On May 21, 2018, Sex and Psychology discussed forced-sex fantasies in the era of #MeToo. The essay and any figures in it stay on that page. This article will not describe how to stage an assault, how to ignore a no, or how to make a fantasy "realistic" by removing the other person's ability to stop. A fantasy is not a request. A request for consensual non-consent, if it is ever made, still needs a stop that works. An actual assault is not redeemed by anyone's fantasy life.
Separate the facts
- A fantasy about force is not consent to be forced, and it is not consent to force anyone else.
- #MeToo did not ban adult fantasy. It required people to believe accounts of real harm.
- If you negotiate a resistance scene, a safeword and plain "stop" both end it. Test them first.
- Sleep, alcohol, and a partner who cannot leave are not consensual non-consent. They are incapacity or coercion.
- Do not tell an investigator, a friend, or a jury that a fantasy made the harm wanted. That is not a defense this page will help you build.
What the fantasy does not mean
Researchers and clinicians have long noted that people, including people who would never want a real assault, sometimes fantasize about force. The 2018 essay is one public discussion of that fact in a moment when many people were naming real coercion. The discussion is not a finding that fantasy and assault are the same event, and it is not a finding that a person who has the fantasy cannot be assaulted. Both errors cause harm. The first error treats a thought as a plan. The second treats a thought as a permanent yes.
If you have the fantasy, you may keep it private. You may tell a partner, in clothes, on a day when you are not having sex, that the fantasy exists and that you do not want it enacted. That sentence is allowed to be the whole conversation. If you do want to ask about enactment, ask once, accept a no, and do not raise it again as a test of whether they are liberated. Pressure after a no is the harm #MeToo made harder to disguise as flirtation. The longer account of why a rape fantasy is not a request is why rape fantasies are not a request. Read that before you ask anyone to play.
If two adults still want a resistance scene
This page will not write the scene. It will name the conditions under which people on this site are willing to call it consensual at all. Both people are adults. Both can leave. The acts are named in advance, including what is excluded. Sex, if any, is its own yes. A stop word is chosen, and plain "stop," "no," and pushing away also stop the scene. You test the stop on a small, non-sexual action before any resistance play. If the stop is ignored in the test, there is no scene. During the scene, an ignored stop is an assault, whatever you called the genre. Punishment for using the stop ends the relationship's claim to negotiation.
Do not add bondage that prevents the signal, a gag that prevents the word, or alcohol that prevents judgment, and then call the result CNC. A public room cannot monitor a private word attached to a gag. That limit is in what a dungeon monitor does. At home there is no monitor, so the signal has to be obvious to the person whose hands are on you. Fear play and humiliation have further limits in the harder masochism article. None of those pages teach you how to commit the crime more carefully.
When someone discloses a real assault
Believe the disclosure long enough to stop arguing about their sexual imagination. A person can have forced-sex fantasies and still be raped. A person can enjoy consensual kink and still be assaulted by a partner who ignored a stop. A person can have said yes to one act and no to the next. The fantasy is not evidence for the defense. If you are the person they are accusing, do not write a speech about their porn habits. Stop contact. If you are the person harmed, you can leave, you can seek medical care, and you can report. You do not have to decide those in one hour. In the United States the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233 and thehotline.org. If you are in crisis, call or text 988. If you want a therapist who will not treat consensual kink as the cause of the harm, start with how to find a kink-aware therapist.
Communities fail this distinction when the accused is popular. A teaching role, a title, or a history of "good" scenes is not a character witness against a specific night. Ask what the stop was and whether it was honored. If the answer is that they do not use stops because the play is "real," they have told you they will not stop. Do not send them new partners. Do not host them. The pattern of control is in the abuse article.
What not to ask the culture to do
Do not ask #MeToo to mean that adults may not describe a fantasy to a willing listener. Do not ask kink to mean that a listener owes you enactment. Do not ask a partner to prove they trust you by giving up the stop. Trust, in this narrow case, is the decision to keep the stop and to use it without a penalty. If the arousal depends on the stop being fake, the arousal is asking for the crime. Decline to stage it. You can want a thought and still refuse to put it on another person's body. That refusal is the whole ethical content of the 2018 question, and it does not require you to agree with every slogan spoken in that year.
What a partner can ask you to clarify
If you disclose a forced-sex fantasy, a careful partner may ask three questions. Do you want this enacted? If yes, what stop ends it, and have you ever punished someone for using a stop? What will you do if my answer is no? You should be able to answer without anger. "I do not want it enacted." Or: "I want to ask later, in detail, and I will drop it if you refuse." Or: "I have ignored a stop before" which is an answer that should end the sexual relationship, not start a scene. If you attack them for asking, you have answered a fourth question they did not have to speak. You are not safe to negotiate with.
If you are the partner who was asked, you may take a week. You may say you need the fantasy to stay fictional forever. You may say you are willing to discuss a narrow, stoppable scene on another day and not tonight. You may say you cannot date someone whose arousal depends on resistance. None of those answers is a failure of solidarity with people who have fantasies, and none of them is a failure of solidarity with people who have been assaulted. The answers are about your body. Your body is not a political proof.
Do not practice the scene while you are fighting, while either of you has been drinking, or while one of you is trying to earn back trust after a lie. Those are the conditions under which a stop gets bargained away. Wait for a week when the only question is the scene, and then test the stop on something small. If you cannot bear to test it because the test would "ruin it," you cannot bear a real stop. Do not begin.
Events, jokes, and staff
A party is a bad place to discover that a guest thinks resistance is a house style. Staff should say, in the rules, that a struggled no is a no unless a pre-negotiated stop system is visible to a monitor, and that the house may forbid resistance play entirely. Many houses should forbid it. A monitor who cannot tell a scene from an assault from the doorway should not be asked to bless the scene. They should stop it. The guest who wanted a private CNC dynamic can take that negotiation home, with the limits above, or they can skip it. They cannot demand the floor as proof the venue is serious about kink.
Jokes that assign a rape fantasy to a guest, or that treat #MeToo as a punchline about sensitive people, are a hosting problem. Stop the joke. The guest does not owe the room a statement about their inner life. The accused person does not get to use the joke as a character reference. If you are staff and you do not know how to interrupt, use the same sentence you would use for any other harassment: "That stops now. If it happens again, you leave." Then follow it. Inconsistency is how communities teach victims to stay quiet.
Keep the research where it belongs. The 2018 essay can help a reader stop panicking about a private thought or stop dismissing a public accusation. It cannot staff your event and it cannot script your sex. If you remember a thought is not a plan, a plan still needs a stop, and an accusation is about a night and not about a genre, you have the part of the topic that prevents harm.
One more limit: do not ask a survivor to educate you about your fantasy. Their harm is not your workshop. Read the essay, read the consent pages on this site, and if you still have a question about your own conduct, ask a therapist or a willing peer who has not been harmed by you. Curiosity is not a claim on someone else's worst night.