Fantasies about Force (Part Two)

This great image was taken from the Delta of Venus erotic image site. Click on the image and go and have a look at their site. #share the love. 

Part of what will transform fantasies about force, is male desire. If we encourage the conversation, men will feel more comfortable to "come out" about their own force fantasies about rape. If men are having these fantasies, particularly straight men thinking about other men, or even women raping them, the conversation starts to leave the domain of cause and effect.

In a conversation I had a few years back with a prostitute who was very well organised politically and socially, she stated that prostitution needed to be unionised, insurances needed to be obtained, and most of all, sex workers needed to be included in the public conversations about them. She explained to me, that taking prostitution out of the deep dark realms of illicit sleaze and forbidden secrets, solves almost all of the social problems associated with it. More than anything else, she wanted to be included when society got together to "discuss prostitution" something that is almost never done with sex workers themselves.

By shining bright lights on these rumours, myths and secrets, you bring what is unconscious to the fore and make it conscious. There are lots of forums and places on line, even more now that erotica is such a hot genre in the reading world, for people to talk about force fantasies and what is really happening when we do that.

I know that for myself, when I was a strict Christian, I had vivid thrilling force fantasies, that died and become uninteresting when I left the church. You don't need a degree in psychology to work out what is going on there, and I was even conscious of this when I was in the Church. Part of what helped me leave was an ongoing reflection on the power the church had over me. My fantasies helped me understand myself. People can (and more importantly need to) be trusted with their own desire.

They have to be. If we are going to continue down the path that the fantasy of one individual causes or permisses the poor behaviour of another individual, we are building a world that we have been working very hard to remove ourselves from. 

Fantasies about Force (Part One)

The notion that women who fantasise about forced sex subliminally means they "want it" was a way of controling female fantasy. Feminism (and rightly so) argued a link between the fantasy of force as a woman's compliance in the mysoganistic theory that all women want it, but you need to force them, and in some ways, and for some people, this is true. Just as we fantasise about incest, or beastiality, or BDSM or religious figures, the anti-sociatal message will heavily influence all sexual desire.

However, what the mysoganistic theory of force really did, was refuse women the right to fantasise. By linking paractise and fantasy, a mysoganistic society could convince a woman that NOT fantqasising about rape and force was a way of controlling it. The logical progression is, if rape fantasy gives men permission to rape, not fantasising will remove that permission.

Feminism was (and continues to be) right, however the focus to control rape should be on rapists and not fantasisers, even in the redcesses of our minds. There is no question that there are females that comply with mysogany, but control over rape should not start with what happens when a female is masturbating or exploring sex intimately with her partner. In fact at this point in the on going debate, it would be better to allow these fantasies, bring them into the light, and debate the rights of women to dream what they like without having to think of managing male desire. Just as we did with other mythologies about female control over when, where, how and by whom she is raped.

Continued in Part Two tomorrow.