A reasonable explanation for why people like me find the idea of cooking and eating a woman erotic (in fantasy, not in real life) is that this is a form of "Forbidden Fruit," an expression of lust for the physical aspects of a woman coupled with the ancient tribal belief that eating the flesh of someone will give you a part of their spirit and/or some physical aspect (not to be confused with any desire to be a woman, which is an entirely different fetish). A fantasy Cannibal wants to enjoy a woman on the most intimate level, to consume her literally and ingest portions of her body. Imagining a beautiful woman being prepared, cooked or eaten is to render her submissive to the act of consumption. This fantasy holds true even if you basically believe in treating all women with decency and respect, or hold the most pro-Feminist view that all women are inherently equal to men on some level and should be treated no differently from men, or on the basis of their abilities and not their gender.
The dark side of any idolization of a woman is the resentment for that which is seen as unobtainable. Women who inspire great desire are very often resented by the very people who idolize them, because on some deep level we know they are not obtainable by us, or that there is a waiting list with only one likely victor who will claim her for a wife, which makes the rest of us feel less than powerful and sometimes challenges our conceptions of our virility and manhood. Desire and resentment are a powerful combination in revenge fantasies, so even if we love these women we can feel a strong urge to see these women in some way "humbled."
It is a dark fantasy, make no doubts about that, but it doesn't have to be treated like a psychosis as these urges need expression, and in fantasy we find a harmless outlet, not a recipe for behavior. "Monkey See" is not "Monkey Do," and most of us in reality would react very badly to a real-life cannibal, as we would to an actual assault on the women we admire, no matter what dark urges underlay our worship.
Oddly enough many women share this interest in Gynophagia, and they even picture themselves as the victim. Why would any woman actually enjoy a fantasy where they are treated like food and rendered powerless? The linking element is very much like any Bondage fantasy: to surrender control to a powerful element or sexual partner. There is a great sense of release when one abandons civilized modes of behavior in exchange for the ultimate thrill of being an object of worship/adoration and even consumption. The degree to which one enjoys this fantasy is a reflection of how deep one wishes to go in surrendering to such dark appetites, to indulge the fantasy of being consumed by a lover.
Not that giving into fantasy is in itself a good thing as there must, of necessity, be a reasonable balance between our urges and our behavior. A fantasy of tying a woman up, torturing, cooking then eating her is not a harmful passtime unless there is a strong desire to carry it out in real life. There many reasons why this is not practical, not least of all because a fantasy avoids the mechanical problems of such a real-life scenario, but the strongest reason of all is the mindset that it would take to carry such a thing out, which few people (let alone average) could manifest, no matter how much the fantasy appeals to them on a personal level.
Many of us do feel powerless in life, overwhelmed by life and circumstances, and often given very few reasons why we must suffer for basic survival. That can turn a decent man into a sociopath, but not a Psychotic. True mania comes from deep-rooted personal problems far more deeply imbeded in the criminal mind than any surface level problems that may manifest where we can see them. That is why a Psychotic can seem perfectly well adjusted yet be a monster on the inside. These are not people who indulge in harmless fantasy, they plan out and execute sometimes elaborate psychodramas, so they are not the audience that is targetted in these web pages.
So the difference between a fantasy involving cannibalism and a real life cannibal like Geoffrey Dhamer is that of a harmless game that is played to indulge in wish fulfillment, while the other is an expression of a twisted nature, and who in their right mind fantasizes about killing and eating young boys in the manner of Dhamer? The fantasy that Dolcett has popularized in his art is of a woman impaled on a stake and roasted while still living. Real cannibalism would probably be a very lengthy and involved process, similar to what a hunter goes through in cooking a freshly caught deer, and such a messy procedure hardly conjures up an erotic image of desirable intimacy and consensual behavior.
Boiling a woman alive is a very popular image of cannibalism, however impractical. We can imagine a woman slowly simmering as she writhes helplessly while a cannibal cook tossed in vegetables and stirs the broth. If the woman expires in the cooking pot she will no doubt have to be cut up before eaten, and let's hope she didn't loosen her bladder at the last moment! There are many ways to conjure such and image and make it seem attractive, even to the victim herself, who might see it as a less drastic way to expire than, say, decapitation or evisceration. In many respects it could almost be described as a "Romantic" image.
In reality boiling someone alive was a horrible form of torture, often used by the Spanish Inquisition to make Jews convert to Christianity. Boiling an enemy to death was used by many a tyrant in the Middle Ages, and to this day the term survives as a vicarious expression, "To be Boiled Alived," meaning to suffer horribly either as victim or as revenge upon others.
What would you need to do to actually boil someone while they were still living? Adjust the heat and raise it slowly, just as one might with a frog, each increase paused to allow the victim to adjust to the slow rise in temperature, until one reaches the state where the victim slumps into a pleasant state of langour and expires moments later, then the temperature can be safely raised to where actual cooking begins. This is a pleasant fantasy and is essentially non-violent.
More likely a woman might be taken to the kitchen, stripped then made love to, at at the appropriate moment either killed or rendered helpless. Evicseration to remove the spleen, bowels and stomach is an option that would cut down on the messiness later, and as Dolcett has outlined it is possible to do this while keeping the victim alive, however such a "cleaning out" would likely cause early death in the victim, and it's a pretty revolting concept.
A woman might "volunteer" to be cooked in this way if she saw it as an acceptable means of expiring and becoming food for a lover, or she might go to the Pot as token sacrifice, or enjoy the thrill of a crowd looking on in hungry anticipation. Knowing that people want to eat you is a form of worship that can appeal to some ladies, and it certainly is a fun fantasy to see the victim as consensual to her own demise, and a lot less jarring to our sensibilities as reasonably Civilized people.
I'm just saying that this is not so warped or abnormal a fantasy as many people might assume, and so we indulge ourselves in the thought that no actual women were harmed in the making of these stories. The idea that somebody is going to read this and think, "Ah, that's how to do it!" and then rush right out to catch himself a "Dinner Date" is to believe that people really are mindless tape recorders who only do what they see and hear. There is no reason for feel an irrational guilt if someone out there cannot distinguish what is real from what is fantasy, and most likely the one doing so is a Moralist, who has a pretty thin grasp of reality in the first place.
Well, those are my thoughts on the subject. I write stories in which women often wind up as dinner, but I don't believe that I am a bad person. I hope you agree, but you are free to form your own opinions. Here is hoping that your site continues to thrive as it is a good thing for people like me to know that we are not alone, that other people feel the same way, and that indulging in a fantasy is not the same as commiting vicarious murder. I trust you will have more stuff to see and read in the future as I think you're off to a promising beginning.
Jim has agreed to share one of his stories with the readers of Boiled Alive. You can find it under the Fiction section. The Editor.