I'm trying really hard to keep myself from slipping into old routines, old thought patterns of submission and inadequacy. There's only so much that one person can take, only so much that they can do for another and likewise the other cannot be expected to constantly be happy, and to feel affinity every second of the day.
I know there are no rules or defaults for love and romance, everyone has to make it up as they go along. It's just sometimes it's hard to think and easy to be scared when my heart is beating way too fast. I want to think 'this isn't how things are supposed to happen' but he and I aren't players on a game-board with set steps and click-lock mechanical brains. At the same time I feel like I'm dancing on the edge of an abyss I've worked my entire life to climb out of.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Rape Fantasy
Being pinned against the wall by a potential lover and then forcefully taken to the heights of sexual pleasure is a common masturbatory fantasy cliché that can quickly evolve into a less accepted rape fantasy. A rape fantasy is based on non-consent and protest; a scenario in which there are two plays of power and two separate desires. What is classified as a rape fantasy varies from mild hesitation befitting a bodice ripper to a darker more violent act in which the “victim” is unwilling, hurt and humiliated. Both sexes are known to fantasize about being on either the receiving or giving end of a rape scenario. The reasons behind rape fantasies are contested in many intellectual arenas. Social conditioning, a disregard for or shedding of human rights, sadomasochism, vanity, wish fulfillment, pathological disorders, and perversion are all presented as basis behind what makes rape sexually arousing. Despite all this supposition scientific studies are often left inconclusive partly because of a general unwillingness to admit to such fantasies and also a fear that publishing found data would encourage the actual crime. An admission to arousal from a rape fantasy carries social stigma for both sexes.
In “Deficiency Theory” Freud is quoted as saying “A happy person never fantasizes, only a dissatisfied one.” In that light a rape fantasy where one is imagining themselves to be in the role of power suggests a need for sexual fulfillment and dominance. However, there seems to be an abundant amount of evidence that a healthy sex life is dependent upon a vivid fantasy life. (Doskoch, “The Safest Sex”) The point of satisfaction that comes from exercising sexual power over a ‘victim’ is extremely subjective. For instance, when a man imagines himself to be one of five men raping a woman in order to achieve orgasm many suppositions can be drawn about his psyche but none can be certain or proven to exist in any other man that shares such a fantasy. Power plays an important role in rape fantasy but so does identity. The choice of being an anonymous perpetrator (such as one in five men) or a prime virile figure in the scenario and the implications of this choice depends on how the fantasist wants to feel and what fears he or she may want to alleviate. If a man’s libido is dampened by performance anxiety then the conjecture can be made that being one of five men would be a relief because he can obtain satisfaction from the victim without close scrutiny of his sexual performance or one can surmise that the man enjoys treating a woman as an object that is used, passed on and discarded. On the other hand, if playing a powerful singular role the man or woman is able to exert power and take control of the victim and his or her situation one can come to the conclusion that the fantasist only feels comfortable when he or she has full command or the fantasist seeks to subvert the personhood of their partner and disregards their partners right to deny sex. The lack of comprehensive knowledge of a person’s motivations and thoughts renders deeper meaning gleaned from a fantasy unreliable.
A common trope in the imagining of this act is that the victim protests at first but then grows to enjoy it. From the dominant point of view this can be an attestation of sexual prowess while still enabling the distribution of pleasure to be solely in the hands of the fantasist. There is no question of who is carrying out their desires but also no pressure of meeting the victim’s wants. This does not necessarily imply that the fantasist derives pleasure from the pain or humiliation of the victim but merely enjoys the enacting of absolute power. This can be brought back to vanity, the idea of being able to make someone desire sex solely through physical means is flattering and arousing but the pretext behind the fantasy remains conjecture and cannot be translated into a need to carry out non-consensual sex in reality.
The idea that wish-fulfillment is behind rape fantasies is one of the main deterrents of their cultural acknowledgement. Because rape is such a serious and damaging crime admitting to arousal from it is seen as obscene and unnatural. Also, some take issue with publishing material that states women in particular have rape fantasies that put them in the role of the victim because it propagates the thought that they want to be raped in reality. It is unwise to take the rape fantasy out of the context of the unreal. People fantasize about strangers, co-workers, and others that are part of their daily life but would most likely never act and more importantly never desire to act upon these fantasies.
A common assumption placed upon those who are aroused by imagining themselves in the victim’s role of a rape fantasy is that they experienced abuse in their lives or have some sort of self-hate that has forced them to associate violence and dehumanization with sexual satisfaction. This is also a dangerous blanket statement that functions as a way to label ‘abnormal’ sexual desires as having roots in pathological disorders. It can be surmised by a less grave observer that the lack of control and the concept of inciting such passion in a lover that they cannot resist forcing the victim to submit to their advances is arousing in itself. Some also theorize that people who have suffered sexual abuse in the past use the rape fantasy as a way of taking control and softening the situation for themselves. However studies show that women who have been raped report no greater frequency of rape fantasies than women who haven’t. (The Journal of Sex Research) Women, specifically, are said to be socially conditioned to desire rape in order to submit themselves to a dominant male. This assumption is also arguably true and false. The influences and pressures of an individual’s life are impossible to measure therefore there is no validity to forming a conclusion behind a fantasy, especially one that has so many facets and components. Because it is so difficult to gather empirical evidence about a subject that not only is steeped in pre-conceived cultural thought but also mostly exists within a person’s mind-space (with the exceptions of those who act out the fantasies in role-play with a partner(s)) drawing solid or “scientific” conclusions is arbitrary at best.
Other theories debunk rape as a fantasy at all; since the fantasist is in full control and is in fact doing it for his or her own sexual arousal it cannot be non-consensual. This could be a valid way of looking at rape fantasies in terms of gauging their relevance to everyday life but it may disregard the more aversive fantasies where the rapist is unattractive and violent. In such a scenario it would be more helpful to think about the separation of romantic connection and sex. After a particularly bad break up or even a bad series of dating experiences it might be difficult to fantasize about being satisfied from sex with someone they have a connection with. For instance, even if the perfect mate were imagined thoughts of how the relationship could go wrong or even annoying habits would involuntarily pop up. Taking the potential for romantic connection out of the fantasy might allow the fantasist to better focus on the sexual/sensual aspects of the fantasy, the added violence helps to further disconnect any real world relevance from the sex act since in reality it would be unfavorable to want to connect to someone who causes you injury or conversely someone who’s received injury from the fantasist. These aspects qualify the fantasy as a rape fantasy because the sex featured is non-consensual however the line remains where even if a fantasist finds anonymous and/or violent sex arousing it doesn’t necessarily translate into a real life desire.
A common theme in studies and articles is to question why women specifically have rape fantasies as if disregarding that men have them or seeing their rape fantasies as less significant than those women have. They also tend to primarily look at women in the role of the victim in a rape fantasy rather than the one taking control. This is revealing of the sort of bias that makes it difficult to take rape fantasy theories and research seriously. Vanity and blame avoidance are fantasy motives that cannot be segregated to one gender and to view the rape fantasy in a singular facet that consists of only a woman imagining herself to be the victim limits real understanding of the phenomenon.
I don’t believe it is presumptuous to say that both women and men fantasize as being the victim in a rape scenario and conversely both sexes also place themselves in the dominant role. Just as the BDSM community is diverse and varied in who participates and what they participate in, there must be an acknowledgement of an even wider diversity in terms of fantasy life. Despite the uncertain commonality of rape fantasies in terms of statistics there is plenty of pornographic material available that suggests a market for such scenarios. To find the reason behind the appeal of the rape fantasy however a far more universal approach must be taken and perhaps a scale needs to be devised on the level of brutality a rape fantasy features because the differentiating brutality and aversive aspects of a rape fantasy yield different motivations. At the same time we must be careful not to take inferences and conjecture and turn them into pathological truths. Acknowledging that a rape fantasy can only have significance on an individual basis protects a person with such a fantasy from judgment and stereotyping. To say that to have a certain fantasy implies a definitive insight into a person is not only frightening to the person admitting to the fantasy but a callous way of addressing a sex related issue. In my opinion because a rape fantasy can be an outlet for such a wide variety of sexual satisfaction hindrances (even blame avoidance) it should be embraced in a positive light unless the fantasist is experience disturbance due to the fantasy. Most likely it’s not a big deal and people need to be informed in a way that conveys this.
In “Deficiency Theory” Freud is quoted as saying “A happy person never fantasizes, only a dissatisfied one.” In that light a rape fantasy where one is imagining themselves to be in the role of power suggests a need for sexual fulfillment and dominance. However, there seems to be an abundant amount of evidence that a healthy sex life is dependent upon a vivid fantasy life. (Doskoch, “The Safest Sex”) The point of satisfaction that comes from exercising sexual power over a ‘victim’ is extremely subjective. For instance, when a man imagines himself to be one of five men raping a woman in order to achieve orgasm many suppositions can be drawn about his psyche but none can be certain or proven to exist in any other man that shares such a fantasy. Power plays an important role in rape fantasy but so does identity. The choice of being an anonymous perpetrator (such as one in five men) or a prime virile figure in the scenario and the implications of this choice depends on how the fantasist wants to feel and what fears he or she may want to alleviate. If a man’s libido is dampened by performance anxiety then the conjecture can be made that being one of five men would be a relief because he can obtain satisfaction from the victim without close scrutiny of his sexual performance or one can surmise that the man enjoys treating a woman as an object that is used, passed on and discarded. On the other hand, if playing a powerful singular role the man or woman is able to exert power and take control of the victim and his or her situation one can come to the conclusion that the fantasist only feels comfortable when he or she has full command or the fantasist seeks to subvert the personhood of their partner and disregards their partners right to deny sex. The lack of comprehensive knowledge of a person’s motivations and thoughts renders deeper meaning gleaned from a fantasy unreliable.
A common trope in the imagining of this act is that the victim protests at first but then grows to enjoy it. From the dominant point of view this can be an attestation of sexual prowess while still enabling the distribution of pleasure to be solely in the hands of the fantasist. There is no question of who is carrying out their desires but also no pressure of meeting the victim’s wants. This does not necessarily imply that the fantasist derives pleasure from the pain or humiliation of the victim but merely enjoys the enacting of absolute power. This can be brought back to vanity, the idea of being able to make someone desire sex solely through physical means is flattering and arousing but the pretext behind the fantasy remains conjecture and cannot be translated into a need to carry out non-consensual sex in reality.
The idea that wish-fulfillment is behind rape fantasies is one of the main deterrents of their cultural acknowledgement. Because rape is such a serious and damaging crime admitting to arousal from it is seen as obscene and unnatural. Also, some take issue with publishing material that states women in particular have rape fantasies that put them in the role of the victim because it propagates the thought that they want to be raped in reality. It is unwise to take the rape fantasy out of the context of the unreal. People fantasize about strangers, co-workers, and others that are part of their daily life but would most likely never act and more importantly never desire to act upon these fantasies.
A common assumption placed upon those who are aroused by imagining themselves in the victim’s role of a rape fantasy is that they experienced abuse in their lives or have some sort of self-hate that has forced them to associate violence and dehumanization with sexual satisfaction. This is also a dangerous blanket statement that functions as a way to label ‘abnormal’ sexual desires as having roots in pathological disorders. It can be surmised by a less grave observer that the lack of control and the concept of inciting such passion in a lover that they cannot resist forcing the victim to submit to their advances is arousing in itself. Some also theorize that people who have suffered sexual abuse in the past use the rape fantasy as a way of taking control and softening the situation for themselves. However studies show that women who have been raped report no greater frequency of rape fantasies than women who haven’t. (The Journal of Sex Research) Women, specifically, are said to be socially conditioned to desire rape in order to submit themselves to a dominant male. This assumption is also arguably true and false. The influences and pressures of an individual’s life are impossible to measure therefore there is no validity to forming a conclusion behind a fantasy, especially one that has so many facets and components. Because it is so difficult to gather empirical evidence about a subject that not only is steeped in pre-conceived cultural thought but also mostly exists within a person’s mind-space (with the exceptions of those who act out the fantasies in role-play with a partner(s)) drawing solid or “scientific” conclusions is arbitrary at best.
Other theories debunk rape as a fantasy at all; since the fantasist is in full control and is in fact doing it for his or her own sexual arousal it cannot be non-consensual. This could be a valid way of looking at rape fantasies in terms of gauging their relevance to everyday life but it may disregard the more aversive fantasies where the rapist is unattractive and violent. In such a scenario it would be more helpful to think about the separation of romantic connection and sex. After a particularly bad break up or even a bad series of dating experiences it might be difficult to fantasize about being satisfied from sex with someone they have a connection with. For instance, even if the perfect mate were imagined thoughts of how the relationship could go wrong or even annoying habits would involuntarily pop up. Taking the potential for romantic connection out of the fantasy might allow the fantasist to better focus on the sexual/sensual aspects of the fantasy, the added violence helps to further disconnect any real world relevance from the sex act since in reality it would be unfavorable to want to connect to someone who causes you injury or conversely someone who’s received injury from the fantasist. These aspects qualify the fantasy as a rape fantasy because the sex featured is non-consensual however the line remains where even if a fantasist finds anonymous and/or violent sex arousing it doesn’t necessarily translate into a real life desire.
A common theme in studies and articles is to question why women specifically have rape fantasies as if disregarding that men have them or seeing their rape fantasies as less significant than those women have. They also tend to primarily look at women in the role of the victim in a rape fantasy rather than the one taking control. This is revealing of the sort of bias that makes it difficult to take rape fantasy theories and research seriously. Vanity and blame avoidance are fantasy motives that cannot be segregated to one gender and to view the rape fantasy in a singular facet that consists of only a woman imagining herself to be the victim limits real understanding of the phenomenon.
I don’t believe it is presumptuous to say that both women and men fantasize as being the victim in a rape scenario and conversely both sexes also place themselves in the dominant role. Just as the BDSM community is diverse and varied in who participates and what they participate in, there must be an acknowledgement of an even wider diversity in terms of fantasy life. Despite the uncertain commonality of rape fantasies in terms of statistics there is plenty of pornographic material available that suggests a market for such scenarios. To find the reason behind the appeal of the rape fantasy however a far more universal approach must be taken and perhaps a scale needs to be devised on the level of brutality a rape fantasy features because the differentiating brutality and aversive aspects of a rape fantasy yield different motivations. At the same time we must be careful not to take inferences and conjecture and turn them into pathological truths. Acknowledging that a rape fantasy can only have significance on an individual basis protects a person with such a fantasy from judgment and stereotyping. To say that to have a certain fantasy implies a definitive insight into a person is not only frightening to the person admitting to the fantasy but a callous way of addressing a sex related issue. In my opinion because a rape fantasy can be an outlet for such a wide variety of sexual satisfaction hindrances (even blame avoidance) it should be embraced in a positive light unless the fantasist is experience disturbance due to the fantasy. Most likely it’s not a big deal and people need to be informed in a way that conveys this.
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