Yes, I disagree with your interpretation:
How so? You are
still making the same claim about rape and still singling out pornography to focus upon, even when I specifically mentioned mainstream literature written by women you don't seem to honestly consider it.
1) What is pornography? Texts, photos or films with the purpose of being masturbation fantasies. To avoid misinterpretation: Other kinds of texts, photos or films may also be used as masturbation fantasies even though it's not their purpose, the same way a crate may be used to sit on. You can use it as a chair, but it is not a chair, and most people are able to tell the difference.
You seemed to have missed the point. Which do you think is going to be more influential on an individuals construction of reality, a porno mag or respected “literature”? Or how about a fantasy told (or a book given) to a someone by their lover?
2) For this reason pornography tries to deliver the fantasies that turn its customers on, and luckily most of these customers (if they are straight men) seem to be turned on by fantasizing about women who enjoy sex, who want to have sex and who have sex.
No particular disagreement.
3) Some men are turned on by the fantasy of women who have sex with a man in spite of their aversion to it, a variation of SM fantasies. In the fantasy world of pornography they mostly end up enjoying it. This is on the one hand a consolation since it tells us that these men do not actually dream of hurting women, but on the other hand it is a very dangerous fantasy because some men may think that women actually want to be raped.
Again, you are focusing upon (male designed) pornography and ignoring other (female designed) literature/media and real life. Let me give you some examples:
I’d say the book the Fountainhead is far more influential then any “pornography” that you can come up with in this regard, not only does it contain an emotionally very brutal rape scene (it’s the victims first sex and she is turned on by the rapists anger and scorn towards her and actually would have been turned off by something like passion), the rapist is explicitly described as the “ideal man” by the author. This book was written by a woman, who actually started her own philosophical/political movement and the book was given to me by a woman who was giving me very mixed signals about how I should
be with her.
Or how about the movie Gone With The Wind for that matter. As G-rated movie (all ages, like a Disney cartoon) you don’t actually see the rape, but it sure is implied but the next scene shows the rape victim rather cheery, watching this movie as a teenager with a sort of girlfriend (different girl then above) I said “what’s she so happy about?” to which my friend replied (this verbatim), “Every women wants to be swept up by the man she loves.”
Or how about this, another, different girlfriend who clearly had some sort of submissive tendencies that were surfacing in our interactions but was reluctant to talk about them when asked. Instead she bought me a bunch of Nancy Friday books and the The Story of O (BDSM sex slave story). The Nancy Friday books were mostly about actual accounts of womens fantasies (there is sociological fluff in between fantasies), and my girlfriend would just tell me the ones she liked a lot. Noteworthy that besides there being a hell of a lot of rape and BDSM fantasies some of them clearly intersected reality and though they were certainly a rarity some women did report enjoying being raped, or hoped that they actually would be raped.
4) They don't!!! Even the (not insignificant) minority of women who sometimes fantasize about being raped don't actually want to be raped.
What percentage of men that fantasize about having sex with children do you think would actually want to have sex with children? Does it honestly seem reasonable to believe the answer is zero percent?
Now imagine if the pedophile knew there would be no chance of criminal prosecution and that the child wanted it to happen. Still zero percent? Now relate it to a rape fantasy where the person fantasizes that they are the victim. It’s a rather huge point, for the person who fantasizes about being a rape victim concern about criminal prosecution or guilt for having hurt another is very different then the victimizer. It would seem to me to that would make it far more likely to be a fantasy that a person would try to actualize.
(Reminder to potential rapists: There is a big difference between a woman's fantasies of being raped by Brad Pitt and her being raped in reality by you.
Absolutely, of course, but doesn't this principle pretty much relate to ALL fantasies. While the concern for misunderstandings regarding rape fantasies is 100% understandable if someone where to tell you they fantasized about having sex with multiple partners, or in an unusual locale, or with some kinky foodstuffs etc . . . you wouldn’t then assume ANY person could fulfill that fantasy, would you?
And to use your own example, what percentage of women that fantasize about being raped by Brad Pitt do you think would actually be traumatized by being raped by Brad Pitt, just like their fantasy? Do you really think the answer is zero percent?
She is in control of her fantasies, she is not in control when she is being raped!)
Yet, it’s often specifically a fantasy about not being in control. The person can fantasize about anything in the world and yet they pick a fantasy where they act like they don't want the fantasy to happen, and that turns them on. How can you be so sure of how that plays out in reality with every person?
5) The idea that women want to be raped is probabably as common among men with rape fantasies as the idea that children want to have sex with adults is prevalent among paedophiles.
The idea that some women in some situations want to be raped is true. I know this for a fact, and if you answered to the above questions regarding percentages with a number other then zero then I don’t see how you could logically not agree with me?
A somewhat confusing matter is that some women in my experience use the inaccurate definition of rape being when a person is forced to have sex when they don’t
want to when the actual definition is forced to have sex when they
communicate (or are unable to communicate) they don’t want to. There is a huge difference between the two, the difference has come up big time with two women friends of mine who had experiences with other women who made it sound like they had been raped because they later said to others that didn’t really want to have sex, but they hadn’t communicated that at the time (according) to my women friends and they thought just taking the lead in the interaction. On the otherside I’ve known women who would say "no" and just expected the guy in certain circumstances to understand they were just playing and not take them seriously.
I once had a discussion with a former girlfriend (a different one not mentioned so far), who was older and much better educated then me, about these issues. She got offended at me saying I didn’t think “no”
always meant “no”. I replied, “how can you get offended when you’ve done that yourself?” Her response, “That doesn’t count because you knew I didn’t mean it.” Yet, I was speaking of our first sex together and we had no discussions about any sort of fantasies, role-play or BDSM talk at all. So how did I know? Was that rape?
When on trial many rapists will use this idea as an excuse for their crime.
This is one of the “ramifications” I spoke of earlier, what if that idea is true? Did you answer “zero percent” to all those questions above?
Instead of trying to intelligently deal with this issue at my college (and I’ve heard similar stories from friends at other schools) women were learning in Intro to Feminism that if a guy has sex with a women who is drunk then it’s rape (oddly, nobody in that class seemed bring up the question of is it rape to have sex with a drunk guy, or consider why women were so readily going to parties and getting drunk) and the Sex and Communication counselor was preaching that guys had to ask for verbal permission at every stage of intimate progression with a women (“can I kiss you?”, “Is it ok if I put my hand on your breast?” etc. . .). They were so out of touch with reality it would have been comical if there weren’t diverting energy from the very real problems they were supposed to be dealing with. I think they let themselves get so emotional that they stopped being rationale (sound familiar?).
6) SM and rape fantasies are perversions of sexuality: to fantasize about having sex with someone who does not want to have sex with you, to rape them, to hurt them.
You left out the other half, to fantasize about being made to have sex with someone you don’t want to, being raped, being hurt.
These fantasies are easily explained when you consider the attitudes to sexuality and free will prevalent in our societies, but perversions nonetheless.
Please elaborate, as you said it is “easily explained” so do so! Seriously! I’d really, really, really like to hear your explanation.
7) This, by the way, also implies that I don't single "out pornography for blame in perpetuating the idea that rape can be enjoyable",
I’m having hard time understanding how you can think you can reasonably think that you did not, maybe you are confused about what “single out” means. It means to: “select from a group”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/single+out
Even in your longer explanation you failed to meaningfully address how the information via non-pornographic sources might be more influential (and I’m arguing it is much more so) in any way while also neglecting the possibility that personal experience AKA reality was a factor.
but apart from rapists there are not many people who actually believe in this idea.
Well there are the people that can imagine a situation where being raped could be enjoyable for them, or or the people that have been raped that viewed it as completely non-traumatic/enjoyable, or the people who consider normal sexual relations to contain a level aggression that would meet the common definition of them being raped. Considering I’ve known first hand all of those different types of people your view of human sexuality seems rather ignorant and lacking in empathy to me.
Research would be a better way to make my argument of course. There was a done in the early 90’s, IIRC conducted by two women professors at a Texas University where they asked a bunch of the female students if they ever said “no when they meant yes?” Want to make a guess as to what percentage said they had?
What Christian (or Moslem) fundamentalists actually mean when they say that scantily dressed women are asking to be raped is that they are sluts who deserve their fate (worse than death) if they are raped. It is a way of condemning a behaviour that they don't approve of. (And remember: A woman may actually dress in a certain way because she wants to get f***ed that night, but that still does not mean that she wants to be f***ed by you.)
I’m pretty sure you are confusing me with someone else.
