maybe if we just called it something other than....

...a "rape fantasy."

Ever since reading this, i've been thinking something fierce about the whole rape fantasy thing and it's not sitting well with me. that "story" in particular strikes me funny for a number of reasons. The first being that i can't really stand anyone talking about sex the way that she does, but there's this strange thing that some people associate with feminism that seems to allow for that way of talking. I think it stems from the whole "men can talk that way, so can we" thing, but that just pisses me off. It's gross when men do it, it's gross when women do it...to me anyway. Secondly, she's awful to the prostitute she hires. If a man wrote as dismissively about a female prostitute as she does about her male one, he would be called a chauvinist. What you can get from her attitude is: "It doesn't matter how I treat him, I'm paying him." And that fucking sucks for any human being. Do your thing, but come on.

Finally, and mainly, the reason why this story pisses me off is the whole rape thing. She hires a man to rape her. SHE HIRES A MAN TO RAPE HER. THAT'S NOT RAPE. That's called domination, maybe violence, maybe power play- whatever- but it's not rape. She was and had to be in control of the entire thing- they even had a safe word.

That got me thinking about this allusive "rape fantasy" and I've concluded that it doesn't exist. OK, maybe there are some people for whom that exists in the way I'm thinking about it, but on the whole the terms are mutually exclusive. If you're fantasizing about something, you're probably enjoying it to some extent or at least wanting it, and that is exactly what rape is not. Rape is not wet or exciting, it's terrifying and awful and dry and painful and all of those other things that we all know rape is. What a "rape fantasy" really is, is folks fantasizing about domination. In the case of women, it's us getting excited about someone taking control, sure maybe being violent or aggressive, maybe there are bruises or maybe it's simply a "I want you" "OK!" kind of thing. The point is, in some estimation, it's wanted. Rape is not.

And rape is not something that feminists can "reclaim" like the word "bitch" (something I still have a problem with honestly...). Rape is rape and trying to take it back and own it makes it so we get to be desensitized when shit actually goes down. It's not like you can say "you can't rape me, I've reclaimed the word." I sympathize with the sentiment, we want to control the things we can't. But how about talking about it and trying to spread awareness instead of acting like rape is a thing that is awesome and that we want to pay people to do....that just gets confusing.

So. I suggest that we change our language when referring to these things so as not to confuse the two ever again. That way when someone says "rape fantasy" we can know that they actually mean it and we can then take psychologically responsible action. Let's call it "domination fantasy" or maybe come up with a euphemism...I'm not that clever at the moment, but I'm sure there is one.