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The fantasy and the reality
In which we try to be Sensible
I felt slightly ill reading the lead story in yesterday’s Guardian, about an Austrian man who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl and brought her up as his secret prisoner for eight years. It’s a horrible thing to do to someone, even if he did look after her health and education. The man – his name was Wolfgang Priklopil – has since killed himself, so his motives may stay a secret; but, reading between the lines, he was trying to act out some kind of Master/slave fantasy.*
I know plenty of people who do have similar fantasies – both as the kidnapper and the kidnapped – but the difference between them and Priklopil is that they know the difference between fantasy and reality. Moreover, they subscribe to one of the strongest rules that comes with being a Sensible Perv – consensuality. It’s no different to the non-kinky world, essentially: I will only do X to you if you want X done to you. You’re free to have fantasies about kidnapping strangers, but they have to stay fantasies. To a Sensible Perv – and they make up 99.999%**** of the kinky people out there – the thought of carrying one of those fantasies out is anathema.
No doubt if a case like this occurred in the UK, there would be further calls for “violent” pornography to be banned, whether it was linked to the case or not.*** There is, after all, an awful lot of pornography and erotica on the internet that relates to this sort of fantasy, largely because it has to remain fiction. Hell, there’s probably quite a lot of it in the catalogue of Black Lace and similar imprints. Banning all that isn’t the answer. The answer is education. If the Sensible Pervs are out in the open, and easy to find, the dangerous ones are more likely to realise they’re not the only kinky people out there. All us Sensible Pervs can make sure that people like Priklopil realise that their fantasies aren’t unique, that it’s possible to fulfil them in almost-legal ways,***** and effectively train them to be a Sensible Perv too. It can be done, and it’s the only way to stop cases like this happening in the future.
* A particular BDSM** subgroup, where one person agrees to be the property of another, with no right of veto. Well, more or less. Any one-liner definition like that is bound to upset someone.
** NSFW links.
*** After all, the internet was still fairly rare 8 years ago.
**** OK, I made this number up. But it’s probably roughly correct, apart from the exact number of 9s after the decimal point.
***** I say “almost-legal” because an awful lot of what anybody, perv or not, does in bed, is technically illegal. Anything – a love-bite, for example – that leaves a mark that is more than “transient and trifling”, is Grievous Bodily Harm. What “transient and trifling” means, of course, is entirely up to the judge. For more information, ask the Spanner Trust.
I agree… banning things doesn’t make them go away, just makes them harder to see.
Incidentally – this is just a by-the-way, really – I don’t know if you realise, but your comments on here still come up with your old URL, and I edit them to the new one each time. I assume that’s what you want?
an interesting post, but surely not everyone who likes that sort of stuff would want everyone to know about it?
[...] http://www.symbolicforest.com/blog/2006/08/26/the-fantasy-and-the-reality/ (I felt slightly ill reading the lead story in yesterday’s Guardian, about an Austrian man who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl and brought her up as his secret prisoner for eight years. …) [...]
That only works if you grant everyone the initial assumption that they are sane.
(I do however agree that banning any sort of porn would not have changed a thing)
an interesting post, but surely not everyone who likes that sort of stuff would want everyone to know about it?
They don’t have to. Most Sensible Pervs don’t go around telling everyone what they do in their spare time, much as most non-kinky people don’t go around telling everyone what they’ve been doing in the bedroom. A lot of Sensible Pervs – including some prominant campaigners – don’t even use their real names when talking about Perv things; of most of the Sensible Pervs I know, I only know their first name and/or their online name. You don’t have to let everyone know who you are and what you’re into. The important thing is being able to find help, support, and sympathetic ears when you want it.