When Mel first saw Lady Gaga's Telephone video, she could barely
contain herself. Watching the opening scene on her computer screen
at work in which Gaga is roughly stripped by two muscled female
prison guards, tied up, blindfolded and circled like carrion by a
predatory prison butch, she felt her cheeks grow crimson. Looking
down, she noticed her right hand had involuntarily risen to pinch
her left nipple and her legs were clenched tight together. The fact
that she was at work was already enough to make her feel
uncomfortable but something else was bugging her. Why had she been
aroused by something that would be traumatic if it were to happen
to her for real?
'I started to think that there might be something unhealthy
about my desire and ergo the dynamic I unconsciously set up with
lovers. I enjoy gentle love-making as well as the
rip-my-clothes-off-now kind of passionate sex but my fantasies are
darker and often involve being taken against my will. Sometimes
during sex with my girlfriend, we'll improvise a kind of dialogue
where she's someone's dad and I'm a 15-year-old who's never had
sex. Sometimes I don't even tell her, I just imagine she's forcing
herself on me against my will and drift off into my own sordid
little fantasy. I'm not clear why I fantasise about men,
though.'
It's not unusual for lesbians to include men in their fantasy
life. Often, our darker erotic thoughts will feature authority
figures - male, female and beyond - who are likely to occupy a
special and terrifying place in our psyche. Queer author and
therapist Patrick Califia, who writes extensively about
sadomasochism and power play, believes there are enormous hard-ons
behind the uniforms and facades of authority and power: a power
that can exist only as long as the penis remains concealed and
elevated to the level of a symbol.
Couples therapist Anando Emryss explains: 'We may be lesbians
but we're still largely socialised as women, who are denied a
certain kind of social status. In the realm of the sex fantasy we
can reclaim a sense of power and/or explore our experience of real
social inequality. It's quite natural in a safe, private, sexual
environment to examine the symbolic aspects of so-called
masculinity such as the phallus, as well as embodying powerful and
dangerous personas.'
Of course one woman's 'forbidden' fantasy may be another's idea
of light or 'vanilla' play but Mel's not the only one who's curious
about the darker side of her erotic imagination. Speaking
anecdotally to a handful of lesbians for this feature, I discovered
that while some of those with similar so-called 'dark' or forbidden
fantasies feel perfectly at ease with their fantasy life, others
are not so sure.
When she was younger, 35-year-old Meena used to fantasise about
being taken by force by her female lovers and remembers the thrill
of enacting her erotic thoughts, taking the role of both
'assailant' and 'victim'. Today, however, she's less inclined to
play out her more disturbing fantasies. After a few years in
therapy, she realised that some of those she enacted were a
throwback to the sexual abuse inflicted on her by her baby-sitter,
who would put her to bed and assault her. 'As a child I used to tie
up my dolls and spend special time with them. As a teenager my
fantasies were about being tied up and fucked by more than one
person. In my 20s I became aware of more structured SM play. There
was a fear in being tied up because it's giving up control. Fear
can be sexy if it's with the right person. I still like some
hard-core sex but these days I can't bear being tied down. I like
making other people physically helpless. Not all my fantasies come
from my abuse though,' she adds. 'I've explored my sexual desire
with my therapist and I think that some simply arise from the
complicated, unresolved power dynamic or bond that exists between
mother and child. Interestingly, since I've begun to analyse them,
the darker ones seem to have lost their potency.'
Eloise, 19, had always been curious about rape fantasies until
she read about the judgment in a Bolton rape case at Preston crown
court in January, when a woman was denied the right to have her
alleged rapists put on trial. 'The horror of the idea that anyone
could be penalised for a fantasy, denied a fair trial because she
expressed her fantasy about being raped on a web-site, shocked me
so much the whole premise has lost all pleasure for me. Though the
act of complete submission is seductively arousing, I want to be
careful. If I am ever so unlucky as to be a rape victim, I want to
be certain my right to see my attacker prosecuted won't be affected
because I admitted that the idea, in theory only, turns me on.
Having an adventurous sexual appetite and being a so-called "loose"
woman should not place a person outside the protection of the law.
Rape is, by definition, sex without consent, and I don't think
anyone should confuse having a fantasy with giving consent.'
Twenty-nine-year-old Pritti admits she's 'always found knives
sexy. Running a blade teasingly along the line of her body, over
her nipples, running it down her thigh. There's something really
sexy and dangerous about going to the knife-block. I also like the
idea of biting my lovers' lip 'til I can taste blood. I had this
fantasy when I was about 18 and became infatuated with a girl at
university. I never got to realise it.'
To some, these fantasies might be considered harmful and
perverted but psychotherapist Anando Emryss sees our dark or
forbidden fantasies as a healthy way to balance the demands between
the private and the public: 'In a sense, these kinds of fantasies
keep us sane and safe within our own context. In our daily lives,
we need to understand and function according to notions of good and
bad, acceptable and unacceptable. For example, when a person does
not consent to sex, it is rape, regardless of their gender, social
background, sexual history or erotic fantasies. In fantasies,
however, these values can be transgressed. The fact that we can be
the directors of our own dark material in a safe, consensual
setting can be very therapeutic.'
But what if your partner wants you to enact a fantasy about
which you feel uneasy? Georgie remembers an ex who had been
sexually abused by her step-father who wanted her to role-play as
him. 'We improvised dialogue as we did it but I felt really
uncomfortable. As if I was colluding with something destructive and
self-loathing. We talked about it and she said it was a way for her
to exorcise the past but I still couldn't do it again afterwards.
It also made me feel distant from her emotionally - as if she was
involved in a memory that didn't really include me. In the end we
split up after a few years because I no longer felt I could hide
behind a role, I just wanted to express my passion and love for her
as "me".'
In his book Sadomasochism, Dr Bill Thompson notes it has been
suggested that sex fantasies tend to reflect our outlook on life.
The American sexologist Robert Stoller thought that enacted SM
fantasies were a form of 'erotic hatred' whereby the pleasure
derived from acting out came from ridding oneself of a fear of
repeating the trauma or frustration, but Thompson believes that
this kind of theory is premised on the negative psychiatric
assumption that fantasies are solely derived from adverse
circumstances and never from pleasurable events. In Nancy Friday's
seminal 70s feminist text My Secret Garden, none of the hundreds of
women interviewed about their darker sexual fantasies linked these
to childhood trauma.
In the 1980s, Maria Marcus' A Taste for Pain examined her own
masochist tendencies. She discovered that although real physical
pain during sex tended to inhibit rather than enhance her pleasure,
she enjoyed the act of imagining her lover performing acts of
humiliation on her, whether masturbating alone or having sex with a
partner. Whether the fantasy took the form of invoked fear,
powerlessness or merely being submissive, all had the same
pleasurable effect.
In other words, says Thompson, 'Given that all sexual fantasies
involve some form of role-play the only real difference between SM
devotees and the rest of the population is that the formers'
fantasies involve overt elements of power relationships. In many
cases, knowing that the imagination is often more stimulating and
satisfying than reality, SM devotees would not attempt to realise
them but when they do enact fantasy role-play the imagination is
the most important feature. It is this feature that helps to
distinguish the SM devotees from those who enact or promote violent
sexual crimes against unwilling victims'. Also, Thompson adds,
'these dark thoughts can be seen as an adult solution to filling in
the gap between desire and fulfilment by marrying one's subsequent
fantasies with the strong emotional response gained by having sex
with a partner who understands the need and has the means to
enhance pleasure.'
Despite this, there are still some who object to all forms of
dark erotic fantasy, whether in the private or the public sphere.
Aside from her overt lesbophobia, perhaps one of the reasons why
American Culture Campaign President Sandy Rios denounced Lady
Gaga's video as 'poison for the minds of children and adults
alike', was because of the way it exposes how authority figures can
use their positions to force real pain on others with their sexless
sadism. As for Mel, she's still hooked on Gaga. 'I'm planning a
prisonbitch role-play scene and feeling a little more comfortable
about my taste for nasty. All I need now is a quick-assembly steel
cage and a haute-couture prison-stripe dress.'
Illustration by Rebecca Rice
This article first appeared in DIVA magazine, May
2010.
