Friday 14 June 2013

RAPE FANTASIES


 The Rape of Ganymede; Peter Paul Rubens (1611)


I think a lot about our erotic fantasies, those wonderful tales that we tell ourselves. We cast ourselves as the hero, or heroine as we delve into our deepest, darkest desires. Yearnings that teeter on the edge of the profane, the taboo. I talk to friends about their fantasies; sometimes, I put their fantasies into my stories.

 Some of us fantasise about being raped. Not just about relinquishing control, about being forced. I am talking primarily, from a feminine perspective; some women have rape fantasies, but I’d never considered that men might have rape fantasies too. And I don’t mean a male being controlled and forced to serve, and service a beautiful woman, or women; there’s plenty of those stories on the web. I’m talking about a man fantasising about being raped by a man; being forced, being violated.

I hadn’t thought about that, until I had a conversation over a bottle of wine, with Justin.
I’ve known Justin for years, I was often a guest at his home, when he was married; like so many of us, he’s now divorced. I was friends with his wife, and with his two great kids. Justin drifted a bit after the divorce, he’s a freelance photographer, so he can find work wherever he goes. He’s unusual, rather than good looking; sort of Scandinavian, with silky, straight pale blond hair and stunning eyes. Watchful eyes, dark grey and heavily lidded. When he’s old, with his angular bone structure, he’ll look like an eagle.

Justin and I always end up talking about sex. We’ve never had sex, not with each other, but he knows about my stories and I’m aware of the private portfolio of his work. He told me about a book he’s putting together for a guy he knows who is a Dominant. Justin has photographed the Dom’s favourite slave girl, in every intimacy imaginable. The book will be exclusive. It will be a piece of pornography that collectors will kill for. Probably only a dozen or so copies will be made.

We were silent for a while. I poured more wine, then Justin told me about his own fantasy. Justin fantasises about being raped. Raped by a man. Violated.

I wasn’t shocked; there’s not a lot that shocks me these days.

There’s not a great deal on the web, but I found this.
“I know this is screwed up and unbelievable but I have no sexual attraction to men at all, only women, but for some reason, every time I get really horny, I have fantasies about someone bigger then me dragging me in an ally, pulling down my pants and raping me, especially when I stop masturbating all together, I have wet dreams about it.

It's taking over my life, I want to be raped; nobody knows this because I'm afraid someone might stage a rape and that's not what I want, I want it to hurt, be real and walk away…”
Cory James. Ask.com


Male rape is acknowledged in the Greek myths.


Ganymede, the youngest son of Tros, the King of Troy, excelled in physical beauty. He was looking after the flocks of sheep, when Zeus, having fallen in love with him, swooped down in the form of an eagle, seized him and took him to Mount Olympus.

“When the gods in classical mythology fall homoerotically in love, they never do so with other gods or with adult human males; rather they always do so with a mortal youth. They enter into liaisons in which they, like Zeus, act the part of the erastes to an adolescent who, like Ganymede, serves as the eromenos. The sexual acts imagined to be performed by the divine-human lovers, though not described in detail, can be assumed to conform, just as the structure of the relationship does, to the cultural ideal of pederastic unions.”
From glbtq


“In Greek mythology, the rape of women, as explained by the rape of Europa, and male rape, found in the myth of Laius and Chrysippus, are mentioned. Different values are ascribed to the two actions. The rape of Europa by Zeus is represented as an abduction followed by consensual lovemaking, similar perhaps to the rape of Ganymede by Zeus, and went unpunished.

The rape of Chrysippus by Laius, however, is represented in darker terms, and was known in antiquity as "the crime of Laius", a term which came to be applied to all male rape. It was seen as an example of hubris -- pride and arrogance, and its punishment was so severe that it destroyed not only Laius himself, but also his son, Oedipus.” WIKI

“Laius, the king of Thebes, is thought to have been the first mortal to bring the practice of the love of youths to the Greeks. What we know for sure is that while he was still too young to rule, his cousins, Amphion and Zethus, grabbed the reins of power. With the help of loyal subjects Laius fled Thebes to save his life, and sought refuge in Pisa, a neighbouring kingdom. There King Pelops welcomed him warmly in his castle. When Laius reached manhood, Pelops entrusted his son, Chrysippus, ‘Golden Horse,' to him so that he would teach the boy the charioteer's art. The king loved Chrysippus best of all his sons, and wanted him well trained in the arts of war. Laius did as he was asked, but fell hopelessly in love with the beautiful youth. During the Nemean games, in which the pair competed in the chariot races, Laius kidnapped the boy. By then Amphion and Zethus had met with misfortune, so he was able to take him back to Thebes where he kept Chrysippus, by force, as his lover. It was not as if he did not know what he was doing. "I have understanding," Laius said in his defence, "but nature forces me."
From Gay-Art-History.

The 1972 film “Deliverance, directed by John Boorman, from James Dickey’s novel of the same name, features a male rape.

Four Atlanta businessmen, Lewis, Ed, Bobby and Drew, decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee Riverin the remote Georgia wilderness, expecting to have fun and see the glory of nature before the river valley is flooded by the construction of a dam. Lewis, an experienced outdoorsman, is the leader. Ed is also a veteran of several trips but lacks Lewis' machismo. Bobby and Drew are novices.
Pulling ashore to get their bearings, Bobby and Ed encounter a pair of unkempt hillbillies emerging from the woods, one toothless and carrying a shotgun. After some tense conversation in which the hillbillies appear to be goading the others, Ed speculates that the two locals have a moonshine still hidden in the woods and Bobby amicably offers to buy some. The hillbillies are silent; menacing. They force Bobby,  at gunpoint, to strip naked. Bobby is then chased, humiliated, ordered to "squeal like a pig;" then he is violently sodomized. Ed is unable to help because he has been tied to a tree and is held by the toothless hillbilly.

In James Dicky’s novel, the narrator is Ed. Bobby has been ordered to strip off his trousers and pants and lay across a fallen log.
            “The white bearded man was also suddenly naked up to the waist. There was no need to justify or rationalize anything: they were going to do what they wanted to do. I struggled for life in the air, and Bobby’s body was still and pink in an obscene posture that no one could help. The tall man restored the gun to Bobby’s head, and the other one knelt behind him.
            A scream hit me, and I would have thought it was mine except for the lack of breath. It was a sound of power and outrage, and was followed by one of simple wordless pain. Again it came out of him, higher and more carrying…The white haired man worked steadily on Bobby, every now and then getting a better grip on the ground with his knees. At last he raised his face as though to howl with all his strength into the leaves and the sky and quivered silently while the man with the gun looked on with an odd mixture of approval and sympathy. The whorl-faced man drew back, drew out… Bobby let go of the log and fell to his side, both arms over his face.”

The terrible images stay with you, long after you’ve stopped watching the film, finished reading the book. The violation is graphic, in both Boorman’s film and Dicky’s prose.
And just when you think it can’t get any worse, you realise that the rape precipitates real tragedy. There is more to come, they just don’t know it yet.

I have put this piece together, because the concept of violation, of being forced, disturbs me. It really does disturb me. And writing about it, is the only way that I can deal with it.

But from my friend Justin’s point of view, and Cory James, a real rape is not just something to be desired, something to fantasise about, it has an urgency, it is a real need.





2 comments:

  1. Provocative as always, huh? Well, if you go back to mythological sources consent isn't an issue because, broadly speaking, they're not 'erotica' but metaphorical and metonymic ways to explain the world...

    On another note, forced sex is a relatively common fantasy for both men and women, and as we all know fantasies have no use for political correctness. Where people do act on these fantasies, they generally do it in a relatively controlled way that ensures some level of personal safety while entering into the realm of 'consensual non-consent'.

    Actual rape is utterly different and... yes, I'm sure you know I hold strong views against any sex without consent, not least because I know women who have been the victim of rape and the long-term trauma they've suffered as a result.

    But that said, over the course of my adult life I have met one woman - though only one - whose fantasies did extend to the idea of actually being raped by an actual rapist, and who occasionally acted deliberately in ways we might stereotypically describe as courting it. To the best of my knowledge she never 'succeeded' in getting raped, which to my mind is a good thing given the possibility of serious harm, infection, etc. she was courting.

    As to your male friend - I have no idea and no data about whether he's in a minority of one. But if I had to make a guess, I'd say he's not.

    I suppose my point is that fantasies take no account of conventional morality; acting on them can be extremely dangerous; but they can be very powerful, and there are a few, though only a very few, people in whom they're strong enough that they seek to act them out in such extreme ways.

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  2. Interesting post. I've known too many men who claim that there is no such thing as the real rape of a woman, since women "always say no when they mean yes." When a man tells me that, I ask how he would like to be imprisoned for whatever reason (e.g. false conviction) and raped by a male convict or a guard. Most men find this possibility horrendous (and apparently it happens regularly in North American prisons for men). Male-on-male rape seems to be the kind that most men don't want to discuss at all, and if they ever fantasize about it, they won't admit it.

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