Our Fears Misrepresented as Our Fantasies

*slight trigger warning*

Let me preface this story by revealing that I am a virtually unemployed, newly published writer who spends most of my non working time emailing resumes, reading, writing, and trying not to stare at the TV all damn day. Mostly, I just end up angry and depressed with this looming image of my college debts squeezing the pennies out of my weekend waitress sized bank account. So when I stumbled upon a Craigslist ad from an erotic author seeking someone to brainstorm with to cultivate a “female, non pornographic” voice for his novels, I was intrigued. As a consumer of erotic materials, it pleased me to see that a man actually wanted to ensure that his representations of women and female pleasure came from an authentic, well researched place of good intentions. I sent an email stating that I was a writer, a woman, and not squeamish with frankly discussing sex and sexuality and would like to meet in public to share ideas. I used to host a sex talk, sex positive radio show on my college campus and I’ve written erotic material in the recent past.

This individual responded immediately with a polite email first thanking me for not being judgmental, for being open to this artistic collaboration, and with more information on his schedule of availability. This writer also sent a photo of himself, I guess to prove that he was a stand up guy, even though his photo reminded me of the bad guy/wolf like character from the Freeway movies. He was white, 40ish, medium size, completely average looking and for some reason he also mentioned being unavailable to meet on days that he had to pick up his sons from Boy Scout meetings. I now doubt the validity of this statement and think that it was thrown in just to prove how much of a regular, harmless guy he supposedly was. He also sent two examples of his erotic storytelling.

After the first page or two, red flags immediately went up, bells sounded off, and I regretted contacting this person even though I did not share any identifying information besides my email account and pen name. It was essentially a long, drawn out rape fantasy from a female perspective, if you could call it that. I saw it as an obvious representation of this author’s own rape fantasy and the shrewd tool of using the female voice to apologize for the violent storyline. Yes, it struck me as horribly ironic that a man stating that he wanted to bring out a more authentic female perspective was romanticizing the biggest collective fear of most women.

I emailed back to tell him that although I thought that his writing was fairly good, this type of story line is a huge turn off to the majority of women who may be his intended readers. I expressed to this older man how women who enjoy BDSM or rough sex are often misrepresented in the media and other avenues as women who all have rape fantasies. It really irked me that this person didn’t seem as serious as I thought he was about incorporating a unique, non pornographic feel to his writing because he completely dismissed my concerns by offering that his character’s fantasy rapist was her boyfriend so, of course, that made everything okay.

I know that some women admit to having rape fantasies, but I am convinced that it is a much smaller number than people assume. It bothers me that something so economically and personally interesting to me quickly turned into such a creepy situation. If it were anything else commonly considered deviant or kinky, I feel like I could be meeting with him right now over coffee, coming up with characters and stories, laughing at the silliness and inauthentic feel of most erotic material.

Now I just feel like I’ve almost been sucked into some weird spider and fly game that involves lying to women online about wanting to write erotic novels, meeting them in public, drugging them, and then acting out those story lines on their bodies.

These predators are evolving in ways to “catch” even the street smart and world weary.