The previous poster finds what s/he terms our “glorifying rape fantasies” “deeply disturbing”. It sounds almost as though she is accusing us of glorifying actual rape. I do hope not. I am not altogether sure what might be meant by glorifying rape fantasies. To glorify means to make something seem more pleasant or desirable (or important) than it actually is. Evidently many women enjoy such fantasies so perhaps our correspondent merely wishes to express disapproval of this fact?

But then, if it is indeed the case that “they work for this woman because it's a way of dealing with what was done to her”, is the poster suggesting that Jayda should not explore the rape fantasies that she finds helpful or otherwise a source of joy in her life? Is it wrong for rape victims to work through what happened to them in this way if they want to? Why? Is it wrong for rape victims to overcome any issues they may have as a result of having been raped, or is it only wrong for them to do so in this way? Is it wrong not to be or remain a victim if you have been raped?

There is something very wrong somewhere if it is actually considered wrong not to be destroyed by vile abusive experiences. This is in no way to criticise rape victims who do not manage to overcome the trauma and are psychologically scarred for life – not at all! But to suggest that a woman who has managed to find a way not to be destroyed by a real rape, has thereby done the wrong thing, seems to me to be positively pernicious.

Surely we should be supporting one another in finding ways to survive and thrive after terrible experiences like rape (assuming those ways do not harm others, of course), not making one another feel bad for not remaining a complete wreck for life! Think how sick such a position is! Remaining in the state of mind of a victim ruins lives! If fantasising about rape, or enacting (consensual) approximations of rape helps some women, whatever is wrong with that?!

(This is all assuming that this is what leads women to desire such experiences. In fact, as I understand it, many women fantasise about being raped, and by no means all of those women have actually been raped.)

With regard to the poster's question about victims of the Nazis, there is of course the phenomenon of victims of abuse developing or maintaining ‘love’ for their abusers, but nothing anyone has said on the rape threads here seems to be about that phenomenon.
However, it is a fact that some of the victims of the Nazis did continue ‘relationships’ they had been coercively drawn into by their Nazi abusers. Some of these post-war relationships were no doubt harmful and unhealthy, but in some cases, the post-war part of the relationship enabled the victim to work through the issues and regain her psychological power and strength. Would it be wrong to do that? Surely not?! Shouldn't your judgement of whether or not someone reenacting X, Y, or Z under safe, loving conditions needs psychiatric help depend at least partly on the state of mind of the person? If it is part of a rational process of laying terrible psychological demons to rest, or otherwise gives her joy, why is that ipso facto a Bad Thing? Why is that automatically a case for psychiatry? I find this an inexplicable, rather hysterical, and deeply twisted position to take, but feel free to put me straight!

Some readers may find the film The Night Porter interesting in this context. Don't believe everything you read in the reviews of it. It is necessary to watch it calmly, or you might see all manner of things that aren't there, and fail to notice the differences between how things were in the concentration camp flashbacks and how they are in the ‘now’ of the film.

Let me make this clear. Out there, there is some man reading this. Not a wonderful strong Alpha male, but a twisted individual who gets his kicks hurting women. Publicizing and making acting out rape fantasies sound like a good thing, may be all the fuel he needs to go and act out his fantasy on an unwilling victim.

If it's consensual, it ain't rape, it's psychodrama. And my problem with something that severe is, it may work for some rape victims but what if in others it triggers the fight response and she goes into a blind rage, actually harming her husband? Once you let all those barriers down, it's like Pandora's box. You don't know what will come roaring out.

A reader wrote:

Let me make this clear. Out there, there is some man reading this. Not a wonderful strong Alpha male, but a twisted individual who gets his kicks hurting women. Publicizing and making acting out rape fantasies sound like a good thing, may be all the fuel he needs to go and act out his fantasy on an unwilling victim.

By this argument, it is also irresponsible of bookshops and libraries to stock several Shakespeare plays, The Fountainhead, the Bible, Poe, and many other books and authors including much great literature, to say nothing of de Sade and the like. And indeed, murderers and rapists and other criminals have often been only too happy to agree that they have supposedly been influenced by books, films, and so on.

How far do we want to take this annihilation of great literature? And do you also think that, for example, Nietzsche's books should be banned because a well-known serial killer claims that he committed his crimes under the influence of Nietzsche?

Such evil individuals can find an ‘influence’ anywhere. There is no limit to what you would have to destroy to reach a state in which perpetrators could not find anything to associate their crimes with. First they commit the crime; then they ‘explain’ and attempt to exculpate themselves. You have the causality backwards.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night, who went to Japan a while ago. He is a respectable English father, and he was staying at the home of an upper-middle class Japanese family he did not know very well. He was completely shocked that one or other person he was staying with would call him into the family room to watch some hardcore pornography that would be illegal in England. He could not get his head around the fact that this stuff was everywhere he looked, there. They have entire sections in videostores devoted to rape films. They even have stuff that looks for all the world like child porn [shudder]. And my friend told me of how he had been in a bookshop looking at Japanese children\s books, only to notice that on the very same table there were some books depicting buggery, nauseating SM torture, and other things that made him wish he had not had any lunch. As I understand it, the existence of this stuff does not appear to be associated with a high rate of violent crime there.

A good man does not turn into a monster just because he reads a few articles on a web site.

What is actually happening here is that in our culture, there is an irrational taboo at work. Whilst few get upset about the depiction of violence per se, and few get upset about the depiction of sex per se, in our culture, books and films depicting even the most mildly ‘violent’ sex occasion hysterical reactions out of all proportion to what they are. (This taboo does not exist in Japanese culture, but they have other taboos which look highly amusing or very silly to Western eyes.)

I think this taboo is connected with another taboo in our culture: the taboo against not being a psychological victim if you have been the victim of abuse or a terrible attack. The taboo against speaking about this stuff is pernicious. It entrenches a state of victimhood in far too many people. It makes victims fear that they are sick and evil in the event that they themselves have rape fantasies. It makes victims feel as though they are betraying their fellow victims if they manage to move beyond victimhood.

The more issues like this can be discussed openly, the less shockingly out-of-perspective the reactions will be, the less unwarranted guilt and misery there will be, and the truer our ideas about it all will become.

Sometimes it is best not to close one's eyes to difficult, disturbing issues. Sometimes it is necessary to engage with them.

the boss said:

I think this taboo is connected with another taboo in our culture: the taboo against not being a psychological victim if you have been the victim of abuse or a terrible attack. The taboo against speaking about this stuff is pernicious. It entrenches a state of victimhood in far too many people. It makes victims fear that they are sick and evil in the event that they themselves have rape fantasies. It makes victims feel as though they are betraying their fellow victims if they manage to move beyond victimhood.

Delightfully well said, the boss.

I tend to agree. Too many people in today's society are raised with a victim attitude including those who think they are entitled to compensation of some ilk. If we can all strive to learn to take charge of our own lives and own up to what has transpired, I think, as a society, we could move forward to happier and healthier lives at an astounding rate. Being a 'victim' is a society created construct that lies within your own mind.

This happened to be the way I was raised. Accept it. Deal with it. Learn what you can from it. And then move on. Maybe that's why I suppressed the memory of my first incident; I wasn't ready to deal with it. Then when I was, it came back and I moved on.

One of the greatest sayings in helping to deal with life that I have come across is: The majority of all stress in life is created by fighting against what is. If we can learn to accept 'what is' and move forward, we eliminate the stress.

This is not to say that we can't do something about it, but we are most effective in doing something when we have truly accepted that what is, is (or was, was), and then learning from it and moving forward in whatever endeavor best fits the person and situation. Sitting and 'whining' about it does us no good, and actually further exacerbates the stress.

I firmly believe that it is within everyone's mental capability to not be a victim. Some people may need a little help though.

Louise, I am not sure what your age is, but when I was growing up in the early 70's, society in the southern US was still encouraging females to 'stay virgins' until married, and/or not to sleep around or be called 'slut' or 'whore.'

I guess, there is some of my 'raising' still in me, because if I thought about being single today, I still wouldn't go out with a guy with the thought in my head that 'I am going to sleep with him.' So, call me old, or old fashioned, but that is me.

At the time I started dating this guy, lets call him X, I was just fourteen and still a virgin. We had the typical high-school relationship and we watched his brother and my best-friend destroy their relationship by becoming sexually active too early.

X and I had discussed having sex, but after seeing this happen to two people close to us, X and I talked and made what I thought was a mutual decision to not have sex, not take the chance of ruining what we had by having sex too early in our lives. Apparently, something changed in his head or life that he didn't bother discussing with me which may have lead to the incident.

I'll probably never know, and don't really care at this point. I have never had the opportunity to discuss things with him, now that we are older and possibly never will. We now live 600 miles apart, and he has not shown his face at any of our high-school reunions.

Also, I never said I got rid of any sexual fantasies, I was just discussing the fact that I still had them, despite of the incident. This for the sake of any readers that may think they are 'odd' for having these fantasis.

And I do live with my fantasies, and husband of 20 years, quite well.

Oh I definitely agree that therapy is very often a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, there are some people out there that can't find a good enough relationship with a significant other and have no other recourse.

And don't worry, you didn't appear insensitive because I did not understand where you were coming from in your background. And, as I have said before, I come from a pretty 'vanilla' background anyway. ;)

So, I wonder if your rape fantasy is in fact a attempt to generate positive emotion (through love, trust, exhilaration, intimacy, catharsis), but with the same intensity as the fear you originally experienced

You know, you are probably onto something here, although I can still remember having the fantasies even before. But maybe this is what I was seeking with my DH.

I think, given your life experiences, that you deserve all of the positive emotion you can get.

Thank you, Steve! But, please don't take my post wrong. I have a wonderful life and have had one in spite of the incidents that have happened along the way. I was just wanting to share with people my particular experiences, and how I have tried to use them to move forward as well as to give comfort to those out there that might be uncomfortable with their own fantasies/experiences, and give them a glimpse into my head, as it were.

I definitely don't want anybody feeling sorry for me for I have used every incident as a growth experience, and I don't look negatively upon any of it. It just is/was.

A previous comment reads:

Let me make this clear. Out there, there is some man reading this. Not a wonderful strong Alpha male, but a twisted individual who gets his kicks hurting women. Publicizing and making acting out rape fantasies sound like a good thing, may be all the fuel he needs to go and act out his fantasy on an unwilling victim.

One of my textbooks (Motivational Explanations of Behavior-Hoyenga and Hoyenga '84)points out that about 5%-10% of serial rapists have the FANTASY that their victim really wants to be raped-by them. I also understand that some serial murderers have the FANTASY that their victims want to be murdered--by them. If we want to understand rape and murder as only violence and not at all sexual, what is wrong with this picture?

There are fantasies which are of course unhealthy (as the above examples) and fantasies which serve a greater good. Healthy or not, fantasies are by their very nature sexual. The rape fantasies described by women on this site are good examples of healthy fantasy. The woman who was brutally raped and then enacted a rape fantasy with her husband reports that after the enactment she was able to experience deeper intimacy with her husband. If fantasy is going to have a purpose, the purpose simply must be to enhance our ability to form and sustain deeper intimate bonds. I know this may be quite controversial but I contend ALL fantasy, healthy or not, have the intent of enhancing the indivdiual ability to form bonds with others. When the fantasy enactment is perverted, such as the case with real rape or murder, this intent is not realized and cannot be realized because of the lack of consent.

Frank Nelson

See Why "Rape Fantasy" is Bad English, by Gerald Sutton on mensnewsdaily.com

[This article refers to a comment on When rape is a gift. - Ed.]

I can see how this can happen to a girl because it happened to me.

I dated one boy all through my high school years, from 15 -19. He was two years older than me and my mother adored him. The first two years we did not have sex. When I was 17, he raped me. I was a virgin. Afterward he was very sweet and gentle, carrying me to the shower and washing me all over including my hair. he dried my hair with a towel and brushed it out. then held me all night long and I slept exhausted in his arms, skin to skin. I felt very loved by the aftercare and thought this was normal. We did not speak about it. Because I thought this was normal, I told no one for many years and we continued dating and having sex for two more years. I never told my mother.

It is not true that all women who have been raped are traumatised and disgusted afterwards, and to say to a woman that it is not rape unless she feels like a traumatised victim is to exculpate real rapists. I think that that is a mistake, Louise. This kind of thinking tends to push women into the victim mentality and does no one, least of all them, any favours.

Yes, I can see from what you say that is was really rape,it sounds absolutely vile, the only reason I thought it might not be is that the way you described feeling afterwards sounded so different from what I'd always undestood rape victims to feel, but then i've never known anyone personally who was raped so it's something I've only ever had third-hand experience of, i.e. reading about it in the papers and in books.

I have had my share of fantasies about being controlled and raped. However, I think, that when I hear or read about real rape it is revolting and disgusting. There is nothing wonderful about it and I have been raped. I think that when you have a woman who has been sexually assualted who asks her partner or someone she trust and loves to fulfill a rape fantasy part of it has something to do with healing and making mends with it through someone she loves.

With that said, no woman would want to be fulfill a fantasy with a stranger unless she knows them enough. Or unless she is a complete freakess and then that is on her. However, I read another article on rape, where you express a woman being raped and has an orgasm- for the rapist to carress and love her. That is completely unacceptable and something you need to work out for yourself. And not here.

Go to therapy, self reflect, create a group online that has members and can be controlled. Find a support group, but do not form a website...making those statements. The comments underminds the women who have had orgasms and felt the shame of it during a rape.