Aside from the rude burst of language with which you begin your comment, I'm grateful to you for raising these important issues.You are right that there is a "rape culture" in our society (though the term is vague and imprecise: there is also, as your comment demonstrates, and anti-rape culture as well). The first question is, Why is there a rape culture? The answer, I suggest, is that these impulses lie deep in our nature. There is a violent tendency in humanity--in sex just as in sports. Neither mode of activity *has* to be violent, but both often are. Like it or not, it is common for both men and women to enjoy certain forms of violence in certain contexts, such as football, boxing, or rough, even painful and degrading sex. You may not feel this yourself, but many other people do.The second question is, What can we do about this? The first and most important answer is: talk. The more we discuss these matters, and the more we overcome our fear and shame and bring our frightening desires into the light of day, the more likely we will be to find healthy ways of dealing with them. Trying to hide these desires away, bottle them up, or equate them with sin lead to unhealthy responses, including denial, self-recrimination, and, worst of all, imposition of our desires on other people without their consent, as in actual rape.Learning to talk about our desires openly and honestly--and to listen respectfully and receptively when others do so--fosters a culture of dialogue rather than a culture of rape. A culture of dialogue requires courage, patience, and persistence, because it involves confronting things that most of us will find threatening at first, both in ourselves and in others. But failing to create a culture of dialogue leads where few of us want to go: to a world in which rape culture is the norm (not to mention religious and political intolerance of all kinds).Once we have created a culture of dialogue around the complexities of human desire (or subculture, which is what the BDSM community is), other possibilities begin to emerge. The simple recognition that fantasy and reality are different things can empower us to explore healthy expressions of our desires in the context of open and respectful exchanges with others. Consenting adults can engage in rape play, voluntary slavery, incest fantasies, and other explorations of our inescapable desires, both dark and light, and doing so can not only provide a pressure relief valve that will help us avoid real rape, slavery, and incest, it will also open up avenues to greater intimacy and self-knowledge.You write that "sex is supposed to be of love." I agree wholeheartedly, except for the phrase "supposed to." That phrase is dangerously close to "must"--an effort to dictate to others how to live and act--a violation of their free agency and will. Love can't be coerced, so try "sex can be of love" and you'll be truer to the spirit underlying your words: sex as an expression of love. Yet wonderful as loving sex can be, why should we want to mandate any particular kind of sex? Just as we don't enjoy only one kind of music, there's no need to restrict ourselves to one kind of sex. Gentle, rough, slow, fast, worshipful, degrading--why limit the menu to "Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer"?Don't assume, either, that different kinds of sex are mutually exclusive. Violent sex--even play rape--can include the most intense expressions of love. The respect and trust underlying two (or more) individuals sharing their deepest desires with one another, discussing those desires, and finding ways to express themselves mutually and consensually can be a powerful manifestation of love. At the very least, it can bring people closer together, help them to know each other at a profound level, and grant them a greater fulfillment than they had believed possible.So yes, if you can't distinguish fantasy from reality, and if you aren't willing to respect other people's ways of expressing themselves when they differ from your own, then this Tumblr account will be "fucking disgusting" to you. But don't imagine that you have ultimate insight into the nature of human desire, or authority to tell others how they are "supposed" to feel. Your claim that "rape is not pleasure for any woman" is true only of real rape, and this blog does not deal in real rape. All these images and stories were created by consenting adults engaging in exploration of their fantasies. And plenty of women derive a great deal of pleasure from rape fantasies, whether on the giving or receiving end, or both. Just look around at the number of women's blogs that are as "fucking disgusting" as mine--or more.Welcome to the culture of dialogue.
