Thank you for your comment, Diane. I know it’s not easy terrain to navigate, and I’m trying my best to articulate my feelings on the topic while at the same time trying not to cause hurt to someone unnecessarily.

I’m glad that there was justice for your aunt. For too many victims, there isn’t any.

I agree with your point of view. My aunt was raped and sodomized about 30 years ago and she spent almost three weeks in the hospital recovering from wounds all over her legs and thighs where she’d been dragged across a highway in the middle of the night.

Luckily, a cop caught it going down red-handed and so she didn’t have to testify about that very painful and demoralizing event.

I’m sorry to hear of your painful experience.

Now that I re-read my answer, I’m sort of creep out by it in part because of the emphasis of control. The concept of “man as hunter” comes to mind, as well as the societal pressure to “get the girl” or at least “get laid/get the price” certainly comes into play from the male PoV. Men are rewarded when they make the catch and ridiculed when they do not, with absolutely no consideration what the women’s desires are.

Always true. The reason that criminals can successfully use the argument, after all, is that many people in our culture believe those to be the facts – that media does enable and encourage criminals to commit crimes.

Blaming it entirely on people using it as self-defense isn’t entirely accurate either I feel. There are special interest groups who will jump at any opportunity to push their own agenda, and seek to harass and ban any materials they don’t like. Or just as an excuse to extend the rights of the state to intrude upon peoples lives.

I do admit I like rough sex, and I tried to be gentle with my descriptions for what I like in regards to rape fantasies, but my tastes do range far past rough sex and dubious consent. I’d rather not get into too much detail, simply because it’s not the most polite topic for conversation, but the violence in my fantasies goes beyond rough sex.

Though I would like to talk about your objection of the use of the word rape for any fantasies. I do understand – real rape is never a fantasy, by the very virtue of it being something one can’t consent to – however, I think that dancing around the term in literature that clearly depicts a rape is troubling.

For instance, a man comes up to a woman at a party, they’re both sober. They dance and spend some time together before he offers to take her home. She doesn’t invite him in, but he comes in anyways, and though she says no, he has sex with her anyways. Even if she did decide she enjoyed it half way through, it doesn’t change the fact that in this scenario, it’s rape. If this happened in real life, he could be tried and convicted of rape.

If this were in a romance novel, it would be deemed something like ‘forced seduction’, but to me, that lessens what it is to every woman who experienced something like that and knew enough to call it a rape. Women already talk themselves out of reporting date rapes because they’re not even sure if they were raped – which I feel is a huge problem.

So yes, I definitely think it would be nice if there were a totally different, new word to describe rape in erotica. Not forced seduction, or non-consent, but something totally new.

Thank you for your comment, it’s always nice to get a different viewpoint 🙂 And I try to be very liberal with my use of trigger warnings out of respect for my readers.

Unfortunately, as with so many things, criminals will use convenient excuses to shirk responsibility to try to get a lesser sentence. It’s one of the reason why things like pornography, video games and violent media has been used so often in court – criminals hope that they can convince a judge or jury that their actions weren’t entirely their fault because of the culture they live in.

I guess it is the semantics of the word “rape” and “fantasy” that bother me the most. If we could use some other term…I think I would be more comfortable with it.

As a whole, I don’t read a lot of romance novels because I find most of it to be very sexist–the male “has to have his way” and the woman is expected to be “passive” and “feminine” and let it happen. Yuck. But then, I realize my perceptions of sexuality is skewed based on my personal experiences. Good post. And thank you for the “trigger warning” in the beginning of the article. 🙂

I think the aspect of the woman’s fantasy is that, like the male fantasy, it substitutes the horrific aftermath with one of contentment, the idea that “she really wanted it” but needed to be “forced” to admit it. Which perversely is the excuse many rapist use for their crimes.

I wrote about it on my blog: http://ralfast.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/sunday-tweet-sex-imperialism-and-romance-for-and-by-women/