I think we all have a responsibility to police our own thoughts.
i think that's a really, really unhealthy road to start travelling.
Is it really healthy to allow your mind to travel where ever it wants?
yes, absolutely and without question.
there is never any reason whatsoever to feel guilty about thoughts or feelings or desires you may have. the question of whether or not they are healthy desires likely to make you and others happy is separate from whether or not those desires are "immoral" (of course, i'm really opposed to the idea of morality/immorality in general).
but, to stay on topic, it's not only stupid (because thoughts and feelings aren't something you can choose to have or not have), but also unproductive. if you think there's a desire that's unhealthy for you to be dwelling on, and you would like to live without it, throwing guilt into the mix on top of everything else you're feeling makes things needlessly complicated and ten times harder to fix.
complex fantasies, i think, are tangled packets of multiple desires, and only by really dealing with them head-on do you ever get to untangle them.
Isn't it entirely possible to desensitize yourself to the more negative possibilities inherant in your fantasies?
i suppose it's a risk, but in my experience, a small one. i'm no stranger to weird/violent/strange fantasies, but over time, as i've worked through them and become more comfortable with (and less judgemental towards) the fact that i did in fact have them, the more free i've been to explore the roots of them, and by untangling the roots of the desires in question, they have tended to lose most, if not all, of their grip. i've certainly gained a much deeper understanding of my own desires by exploring them, and a lot more self-control in any case.
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however, i think the way these desires are expressed to others is also a separate issue, and i think that's where a lot of discomfort comes into play. whether or not it's healthy for you to explore your own rape fantasies if you have them (and i think it is) within the context of your own mind, realistically it's important to understand and respect the delicacy of explaining these things to other people. saying "hi, Suzie, last night, when i was masturbating, i was fantasizing about raping you, both vaginally and anally. it's been really healthy and productive for me psychologically" may not be the most wise course of action, out of context, though in the right context, such as in a consensual BDSM relationship, it can be very healthy in a kinky sort of way to discuss these things with someone who's comfortable with such discussions.
it can be very weird and disconcerting to find out that someone has any kind of very detailed and complex fantasies about you, especially if they involve taboo subjects like non-consensual sex or pedophilia or what-have-you. to flip this whole discussion on its head, i've had a number of people confess to me that they frequently fantasized about me raping them. when it's come up in the context of an existing relationship, i've generally been receptive, but in at least one case, it made me feel really squidgy. the boy in question was a friend of mine. he was someone i might have been interested in in the right circumstances, but he had extremely detailed fantasies about me getting drunk, becoming violent and abusive with him and ultimately raping him. there were a lot of reasons why i was uncomfortable with it to begin with, but it got really weird when he started engineering circumstances wherein he tried to get me drunk and provoke me into getting angry at him (which, presumably, would lead to me abusing and ultimately raping him, i suppose). i was uncomfortable to some extent with the fantasy anyway, but i became extremely uncomfortable with the way it was expressed.
basically, i think that he had every "right" to have whatever fantasies he wanted to have about me. however, at the same time, i think it was perfectly OK for me to be uncomfortable with it. under normal circumstances, i would be inclined to keep dialogue open about the whole thing in an effort to help my friend come to grips with his own desires and me to come to grips with my discomfort. however, the way he expressed his desires made it impossible for me to do this while staying within my own personal boundaries with respect to my discomfort.
sorry, kind of got rambling there for a bit. |
