When women fantasize about rape: it is always more complicated than that

The author grants permission and encouragement to other to circulate and repost this piece (without editing it or claiming authorship) in the hopes that it may help others.

Trigger Warning: Sex unfriendly religious upbringing, rape, rape fantasy, rape culture, including a description of a sexual assault with additional trigger warning.

I was seven years old when I asked a playmate to tie me up.

The request wasn't a sexual one, at least not consciously. I just thought the experience would be fun and thrilling and dangerous and exciting. It was, too, at least until my parent found me alone and tied up in the church music room a few minutes later and wearily demanded to know what I thought I was doing. I explained that we were playing Superheroes and I was waiting to be rescued, and my parent untied me and told me not to do that again because it was dangerous. What if the church burned down and you couldn't get out? was the argument, and I remember being deeply disappointed. I never broke rules once they'd been explained to me, which meant that I wouldn't ever be tied up again because if I was tied up, I could die in a fire. It didn't seem fair.

As I grew older and became more aware of sex (courtesy largely of the family Bible, which I read cover-to-cover on a two year cycle), I started to have vivid and complicated dreams of bondage and sexual domination and something that seemed, strictly speaking, to be rape, but which in the dreams felt not like rape at all. I had been taught that all sexual fantasies were sin, because thought was as bad as action, so while I was disturbed by the dreams, I was disturbed more for the blanket sin of sexual desire than for the idea that the type of desire I was subconsciously expressing might not have been appropriate or healthy. Knowing as I did almost nothing about sex, I could hardly know at the time that my desires were unusual; I suppose that if you had asked me at twelve what mommies and daddies did in the bedroom, I might in all innocence have hazarded my own fantasies as the norm for everyone.

I went to a conservative college where we were reminded that sex outside of marriage was a sin and that desire and fantasies were sinful things to indulge in. A sort of low level guilt accompanied me everywhere during this period of my life, a frustration over my inability to stop sinning in my dreams or in furtive masturbatory sessions in the rare moments alone in my shared dorm room. My fantasies and subconscious dreams turned darker at this time, now requiring not only an inability to consent on my part, but also that my partner very clearly and specifically not care about pleasing me. I have no doubt that had I shared my secret sin with a school counselor, this evolution of my desires would have been seen as proof that my soft-core bondage sin had lapsed inevitably into hard-core rape fantasies, and such was the power of evil spreading over my life.

When I was seventeen, I had my first serious relationship. We'd spoken at length about how I was not ready for sex and did not want sex until I was married. I had been open about that fact from almost our first date, but I still felt enormously guilty and selfish and so I regularly pleased my partner in ways that were "not sex" in my mind, but which I recognize now in retrospect, were. However, I still felt comfortable in my "virgin" status, and I felt that our relationship was a healthy one.

Trigger Warning: description of a rape
Six months into our relationship, my partner held me down and had sex with me against my will. I cried and struggled and begged that my partner stop, but I wasn't given a choice in the matter. Afterward, my partner held me and told me I was loved and that they just hadn't been able to control themself. I felt hurt, angry, and utterly betrayed. I had been raped, and by someone I loved and trusted, and I did not know how to cope with that reality. My body was in complete conflict, with some parts of my body reporting searing pain and others horrifyingly reporting a reactionary sensation of pleasure that angered and humiliated me. But my mind was in one respect perfectly clear: whether the act had been pain or pleasure, I still had not wanted it, and it had been forced on me against my will.
END Trigger Warning

I have had rape fantasies for almost as long as I can remember. Being raped did not make the fantasies go away, but it did make me ashamed of the fantasies. Even when I left my childhood church and decided that sexuality was something warm and wonderful and free to be celebrated and never a shameful sin to ask forgiveness for, yet still I couldn't embrace an aspect of my sexuality that had been part of me since childhood because my sexuality was the wrong kind of sexuality. I had traded one concept of sin for another.

Moreover, having rape fantasies made me feel like a fraud. How could I live as a rape survivor and work on behalf of human rights during the day and still desire at night a cocktail of degradation, humiliation, and pain? It didn't really matter that I never shared these fantasies with anyone else; it didn't really matter that they were confined entirely to my head. They existed, I had them, I couldn't get rid of them, and the more they stayed with me, the more harshly I judged myself.

My life is a contradiction between what I know intellectually and what I feel emotionally. I believe that a large part of my sexuality is driven by my genes and my biology. I believe that my parents or my grandparents or my great-grandparents probably experienced similar fantasies in the privacy of their own minds. I understand that a large part of my sexuality is and has been determined by my culture and my upbringing. I intellectually acknowledge that sexuality was first presented to me, as a child, in images of bondage and sexual tension in numerous comics and cartoons. I see now that the movies and television shows I watched as a child were more rife with rape narratives and villains than they were with non-rape sexual narratives and heroes. I understand why, as a child in the environment I was raised in, I normalized what I did.

I recognize, too, that the pressure to be a good in my church and in my society imprinted heavily on my subconscious. I see clearly that the evolution of my desires from light bondage to heavy rape was an evolution that occurred as I was continually informed that engaging in any kind of consensual sex made me a sinner. I recognize that my fantasy partners needed to not care about my wants and well-being because if they cared about me, that meant I could stop the sex at any time. And if I could stop the sex in my fantasy and didn't then clearly I was a willing participant in sin and a damned soul for eternity. That's a lot to put on a teenager budding into a sexual being.

I fully realize that rape fantasies are not the same as rape. I recognize that rape fantasies ultimately have a layer of control in them that my trying-not-to-sin subconscious chose to ignore: that the rape fantasy starts when I want it to start and ends when I want it to end. I realize that actual rape is an entirely different experience from a sexual domination fantasy. I understand that my rape was a violation of my control over my body, over my trust for my partner, and over my expressed desires and not an experience that I secretly wished for and somehow unconsciously brought on myself. And I understand that a rape survivor can still enjoy rape fantasies without being a hypocrite.

But knowing all that doesn't make me feel any better. I judge myself harshly, and to a standard that I would never impose on another human being. You have rape fantasies? Well, you can't control that, and as long as you're not harming yourself or others, you should enjoy your sexuality however it expresses itself. But when I have rape fantasies? I'm a terrible human being and should crawl into a hole somewhere and die. It's all very subjective, it would seem.

I'm not writing this because I need encouragement or validation or solidarity. I am who I am, and I recognize at this point in my life what I can change and what I cannot change, and one thing I cannot change is my sexuality. I'm a reasonably happy and healthy human being, and I live and work and interact with a variety of people - coworkers, family, friends, lovers - who don't know this side of me and never need to. There's a mental tension I live with, the tension of should-be-but-isn't, but it's a tension I've grown accustomed to. I've learned, oddly, to accept my non-acceptance of myself.

I'm writing this because this is the sort of thing I needed to read years ago, when I was first struggling with how to reconcile my rape with my rape fantasies, and was trying to work out in my head that just because two things share similar words, doesn't mean they are in any way the same thing at all. Maybe reading my words will help someone else. I hope so.

--Anonymous

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TBAT realizes that due to the nature of the material commenters may wish to do so while preserving their anonymity. Using a variation of "Anonymous" makes it less likely that TypePad will toss one's comments into the spamtrap. TBAT will check the spamtrap regularly to check that that has not happened. As always TBAT will protect the confidentiality of commenters.

---

The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

 

Comments

[Anon for now]

Thank you. Thank you. Oh God, thank you for writing this. I had a Strict Religious Upbringing too, and had those fantasies all the way through to now, and have never stopped being ashamed of them. Thank you so much.

[Kit Whitfield]

In my admittedly non-comprehensive experience, sadomasochists tend to be more respectful of consent than most people. If the kind of things you like to do in bed could seriously injure or traumatise someone even if you have their consent, you have to think long and carefully about what consent consists of and how it can be clearly communicated and/or withdrawn. Consent is a serious issue.

So based on the people I know, to be honest it's the ostensibly vanilla people I'd be more concerned about. The sadomasochists tend to be nice, considerate people. In sadomasochistic sex, traumatising someone isn't just unethical; it's also incompetent. Would that this were equally widespread an opinion in 'normal' sex.

For what that's worth.

[Lonespark]

This post is...something. A very good something, and powerful, and necessary. Well done, Anon.

I was briefly confused because all the comments on the sidebar go to the other hidden post. But that's cool, too, to revisit No Apology.

[Anonymous too]

I'm a transgender person born male. I am not openly transgender, not even on the internet. I look very male and I don't think anyone I haven't told suspects anything.

In fantasies I present as female and do it so well that no one who didn't know could possibly tell I have a male body. That makes sense. How much of a fantasy would it be if I looked male in it? So my clothes, my voice, my hair, my posture, and everything else about me sends off female vibes. But it isn't by choice. My fantasies all involve being forced to present as female by someone who is cruel and has unopposable power over me. They are not fantasies of being able to be who and what I want to be, they are fantasies of being forced against my will to be what someone else wants me to be.

Instead of getting what I want because I want it, I am forced and it is degrading and demeaning and humiliating in my fantasies. It is monstrous. If someone really did to someone the things I fantasize about people doing to me, that person would be utterly evil and committing psychological torture.

When there is sex in my fantasies it is rape.

The fantasies also involve conservative gender roles being forced on me. Gender roles no one should ever have to conform to.

I hate my fantasies. I don't judge myself harshly for being trans, but I do judge myself for my fantasies being so awful. I wish that I could fantasize about being in a loving relationship with someone who accepted me so that I was a woman of my own free will and sex was consensual. I can't. I've tried to make myself. It always comes back to being forced.

I really identified with these parts of the original post:

They existed, I had them, I couldn't get rid of them, and the more they stayed with me, the more harshly I judged myself.

But knowing all that doesn't make me feel any better. I judge myself harshly, and to a standard that I would never impose on another human being. You have rape fantasies? Well, you can't control that, and as long as you're not harming yourself or others, you should enjoy your sexuality however it expresses itself. But when I have rape fantasies? I'm a terrible human being and should crawl into a hole somewhere and die.

And I'm terrified of posting this.

[Mmy]

I wish I could more than listen, learn and love.

[Anonymous three]

Thank you for the honesty in this piece.

[Bay]

I wonder sometimes how I can be a feminist and yet have sexual fantasies in which women (myself or otherwise) are degraded and used. Even knowing intellectually that fantasies are different than reality, it's hard to get past the gut feeling that "I am a terrible person".

[kisekileia]

Anonymous too, I can in fact see why the fantasies you have would be appealing in your situation. If someone was forcing you to present as female, you would, at least theoretically, be able to present that way without people blaming you for being trans and being bigoted against you for it. You would have the emotional rewards of presenting as your true self, and you'd also have the fact that you were forced into it as a bulwark against people blaming you and hurting you because they think you chose it. In fantasyland, that would feel like a win-win situation, even though it obviously wouldn't be in real life.

Libby Anne over at Love, Joy, Feminism, a young woman who was raised in fundamentalist, patriarchal, pro-Michael Pearl Christianity and grew up to be a feminist and atheist, addresses experiences she's had that are similar to the OP's in this post. Basically, she couldn't give herself permission to think about enjoying sex unless, in the fantasy, the sex was forced on her. In her case, the reason was that when she was growing up, she had thoroughly internalized the pervasive message that she wasn't allowed to think about sex or have sexual feelings. So when she got married and started trying to enjoy sex, she needed to imagine that she wasn't choosing it in order to enjoy it.

I really, really hate that there are so few resources available for people who are trying to build healthy sexuality after being raised or spending a lot of time in a puritanical environment. It seems like SUCH a common problem, but I've asked about books on the topic at both my local feminist sex store and my local feminist bookstore, and they both came up empty. I'd think about writing such a book myself if there weren't disability issues that make that impossible. (Specifically, anxiety issues around certain types of writing, plus ADHD.) I haven't even seen any websites dedicated to this specific topic, although there was a LiveJournal community for it at one point. People really need to start talking about this.

[Nick Kiddle]

//So my clothes, my voice, my hair, my posture, and everything else about me sends off female vibes. But it isn't by choice. My fantasies all involve being forced to present as female by someone who is cruel and has unopposable power over me. They are not fantasies of being able to be who and what I want to be, they are fantasies of being forced against my will to be what someone else wants me to be.//

When I was trying to wrap my head around what it might mean to be trans and want to transition, I wrote a story about someone who was kidnapped, held down and forcibly injected with hormones. On one level, it was a story, but partway through I realised in a sense I envied that character. The decision had been taken out of their hands, sparing them the should-I-shouldn't-I brain loop that I was constantly running through. I spent quite some time wishing for a similar fate.

[Rowen]

I've had some good experiences being a sub, and in some of my fantasies, it's gotten very . . . well, kinda degrading. I've found one or two tops who have been able to safely do what I've asked of them. Honestly, a lot of the time, I've felt a lot of shame, and even wondered if I needed to seek some sort of help to help me appreciate more sensual sex, rather then what I feel like is degrading sex. Yet, recently, I met one guy who said that he really respects and appreciates a sub, and that it's whole goal to get the sub off. He phrased it better, but it was a whole new world, and i've been trying to concentrate on that, rather then, "I like things that are bad for me."
/end ramble

[GiyTabLit]

Thank you for sharing these intimate inner dialogs. I also have rape fantasies that as a feminist shame me deeply. What baffles me is that I don't have a strict religious upbringing and sex was always something I could talk openly about so I don't understand where my sexual repressions come from. I wonder if being chubby as a child and fat as an adult sent similar messages to me about sex. Rather than it being a sin, maybe I believed it was undeserved? I don't know. Intellectually, I understand that powerplay is an acceptable form of sexual expression as long as its done with a trusted partner with proper signals for safety. But that doesnt stop the shame i feel. Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone.

[AnaMardoll]

I've felt all day like I should post a comment to this, but it's hard to think of something to say beyond "wow" and "thank you". So... Wow. And thank you.

Actually, I can think of something else. In addition to a huge thank you to the OP author for putting themselves out there like this, I want to thank hapax, Kit, and mmy for being willing to host this. I'm sure a lot of places would have shied away from this as too controversial, but I so glad that this is out there. If the author really doesn't mind redistribution, I'll be reposting this next month, to circulate this 'out there'.

Something like this... really resonates with me. I had a strict religious upbringing too, and I understand so much that feeling of sinning every day, in every thought, word, and deed. I understand that feeling that enjoyable sex is something horrible, and the problem of not being able to switch that "off" just because you left that community. Or even just because you got married. It doesn't seem to work like that... that you can be told all your life that something is bad, and then *poof* it's good because a paper was signed by a judge.

I'm rambling, so I should stop now. I just wanted to say "thank you" that this was written and posted. Thank you, so much.

[burgundy]

I've never had a personal rape fantasy, but until relatively recently most of my fantasies were basically porn-in-my-head rather than anything involving me. Often really complicated stuff, with involved storylines, and recurring characters, developed over years. Fun stuff. Anyway.

As far back as middle school, a lot of these stories involved rape or degrading sex. It's never been the majority, but it's always been a significant amount. And as I got older, this worried me more and more. And I didn't feel like I had anyone I could talk to about it.

When I was 18 or so, I had a good friend (later girlfriend) who was a few years older, and very sexually experienced and knowledgeable about all kinds of things sexy, and one night I confessed to her that I had all these fantasies, and did it means something about me? Had I been molested or sexually abused in some way and I'd repressed it and this is how it was coming out? And she explained that lots of women have those thoughts, and it doesn't mean anything at all. That was such a huge relief to me.

I'm so glad you shared this with us, and that we're getting the comments we're getting. It's a very difficult topic, but clearly it's something we need to be hearing more about. The more people feel less alone and less ashamed of things that really are ok, the better.

[Omorka]

Thank you very much for sharing this. Struggling to come out from under a strictly-religious, sex-negative upbringing has clearly been painful and difficult for, well, a whole damn lot of us in a whole damn lot of ways.

[Eva-Lise Carlstrom]

Thank you for posting this. You are brave and generous to share it.

[Silver Adept]

First and foremost, many thanks to our Anonymous poster for being able to speak freely and frankly about a topic of great importance, and to TBAT for hosting the piece and committing to exercising care and monitoring in the comments.

For the following portion of the comment, I'm speaking intellectually and from what I've learned by talking to people, not from any direct experience, so please take that with what you consider appropriate amounts of salt (or equivalent spice/saying).

What Kit says is true - most people in BDSM relationships, or top/bottom relationships, are very concerned about consent. There's an additional component to it that's not necessarily evident from seeing such a topping/bottoming scene at work - it is part of the top's responsibility to be aware of their bottom.

In the hands of a capable, trusted, and usually experienced top, often with a long relationship with their bottom, areas like where the OP and several of our commenters are fantasizing can be breached, discussed, and sometimes even acted upon in scene. It requires considerable skill and attention from the top to look for warning signs that their bottom is moving out of a headspace where they will have a positive experience and into one where they are having a negative or scarring one.

That said, a lot of bottoms also say that while they're experiencing such things, they feel emotions like shame and degradation - but as Rowan points out above, a skilled top can over-ride those feelings of shame by mentioning how much the top feels pride and awe and appreciation for the bottom for going through those kinds of experiences. But it takes time, and good relationships, and small steps sometimes.

And to an outside observer, it looks remarkably like forcing someone, degrading them, and not respecting their consent or them as a person.

Regarding the original topic, I wonder if: (a) in sex-negative religious upbringings that insist that women give their husbands sex whenever they ask for it, regardless of their own feelings about it, and insist that taking pleasure in sexual behavior is sinful, and/or (b) cultures derived from those kinds of upbringing that devalue the input of women and reduce them to objects in their media contribute to the presence of rape and nonconsensual fantasies in women, regardless of their feminism credentials. In the fantasy, there's good sex without the accompanying sin (because it wasn't chosen) and...perhaps, without the need to be an active director? Good sin-free passive (ish?) pleasure certainly sounds like a good deal - what does that say about our society, then, that it takes something like these fantasies to be able to get there in our own heads?

(Not to sound academic or trivializing of the experiences related here or the tremendous courage it takes to relate them, even anonymously. If that's the case, to the rubbish bin with this comment.)

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Hello all. It's been a while. Stuff happened, then I was read-only for a while... etc.

De-lurking, and momentarily breaking character, to thank Anonymous up there for this post... and share my own rather bizarre story ROT13'd for Trigger Warnings:

Gur svefg guvat vf, V'z Vagrefrk. V unir obgu znyr naq srznyr traqre vqragvgvrf... naq, nf ovmneer nf guvf vf, V ubarfgyl srry yvxr gurl'er gjb frcnengr naq qvfgvapg "fgngrf" V pna or va ng nal gvzr. Naq va obgu fgngrf, V nz urgrebfrkhny... zl znyr fvqr yvxrf jbzra, naq zl srznyr fvqr yvxrf zra.

V qba'g xabj vs guvf vf eryngrq gb gur sbyybjvat zber-eryrinag-gb-gur-BC guvat ng nyy, ohg vg znl or. Ntnva, znffvir Gevttre Jneavatf:

V unir encr snagnfvrf nf jryy. Hasbeghangryl, V unccra gb or bs gur culfvpny traqre gung vf zber culfvpnyyl pncnoyr (naq, fgngvfgvpnyyl fcrnxvat, zber qvfcbfrq gbjneqf) gheavat fnvq snagnfvrf vagb qrpvqrqyl-ABA-snagnfgvp ernyvgvrf, zl znyr "fvqr" graqf gb cbffrff (naq vaqhpr) frirer thvyg vffhrf. Orpnhfr rira gubhtu V jbhyq engure fnj bss zl bja... re, V zrna, V'q engure qvr guna npghnyyl ranpg nal bs gurfr snagnfvrf (naq V ubcr n guveq cnegl jbhyq ranpg fvzvyne whfgvpr ba zr vs V qvq), V fgvyy snagnfvmr, va qvfgerffvatyl rynobengr naq qrgnvyrq jnlf, nobhg gurz. Nobhg gurz unccravat gb bgure jbzra, be nobhg zl srznyr fvqr haqretbvat gurz zlfrys.

V gel gb pbafbyr zlfrys jvgu gur xabjyrqtr gung gur gjb fcrpvsvp "fhotraerf" V rawbl ernqvat naq qnlqernzvat nobhg ner vzcbffvoyr va gur erny jbeyq naljnl (gur traer-pbqrf "GT" naq "ZP" jvyy cebivqr nyy gur uvagf V jvyy qvihytr), naq V'ir sbhaq gung zber "ernyvfgvp" encr snagnfvrf qba'g nccrny gb zr rira va ulcbgurgvpnyf, ohg gur snpg erznvaf gung V qb rawbl ernqvat naq qnlqernzvat, va ubjrire rfpncvfg be vzcbffvoyr n pbagrkg vg znl or, nobhg guvatf gung jbhyq, vs cbffvoyr va gur erny jbeyq, or ubeevsvp.

[chris the cynic]

Hey Nicolae, it's good to see you around again.

Generally I think it's a good idea to specify what kind of thing might be triggering in the trigger warning because it's not as if everyone is triggered by the same things. For that in particular, for example, people are probably going to be expecting that it's going to be in some way related to rape, but the ideation of self harm (the "I would rather ..." section) is probably something that couldn't be predicted and if someone were going to be triggered by that a general trigger warning might not help them avoid being triggered.

On the other hand I never know how specific a trigger warning should be. Would "Trigger Warning: Ideation of self harm," be specific enough or might someone read that, think they'll be ok because they didn't realize it meant that and then be triggered anyway? If the trigger warning is in too much detail it risks triggering people in itself. So I don't know exactly where things should be, but I think it's better to be more specific than just "Trigger warnings."

That said, I generally forget to use trigger warnings entirely, so you're already better at doing it than I am.

[AnaMardoll]

Nicolae, thank you for posting that. I think that takes a tremendous amount of courage to say.

I don't know that this will make sense, but my first thought on reading your comment was that it tied perfectly back into the OP in the sense that, well, of course it makes sense that a physically male person might've internalized "Male Sex Is Aggressive / Female Sex Is Passive", if they've been living in the same society and getting the same cultural cues as many of the rest of us. I mean, isn't that the flip-side to all this?

My next thought was something akin to Kit's, in the sense that people who acknowledge they have s/m fantasies/kink seems to tend to also understand the vital importance of consent.

My third (random) thought was that a partner who understands all this could conceivably be a wonderful friend/lover for someone who has also internalized these messages. I'm guessing that a lot of people don't feel like they have someone they can safely talk to about this in face-to-face space.

But thank you for sharing that. I almost think a companion piece to this about men and their fantasies would be... well, I would read it.

[The Board Administration Team]

TBAT has had the a question raised in private: how do non-consent fetishes and rape culture affect male fantasies and guilt? The question was raised off-board because the questioner didn't want to derail, but we all agree that it's an issue worth discussing.

We have therefore put up an open thread so that anyone who wishes to discuss this subject can do so without imposing on this one. Posters are requested to take discussion of male fantasies there; posts unsuited for this thread will be removed and re-posted in the open one.

[Majromax]

I've noticed a common thread throughout this. The unacceptable fantasies are themselves enjoyable, but when put in broader context ("what does this mean?" "what does this say about me?") guilt or negative feelings arise.

I wonder if this is because we have a very poor cultural vocabulary for fantasies. We use the same words for things that can never/will never happen ("I daydreamed about sprouting wings and flying around the world under my own power") versus things that we indeed very much would like to have happen in reality ("I daydreamed about winning the lottery and telling my boss just where he could shove his unrealistic deadlines.")

This is especially fraught when it comes to sex, where as a culture we think that the only value in sex is within the context of a relationship (Ex: "meaningless" one-night stands) -- very much not a solo activity. All the leeway we'd give to a standard flight of fancy goes right out the window when it comes to sex. There's no difference in context between a sexual fantasy that one may easily act upon ("I want to have sex in the kitchen") and one that would not be safe/sane/possible ("I want to be degraded, humiliated, and have my consent violated by an uncaring partner.")

So what's it mean? When we have impossible[1] fantasies, we do not instinctively put them in their proper place -- as flights of fancy to be cherished and enjoyed but not built upon in reality. Instead, we get the dubious pleasure of worrying about the implications of their implementation, with all the incumbent guilt.

[1] -- I'm so deeply immersed in culture that I can't even think of a good word that means "unable to be acted upon without ruining the qualitative aspects of". Impossible comes close but not quite; insane and unwise approach from the other direction but carry serious negative connotations; implausible also seems to miss the mark.

[Anonymous in the NW]

Your experiences almost exactly mirror my own, and I too am grateful that you can speak about them in such a clear manner, and have been given the space to do so.
Much of my own angst has been over whether or not I was born this way, or was I made. Certainly my sex-shaming upbringing helped. (A common fantasy of mine was "Oh, I have this horrible magical curse upon me I have to have sex with you or I'll die!" No attempts at no-fault sex there, no sirree.) So did the neighbor girl who initiated kinky games with me. (Did she instill the fetish in me, or did I just happen to luck out and find someone who fanned the already-present spark?)
I'm still not sure why this particular bit sticks with me. I just know that I hope/wish it's inherent. Maybe it's to free myself of the suspicion that I'm broken. But I'm already broken! Everyone is, and I accept the inevitable cracks of life with grace.

>>a lot of bottoms also say that while they're experiencing such things, they feel emotions like shame and degradation

And that's what aftercare is for. After the beatings and humiliation, there's cuddles and warm fuzzies and band-aids. Trust is the most vital element of a kinky relationship, and the aftercare is where the trust is restated. You get two people* peeling up the sticky undersides of their souls in a scene, and the aftercare is where you remind each other that you're safe, whole, and grateful for the glimpse beneath the skin.

*In my experience Topping, the willingness to let yourself be a bad person is every bit as scary as letting yourself get whipped and bled.

[jemand]

Trigger warning: BDSM, Power play

I actually think it's been *so* long that I've had the types of fantasies I feel ashamed of and angry at myself for having... that the guilt and shame of my response to the fantasy has sort of been eroticized itself.

I really like power play in sex and it sometimes feels like there is one part of my head that gets off on "forcing" the rest of my head to watch internal videos it reacts with guilt to, whereas the rest of me really enjoys the domination/degradation/shame in being forced to watch.

And... I really do like the shame, I like to ride it through an encounter. Rowan and Silver Adept mentioned that a top *can* over-ride these feelings by injecting appreciation and respect into the scene... but that would just completely change the scene for me, and while I might appreciate that, too, that's not all of what I crave.

And, while it's true that an experienced top can do a lot, I think there are responsibilities and abilities that an experienced sub has too, and if it is the SUB that has more experience, I think he/she needs to be watching out for anything that seems unhealthy or off and being ready to call off the encounter. Because one of my fantasies is initiating men into acting out domination fantasies with me... and I feel like it would be inappropriate and dangerous and disrespectful of me if I ignored the possible affects on their psyches, and if I ignored the fact that in such a situation I am way, way more able to watch out for my own headspace staying safe than they are, because they are so new to it. I think, there's a phrase for this, "topping from the bottom?" I haven't read all I probably should about it... but I think personally, it just complicates the power play with yet another layer, more depth, more game within game and nobody's sure really who has the "most" power. Apparently, I like this. Doesn't always make me *happy* that I like it, but it seems to be immutable.

[Silver Adept]

@jemand -

Ah, thanks for that. The original in my head talked about the need for each role to look out for each other, but I scrubbed some of that, thinking it wouldn't be relevant.

I think the phrase for what you're talking about - "topping from the bottom" - can have a negative connotation of "a bottom that's not in proper headspace and is trying to top the top instead of letting the top top them." It may not be what you're aiming for.

@Anonymous in the NW -

Many thanks for the mention of aftercare and its function. It slipped my head entirely in trying to think about what I did post about.

[Anon_V]

Thank you so much, OP!Anon, for bringing this up. It feels wonderful to hear from so many other people who grew up in a strict religious anti-sex environment. I've often said that I felt guilty about my first lesbian crushes not because they were same-sex, but because they were crushes at all. I never masturbated until I was about 18, and then spent four or five years feeling guilty about it. Ana Mardoll mentions not being able to just "turn off" the training that sex is bad--the women I knew when I was a teenager used to joke sometimes about how "The Holy Spirit will be offended if you have sexual thoughts before marriage! And then on your wedding night the Holy Spirit will be offended if you don't!" So at least they recognized that it could be a problem--not that I ever heard any ideas for how to deal with it.

I don't have rape fantasies in the sense that I fantasize about being violated against my will, but I do have fantasies where either the men or women in my mental-porn-video are tied up or hurt or treated without as much regard for their consent as I would want to happen in real life. What you'd call "dubious consent" in erotica, I guess. I do feel guilty about this sometimes--ew, I wouldn't want to do that in real life! Does the fact that I get off on it mean I really *would* want to and am a bad person?

Since discovering that kink and BDSM exist, I've had another series of thoughts--if I'm involved in a sweet kind vanilla f/f relationship, but my most reliable fantasies are of topping a man against his will (or dub-con m/m power fantasies), does that mean what I *really* want is to find a male sub somewhere? Well, no. For one thing it would be way too much work. I like the way I'm living now and the woman I'm with and have next to no desire to sleep with a man in any way. And yet...

I really like what Majromax said about different types of fantasies. Gonna be thinking about that now, thank you.

[anon for a number of reasons]

Thanks for your powerful honesty in this piece. This piece and the other linked article about women recovering from purity obsessed cultures actually helps me understand somewhat where one of my college friends was coming from. She was raised in a strict conservative household and her dad was a Baptist pastor. She was one of those girls who looked very sweet and "virginal" but was actually rather talkative about her sexuality. Unfortunately, most of this honesty was about her incredibly overwhelming guilt in regards to it. (Sadly, I think the fact that she was sexual and felt guilty about it made her more attractive to the Christian guys - there were a ton of guys with crushes on her.) Although I don't know if she had rape fantasies, it wouldn't surprise me considering the fact that she clearly wanted the men she was with to dominate her personality and life. When she started dating someone new in senior year, I didn't see her for days or weeks at a time, even though I lived next to her and had a class with her. Unfortunately, of that entire mess, our Christian guy-friends just kept focusing on the fact that she was having sex before marriage and what could they do about that (because that was clearly their business...) instead of being concerned about the fact that she had stopped going to class, reinforcing the idea that the only thing men care about is your sex life.

TW: dysfunctional eating
In terms of guilt and attempting to purge your mind of sexual thoughts, I've found the best metaphor is to food. Both are basic animal urges that can have significant emotional and spiritual depth. Attempting to deny oneself completely (or severely limiting it, in the case of eating disorders) of either of them is going to lead to an unnatural focus on the point of denial and a very screwed up relationship with it. In both cases, there are times to have a deep engagement with it, like within a serious relationship for sex or a celebration for food, and there's times that you just need to take care of that urge. Obviously, this metaphor only works if you already have a healthy relationship with food, but I think it's a good way to explain it without making moral judgements.

[Slacktinonymous 0721]

In terms of guilt and attempting to purge your mind of sexual thoughts, I've found the best metaphor is to food. Both are basic animal urges that can have significant emotional and spiritual depth. Attempting to deny oneself completely (or severely limiting it, in the case of eating disorders) of either of them is going to lead to an unnatural focus on the point of denial and a very screwed up relationship with it.

YES YES YES THIS EXACTLY. I used to post on a message board where (when I first started going there) a lot of people believed that even masturbation constituted sexual sin, and there was a group where people tried to hold each other "accountable" for said sin. It later gradually came to light that there was a horribly high incidence of guys in their 20s coming on to teenage girls among people who'd met there. Even the masturbation accountability group itself failed to appropriately separate genders and ages, with what I now realize were extremely problematic consequences. Because people tried to avoid expressing their sexuality even in ways that would have harmed no one, they ended up obsessing over sex and giving into sexual temptation in really harmful ways. I really believe that a lot fewer girls there would have been preyed on if the older guys had been willing to experience sexuality in healthy ways like masturbation.

[Anonymous 3]

I don't have sexual fantasies -- that probably makes me weird; I think most people who aren't asexual have them, but I haven't gone around polling people so I don't know. I do have fantasies, but they're all G rated. I also don't identify as kinky. So, what am I doing in this thread?

I'm a rape survivor, many times over. I don't have memories of life before sexual abuse started because I was very young the first time. The most recent time was just over five years ago. I don't know what I was like before or how my sexuality would have developed. Would I still be a lesbian? (Before I get jumped on, let me say that if the abuse did influence my sexual orientation then at least something good came out of it.) Would I masturbate differently than I do now? Would I have less sexual hangups and would I be more comfortable with touch? Would I still be stone butch?

A lot of what I do when I masturbate is recreating scenes from abuse. I've had consensual sex but when I masturbate I don't tend to do that sort of thing.

The line between masturbation and self-harm, the line between orgasm and triggered is blurred for me and it's blurred both ways. Rot-13 for tmi and trigger warning for self harm.

Jura V pel, zl ihyin uhegf. V unir ab vqrn vs guvf vf abezny be abg ohg V'ir arire frra nalbar qvfphff vg. V pna bayl betnfz vs V'z pelvat. Znfgheongvba urycf zr pel, gheaf n gevpxyr bs n 2 be 3 grnef vagb n sybbq gung trgf vg nyy bhg. V gbhpu zlfrys hagvy uhegf.

V erperngr guvatf gur ynfg bar qvq jvgu n qvyqb. Ohg guvf gvzr V'z gur bar va pbageby. V pbhyq gurbergvpnyyl fgbc, ohg V qba'g. V gevttre zlfrys, be V qb vg jura V'z nyernql gevttrerq, naq V svaq vg pngunegvp, n jnl gb cebprff jung unccrarq, n jnl gb gnxr onpx fbzr pbageby, n jnl gb orpbzr zber pbzsbegnoyr jvgu orvat gbhpurq.

Va gur cnfg, V crargengrq zlfrys jvgu fpvffbef be enmbe oynqrf, V chg n one bs fbnc va naq yrg vg qvffbyir vafvqr zr, V hfrq n ynetr nrebfby pna gb erperngr gur srryvat bs ubj zhpu vg uheg jura V jnf yvggyr. V qba'g qb gung cneg nalzber. Abj, jura V pel, V ynl qbja va orq jvgu n zveebe gb jngpu gur grnef naq chg n cvyybj orgjrra zl yrtf naq guvax nobhg gur encrf. V unir gb. V pna'g pel cebcreyl jvgubhg qbvat vg naq V pna'g znfgheongr cebcreyl jvgubhg qbvat vg.

If I don't do it consciously, it's still there, still present, my history as a rape survivor is not something I can discard when it comes to touch and intimacy. It's always there. If I acknowledge the history, it at least gives me some control.

[Lee]

Majiromax said: I'm so deeply immersed in culture that I can't even think of a good word that means "unable to be acted upon without ruining the qualitative aspects of". Impossible comes close but not quite; insane and unwise approach from the other direction but carry serious negative connotations; implausible also seems to miss the mark.

May I suggest "unreasonable"?