I remember when I was a miserable teen, and would wallow in fantasies of being raped, horribly abused, tortured and humiliated in the worst ways imaginable, suffering from Anorexia and being a victim of all the most horrible things I could think of. I loved those fantasies, because in them, I was justified in feeling as depressed as I did in my real life, I had real reasons to. Later on, the fantasies would change slightly, I would still be the victim of the worst cruelties of mankind, but the point of the fantasies was the righteous anger I would feel afterwards, leading to a terrific revenge. ;D
Honestly I think this is probably so so common, especially for teenagers. And really, if you'd been obsessed with finding out about real victims of these things I don't know if that would make it so much more respectful. I mean, if you didn't know the difference between your fantasies and the real thing, that would be one thing. But it seems more just like a private pity party.
Of course, in fanfic these things are written down so maybe people automatically assume you're then saying something about the real subject, but I don't think you really are.
For some reason this reminds me of an Oprah I once saw where she was saying how she really hates horror movies and she always says, "Why would you want to create horror when there's so much in the world?" or something like that. Needless to say I just don't think she gets horror movies at all and that's a dumb thing to say, but I thought what was especially weird is doesn't she like all that Lifetime Women's movie type stuff? Why is it somehow different to want to watch Jacklyn Smith get raped and then fall in love? That's standard Woman's programming.
Otherwise good fics can portray a rapist as being "justified" in raping, and have the rape victim fall in love with the rapist etc, and I personally find that much more disturbing then when a badfic does the same thing.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 07:42 pm (UTC)Honestly I think this is probably so so common, especially for teenagers. And really, if you'd been obsessed with finding out about real victims of these things I don't know if that would make it so much more respectful. I mean, if you didn't know the difference between your fantasies and the real thing, that would be one thing. But it seems more just like a private pity party.
Of course, in fanfic these things are written down so maybe people automatically assume you're then saying something about the real subject, but I don't think you really are.
For some reason this reminds me of an Oprah I once saw where she was saying how she really hates horror movies and she always says, "Why would you want to create horror when there's so much in the world?" or something like that. Needless to say I just don't think she gets horror movies at all and that's a dumb thing to say, but I thought what was especially weird is doesn't she like all that Lifetime Women's movie type stuff? Why is it somehow different to want to watch Jacklyn Smith get raped and then fall in love? That's standard Woman's programming.
Otherwise good fics can portray a rapist as being "justified" in raping, and have the rape victim fall in love with the rapist etc, and I personally find that much more disturbing then when a badfic does the same thing.
Absolutely. I find that much more disturbing.