Why do so many women have Rape Fantasies? (PAYWALL REMOVED)

And whatever happened to sex-positive feminism?

Dear Nevermorons,

Recently, we published a piece about porn by Alicen Grey, which stimulated a lot of interesting debate. Clearly, there is a demand for such content.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEX-POSITIVE FEMINISM?

When I was coming up in the anarchist scene, there were two kinds of feminists - second wave and third wave. The main difference between the two was their attitude towards men and towards sex.

Second wave feminists were heavily influenced by Andrea Dworkin, who was clearly severely mentally ill.

Third wave feminists were more likely to be punks and anarchists. Perhaps the figures that best typify the spirit of this movement were Kathleen Hanna and Ani DiFranco.

Ani DiFranco had a massive influence on my political thought, because of the album that she did with the great anarchist & Unitarian Universalist folk singer Utah Phillips.

I encountered this album when I was 15, and it was a big part of the reason that I converted to anarchism.

I am forever indebted to Ani DiFranco for bringing the words me Utah Phillips message. I deeply respect the values of Third Wave Feminism, and consider them very contiguous with anarchism. In many cases they’re the same thing.

There’s not actually any meaningful difference between anarchism and anarcha-feminism in terms of core values. Anarcha-feminism simply emphasizes the gender egalitarianism that is inherent to anarchism.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

Anyway, one of the big differences between the Second Wave and Third Wave feminists was their attitude towards sex work and porn.

Andrea Dworkin was deeply and profoundly opposed to pornography, which she believed would lead to an increase in rape.

She was wrong. By every available metric, there has a precipitous decline in rape since internet pornography became ubiquitous. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that fewer and fewer people are having sex, fewer and fewer and people are forming lasting intimate relationships, and fewer and fewer people are sexually satisfied.

It’s called the Great Sex Drought, and no one is talking about it.

I certainly don’t agree with Dworkin’s views on porn, but she was right that porn has turned out to be a horrible thing for society.

To be fair, Dworkin was not the only anti-porn feminist, nor is it fair to tar all Second Wave feminists with the same brush.

Ann Hansen, Canada’s most badass anarcha-feminist of all time, literally fire-bombed porn shops.

Anyway, I’m not claiming to have all the answers. All I want to do is start a conversation.

I also want you to become a paid subscriber, and I know that sex sells.

So I’ve decided to post a classic essay by a great sex-positive feminist. Speaking of great sex-positive feminists, have you ever read the obituary that Susie Bright wrote for Andrea Dworkin? It’s one of the most unforgettable obituaries I have ever read.

Perhaps the reason that it stuck in my mind is because it included one line that I have found absolutely incomprehensible.

Malcolm pointed out  “The problem is WHITE PEOPLE.”  Dworkin said, “The problem is MEN.”  And for all the holes that can be poked in that cloth, there is something about that grain that is absolutely true, when you are the short end of the bolt.

I loved that she dared attack the very notion of intercourse. It was the pie aimed right in the crotch of Mr. Big Stuff. It was an impossible theory, but it wasn’t absurd. There is something about literally being fucked that colors your world, pretty or ugly, and it was about time someone said so.

Anyway, I have chosen to publish something behind this paywall that may or may not copyrighted.

If you want to read it, you’re going to have to cough up five smackeroos.

If you don’t want to become a paid subscriber right now, I suggest checking out this interview with Mary Harrington, which I think is a great introduction to the political reorientation currently occurring in feminist theory.

You might also be interested in these articles:

March 8th, 2023: The Most Sexist Thing Imaginable

June 24, 2023: Why Are Women Ditching Feminism? (Rozali Telbis)

November 5th, 2023: “Slayer of Taboos”

December 18th, 2023: The Ultimate Misogyny

January 14th, 2024: “A Woman Needs a Man like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.”

January 17th, 2024: Why Feminism Ain’t Cool No More

February 1st, 2024: Are Women Slaves?

March 26th, 2024: “We Could Have Erotica. But we choose porn.” (Alicen Grey)

March 28th, 2024: The #MeToo Era is Officially Over

Rape Scenes

by Susie Bright

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME someone stuck his hand down my pants when I didn't want him to. My roommate and I were mugged and molested in San Francisco while walking home from a movie.

What I remember most was that my assailant was a full head shorter than me. He looked to be about fourteen and he had the tip of his knife pushed against my breastbone. I was scared stiff, unable to move, pleading. Our two mugger boys were so inexperienced themselves that one of them handed my roommate's key ring back to her so he could use both hands to unfasten her pants. She blew the silver whistle that hung off her keys, and as if she had fired a warning shot, the armed and dangerous brats scattered like rabbits. It was over. I felt like shit and I continued to feel like shit for months. I moved out of that neighborhood.

I remember the first time I had a rape fantasy. I was quite young and had gotten my hands on a very naughty book. This naughty book was actually a serious volume on true tales of juvenile delinquency which I found in the library. One story described a teenage girl pinned to a cross, just like Jesus, on a grassy hill outside her suburb; all the boys in her school had their way with her. Another story was about a little girl who didn't obey her parents' warnings not to talk to strangers. She was kidnapped by a couple who sequestered her in their apartment and introduced her, day by day, to various sex acts which she first resisted and then (of course) became addicted to. I was attending Catholic school at the time, and my head was already filled with stories of romantic martyrdom and the wages of sin. The juvenile delinquents' dramas played over and over again in my head at night as I rubbed myself through layers of sheets, pajamas, and underwear, always coming very hard. I never left that neighborhood.

I did not acknowledge having masochistic or submissive tum-ons until I was in my twenties. In a feminist college course, our teacher asked us if we had experienced arousing rape fantasies. One girl tearfully raised her hand and said this was true for her. My heart started beating so fast, it was all I could do to stay put. I was just as ashamed as she of these fantasies, but I would never have admitted them. Our professor was actually quite kind to her, if misinformed. She comforted the girl by saying that, as women, we had been brainwashed by the patriarchy to eroticize our subordination to men. She said these fantasies were very common, which is true, and that we could "overcome" them by exposing our fantasies to feminist analysis and by our increasing self-esteem.

She was dead wrong. In fact, I knew she was wrong later that same night. Despite my assertive self-confidence, rock-hard feminist analysis, and weekly shift at the rape crisis hotline, I could still crawl into bed and successfully masturbate to those same disturbing fantasies that had aroused me since I was a child. Feminism and self-esteem had no more effect on my erotic hot spots than the Communion wafers I used to take every Sunday, hoping they would wash away the devil's seed inside of me. Clearly, religion and linear politics were useless in explaining the unconscious and subversive quality of eroticism.

Two years later, I started reading about sexuality for the first time: the stuff that comes after the birds and the bees. At an airport newsstand, just before boarding, I picked up the mass-market edition of Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden in idle curiosity. The back cover quoted some eminent psychiatrist who said the book revealed "the hidden content of our own sexuality." I wondered what it would reveal about me, other than that I was a hopeless pervert.

It was a long trip from L.A. to Detroit. In fact, I would say it was the most excruciating five hours I have ever spent in the air. My face was scarlet; my floatable seat cushion was wringing wet. Friday quoted her "first name only" correspondents—Marie, Debbie, Jessica—describing fantasy after fantasy on subjects I had never spoken out loud: incest, anal sex, erotic kidnappings, dog lickings, gang bangs, screwing on altars, and panting in total darkness with nothing on but a blindfold. As flabbergasted as I was that these women came from every background and corner of the map, I recognized that I had been arousing myself with similar themes for as long as I could remember. I never consciously said to myself, "Oh, I think I'll fantasize about my sex-slave circus tonight." But each time I climaxed, at the moment of truth, those tigers and cowering slave girls flashed through my mind. The whip cracked.

I was one of Nancy's kids. According to the book's cover copy, I was one of a million women who read this book and, I assume, had a similar reaction. Either we were a million perverts clutching our grimy handbooks in shame, or these sexual fantasies were as normal as apple pie.

I had never really thought about what created an erotic fantasy. I thought a sex fantasy was some Tiger Beat scenario where you scored a dream date with this month's current tanned celebrity. I had masturbated since I was eight, but when I squeezed my eyes shut and bore down so hard on my arm that my fingers went numb. I never saw drift across my orgasmic screen. Or Mick Jagger. Or Bianca Jagger, for that matter.

Nancy Friday broke down the closet door of female sex fantasy by presenting the unfiltered erotic confessions of hundreds of women. Unfortunately, she also insisted on providing, in the same pages, her misguided analysis of female sexuality. Her lengthy introductions to each section of fantasies were designed to legitimize the book's intent, but sad to say, her stab at explaining why women are aroused by this taboo material was an intellectual disaster area. On the one hand, she was a feminist who believed her respondents were thriving, healthy women who had a lot of guts to speak out like this. On the other hand, she hinted that the whole lot of them had seriously ruptured relationships with their mothers. Or fathers. Or maybe society at large. It was pop psychology at its most awful.

Instead of providing the delicate framework needed to understand how erotic fantasies come from all manner of triggers, both deeply personal and cultural, Friday tried to read fantasies like they were Tarot decks. Oh, you have a lesbian fantasy? That must be the "longing to be close to mother" card. Every time I read one of her explanations, I felt like someone was trying to stuff my foot into a shoe that didn't have a prayer of fitting. Later, when I recommended the book to friends, I issued strict instructions: Read the fantasies only and draw your own conclusions.

Friday has continued to collect fantasies since My Secret Garden and its sequel, Forbidden Flowers, came out in the mid-seventies. She has finally compiled an anthology of fantasies for the nineties: Women on Top. As you can guess from her title, she not only has new stories to share but also claims that women's lives and wet dreams have changed extraordinarily since she did her first interviews twenty years ago.

On one score she's right. Most of the women in her new book are young— the end of the baby boomers. Their attitude toward masturbation is utterly matter-of-fact. One of the rare fifty-year-old contributors ends her fantasy with the exclamation of a post-feminist convert: "Masturbation is GREAT." The younger women consider sexual satisfaction a completely reasonable expectation in their lives.

Nancy is full of evidence to document the End of the Good Girl Era. Sex toys are commonplace in her respondents' bedrooms, and in their fantasies these sometimes take on Terminator-style proportions, as in one story about a woman who imagines herself being penetrated and stroked along a relentless conveyer belt.

The fantasies are just as wild when they come from virgins as when they're from women with plenty of experience. "Connie," who has never had sex with anyone besides the boyfriend she met in fifth grade, tells a hot story about her turn-on for cops in uniform. She imagines being pulled over in her car and given a thorough pat-down. "[He] titillates my clit like a marble in oil."

Friday's research is an erotic marathon. The Gorilla Science Lab Experiment, where the woman scientist seduces her subject, alone is enough to send you to bed for a week. It becomes clear, reading story after story, that no territory is so fantastic that it cannot arouse you or remind you of your own provocative daydreams. Each woman prefaces her fantasy with a little information about her real life, making it obvious how normal, how common it is to fantasize about the bizarre, the taboo, the things that in real-life circumstances would trouble us, frighten us, or maybe just make us laugh. Erotic fantasies take the unbearable and unbelievable issues in life and turn them into orgasmic gunpowder.

Switching genders was a new issue in Women on Top, although I know women who were fantasizing this sort of thing long before Friday published it.

One woman explains that when she massages her clitoris she imagines it growing "larger and larger until it is the size of a penis. I imagine I can feel the sensation of a man during intercourse. I also imagine that the man is having sex with me . . . hence I can feel the sensation of both partners at the same time."

As excited as Friday is to show off new fantasies where women experiment with men's traditional roles, her political agenda is still at odds with her story material. What she wants to prove is that today's groovy heads of households have dumped those nasty old oppressive rape fantasies in favor of turning the tables on their oppressors—dominating men and loving it.

"Women in My Secret Garden who may have had very controlling natures in reality invented elaborate fantasies of rape," Friday recalls. "It was all they dared themselves. Then once My Secret Garden was published, overnight the rape fantasy was rejected by the women in this book who wanted total power over and domination over men."

Oh, horse feathers. Women are not newcomers to fantasies where they wield the sexual power, nor have we abandoned fantasies of being ravished just because this is the macha nineties. A woman's place in her job or home is no forecaster of what her fantasies may be. How can Friday not know this yet? A woman or man CEO can have the most hair-raising rape fantasies on the block, and it will have nothing to do with lack of courage. A willing submission is every bit as powerful as a domination fantasy. And in our fantasies, no matter how much we struggle to deny it, we control every frame.

Whether we are standing tall in thigh-high boots or are breathless on our knees is simply a matter of our well-lubricated position. As Friday knows from her survey of men's fantasies in Men in Love, men have submissive fantasies in even greater numbers than women. So spare us the pseudo-feminist Bible stories.

Friday devotes a full chapter to "Women Controlling Men," and while it is certainly a delightful treasure trove (Lou Ellen and her fifteen well-endowed male housekeepers are particularly fabulous), it is downright irritating that Friday buries the numerous submissive and masochistic fantasies in chapters whose titles don't hint at their contents.

Lesbian fantasies get the worst treatment. Friday insists that "all fantasies with other women begin and end with tenderness." Then, in the very next fantasy, a girl named Brett says her favorite fantasy is to be dominated by a group of ruthless bulldykes. Not one particle of tenderness is mentioned. In many of the other lesbian fantasies, the feminine attraction is bitchy or masculine rather than narcissistic or maternal.

Friday's prejudiced image of lesbianism as the last word in sisterly, dewy-eyed breast worship is dead wrong. She misses the variety of gay life, and the fantasies she has collected don't accurately represent the spectrum of lesbian desire.

Friday took all the fantasies that didn't fit her new "dominant-woman theory" and scattered them throughout the book in the most unlikely- places. I had to search and search to find the very best innocent babysitter fantasy ("I am babysitting two boys. They decide to play Indians and tie me up. Here their father comes in. . . ."), which was stuck in a chapter called "Women with Bigger Appetites than Their Men." If this was my anthology, I would have had chapter titles like "Sweet Innocent Babysitters," "Secret Spy Agents," and "True Tales from the Catholic Church."

In her claim that women are now "on top" in their sexual fantasies, Friday cultivates a dangerous party line. She imagines that women's economic independence is somehow tied to the content of our sexual fantasies. We don't need to make a case for feminism by claiming that women are now entertaining new, improved, ringmaster or revenge fantasies. This kind of thinking unwittingly censors the diversity and complexity of real women's fantasies. It is the same as my Women's Studies teacher claiming that only unliberated women have rape fantasies and that as soon they get their consciousnesses raised, those ugly stains will wash right out.

What really happens when you get your consciousness raised is that you can't be afraid of your fantasies any longer. You see the difference between your real-life anxieties and limitations versus your potential to go to any extreme in fantasy. Now, that is empowering. Erotic dreams certainly communicate powerful and very personal messages. But to read them as if they were tea leaves amounts to some pretty tacky fortune telling.

We can't assume that certain labels lead to certain behavior and vice versa. After I was mugged and fingered by the fourteen-year-old prick, I had several fantasies. In one, my revenge fantasy, I walked in on him at home during Sunday dinner and shamed him in front of his family. His mother told him to get out, that he could never come back again. In another fantasy, I imagined my "if only" scenario, where I raised my long arm, disregarding his blade cutting into my chest, and decked him. I spit on him lying in the street, and the blood from where he nicked me dripped into his eyes.

But in the third fantasy, he kept fucking me with his hands, and I was frozen, naked on the sidewalk. He talked to me nasty, he was arrogant, and he teased the knife against my nipples. Neighborhood people gathered; he invited them to take his place.

I had this last fantasy twice, both times culminating in orgasm. Then it became impossible to conjure up. My old rape fantasies from childhood came back in its place.

A year later, I moved back into the old neighborhood, the "scene of the crime," but I was smarter and, in a first for me, I was territorial.

Welcome to my neighborhood— all of it.