Nineteen Ways of Considering Female Rape Fantasies

Nineteen Ways of Considering Female Rape Fantasies
for Karla Francis Smith, 1976-2003, and Jami Liz Macarty

Wanting what she cannot want, what
Society doesn’t allow,
And doesn’t allow her to want,
And understanding her greatest fear
Is a kind of prison, and wanting
To free herself from this mental prison
That’s her greatest fear,
Because she knows what hasn’t happened but could
Is worse than what already has,
Almost always,
And once it’s over she’ll still
Be there,
And wanting equality with men, the same men
Who for centuries couldn’t be raped,
(i.e. A man
In a western country
Before 2012,
When the FBI re-defined rape,
And the legal ramifications and attendant protections
Were extended to men)…
A woman who fantasizes her own rape
Wants her deepest fears realized,
Wants trauma,
And thus
Has already been raped…
How many times? Three? Four?
How many times must a woman want to be raped—
How long!
And how purely!—
Without equivocation or hedging,
Before she is really and truly raped,
Already and always,
And forever, for all to see?
This woman who wants to be raped
Is raped. All day. Every day.
How long must she want to be raped
Before she is no longer raped?
The sign above the gate
Read in ornate wrought-iron letters, “Rape
Will set you free.”
She isn’t afraid of rape,
Rather has made a friend of her own rape,
Her ultimate nightmare.
A kind of victory.
Because if her own rape isn’t a woman’s closest friend
It is a thing to be feared.
Truly feared.
This woman wants to live without fear,
Bravely,
With nothing to lose.
She isn’t a victim,
Has never been a victim,
Is exercising her own agency
Say the fourth-wave feminists—
Wants to transcend
The value imposed on her cunt
By the patriarchy.
This woman who wants to be raped,
Like an object of endless aesthetic fascination,
Depends upon
Your point of view.
She makes the fat and slovenly post-structuralist feminists
And their beta-male and white knight attendants
Surround her,
Sprawl around,
Rise up to her, no longer surly, wild,
But pale and mild.
The subject of endless debate and navel-gazing,
She has made of her desire
For independence and self-reliance
A public declaration, a manifesto,
Is a pioneer
Carving a path through the wilderness
Of herself,
Advancing a frontier.