I love that quote! And I think I've posted about this before, and it was wanky, but mostly it's that it's hard to say without offending people and also with an explanation that makes sense to someone who doesn't experience their daily lives as "also an imagined life". That seems to be something that either makes sense to someone or not; if you live in a world of numbers, appointments and walls between feelings and thoughts, walls between actions and intentions-- as some people seem to-- I guess this concept of the unconscious world being naturally wedded to the conscious daily world is something threatening and alien.
When most people say 'it's something we have to take seriously', I guess they mean you have to write it in a certain way-- like, you have to write it 'realistically' (with 'correct' consequences and so on), and I don't believe that; kink is valid too. I guess to me, 'seriously' is an internal process that merely means continued self-awareness, something that prevents self-righteousness and casual dismissals. Something like a process of paying attention-- rather than taking the form of policing others or demanding change, maybe it's something more difficult for some people, ones who aren't naturally honest with themselves or given to self-reflection. Apparently, you know, there are people who resist certain kinds of introspection even in therapy-- don't want to talk (or, you'd imagine, think) about their own feelings & deeper motivations. I'd have thought those people wouldn't be writers, but-- I guess it's possible. Maybe the person is good at fantasizing and observing the outside, mimicking the inner without being truly aware.
I do think that those statistics don't take the sort of person it is into account, and that's important in this context; your everyday sexual fantasy isn't the same creature as a fantasy in the context of erotica writing. I mean, they're related, but it's still different in terms of motivation and effect to some extent. Also, we don't know the role imagination plays in the lives of your everyday common garden-variety sex-offender; my guess is that there's a wide enough variety, but the majority of people in general (sex offenders or not) aren't very imaginative, so I assume they don't reflect on their desires one way or the other but rather act on them mindlessly, not considering the real effects (especially in circumstantial cases, which are probably in the majority of instances-- ie, not premeditated). Most people (I assume and observe), as in, most 'normal' non-especially-creative people, don't seem to have much of a conscious, active imagination; I'm not sure what precise effect that has-- I just think they don't think about their dreams/feelings that much if they don't have to, so a lot of it's repressed and unconscious.
So what does it mean, as a creative self-aware person, to let your unconscious out to play? Obviously, since people who write erotica or fiction of any sort are in a minority, and sex offenders are also (thankfully) a minority of the population, there aren't going to be many people who're both writers and sex offenders. And so on some level I can see where the indignation comes from-- something about the way writers are, the way we're more comfortable with our darker/deeper levels of imagination, we think of it as harmless 'cause obviously the only person it ever seems to hurt is ourselves (and it's more like a burden in the outside world, rather than some sort of weapon). I think it's much more dangers to not explore it, not write or think about it, in terms of having it get away from conscious control. And yet at the same time I just instinctively feel the thin, worn places where the walls between desire nd impulse to action are worn thin; the thing that's keeping me from action is really my innate nature rather than some safety of fantasy remaining in check by its nature, I guess.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 01:56 am (UTC)When most people say 'it's something we have to take seriously', I guess they mean you have to write it in a certain way-- like, you have to write it 'realistically' (with 'correct' consequences and so on), and I don't believe that; kink is valid too. I guess to me, 'seriously' is an internal process that merely means continued self-awareness, something that prevents self-righteousness and casual dismissals. Something like a process of paying attention-- rather than taking the form of policing others or demanding change, maybe it's something more difficult for some people, ones who aren't naturally honest with themselves or given to self-reflection. Apparently, you know, there are people who resist certain kinds of introspection even in therapy-- don't want to talk (or, you'd imagine, think) about their own feelings & deeper motivations. I'd have thought those people wouldn't be writers, but-- I guess it's possible. Maybe the person is good at fantasizing and observing the outside, mimicking the inner without being truly aware.
I do think that those statistics don't take the sort of person it is into account, and that's important in this context; your everyday sexual fantasy isn't the same creature as a fantasy in the context of erotica writing. I mean, they're related, but it's still different in terms of motivation and effect to some extent. Also, we don't know the role imagination plays in the lives of your everyday common garden-variety sex-offender; my guess is that there's a wide enough variety, but the majority of people in general (sex offenders or not) aren't very imaginative, so I assume they don't reflect on their desires one way or the other but rather act on them mindlessly, not considering the real effects (especially in circumstantial cases, which are probably in the majority of instances-- ie, not premeditated). Most people (I assume and observe), as in, most 'normal' non-especially-creative people, don't seem to have much of a conscious, active imagination; I'm not sure what precise effect that has-- I just think they don't think about their dreams/feelings that much if they don't have to, so a lot of it's repressed and unconscious.
So what does it mean, as a creative self-aware person, to let your unconscious out to play? Obviously, since people who write erotica or fiction of any sort are in a minority, and sex offenders are also (thankfully) a minority of the population, there aren't going to be many people who're both writers and sex offenders. And so on some level I can see where the indignation comes from-- something about the way writers are, the way we're more comfortable with our darker/deeper levels of imagination, we think of it as harmless 'cause obviously the only person it ever seems to hurt is ourselves (and it's more like a burden in the outside world, rather than some sort of weapon). I think it's much more dangers to not explore it, not write or think about it, in terms of having it get away from conscious control. And yet at the same time I just instinctively feel the thin, worn places where the walls between desire nd impulse to action are worn thin; the thing that's keeping me from action is really my innate nature rather than some safety of fantasy remaining in check by its nature, I guess.