Date: 11/18/2024
Mood: isolated
Listening to: Cat Walk Dancing - Wink
thought crimes
>"I always get this nagging feeling that I'm doing something wrong or unhealthy whenever I indulge myself in these fantasies even though I guess I'm not hurting anyone."
Beginning to unpack this woman's idea would take me 50 years. Where do I even start?
First of all, women are constantly and consistently shamed for having self-oriented fantasies of any kind. Point blank. Men can sit there and have entire genres of porn invented for them and their fantasies. Even their fake lesbian fantasies. Meanwhile women are looking at jpegs of musicians or singers who are often fully clothed and analyzing the pixels. We have had to make up our own genre because nobody caters to us. We're deemed unimportant. Our wants and needs are not considered. That is also why women are looking at gif and clip of actor and also analyzing the pixels. We whole cloth invented our own fake pornography from SFW material because the industry caters none to us. That is also why we made up our own fanfiction and materials in text form. We are not given our own anything. It all goes towards men and their wants, needs, fantasies, desires, and demands. We gotta be honest: 90% of fanfiction was invented by women for women. Because media does not cater to what we want to see or what we like.
Women who wrote this fanfiction were shamed for many many years before it was normalized on AO3. On fanfiction.net, women were banned, deleted, and shamed off the site very often. We were not given a place to exist. That is why AO3 was invented. Fanfiction used to be very very prone to disappearing due to having to be kept in haphazard conditions from tech men constantly kicking us off of websites, laughing at us, or thinking we're disgusting. Women had to hide their fanfiction online for years in small communities and locked LJ comms. We had to use private forums to keep issues at bay. Men can have all the porn DVDs and VHS tapes they want objectifying a woman. But ooooo that gay slash text-on-a-screen is just too far for them to handle. You don't like it? Are you mad at seeing a male body being objectified? Boo hoo. Cry harder. Now you know how we feel when I have to see your male oriented "lesbian" porn. Same thing.
Women made analyzing body language of random characters or musicians our version of fantasy. Women made analyzing random actor chemistry in some TV show our version of self-oriented fantasy. Where is the crime? Compared to the abusive and exploitative form of the porn industry, all I can say is, our version of fantasy doesn't hurt anyone. We're the better ones for it. Men have entire magazines dedicated their fixation on women's bodies. They're the backbone of the porn industry. They are the losers on OF buying images of bodies to fantasize about. I get off to images of a man for FREE. I post them all over my website for FREE. You pay for your jpegs? lmfao. Rethink your life choices. Have some imagination. My entire website is me lusting over a man for free. What are you doing? The only thing I have ever purchased is CD, DVD, book, sometimes merch, and concert ticket. All of which are optional. I can choose to be a pirate for free to be honest.
Do you wanna know what is wrong with many men? They merely fixate on a body to find attraction in. They forgot about a personality and human identity. Women didn't. That is why they're out here buying jpegs and I'm not. As a woman, I am able to find healthy thoughts and outlet in an entire human concept. Not merely a physical form. I don't need his body to feel attracted. I can do it on mere personality concept alone. He's literally just standing there and I can enjoy it. Get on my level. Many women do that with their favorite guy or character. What does he do? He just exists and that's enough.
So yeah, I'm not surprised you feel like having your own wants, fantasies, desires, and attraction to a man is "wrong" and "unhealthy." The entire media landscape has told you for years that doing this is disgusting of you. Men have shamed you for liking what you like. You have no healthy approved outlet to put your emotions towards. You have minimal media meant for you to express yourself through. Any media you can, is entirely self-made and that is why you feel wrong. Fanfiction and fandoms online with heavily female demographics are routinely the butt of the joke and made fun of. Say what you want about the quality of Justin Bieber music or One Direction. But fans of men like that are routinely mocked, made fun of, hated, criticized, shamed, and sneered at. Most of the time those women are only teenagers and young adults. Yet the vitriol they face for merely saying, "this boy is cute" is enough to send men online into a fit over it. Do you seriously not remember the Bieber hate campaigns? It was ridiculous how much men overreacted to teen girls liking A Thing. Nobody gets more hate online than teen girls liking A Thing. Be it Twilight, JB, 1D, or like.... what is it the kids are into nowadays? Dream?? Corpsehusband? Minecraft YouTubers??? Markiplier? (I'm too old for this.)
You have minimal media oriented towards you and anything you do have, goes through extreme criticism from men everywhere you go. You're mocked for anything you enjoy and you learn this at a young teenager age that your media is less than high class art like films directed and produced by men. Your media is deemed lesser, trashy, and something you need to grow out of. Just the word "boy band" is enough to feel like a pejorative when it's used and gives you a sense of embarrassment. Because you know men criticize and hate boy bands as lesser media than their media. Especially if you're a woman with zero interest in Japanese media which caters to them. Say what you want about Japan's issues with sexuality, but they at least have media by women for women and it's a normalized industry with profits.
They proved an industry for this can exist and women want it. Entire anime franchises that make huge money are carried by women's horny levels for 2D man drawings. (Yuri on Ice, Jujutsu Kaisen, Tiger & Bunny, Touken Ranbu, Hetalia, Osumatsu-san, etc etc.) The only media that comes anywhere near Japan's market on this is the romance novel genre which is by women for women. Think: books with Fabio on them. You know what I mean? Or maybe to some degree romance films on like the Hallmark Channel. Now think about this, are those mediums considered valued? How many times have you heard lambasting against Hallmark movies? Think about romcom movies and how many of them are critically panned by men, considered low quality, and yet they find niche female audiences who love them.
Just the term "chickflick" is enough to be considered a pejorative when used to describe a film and evoke the idea of being bad quality because it's >for women. Do you see cultural applause for these books and films on average? How often are they critically adored? Movies like Mean Girls which break this trend are the anomalies, not the standard. For every Mean Girls that is beloved female oriented film, is another female film being criticized and misunderstood for no reason (ie, Jennifer's Body, Bring It On, Jawbreaker, Hard Candy, etc). How much is the media critic industry dominated by men reviewing things? How often do you see romance novels by women being fawned over or appreciated by men? I won't deny the book has story and character issues, but the way people acted hysteric over 50 Shades is ridiculous. You'd think this simple fanfic book about kinks destroyed people's lives with how much hate it gets. Yeah, it has problems with narrative and whatnot. The films aren't that good. Sure, I get it. Yet it feels like people were more critical and hyperbolic about this franchise because a woman wrote it and (gasp) she based it on her fanfic. A fanfic to Twilight which is already pop culture pariah because >women liked it.
When actually, you're healthier than any man for this. You don't participate in a sick industry of exploitation. You don't contribute to the degradation of a woman's body. You don't fuel male violence or their entitlement to women's bodies. You're looking at fanfic text-on-a-screen. Text that was most likely written by another woman. Where you're contributing to her positive self-esteem when you leave her a comment or kudos for her fanfic. Where's the harm? Are you hurting? Is she, the author, hurting? Are random actors or musicians hurting for this? Nope. Nobody really is.
You're looking at pixels of an actor in a TV show. You're staring at music man on a stage. Who is being hurt by your behavior? You're looking at a screen and feeling guilty for it. It's sad, isn't it? That you've conditioned yourself to suppress your emotional and sexual thoughts this hard that the mere idea of a FANTASY of a man that is 100% in your head is making you feel unhealthy. A fantasy you invented yourself without any exploitation involved and no risks to anyone at all. Nobody can hear, read, or perceive your thoughts you have. Nobody knows what you're thinking. Only you. So much so, this man doesn't even know you damn exist and you're a lady in your room lost in her thoughts. THOUGHTS. You're essentially accusing yourself of thought crimes. As you haven't taken or performed any behaviors. You are trying to vilify thoughts as reflecting a behavior when nothing has happened.
It's you criticizing yourself. You say this is "indulging" yourself. But is it really? It sounds like you feel guilty for having wants, needs, thoughts about sex and emotions. None of which is anomalous, out of the ordinary, or unhealthy in the slightest. Why would you consider basic human behavior reflecting your attraction to men to be indulgent? How so? Do you at all think the culture around you which shames female sexuality is at play? Or maybe if your fantasies are entirely SFW, do you think the culture around you doesn't support your self-esteem enough for you to feel like you can achieve this through social connections? Do you, as a woman, feel wanted, needed, safe, and like you belong in your social circle and community at large? Do you feel like the state of your feminine identity is valued in your culture? Or do you think one of those fundamentals is missing? Do you think that contributes to why you want a healthy object of affection male in your thoughts? Because, let's be real, you're most likely thinking about him in a way that reflects him being attentive to your physical needs, emotional connections, and paying attention to your personality. You want to have a sense of worth. You want a man to value you as much as you value him. You memorize stuff about your favorite man in your "mental database" because you wish he'd know stuff about you too. Your behaviors reflect what you lack. A sense of being appreciated, valued, and like you're noticed and cared for. Don't you wish someone had a mental database of your nuances too? That's what having a functional boyfriend or husband should be like, but alas.
You're doing nothing wrong. You're thinking about a vague imagined man who doesn't even know you exist and you are doing nothing to impact his life. You are a woman in your room thinking about a vague incoherent male-shaped conceptual idea. One which is idolized to remove his flaws and problems. You're also most likely getting off to him being emotionally attentive and perfecting his personality. Not solely his body the way men jerk off solely to a woman's physical form. Did you care about your actor, musician, or Internet video man solely based on his body? I doubt it given the history of how women act in fandoms being oriented around a personality. Many cases you're likely attracted to his character, performances, and things he's said. Or your interpretation of his personality. You foremost liked something about his character and identity. Of whatever form that took. Sure, physical form mattered to some degree. I don't deny it. But I do not believe it's the only factor. Men 99% only look at how hot the woman is and get off to a body and nothing more. That is why they're obsessed with deepfake porn of women actresses or Internet personalities. They just care about her looks. They cannot manage to get off to a woman in their mind alone based on her entire identity and personality.
You're so much more powerful than them. You can be attracted to the most SFW media with zero nudity and still find value in it. They can't. You don't need deepfakes. They do. How does this make you unhealthy? The way I see it, you're healthier than them because your version of sexuality and sense of identity doesn't solely rely on image and body to function. You are able to incorporate personality, nuances, canon, ideas of emotional care. You are able to be attracted to a whole sense of a human. I am absolutely convinced most of your fantasies relate to receiving emotional care, feeling valued, feeling safe, and/or equal partner in sex. This should be standard in a relationship and yet with many men IRL, this isn't how they operate. Only some niche few.
You're also attracted to the way you've emotionally fixed him. You don't objectify him alone for his body. You want emotional security, a personality type or archetype you deemed attractive, and often make him emotionally attentive. That is a repeated pattern I found in both yumejoshi husbando and 3D fanfiction of actors and stuff. Emotional attentiveness to a woman's needs or identity. Be it physical or in her personality, this man is paying attention to her needs and making her feel seen, heard, acknowledged, and wanted for more than a body. Okay, hear me out ladies. I know we all hate this trope. We know it's a problem in fanfics as it often goes poorly when written. However, there IS a reason why amateur writers end up making a fanfic where the men are 100% thought-centric to a female OC/self-insert. Where all attention, all thoughts, all ideas are put on her by every single male character in some way. You can hate that trope all you want and the issues with it. But you have to at least ask: why do women gravitate to doing that so much?
My theory? My answer? Because in misogynistic culture we don't feel seen, heard, acknowledged, or like we're valued regularly. Fantasy is the only place to suddenly feel important and like others value you. Where every man around you treats you with utmost importance, value, and fixated on making sure you're comfortable around them. Women repeatedly over and over fall victim to that trope the minute they can access a keyboard. It happens when they're teenagers most often, but pretty much any woman does it. Why are teenagers feeling that insecure already so young? Why are they already realizing they aren't valued by men by the time they're 16? So much so, the trope is frustrating. Yet we fail to really understand why women default on this thought process. To understand it, you'd first need to ask why a woman is sitting at her keyboard wanting to write a fantasy about a man she doesn't know or isn't real at all. Why is her reality around men so unfulfilling that she is turning to fantasy? Why is this happening to a large enough degree that entire sub-cultures like yumejoshi have taken form? Why has the medium of fanfiction only grown bigger and more and more culturally significant?
To this anon, I'd say: the fantasy in your head is nothing more than unwritten fanfiction that is exclusive to your head alone. Do you think fanfics are unhealthy or evil things? No, you'd call them harmless text doing nothing that is such a big deal. Give yourself some slack. Be kinder to yourself. Because all you are doing is the mental equivalent to fanfics that are imagined instead of typed out word by word. Seriously, all you are doing is mentally writing the equivalent of a reader insert fanfic. Is that a crime? Is that a big deal? Is that unhealthy? Would you accuse anyone on AO3 of being weird for that? The difference is you wrote it in your head and didn't keyboard it. You can put it to text if you wanted to. Nothing stops this.
Anytime you think your fantasy issue in your head is "unhealthy", ask yourself "can I write this down and post it on AO3 without being hated? do I blend in with other women doing this?" And if the answer is yes, then you're doing nothing wrong. You're literally just writing mental fanfics. This is fundamentally what yumejoshi do the entire time. We need to introduce IRL husbando sufferers into yumejoshi therapy immediately so they stop generating self-hate and animosity that they're doing something wrong on a severe level.
Thoughts aren't crimes and neither are random fanfics on AO3. Which have no bearing on the real world. Do you know what has bearing on the real world? Actual filmed pornography and prostitution for men. Those are both fantasies of women's bodies that men regularly utilize and cause harm with. Both of those are rife with risks of abuse and exploitation. These have real world effects that cause problems for everyone. Why are you criticizing yourself on that level while men aren't held to that standard for their fantasies? Whenever you want to criticize your male fantasy in your head ask yourself, "is this worse than prostitution?" If the answer is no, carry on. No men are being harmed or exploited for thoughts in your head. Nobody is hurting for this. Only you are because you're conditioned to reject feeling good about yourself in a male context. The second a fake male made you feel worthy and good inside through this fantasy, you panicked to think you're doing something wrong. Why are doing that? Why are you rejecting comfort, self-worth, positive emotions, and healthy sexual ideas? Huh?
Men do this behavior towards you to fantasize and sexualize you at any given random moment they want to with minimal to no consequences, and feel no guilt during or after. You do it to them and you fear you're doing a crime, unhealthy, not supposed to, or are causing a problem for either him or yourself. Crazy, isn't it?
That is why my response is: DO IT ANYWAY.
Ignore the shame and guilt. It's not real. That's merely what a misogynistic culture has instilled. To subvert your own needs, happiness, self-worth for being concerned with a man's instead. You felt good by your fantasies of a man you actually find endearing and then freaked out because you were apparently guilty of the crime of (checks notes) feeling too good.
You are unable to cause a man pains by thinking positive emotions about him inside your head to be a loving person in your life. What are you gonna do? Love and appreciate him so much in your fantasy that he vaporizes? What is your affection going to do to harm him? No single positive fantasy you have about him does him any harm. You most likely appreciated him for his identity, personality, character, whatever. You're not actually dehumanizing him. Your affection for him is far more humanizing than you think because I have no doubt most women are imagining romantic scenarios, nice things about his personality, and what they cannot have IRL from shitty men in their life. Thoughts are thoughts. You can't emote love in your head so hard you cause a problem because you know deep down you're not delusional or dangerous. (Such disorders are very very rare actually.)
So do it anyway. Do it again and again. Because it makes you feel good inside, doesn't it? Why are you trying to take that away from yourself to protect a random guy who doesn't know you exist? He's not gonna KNOW. He does NOT know you're doing this. He has NO IDEA. You are your only critic. Not him! He has no clue what your thoughts are about him. Because you are not delusional, he will never ever know about it. Nobody will tell him what you do in your house. So think whatever thoughts about him you want to.
Like seriously. YOU ARE THIS TUMBLR TEXT POST.
You are a woman in your house lost inside your thoughts about a random man who doesn't know you exist and will never know what you do. He is in your thoughts. Your thoughts. Just a thought. What crime are you committing again? When did it become illegal to think internally? You do not need to tell anyone your fantasies or thoughts about the man you like. The only critic here is yourself. The only person causing fear, concern, wrongness, and nagging is yourself. Because you live in a misogynistic culture which taught you to believe valuing your sense of worth is wrong. You live in a culture where your sexuality is shamed. You live in a culture where your media enjoyment is lesser priority. You do not get enough positive attention from males nor feel fully safe around them to get this in a realistic way from a man that isn't a fantasy.
Am I responding to nonna or am I self-reflecting? Good luck with that blurry line being crossed right now. I know that every single word I wrote is me talking to a mirror about Paul. Thank you, you did not get this past me. I know what I just wrote. There is a reason why you're looking at the layout of the Paul blog right now. I know where I am posting this. This is my therapy for me. This is for miss anon. And it's for me. It's my letter to myself. It's me yelling at me. If my only crime in life is "emoting towards German man with guitar" then goddamn, I will have done less crimes than the average man does in his lifetime.
I guess this is my burden to bear. I am taking one for the team. I will go ahead and finish out the remainder of my life emoting to this guy and I will let you know if the world suddenly ends via my affectionate thoughts and positive vibes. I will be the case study for us all. Keeping you posted!! So far I am 18 years deep and the world is still fine. Paul is doing great lmfao. I really think that sentence says a lot. I have been like this for 18 years and nothing bad has happened in this very long span of time. This is why I say: keep doing it. Emote away. Think about him. Fantasy all you want to. It's kinda weird how you can think about someone as much you want and there are no consequences.