Ahh, I love her.
I do have intrusive thoughts fairly often. Fortunately I married a guy who eats intrusive thoughts for breakfast so I’m usually able to back that train up before it becomes OCD.
These thoughts aren’t usually pleasurable (in an OCD context.) I once, due to an ill–advised Facebook post by a friend, had repeated intrusive thoughts about what it would be like to be burned alive. It went on this way for a couple of months and I couldn’t sleep and was just constantly in a state of panic (because I have a very vivid imagination.) Eventually I just sat down and decided to do my own exposure intervention - I wrote down my thoughts repeatedly in a journal, over and over, in as much horrifying and vivid detail as possible, until the thoughts became boring and I could sleep again. It’s not even the only time I’ve used that technique - it works a charm.
How do you know that torture has no evolutionary basis? We’ve certainty been doing it a long time. How do you know fantasizing about torture is a red flag if never acted upon, when we have no research on people who fantasize about torture but don’t torture?
You seem to be saying evolutionary fantasies (like I presume rape or screwing fourteen year olds) are fine but it’s somehow worse if it’s not biologically rational. But the truth about sexuality is we have no idea where our weird-ass desires come from. Freud was extremely wrong about this. The truth is what we find sexy is probably a fair amount of nature/nurture. And also a fair amount of having nothing actually to do with what we’re fantasizing about. To take a common example, a woman’s rape fantasy bears zero resemblance to an actual sexual assault - and it can’t resemble sexual assault, under any circumstances whatsoever, because she controls every facet of the experience. Therefore it’s almost meaningless to call it a rape fantasy, and is why erotica writers use phrases like “non-con” or “dub-con.” But try to explain this to the guys trying to justify rape culture mythology.
Then there’s the fact that most people don’t even necessarily want their fantasies to come true. I’m personally fairly deep into aspects of BDSM but I have no real desire to impose this framework on my current relationship. It’s just there for me and me alone and my readers if I ever publish. I’m sure it’s way better to fantasize about than to actually do, anyhow.
I find it interesting that you’d make an exception for fiction writers. As a fiction writer a lot of what I do is fantasize, in really specific, personally entertaining ways. I enjoy gritty sex and violence, lovingly eviscerating rapists and other symbols of the patriarchy, and farfetched, sexy kidnapping plots, and for some reason I write about prisons, a lot. And torture. It’s not that I find these things good in real life - in fact I had to do a lot of research to put together some of these scenes and I found a lot of it, like the stuff about Gitmo, personally horrifying – but controlling every aspect of a situation, especially one that kind of frightens you, and turning it over in your head and capturing just that perfect detail to cause just that feeling, well, I imagine a lot of people have a similar impulse, even if they can’t write. And I can tell you with 100% honesty I enjoy killing the shit out of people sometimes – in my very detailed imagination. The fact that I do it using words other people can read – I mean is that objectively better somehow?
I think it’s weirder if you’re doing it with someone you know - but hell, even Stephen King murdered a guy he knew in one of his books (the guy that hit him with his van.) And I know a lot of writers who draw from people they know in real life. Not my style - I don’t know enough spies or killers - but anyway. It’s terrific fun. You should try it.
As a Buddhist I struggle with this one, both because I’m a writer but also because I don’t believe people can control their thoughts. They can choose to redirect their thoughts with practice but I don’t know that anyone can just stop thinking about something. I do think there’s something to the idea that if you nurture a thought it can make it more likely to become an action, but I see that as an individual moral choice, not something where I would impose my own morality on someone else.