לפני 15 שנים. 3 בנובמבר 2009 בשעה 14:15
I take my title from the mammoth blunder by Whoopi Goldberg over the re-arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland, concerning the 30-year old charges against him which, while he was convicted and sentenced for them, never saw time served as a result. Whoopi famously, or to be more accurate, infamously, claimed that what Polankski did was not "rape rape" but rather something else. This was, of course, complete bollocks. It was statutory rape, sex without permission, forced anal sex and many other horrific things besides. In my opinion, her mother also deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered for allowing her daughter near him in the first place.
But this is not the purpose of my piece today. At all. Letters of complaint if the title mislead you should be written on the back of an empty condom packet and sent to Lilly Von Schtupp, c/o The Cage.
😄
I met up with a fellow pervert this week, a very lovely and decent fellow with whom I'd corresponded. We met here in the Cage, and our discussions had led to an open-air, public place, coffee a-deux, in a nicely upscale coffee shop, close by my office.
Like me, he is a switch, so we had much to discuss. We are the archetypal polar opposite of switches, however -- with him being 60/40 dom-to-sub, and me being 30/70 sub-to-domme -- charging the atmosphere with electricity quite nicely, and making for an interesting conversation. After an initial and obligatory "hello, did you get here OK", we started non-stop gabbing about That Thing It Is That We Do, and how it had affected each of our lives, heavily featuring our respective tales of our personal revelation into "how did we first know we were into BDSM?" Various fantasies were mentioned, his far more graphic than mine, which got me wondering.
People often say that they had experienced detailed fantasies of restraint, and pain and so on, well before being able to acknowledge their tendency to all things BDSM. I always counter this with my abject lack of fantasies of a similar nature, and the wondered-aloud surprise at this... but this time, a penny dropped for me.
I used to have rape fantasies. Short, dreams of being anonymously taken roughly (woughly, centuwion?) by a faceless man, in the dark, usually in my bedroom; the circumstances of how he came to be there conveniently fuzzy, and the end of the story never leaving me with any hint of the pain and suffering characteristic of a real-life actual rape.
Would you call it rape? There was never any inkling of anything being against my will, although certainly considerable force was implied. The key points of the fantasy were the anonymity of the man, his size compared to mine (large and burly enough to overpower me, and I'm not some tiny little skinny thing, in case you weren't aware), the athletic nature of the fuck itself, and the feeling of helplessness and submissive control. Not that I could have articulated the last two at the time, it's only in 20:20 retrospect that I'm able to dissect the fantasy so thoroughly.
Now, many years later, having opened my mind (and my body, heh) to the joys and wonders of the world of BDSM, i never have rape fantasies. Fantasies today are far more specific in nature - I can ascertain not only my position (usually doggy, since you ask) but also side-effects (flogging, spanking...), my hair being pulled, evil smurfs on or in various bits of me and so on. The idea of rape is not a fantasy I can come to terms with, it attracts me not at all, and I do not like even thinking about it.
It seems to me that the whole idea of rape was the one frame of reference that I possessed that could answer my more subliminal need to submit. There was no other way that my sub-conscious could process the need to be restrained, or overpowered, or -- more to the point -- my willingness to be controlled in this way.
It was a major breakthrough. I now understand so much more than I did. And while I'll probably continue to shake my head every time i get wet at the sight of my karada rope, or the cuffs, or my collar -- my exclamations of "I'm *such* a pervert!" may well be said with a great deal more understanding and inner knowledge.
And that can never be a bad thing, right?
