When Does Fantasy Become Enabling?

[Nonsequitur]

The sex-positive community has made break-throughs of breaking societal connotations and empowering individuals.
Although, it concerns me that liberation can sometimes be very damaging. Especially niché online communities that welcomes this.

Though most sexual actions and fantasies are harmless, alongside discussing them, sometimes, it can deteriorate someone’s moral or harm their physical and mental health.

When we encounter someone (whether online, or in-person) who are expressing something sexually-unethical or obsessive behavior that harms their health, what should we do?

[Heather]

Hey, nonsequitur. I might need you to perhaps give me a concrete example of this. Fantasy is something only inside someone's head, so is very unlikely to harm their health or damage a person in some way. But then you brought up sexual actions, so it sounds like you might not just be talking about fantasy?

[Nonsequitur]

Fantasy, at least in my connotative way, means a person indulging in thoughts/positing/viewings, although they don’t partake in these “actions” off-screen.

The person indulging in these fantasies are “the script writer” rather than “the actor”

So in easier terms:
“If I’m just fantasying about it, doesn’t mean I’m hurting anyone right?”
“Online vs. IRL”
“Free Speech”
“People who produced this are awful, not me, I’m just looking at it!”

I know what I’m trying to describe is very abstract, so here’s an array of examples I’ll try to provide:

• You check out your friend’s public forum profile, it revealed that they’re a member of an online group that takes sexually unsolicited pictures of their co-workers
(Hence, they’re only a member of the group, not participating in forum postings; watching/viewing)
• Someone has strict interest in viewing porn with unethical themes
(drugging, incest, blackmail, “revenge”-porn)
• You find a forum that has an adult commenter has an attraction towards a fictional character that’s a minor
• A close friend of yours admits in being curious in a fetish, the community that surrounds it is suspicious, “creepy”, etc
• You’re in a group chat where someone talks about wanting to cheat on their significant other

I witness these examples time-to-time, it’s very sad to see someone who’s close in your life to behave like this.
Sometimes they don’t know what they’re doing is in the uncanny-valley, plus if they’re indulged in a community... others are empathetic to the idea and supports it.

It can definitely harm your mental health due to desensitizing your moral. Desensitizing can lead to the forgetfulness of consequences, which guides into physical action.


Most importantly I’m asking, next time I witness something that seems a like fantasy allows someone to be “sexually suspicious”, (especially someone I care about), what’s the right thing to do before something gets out of hand?

[Sam W]

Hi Nonsequitur,

So, I do want to touch on the fact that a lot of those examples you gave involve at least one step beyond fantasy. In the first two examples, if someone is actively engaging with communities that produce revenge porn/non-consensually taken photos/porn in which coercion was actually involved, even if they aren't the ones creating that content, by consuming it they're encouraging that community to continue. That's different than if they were, say, fantasizing about coworker.

With the friend who is interested in a certain fetish (even if it's a bit of an out-there one, unless it's one that actively turns on another person's non-consent, it's unlikely to be cause for concern) and the person who expressed an interest in cheating, it sounds less like someone sharing a fantasy and more like someone testing the waters to see what kind of reaction they get to something they want to try. They're not just keeping the idea in their head as something they like to imagine.

When we talk about fantasy, we're talking about something that only happens inside that person's head. That's why Heather said it can't really hurt a person. In fact, fantasy is in many ways a safe outlet for people who know that some of the things that arouse them are things they can't do in real life. Even if a fantasy is pretty out-there, or involves things that are taboo or illegal, it isn't automatically going to harm that person, or cause their morals or behavior to degrade.

As to your question, I'd say the time to speak up is if what someone is telling you suggests that they're actively going to do something that could put themselves at risk or that could hurt someone else. Beyond that, you can't really caution people not to have the fantasies they do.