “compelling mythology” is right. (In my defense, it does seem like frequent posters there are disproportionately in the actually-serious-about-it minority.)
Actually, TRP got really confused/put off and started accusing each other of being double agents: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1ivvph/rbreakfeminazis_a_new_subreddit_exploring_the/
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Really do not see anyone accusing each other of being a double agent in that link. /u/fieryredpill was a weird variant of troll (note that those are the only two posts on his account), and he got called out for it.
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Oh, I see what you were talking about. Someone accused the subreddit of being a false flag by SRS. Eh. Let the record show the BDSM identification was upvoted and his post was not.
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Heh, I wonder if there is any of the opposite of this? There is plenty of female supremacist porn of the “slave lick my feet!” variety, buy an over the top exaggerated, eroticized and rapey version of the extreme forms of Internet “feminist” ideology sounds like it could maybe be pretty hot (fantasy, obviously).
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@Illuminati
I know at least one person who has what you describe as a kink.
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I actually hate certain large chunks of society independent of gender. It is just that with women I also feel attraction and some stimulus to interact with them, which makes the hate so much harder to suppress. I am not proud of my feelings, but I have learned to live with them, although it makes it so much harder to have satisfying social relationships, if you always have to wear a mask.
You can rest assured that I am not going to write fanfiction anytime soon, though.
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Huh, that’s interesting. I can’t imagine being strongly attracted to someone I want to avoid due to their personality, politics or whatever. Are your feelings of attraction strictly appearance-based?
Side note: I think the “male-oriented” sites veronica mentioned mostly contain original/non-fanfiction stories — or else there’s a secret world of (comic? movie? cartoon? gaming?) fanfiction I need to learn about.
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Definitely not strictly appearance-based, but it plays a huge role, especially when it is someone I haven’t talked to yet. I also judge people a lot according to their appearance, and that is already where things can get problematic.
Usually it gets better when I get to talk with somebody and he or she shows some basic interest in me, though that definitely happens rarely with women.
Oops, yeah I got that wrong. Read “fanfiction or original stories”. I definitely wanted to refer to what veronica d meant, but either is true.
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You’re basically the villain in like half the stories I’ve written.
Actually, at one point I stopped writing stories like that, as they were becoming cliché. But in any event, it‘s curious to see a real life example of something I have produced in fiction.
@Nita — There are sites like asstr and storiesonline.net and literotica.
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You’ve met at least one. *raises hand* It’s easy to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and as long as I’m averse to real-life rape, I don’t see any reason to feel guilty. Also, much of what I fantasize about ranges from improbable to actually impossible.
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I feel some cognitive dissonance, but nothing like the guilt Ozy seems to be describing. I think your third sentence explains why it might be easier for you. To the extent that I do feel guilt, it’s because I’ve had realistic, plausible fantasies about actual people.
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This makes a lot of sense. My porn sometimes involves noncon of varying degrees, and I’ve never felt any guilt about this. But those tend to be text or illustrated furry porn, so there’s almost no sense of the sex as a representation of reality.
I also had virtue ethics burned right out of my head as a consequence of growing up gay in a conservative area. Hard to say which is more directly responsible for my equanimity.
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I’m not sure if “met on the internets” counts, but if so, I make at least 2. I’ve had fantasies of taking women nonconsensually since early in my adolescence, and it never occurred to me to be bothered until I was 18 and a teacher criticized Twilight for being a rape fantasy because actually raping someone has never occurred to me as something could be fun; it was obvious that the only way I’d ever play out a rape fantasy was as a fantasy. The two are separate to the point it may be more accurate to talk about having a rape fantasy fantasy.
Suggesting my rape fantasy might lead to me actually raping someone is as strange a notion as suggesting enjoying Dexter may lead to becoming a serial killer. Each pair of those things are about equally far apart in my mind.
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I agree that rape fantasies don’t lead to rape, but disagree that it’s equally ridiculous as enjoying a show about a serial killer. Unless you identify with Dexter and fantasize about murdering people yourself, it’s not really analogous.
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um, a lot of people DO identify with Dexter and fantasize about doing the sort of things he does. well, at least I do, and I don’t feel at all odd in doing so. Dexter is a good guy who makes the world a better place, he’s obviously meant to be identified with.
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I used to experience “Schrodinger’s guilt” during a period where I was unsure if such fantasies were good or bad. It’s a feeling of vague uneasiness that is not specific enough to be guilt.
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Can people please stop conflating quantum superposition with calculation of expected values. [/language lawyering]
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@Lambert
If you can pin down their semantic position you won’t be able to tell where their argument is going.
*ducks*
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One other quick reaction. I think you’ve said before that you don’t generally fantasize about real people. Depending on what you mean by “fictional,” I think you may be wrongly generalizing from one example when you say:
Rape is wrong because it hurts actual, real, existing people who have thoughts and emotions and preferences. Rape fantasies only hurt the imaginary, fictional people inside your own head.
In that other people are definitely having rape fantasies about real people (who still aren’t being hurt, since they don’t know about it, but they aren’t fictional).
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In a certain sense, the people in the fantasies merely refer to real people. Is the Henry Hooke from the film Zulu real due to having the same name as a real person with a considerably different personality.
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I keep finding other interesting tidbits in this post on re-reading it, that lead me to conclude there is a lot of psychological variation about nonconsent. For example (regendering quote, because maybe there is a gender difference in the psychology?):
It’s okay to get off on the idea of holding a girl down and fucking her because you can tell she secretly wants it,
Er, no. That’s an (*not excusing this mindset in real life, just clarifying for classification purposes*) “it’s not really rape” fantasy. A rape fantasy is — they don’t want it, you know they don’t want it, and you enjoy it more as a result.
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I disagree; I think it’s still a subset of rape fantasy. It might not be a very realistic rape fantasy, but with details changed ever so slightly it could be: lust combined with a desire to wait to have sex, not cheat on a partner, etc. I hope you agree that forcing someone to have sex in that circumstance is still rape?
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I agree that it is rape, but I don’t think the kind of person who actually commits rape “because that’s what she really wants even though she’s saying no” sees themselves as committing rape.
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Let me clarify that. In real life, any situation where the acted-upon individual does not want sex is rape. Whether the perpetrator has incorrect beliefs about what constitutes real rape is irrelevant. But in a fantasy, the perpetrator’s state of mind does matter, because that’s the only real mind there. So even though that would be a rape in real life, it doesn’t really look like a rape fantasy — I’d bet that the kind of person who has that fantasy further fantasizes that the victim comes around to his/her point of view afterward, rather than pressing charges.
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That makes sense; thanks for clarifying.
I guess whether we classify that as a “rape fantasy” depends on why we’re doing the classifying. A researcher asking “Does reading Twilight encourage rape fantasies?” would probably answer differently than someone who fantasizes about rape (that they think of as rape) but feels conflicted and wants to talk it over/commiserate with likeminded individuals.
Going back to Ozy’s original post, though, I wonder if the type of fantasy described is usually/always engaged in with lack of awareness that in reality it would be rape. My assumption that the fantasizer usually would know that that would be rape IRL, combined with your assumption that they wouldn’t, is probably what led to the confusion when I read your post earlier.
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Just to be clear, while I think the situation described is unlikely to happen in real life, even if it was *exactly* as described, I think if it happened in real life it would still be rape. I mean, I guess if the situation was “her body is being remote-controlled by someone else and she would indicate consent for sex if she was capable of doing so” it wouldn’t be, but in any situation where someone is purposely indicating that they don’t want to have sex, it would still be rape.
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Related: Daniel Engber seems to get it on the fantasy vs reality issue.
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“If someone has made it clear they don’t want to talk about it, don’t fucking talk about it. I think people shouldn’t go out of their way to be dicks to us, but they don’t have to be comfortable with us. As long as we go our separate ways, it’s fine.”
The huge damn problem with this is
– like the apocryphal Soviet Politburo mandarin who struck building a toilet paper factory from the following year’s plan, because it’s so non-awesome and demeaned the heroism of Soviet workers –
it’s much easier to come into a mostly-neutral, sexuality-discussing space and demand that it should be a safe space for people triggered or upset by noncon (Protecting victims!) than a space tolerant of discussing noncon without shaming (Indulging creepy d00ds!). And so the cycle continues. Posturing, posturing without limit.
(In general, the cry of “Think ONLY of the victims, how can you be so selfish not to, you creeps” can be such a moral ratchet… not to mention coming to harm its intended beneficiaries in many cases.)
Making ~~~excuses~~~ for your noncon fetish seems to be perversely considered culpable in itself, so it’s not discussed, so it’s easier to Other people who have it…
Hell, on a very related note, please look at most talk about “kink-positivity”/coming to terms with your sexuality being so uncomfortable with the possibility that its audience could involve a male-identified, cishet, sadistic/bad-things-fetishizing person. I have literally seen like… 50 posts and pieces aimed at women with fantasies of suffering for every 1 aimed at men with fantasies of doing it.
That’s not okay, it’s evasive and unnerving and fucked and disheartening.
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I am not kinky, but in my limited exposure it does seem that most of the public discussions of kink are very very heavily female dominated. And maybe the “protect the vicitms!” line (with the false assumption that all victims are women) is part of that.
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You’re not alone in thinking that, LTP. There’s also a false perception that the only person who can be hurt in a scene is the sub, as though taking on a mantle of illusory power means you no longer have complex emotions or limits that the other party can pressure you to violate.
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Ninecarpals: oh so much. Doms can be exploited/abused/objectified, doms need honest communication and aftercare from a sub, male doms can suffer the enforcement of toxuc masculinity / gender expectations from a sub.
(that last one feels particularly threatening to me personally, seeing as I want to be read as male but not masculine during such a scene – well, I am not attracted to very masculine people as a sub either, heh)
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Seems to me that Ozy is quite consciously trying to be part of the solution with this post. Even sex-positive feminists are rarely willing to defend rape porn, for exactly the reasons you cite.
I find it extremely off-putting myself, but I’ll always get behind a defense of the reality-fantasy dichotomy, on general principle.
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Heck, I’ve written rape porn.
That said, it always seemed to me that rape porn is *advanced*. Like, a skilled hand and a sensitive mind can produce something really HAWT, but a clumsy hand and a shallow mind will produce something crass and horrible.
And yes, those are judgements.
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That’s all porn. The worst of it is the literary equivalent of trying to make out with somebody with extreme halitosis.
I think my aversion to rape porn is not so much a moral frisson as a perception of gaucherie, like watching a chess match where one player upsets the board and declares victory. Perhaps I just haven’t encountered a skillfully written one.
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I don’t generally consume literary erotica, but I suspect that as with visual porn the problem is that it’s really contrived. Not that I haven’t consumed it, but I tend to think it isn’t as good as rape scenes in literature and film that weren’t meant to be porn and occur “organically” in the story, as it were. Examples I found much more erotic than actual erotica, off the top of my head:
[I’m pretty sure that most people aren’t supposed to think of this as porn or get aroused by it] The marital rape scene on the stairway in A History of Violence.
[I am absolutely positive that no one is supposed to think of this as porn or get aroused by it, and the fact that it’s like the most erotic thing I’ve ever read does make me feel a little bit bad about myself] The scene toward the end of The Magician King in which a protagonist is encrq ol n qrzvtbq, n ivbyngvba gung yvgrenyyl ebof ure bs ure uhznavgl. Vg nyfb vapyhqrf n yvar V pna’g svaq bayvar nobhg ubj n cnegvphyne flancfr oevrsyl ertvfgref cyrnfher ntnvafg ure jvyy, naq gura oheaf bhg sberire.
(Trying to look it up online now, I see that Grossman’s inclusion of the latter scene did, in fact, make a lot of readers really, really angry.)
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And there is the whole issue of fantasies not always actually being about what they are about on the surface, e.g. fantazising about sex in public can be about desiring acceptance of one’s sexuality, rather than actually wanting to have sex in public. I guess the same applies here.
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