Acceptable fantasies?

A fascinating debate has sprung up on the happytails forum, concerning the moral responsibility of depicting certain types of non-consensual or historically-based fantasy.

The trigger issue is Niki Flynn's much-lauded recent film 'The Spy' with pain4fem (I haven't seen it yet, but I'm planning to when I next have some spare pocket money). If you're interested in questions of the boundary between fantasy and reality, if and how we should draw a line between acceptable fantasies and unacceptable ones, and the extent we as fetishists should take responsibility for the content and consequences of our fantasies, then the thread is well worth a read.

I may contribute my own opinions at some point, but right now I need to tidy my room ;) In the meantime a lot of people are making some very good points a lot more articulately than I could - for example, this comment by Michael:

"Ninety percent of everything shown in every spanking video ever made would be a sex crime if it actually happened. If we eliminate sex crimes from our repertoire, we are left with nothing but adult consensual DD and kinky foreplay. [...] We get off on stuff that's illegal to actually do. We have to live with it.

[...] There's a further wrinkle in the case, specifically, of our kink -- the extent to which we are worried what the vanillas think. This has specific applications -- the problem some sites have getting credit card approval for their content -- and more general ones -- do we censor ourselves so that the larger culture won't think we're "dangerous" and decide to suppress us? I see our emphasis on "safe, sane, and consensual" -- which is an excellent guideline for actual play, but a lousy description of the content of our fantasies -- as relating as much to how we present ourselves to a potentially oppressive outside world as to what we say to each other. Do we try, in anything the vanillas have access to, to try to make ourselves look like harmless, fun-loving, butt-smackin' kinksters who may be ridiculous or amusing but are totally non-threatening, to avoid giving them an excuse to repress us? Or are we honest and open about the full range of our interests and fantasies, and stand up for our rights of freedom of thought and expression?"