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Here’s a thought experiment for you.
It’s both at once amusing and terrifying, but as it’s Halloween, it’s the perfect time to share it with you.
If it was possible to be presented with a comprehensive list of everyone who has thought about you, either while masturbating or having sex, would you want to see it?
There is no way to feel neutral about this list.
Just pausing to imagine what names you might see on the list could at once be validating, but at the same time, horrifying. What if someone you once had a crush on is on the list, but then also someone you really don’t or didn’t like all that much?
This list would change your life. You might not be able to look at many of your colleagues the same way again. Do you have the kind of personality where this knowledge wouldn’t get to you? If somebody has had a sexual fantasy about you, without you, is that their privilege? Is it okay, but just as long as you don’t know about it? But now you do.
Would you be okay looking at the list, but with the caveat of being protected by it only covering up to five years previous? Looking back might be amusing, but seeing anyone on the list you still interact with in the present might be awkward and borderline traumatic.
But looking back, would you want to know who thought about you in a sexual fantasy when you had not yet come of age? If someone had been the same age as you, maybe you’d be comfortable with that, but what if they’d been a lot older than you?
What about how many people were on the list? If it was minimal, would you feel rejected? If it was sizeable, would you feel used? Would you obsess about the number of people on the list during certain eras or your life? Was it more frequent when you were in college compared to five years in the professional world?
The power of this hypothetical list is immense, especially when you consider how many other people’s lists you would appear on.
We are clearly all entitled to our own fantasies, as long we recognize them for what they are and we do not allow them to push us into criminal behavior. But we also have to acknowledge that this means people are entitled to their own fantasies that could include you — and this isn’t immediately comfortable. Knowing that you form a part of somebody else’s fantasy starts to dissolve the line between fantasy and real life. The list would undermine this line, this protection. Respecting somebody else’s fantasy from a distance is perhaps the best we can do.
Maybe we would prefer this list to be a blinded database, where we could just ask if a certain name was in there. But then, could we trust ourselves not to obsess about checking for everyone we’ve ever known?
Would it be important information to know? Could we be empowered in any way to know this information? Would we feel validated or would we feel cheap?
My guess is that the list would destroy us all. Happy Halloween!
