In my last post, I wrote, “But lately, there’s been an awakening sense of violence in me. A burgeoning sense that I want to… harm someone, destroy someone, when I fuck her.”
This has elicited a couple of different reactions from readers. The primary one has been, essentially, “YES! Please destroy me!” There’s been a resounding chorus of this reaction, both in the comments and in private e-mails. Alas, almost all from women in other countries. 
A second reaction has been a sort of cautious, “Well, yes, but….” The words I chose – “harm,” “destroy,” have a viciousness to them, a violence. And several readers were caught up in the danger attendant to those concepts. And let me just say this, if it wasn’t clear, if it isn’t clear: I am not a sadist. I am not a sociopath. The only harm I ever hope to inflict is harm that is affirmatively welcomed; the only destruction I hope to do is situational, welcome, perhaps metaphorical. If, on any level, I aspire to the literal forms of those verbs, it’s deep, deep in my unconscious. (And I suspect it is there on some level. Which is why in that post I celebrated my gaining just a little contact with that.)
I didn’t think I needed to say it, but I guess I do: I’m a big believer in consent, in mutuality, in respect. Degradation outside of those contexts, pain, force, power, is repulsive to me. I’m not a rapist, not an abuser.
I’ve spent my adult life trying to access, and to reconcile, the deeply internal sense of aggression necessary to fuck well and properly with the far more conscious (and even occasionally impotence-rendering) sense of abiding respect for the women with whom I’m fortunate enough to explore sexually. Sometimes, I think this doesn’t serve me so well sexually.
This was my point.
Thank you, N, for this follow up. I assumed you implied this, but know from myself that the line can get blurry in the heat of the moment, which is a scary thought/fact. To be consumed with the lust of destruction ultimately/honestly would mean to disregard consent, mutually established limits, etc; just by sheer definition of ‘being consumed’. That was the point I and some other commenters went at.
That so many women wrote in with such enthusiastic agreement: well… amazing!
The losing total control of the aggression part? Or?
Yes, I think my reaction was a very “spur of the moment one”. My reasoning self KNOWS that you didn’t mean it outside of the context you just explained here. And in that context, I think I’d be one of those women to say : Yes please!
This said, I guess my emotional self took over and got scared by the idea… and buried the reasoning one deep inside, where it didn’t have a say (a bit like the person in you who wants to destroy women is buried deep inside, and you’re trying to access it…).
One way or the other, this is something that I’m glad I got to think about, as it is important, now even more than before, that I know where my boundaries are…