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agonyaunt2021-06-01 03:06 am
How to do it: My Girlfriend Just Revealed Her Real Sexual Agenda With Me. I’m Speechless
I’ve been dating this girl for over two months. She’s way out of my league in terms of both socioeconomic status and physical attractiveness, and I consider myself very lucky for it. Our relationship seemed perfect, and I was already planning what ring to buy for her until she came to me with a disturbing confession. She admitted to me that a major reason she’s sexually attracted to me is because I am a descendant of a Holocaust survivor, and she has a persistent sexual fantasy of being a Nazi concentration camp guard who is overpowered and raped by a male Jewish prisoner. I’ve rejected the idea before, both because I find ringing sexual pleasure out of the Holocaust tasteless and because I don’t have violent sexual desires. Regardless, she is insistent that I “give it a try.” She even went so far as to buy the costumes for both of us.
While the suggestion is obviously offensive, she’s always been willing to engage in whatever fantasies I’ve desired without a complaint, including allowing me to invite my old flame from college into our bedroom for a threesome. I feel guilty rejecting her first-ever sexual request of me, even if it isn’t terribly respectful. On the other hand, I am beyond uncomfortable with it, and I don’t know if I could force myself to go through with it. I once even suggested to her that she could live out this fantasy with another person in an open relationship-type arrangement, but she insisted it has to be me. I even suggested a compromise of other rape-fantasy role-play scenarios that don’t involve genocide, but she said that doesn’t work either. Should I just go through with it? Is there some other compromise I can offer? Is it reasonable for me to flatly say no? Should I, as one friend advised me, “run the hell away”?
—Don’t Understand Gentile Sexuality
Dear Don’t Understand,
A partner’s past permissiveness does not transfer them credits to spend on whatever they want sexually. There is not tit-for-tat obligation in sex. But even if there were some kind of one-for-me-one-for-you rule, a kink as elaborate as your partner’s does not necessarily equate to something like a threesome in terms of the required emotional and dramatic effort. What has been proposed is not a “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” type of situation; it’s more like, “I’ll scratch your back and then require you to sexualize generational trauma from mass genocide.” While I don’t believe that any fantasy play between consenting adults is off-limits, no matter how taboo the premise (sex is, in fact, a way to get close to certain facets of existence that are otherwise too far out to broach), I do believe that the key is that both consenting adults should want to do it. You are uncomfortable with this, and it is completely reasonable that you would be. No judgements, but the notion of the Holocaust has hardly been known to make panties drop. Are you cool with being fetishized for your lineage? Is that an adequate trade-off for having someone who is superficially out of your league and just plain … out there by most measures? I don’t think so. Don’t do something you know that you don’t want to do. You have offered the best compromise possible. It is reasonable for you to say no. You don’t have risk getting winded by running the hell away; a brisk walk will do you just fine.
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(To be clear, the kink I'm shaming is not the GF's fantasy, which is no more shameful than any other sexual fantasy, which is to say, not at all. It's the GF's insistence that any human being, not least the real life descendant of an actualfax Holocaust survivor, play out this fantasy with her. So I guess I'm asshole-shaming and not kink-shaming, but that's a technicality.)
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Her insistence on the specificness of the fantasy despite his discomfort, combined with the fetishization (it specifically being because he descended from Holocaust survivors) plus her unwillingness to explore other ways to make the fantasy work for both of them makes her a huge asshole.
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I, a kinky bitch, am going to kinkshame (or, as you said, asshole-shame) this woman for her STAGGERINGLY GROSS and, frankly, dehumanizing behavior.
Having edgeplay-type fantasies is one thing, but making your partner suspect that they were chosen specifically so that you can act out a fantasy based on their horrific generational trauma is next-fucking-level.
(Same thing with raceplay, it’s only permissible when fully and enthusiastically agreed-to, and even then, it’s psychologically loaded and full of landmine-level triggers.)
He’s said no, and she BOUGHT COSTUMES ANYWAY. Nazi/prisoner costumes.
And this is purportedly a dating/romantic relationship, not a Fetlife hookup.
I don’t think she’s seeing him as a person, and I don’t like the level of calculation on her part that this implies — did she go LOOKING for the descendants of Holocaust survivors in order to act out this fantasy?
Just a whole metric fuckton of NOPE on this one.
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someone in the twitter thread where I first saw this said "what do you bet the 'costume' turns out to be her great grandfather's uniform?"
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*kinkshames vigorously*
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That's very basic consensuality: LW's lover wants to RP something that LW doesn't want to do. 1+0≠2. End of story.
I...uh...I did like the bit at the end of the advice: You don’t have risk getting winded by running the hell away; a brisk walk will do you just fine.
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I have more to say but my hands are cold and I'm on my phone
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It's not the fantasy that's wrong in this scenario, but the girlfriend's pushy and uncompromising attitude.
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The fact she's not doing everything in her power to excise her fantasy of being a nazi violently raped by genocide victim is itself disgustingly antisemitic, without even bringing her Jewish BF into the picture.
TLDR kink does not exist in a vacuum and isn't/shouldn't be above critique just because kinkiness can be an identity thing.
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Opening her mouth and trying to act this one out with a real human being who has his own needs and feelings is the problem here.
(I am not in any way defending the girlfriend in this scenario, I’m saying that the content of sexual fantasies and fetishes often can’t be excised, even with professional help — as has been shown by things like the abject failure of conversion therapy.)
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Or, in this specific case:
"I want to pretend to be a nazi in order to get my rocks off" is not an ok kink for the vast and overwhelming majority of living people to have. It's not an ok thing for the vast and overwhelming majority of living people to want.
Frankly, it *should* be disturbing and distressing to the person who wants to pretend to be a nazi in order to get their rocks off.
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Her ACTIONS are unconscionable.
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Fetishes/paraphilias and fantasies can be instilled really early and in some fucked-up circumstances (people reenacting abuse or trauma, people who have intrusive thoughts that deeply distress them during sexual arousal, etc.), so I am ONLY saying that “get rid of the fantasy, how dare she have it in the first place” isn’t necessarily psychologically possible.
What IS possible is to never propose it to a partner, or to discuss it in therapy but not try to act it out.
She seems like a legitimately horrible person who is behaving extremely badly.
The one and only point I’m trying to make is that fantasies are sometimes beyond a person’s control, but their ACTIONS are something they do have a choice about.
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In either case, I agree she could have made better choices and treated his boyfriend with more respect.
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LW's GF has clearly not done everything in her power to expunge her nazi kink from her person, and is clearly neither distressed nor ashamed of having it, as borne put by her actions.
Both the existence of the fetish itself *and her relationship with it* as evidenced by the content of the letter are up for criticism and, yes, kinkshaming.
Because having a genocide kink is absolutely something people with genocide kinks should be shamed out of talking about or expressing where other people can see it.
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I agree! I just don't think that means these kind of fantasies must be kept secret and never, ever, thought of, discussed, or acted upon even if the participants are willing and consent to it.
Since these kind of fantasies can result in delicate situations - retraumatizing, digging up previously buried issues, the person playing the part of the aggressor not understanding how hurtful certain words or actions can be, etc. - I think participants should communicate in depth before the scene. If the boyfriend decided to participate in this fantasy on his own volition, nobody would have the right to criticize him. However, that's not the case here - girlfriend steamrolled over his refusal and acts as if it's going to happen eventually. She acts like he's another prop for her fantasy, instead of a real person. *That's* what not OK.
If we were talking about, idk, a group of white right-wing politicians caught in an orgy dressed like nazis I'd feel more worried, but because those people a. have the power to enact oppressive policies and b. have the means and connections to cover up anything shitty they might do.
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And frankly I don't look kindly on people who would consent to play out such a fantasy, either.
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Excuse me, what the fuck.
Until the mention of buying costumes, I think I managed to not kink shame. Buying costumes pushed it over the line, kink is about consent, okay, and if someone says no, it ends.
Letter-Writer, please take a really lovely brisk walk away from this person who is not only not respecting 'No' but is also rather cold and calculating about not respecting 'No'
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yeah, the costumes were where this crossed the line for me from "pushy person with an upsetting fetish who doesn't know how to let it go" to "potential abuser." LW said no.
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Pretty sure there are people out there who want to roleplay slavery scenarios, too, but the core of the problem is the extreme objectification of the other person to the point where that other person is there in the kinkster's life ONLY to serve the kink.
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(BTW, am I the only one who finds it weird and not a little oogy that her fantasy dramatically, and violently, upends the victim/victimizer paradigm of the Holocaust? I can't even begin to unpack how much that bothers me, and if that's kink shaming, I'll live with it, but...yeah.)
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You're not the only one. I'm trying to be aggressively fair, because when I was a little Jewish pubescent who'd been fed a steady diet of Holocaust media for my entire childhood, my fantasy life was fucked up. And I don't think that taboo sexual fantasies should be dirty secrets between oneself and one's therapist.
But:
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