Originally posted on April 8, 2010.

I'm a young, straight feminist male, and I've been dating my feminist girlfriend monogamously for almost two years. Recently, I've been coming to terms with the fact that I am turned on by rape fantasies. Of course, I find the idea of actual rape repugnant, and this is probably, of course, why fantasizing about it turns me on. I sent out some feelers by initiating a conversation about kinks and what types of kinks she would hypothetically be comfortable accommodating. I asked her to imagine that I fantasized about feeling up women on the subway and wanted her to simulate and help realize that fantasy scenario with me. Her response was that I needed to be "cured" of my desires, and that she would help me figure out and work through the psychological gender-power issues behind it, and to that end she would try to show me how enjoyable consensual sex could be. My first thought was, "Well, that's not GGG..." but then I reconsidered: Would indulging that fantasy only reinforce patriarchal patterns of thought that I've worked to expunge from my brain? How much of a point does she have?

Feminist Rape Fantasist

My response after the jump...

DTMFA.

I'm not telling you to dump your girlfriend because she won't let you feel her up on the subway, FRF. She isn't obligated to help you realize your consensual-rape-lite fantasies. If that shit squicks her out, that shit squicks her out. But you can't have a mutually fulfilling sexual or romantic relationship with a woman—feminist or not, squicked out by simulated nonconsensuality or not—whose first impulse when presented with a run-of-the-mill, completely consensual role-play scenario is to pathologize her partner, declare him sick, and accuse him of not being aroused by consensual sex when consensual sex was precisely what he proposed.

There's nothing wrong with you, FRF, nothing that needs curing. The only thing you need to expunge is a girlfriend who regards you as a sicko and a rapist. DTMFA.