Analysing my fetish, continued

Sometime in my late 20's I said to myself "fuck it; the only people I'm hurting are figments of my imagination". I decided that I deserved sexual satisfaction as much as anybody else, even if my fantasies WERE exactly what my feminist peers hated most. I decided that I was an honorable, ethical person, and that I did not need to live my life ruled by the moral exhortations of people who obviously cared more about controlling my thoughts than about my actual well-being. I decided that I wanted to fucking well enjoy my fantasies for a change.

And that was when understanding began to dawn on me. Before this point I would have insisted that I viewed these scenes from outside, as if watching a movie, and that I wasn't in any role. Now I could see that I was MUCH more interested in the aggressor's perspective, imagining in minute detail what they said, did, & felt. I realized first that I was not, in fact, ever interested in mentally playing the part of the victimized girl, but that I totally got into the part of the raping man. Or, more accurately, the role of the men. ALL of them, simultaneously. Which is impossible in the real world, yes? And so the second thing I realized was that the sheer physical impossibility of my fantasies was important to me. It was significant that my role in the scene was as the sort of big, hairy, masculine guy that I had no interest in being (or shagging). It was significant that I often mentally played the part of a whole GROUP of these guys. It was significant that I also loved things like Japanese tentacle porn which were equally impossible.

It would be easy to assume that my rape fantasies have male aggressors and female victims because we live in a culture where women are shat on. That IS the feminist party line, isn't it? Nowadays the dogma goes so far as to call this a "rape culture". (And that assumption was a HUGE part of why I felt unable to talk about my fetish with anyone. A huge part of why I still avoid talking about it.) But that explanation just doesn't ring true for me. As I said I grew up in a household headed by a strong woman who ruled over us all, including her husband. I was taught that girls could do anything they wanted to, including have free & satisfying sex lives, and that equality between the sexes was the order of the day. And I lived by that teaching too. For instance, in 99% of my relationships I've been the one who made the first move toward sex. Heck, I'm accustomed to making the first move even in asking for a date. And maybe I've been freakishly lucky but I've had dozens of male lovers and never yet encountered one who was NOT greatly interested in my pleasure. In my world women have always been free sexual agents.

So yeah, the idea that my mind fixed on these archetypes because of some underlying belief that woman=victim simply does not hold water. But we also live in a culture where MEN are presumed to be victimizers. Even the 'good guys' are supposedly only a hair's breadth from turning into predators at any time. That is the message sent by things like the ubiquitous falsehood "1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted". It's the basis of the entire "rape culture" theory. And women, according to this dogma - the dogma that I grew up with, remember - are supposedly so morally superior that they would never, ever be sadistic rapists.

Take that message - that only men are capable of being sexually sadistic, and women are never rapists - and layer it with the usual prohibitions against ANY violence, and it hardly seems surprising that I might have had difficulty coming to terms with being a sexually sadistic woman. The funny thing is, I haven't ever really felt any of the agonizing guilt about 'abusing' people I like that seems so common with other doms. I figure its because my subconscious did this neat little trick, and turned my darkest fantasies into something that relied on it's own impossibility. I don't want to be a big, hairy, brutal guy. I don't want to be any guy. And thus on a very basic level I never worry that I'll go too far in realizing my dark dreams, because I never could!

This all makes even more sense when taking into account my disposition. If I had a D&D orientation it would be 'lawful good'. In a way you could say I play the role of an impossible villain because I can't imagine myself as the villain.

Now if all this sounds like I'm anti-feminist you've got the wrong idea. To repeat what I've said several times already - I grew up believing very strongly in the ideal of equality among all sexes/genders. I STILL HAVE those ideals. I think this sense of justice is at the heart of at least one part of my kink. But I've also had a pile of life experiences that've led me to doubt some of the feminist dogma I was taught. And in this case it makes a whole lot more sense to me to think of my fetish as being a response to negative messages I absorbed about men rather than negative messages I absorbed about women.

A self-protective twist of my subconscious elegantly accounts for the gender oddity in my fantasies. But I believe the core need expressed in them is a need for CONTROL. In many ways I was not in control when I was growing up. I guess this is true for every child, but perhaps more than usual in my family. And knowing the extent of my drive to control things (including non-sexual things) nowadays it makes perfect sense. My fantasies in the end are all about control.

And this final realization illuminates yet another facet of my fetish. You know how they say 'rape is not about sex, it's about control'? (Another one of those items of dogma I grew up with.) Well, in a way the girl in my fantasies IS also me, even while I consciously inhabit the role of the man/men. They are all symbolic figures constructed by my psyche. And the dramatic enactment of the rape itself symbolically represents me controlling my own sexuality.

That about sums it up for an analysis of my fetish. But it's really only the beginning of analyzing my sexuality. This entire essay has been about what was going on inside my head though the years; it says very little about my behaviors. It doesn't explain, for instance, how I got into sex work...how I became a domme...what I get out of forced feminization...or a lot of other things one might wonder about. This fetish is like the keystone of an arch: it's central to my sexuality but it's meaningless without all the other building blocks. I aim to try putting all the rest into words as well, but considering this bit took me weeks to compose I recommend not holding your breath in waiting for the next installment. :p