Part II: Rape as the anti-erotic

Sensitive content warning: mention of sexual assault and abuse

The next theme I wanted to explore is how rape would be placed in this erotic structure but I found that there is no place to put it, just as there is no place to put narcisism in maslow’s hierarchy of self-actualizacion. Narcisism would be empty space around the pyramid, before ‘safety needs’ are met. Rape is the void that the sexual-erotic Structure lives in. That is to say, rape is not desire.

Rape is the anti-erotic. Rape is what happens when there is a failure of erotic reception with the object of one (the initiator’s) erotic desire.

Rape doesn’t happen because someone withholds erotic response — it happens when there is no capacity for erotic resonance between two beings.

In other words:

There is no shared field.

No symbolic reciprocity.

No mutual architecture of desire.

And yet — the rapist forces their erotic fantasy onto the other,

and in doing so, tries to implant their distorted erotic vision as if it were real, meaningful, powerful.

And that’s the second violence, maybe the one that lasts longer than the physical one:

The victim is left with the burden — the phantom weight — of the rapist’s erotic vision, as if it meant something,

as if it had value,

as if it was ever real.

It can manifest as carrying around this idea that being angry, scared, or bitter makes you sexually attractive.

And that script might’ve coded:

• Powerlessness = desirable

• Fear = sexy

• Rage = fuel

• Collapse = opening

• Silence = consent

• Resistance = foreplay

Maybe my anger, my fear, my edge… is the source of my desirability.”

Not because it’s erotic, but because that’s what someone once wanted from them. And it worked. They were violated successfully. That’s the imprint.

This creates a haunting confusion in future attraction.

Instead of feeling free to desire from joy, wonder, empowerment, curiosity —

a part of them may only feel sexually visible when:

• they’re in conflict

• they’re unsafe

• they’re feeling broken or bitter

• they’re performing pain

It’s not performative on purpose. It’s residue,  psychic debris from a false erotic experience masquerading as the real thing.

I think rape is a non-entity. It doesn’t actually ‘exist’ in a coherent or symbolic sense — in the same way that a narcissistic ego doesn’t truly exist. It is, by nature, a confusion. A confusion about what sex is. What eroticism is. And above all, a confusion that fears the collective knowledge of it.

There are moments when rape tries to enter the erotic field — to disguise itself as sexual fantasy. But the very act of making it imaginative and consensual disqualifies it. It is no longer rape. It becomes something else entirely.

The simple act of defining the erotic structure is enough to dissolve its psychic stronghold. The same way an abuser loses power once you are no longer confused whether it is abuse.