Mary

Women Don't Need More Sexual Guilt

This article highlights the fact that women have both dominant and submissive fantasies, and enjoy seeing them acted out in pornography. Banning that imagery will only increase the shame and stigma of women exploring their personal sexuality.

All the time I have been opposing this legislation, I have felt safe in the knowledge that I - as a woman who doesn't watch much pornography - am safe from this law. But the more I have researched censorship and the more I have looked at this law the more I realize plans to criminalize so-called "violent" pornography do threaten my way of life.

I am a woman who enjoys fantasies featuring non-consent. The only material that really excites me features rape scenes; I like the idea of someone being overpowered. As a sexually dominant woman, I like to imagine a man succumbing to my powers. These fantasies can be violent; short, sharp scenes where a man is overpowered and has no choice. After the event he is left abandoned and shaken up.

Other fantasies feature extended periods of sensory deprivation such as a prison scene where a man is gradually trained to want to please me, to such an extent that he pleads to be used and degraded by me. Conversely, I also enjoy rape scenes where a woman is overpowered by a group (of men or women). In these scenes, I (the victim) remain a powerful woman. My body is so desired that my assailants overcome societal norms and are driven to use and abuse me.

This is not a glorification of violence against women.

I have been raped and know the reality is very different. Maybe I am re-appropriating my past. Maybe my fantasies are completely unrelated to the reality of rape. I'm sure - like dreams - there is an underlying meaning that isn't immediately obvious in the imagery.

Unfortunately, there are few porn films out there that accurately reflect my desires. They tend to feature unbelievable women, are too glossy and the storylines are too sugary sweet - even gang rape scenes. My fantasies are darker. And I'd like to see more films featuring "violence" against men. I had hoped to fill this gap by making films of female domination. I have written a screenplay about a man who has been kidnapped and helped captive by a group of women.

I had begun to recruit actors and film-makers when the government announced plans to make pornographic material featuring acts of violence illegal to own and illegal to make. Since then I have been fighting those plans. Because they smack of thought crime, because they fail to allow for the variety of human experience and because they are based on ill-informed subjective morality rather than on any evidence of need. More recently, my opposition to these laws has brought me face to face with angry feminists who believe all pornography is hate. These women - like the MPs behind the governments' proposals - refuse to accept that women could have fantasies like mine. They believe that my fantasies were created for me - by men. They seem to believe that banning this material would make me safer.

What they won't allow is that these fantasies pre-date the internet, and any exposure to pornography. Indeed, they pre-date any sexual feelings. I was the girl in primary school who thought it was unfair that girls got chased by boys and started girl-on-boy kiss-chase. When I played doctors and nurses I made the boys line up with their trousers around their ankles so I could inspect them. As I grew up, I embraced my natural dominance and I searched for pornographic material that reflected these fantasies.

That wasn't easy before the advent of the internet, in a country where pornography was largely illegal. Luckily, though, I found partners who were happy to re-enact my fantasies.

And then, finally, UK law was liberalized and I was able to walk into sex shops and buy films that - although only vaguely related to my desires - gave me the wank material I had been looking for.

Now new laws are planned. Laws that would make realistic depictions of my fantasies illegal to view - even if the actors were happy to make the images and even if I know that no-one was harmed.

While I think this is a patently ridiculous law and hope the government will see sense before they try to criminalize my fantasies, I am even more concerned that this law could have some seriously detrimental consequences if it were to come to pass. Indeed, I am concerned that the discussion surrounding it is already harming women with fantasies like mine.

I worry that if - as a young girl - I had been surrounded by people who told me my fantasies were sick and were rightly illegal I would have learned to despise myself and - more dangerously - would have tried to stymie my own sexual desires.

With so many pressures on women not to explore their sexuality as it is, the last thing we need is a law that tells us we're sick and should be ashamed of our fantasies.

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