Rape fantasies are as much about rape as playing Romeo on the stage means you plan to kill yourself.

The rape fantasy, is actually about getting the mind and the ego out of the way so that the libido can enjoy itself. It is always purely consensual. But it is an agreement that the other partner must initiate all the actions and not solicit a decision from the "victim" as it could force her back into her head and too much decision-making.

Essentially every romance novel is a rape fantasy in which a strong man takes a woman to exactly where she would choose to go without forcing her to plan the trip herself.

Some women choose it because being a negotiating partner in an eternal series of "are you OK with this, what do you want to do next?," questions is a buzzkill.

Sometimes though there is a pathology in question, just not hers. With a sex-negative culture there is often too much expectation that "good girls" don't have desires. That was the case with my Latin lover Luz; who had a massive Catholic guilt complex. Maybe therapy could have helped. But she'd already left the Church long ago and rejected it intellectually. The problem was that she'd internalized the values. So the solution was to find a sensitive guy and then make him the designated driver. She could say, "No, no" while meaning "yes, yes" in order to steer from the backseat. But asking her to choose to "sin" would have been a buzzkill.

As for whips? I have no experience of that myself. But I know that the wiring for pleasure and pain are linked in many people. I hate being "stung" by spicy chilis. Some love it. Neuroscience shows that those who hate spicy foods tend to have a lowered level of the body's natural opiates. The pleasure in chilis is that they cause pain which causes a natural morphine rush.

And in some cases strong bodily sensation is used again to get one out of one's head and into one's body. This is why in some religious rituals ( think Catholic flagellants and Shiites on Ashura ) pain is used to facilitate the ecstatic experience. Sure it is also used to "punish" the flesh. But sometimes its used to transcend the flesh and achieve ecstasy. My low pain threshold makes me a poor candidate to get off on Jalapeño chilis or whips; but if its a consensual choice I'm not going to make a moral judgement about someone else's liberal use of Tabasco.

And don't worry. You aren't likely to encounter this. Sexual minorities are used to being judged as sick for consensual choices. They don't tend to ask the judgmental to join in; even if it means that they are withholding their desires and saving them for a later partner.

Dante