THURSDAY, NOV 21, 2013 08:59 AM +0900
In defense of “rape” fantasies
The U.K. will criminalize porn simulating sexual assault. Ironically, this amounts to an attack on consent
TRACY CLARK-FLORY
これはわりに面白い記事。
In general, the BDSM scene, which deals in power play, is smarter about consent and negotiation than the vanilla world. As feminist writer Zoe Stavri wrote this summer in the Independent, “Within BDSM porn, there is often a short interview between the performers discussing what they would like to do, and what they would not like to do, and how they can signal that they want the scene to stop if need be,” she said. “After the scene has finished, the performers talk about the scene in a debrief.” Consent, communication and boundary-setting! That is the opposite of rape.
What’s more, research shows that rape fantasies are common among women: Roughly four in 10 report having them. One study found that 52 percent of female respondents reported fantasizing about being “overpowered by a man.” This does not mean that four in 10 or 52 percent of women want to be raped; it means that they have enjoyed the thought of being overpowered within the fantasyland of their own brains. That is the contradiction of rape fantasies: They represent a faux-violation, a powerlessness that is paradoxically controlled by the fantasizer.
As Daniel Bergner, author of “What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire,” told me earlier this year, “The force of culture puts some level of shame on women’s sexuality and a fantasy of sexual assault is a fantasy that allows for sex that is completely free of blame,” he said. Another explanation, he said, “is this idea that the feeling of being desired is a very powerful one, a very electrical one. And I think at least at the fantasy level, that sense of being wanted, and being wanted beyond the man’s self-control, is also really powerful.”
Male or female, a “rape” fantasy in and of itself does not make a person a rapist or a rape victim, or mean that he or she actually wants to rape or be raped.
This isn’t just an issue of defending sexual expression and fantasy, though. As the Atlantic Wire reports, “The connection between actual real-life violence and porn is blurry at best ― India, which bans all forms of porn, has been in the news thanks to a rash of brutal rapes. Meanwhile, in the United States the incidence of rape declined 85 percent over a period of 25 years while access to pornography has increased.”
イギリスではレイプポルノを閲覧するだけで犯罪にする法律の立法化が検討されている、と。
ただ、レイプポルノと言っても、ポルノだから、合意のもとの演技であり、表現の自由の問題もある。
さらに、レイプされたり、男性に圧倒されたりする幻想をもつ女性は4人に1人ないし、半数以上いるといわれるが、これは、男性が衝動を抑えられないほど自分に欲情し、欲している、という幻想に満足感があるからであるが、だからといって、実際に、レイプされたいと思っているわけではない、と。
つまり、男性でも女性でも、レイプの幻想をもったからといって、その人たちが現実に、強姦の加害者になったり、被害者になりたかったりするわけではない、と。
ポルノと現実の犯罪の相関について、インドでは、ポルノは禁止されているが、残酷な強姦のニュースがながれてくるが、他方、ポルノが増えたアメリカではここ25年で、強姦は、85%減少している、と。
現実の児童を使ったポルノ映画については言語道断だが、しかし、漫画やアニメの規制については、こうした点は考慮されていいかもしれない。