Sexual fantasies

[BurningBuntingFlipFlop]

Many women have fantasies of rape, being controlled, abused etc (in a safe, loving relationship). Do you think this is due to patriarchal society conditioning us or are these genuine harmless desires?

But do you go around other topics, for example "STyle and Beauty" or "Going back to Work" and tell them that their topic isn't interesting. OR do you only do it in the feminist topic?

Only feminism. I am not that interested in Style and Beauty. Goin.g back to work is I imagine more pragmatic in tone?

I imagined, though it may have been wishful thinking, that the feminist section would attract a more serious thinker, a broader approach, a concern for the plight of all women, and I find it really self indulgent sometimes.

Isnt you are probably right, I should just go away. That's what you asked people to do last week. To leave you to it and enjoy.

I haven't told you to go away, I have said that it is worthwhile reading more than just the OP.

Re the self indulgence, a lot of people talk about their lives and the things that affect them. That's understandable I think. Just because people are feminists/interested in feminism doesn't make them magically different to other people, in that most people are interested primarily in things that affect them and theirs.

The plight of all women thing - you mean internationally? In places like Saudi and Afganistan and parts of Pakistan and so on and so on. I read the news and feel about these things, but what is there to talk about? They are awful. I have no idea what can be done, certainly it is beyond our power to actually do anything about these things. I suppose I could leave my family and go and campaign for womens rights somewhere else but, honestly, I really don't want to. But eg taking part in a march in the UK, that is something I can do.

OK, Appletrees, I'll rise to that particular bait and I'll do it along the lines ISNT suggested. There's a new book out which calls gender violence a problem on the same scale as slavery and the Holocaust and sets out suggestions for how people can help. It's called Half the Sky. It's had both glowing and less-glowing reviews:
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/31/half-the-sky-germaine-greer

We can talk about that if you like.

I am talking about it on another thread.

Isnt: well yes and no. Tis advisable to do one but reasonable to do the other.

Sorry that was about reading through or responding to op.

No I don't think we can throw our skirts over our faces and say oh it's just too awful but what can we do?let's talk about fantasies instead.

Half the sky talks about and encourages direct action. I am very unsure about how to deal with and approach these issues and I am talking to Sakura about it.

Appletrees, you appear to be assuming you know why the OP posted -- "I am so disheartened by the immensity of the women's rights challenge that I'll retreat to a small issue of fantasies instead" or somesuch. But that's just speculation (and it's not that convincing to me, either). If you want to know why the OP posted on this topic, you'd have to ask her and hope she replied.

BUT, your complaint was that the important subjects aren't discussed in this section. Yet you say you are talking about the value of direct action with Sakura on another thread. It therefore seems like that would be a better thread for you to focus on, rather than getting cross with this thread.

It's a shame for you that you get frustrated by what you see as self-indulgence in this section. Why not just be more selective in which threads you engage with, though? There are plenty that are as serious as you could wish for. My recent choices would include:

• the body/beauty standard thread
• relationship between feminism and lesbianism
• how to assert feminist principles in a heterosexual relationship
• someone asking for help for a rape victim
• feminism and religion
• a call to action to lobby Russia about sex trafficking

YMMV, but I find it hard to imagine that you wouldn't find at least a few threads that give you what you're after. If you really can't... trying to up the quality yourself or looking elsewhere strike me as the most likely methods for you to find the debate you're after. Complaining in threads you don't like will allow you to blow off steam, but I don't think it will change things as you would wish.

Apologies for going off-topic, with this response to an earlier post by Appletrees.

Appletrees wrote "I imagined, though it may have been wishful thinking, that the feminist section would attract a more serious thinker."

I'm sorry to read of your disappointment. I happen to think that there are quite a few serious thinkers on the feminism threads.

What do you suggest could be done to raise the quality of the debate? Do you have any constructive suggestions on how thinking can be made more serious on these threads?

I remember welcoming you to the feminism section when you wrote the same assessment of the threads a few weeks ago, and I invited you to start a thread. You responded "No V. Have looked at history of topic and decided not to."

I don't understand your reluctance/refusal to start threads and try to change things for the better, when you feel the current offerings are not serious enough for you.

I don't see why you can't discuss sexual fantasies and Saudi Arabia actually.

Being interested in one doesn't preclude being interested in the other.

It seems to me Appletrees has just come here to sneer. Which is up to her really, whatever floats your boat.

I agree with HB. The other topics mentioned on this thread are very important and should be discussed.

However, we should also be able to discuss women's sexual desires in this section. I have been finding this thread interesting because I have problems with my own sexual desires. I feel that acting them out may conflict with my feminist views (iirc this topic was discussed at length on a previous thread). Any information / discussion on the subject is useful to me.

I imagine that is not an uncommon problem peabody. Maybe what you need is a bracing chat with SGB

Why not namechange and start a thread about whatever is bothering you? Unless you are happy to tak about whatever it is without namechanging obv.

Have lots to say in response but can't right now though I will be back later.

(nobody holds breath)

See, I don't think it is uncommon. As the OP said, many women have fantasies about being dominated in some way. I think it is important to talk about why this might be.

This thread suggests cultural conditioning, loss of responsibility, loss of control. On another thread someone suggested trauma re-enactment.

Why does anyone have the desires they do? There are people with all sorts of strange fetishes. Where do they come from? Are sexual desires innate? formed early in childhood? formed at puberty?

Can anyone recommend a good book that deals with the subject?

I'd be willing to talk about that topic, Dittany. My thoughts, which are admittedly ill-formed, are:

1. there's a time for repressing one's sexual fantasies, and men whose fantasies involve rape have reached that point, in my view. I wonder if any work has been done on how people can successfully suppress fantasies in this way? presumably yes, in the context of other criminal fantasies eg paedophilia, although I'm sure success rates are very low
2. context will shape fantasies for men as it does for women. sexual violence and imagery in our culture is sufficiently rife to shape men's choices. this is not by any way of excuse, but by way of understanding causes so they can be tackled effectively.

peabody yes I said I didn't think it was uncommon

Your questions are all very interesting I think...

Thinking about your post slhilly, and about peabody's, you could probably find out quite easily what people fantasise about and in what proportions by looking at literotica.

I wonder about Nancy Friday (as she was mentioned up the thread). I've read her Secret Garden book and tbh I was sceptical. She said in the intro, iirc, that she'd put a small ad in the back of a newspaper, asking for women to send in their fantasies. I can imagine very few women seeing such an ad and merrily writing down their most private fantasies and sexual experiences and posting it off (especially considering how, er, extreme some of the contributions are), but I could imagine a lot of men (or maybe women, who know?) making up something for a lark. A lot of the stories read like bad, far-fetched porn. I don't have the book to hand to pick out examples. Am I the only sceptic?

Back to the topic at hand, I don't know because I don't understand the appeal of violent fantasies, S&M etc. at all, but I'm always surprised by the number of men willing to pay for a dominatrix (er, not from personal experience!). I?ve also read of people (usually men, I think) paying through the nose to be ?kidnapped?; you arrange that over a certain period of, say, a fortnight or a month, a team of people will pounce one day and shove you in the back of their van and probably take you back to their headquarters for some sort of dominatrix action. I find that in such poor taste. I think it?s a slap in the face to real victims of such horrible crimes, to fetishise it like that.

I can understand a fantasy centring on the idea that a man found me so irresistible he could hardly help himself, but not one in which I was protesting (i.e. not a rape fantasy; more a fantasy about being turned on by his arousal and of being the desired and pursued one in control and confident), and certainly nothing about being controlled or abused.

ISNT - Sorry, I was trying to agree with you and obviously failing miserably :)

lydialanguish, I'm sceptical about Nancy Friday's books too. I read them years ago, but I wouldn't reread them now. Remember Kinsey and his possible distortion of figures. Some may want to be sensatioanlist to make money, and others may have an agenda. I don't think you can hold too much store by some of these books.

Peabody, I think the fantasies that you have are quite normal. From the people that I know, I have found that the people who are control-freaks, who are organised etc. like being dominated, because it is the opposite to their real life. They are free from being in control, free from acting a part, free from holding things together. They are able to let go and be dominated instead of always being in charge as they are in real life. The people who are disorganised on the other hand often like dominating. They gain the control that they don't have in real life. That's why some of the most powerful men in business and politics like being dominated, as a release. SGB will know more about this than me, but I think the figures for women and men who like being dominated far outstrips the figures for those that like to dominate.

I think that people have these fantasies as well because they are essentially play acting and they are confronting subconscious fears by acting and drama and this lessens the fear. It's a bit like people who are scared of flying, forcing themselves to fly or imagining that they are in a plane, and overcoming the fear by surviving.

SGB won't agree with me, because she doesn't believe in imaginary friends, but I think there is also possibly a spiritual element to it. It is a bit like the priests who self-flagellate and wear hair shirts amd pierce their tongues etc., as in India. Through pain and suffering, people lose themselves, they relinquish control and strip the facade of control from their lives and get closer to God, because they get close to finding out what is underneath the facade of their personality and being, and get closer to the core, which is God.

peabody