Should Fantasies be Judged or no?

Who says that fantasies are wrong and should be criminalized? Fantasies are something that can help people cope with certain things such as traumatic events, and stress. After reading “Be Careful Not to Criminalize Fantasies”, An NY Times article, I have realized that there are a lot of people that have many different thoughts about fantasizing. Some people may think that it is weird and some people may think that it is completely normal. In reality, is it normal or is it weird? The answer to this question is more opinionated than factual. Even though there are some facts about how people actually fantasize, not many people know them. With all of her experiences and opinions, the author convinces you but, she does not have enough facts to make her argument valid. 

Facts make an argument valid because it is actual data. The author states her opinion of fantasizing as “The power of fantasy that lies in the capacity to explore, without restriction, the inner recesses and outer limits of our psyche.” As the article goes on, she argues that people should not be punished for what they fantasize about because it is normal. Instead of including facts into her argument, she states her opinion about fantasizing.  This is her opinion because as she talks about why it’s normal and healthy to fantasize, she says that fantasizing should not be illegal. There is not any true-life proof that fantasizing is healthy and normal. In the article, she uses her own opinions to state information about fantasizing. For example, Williams states “Negotiating and fulfilling fantasies with consenting parties can be healthy.” If she would have included accurate data then her argument would have been valid. She also talks about how fantasizing is healthy and how talking about what you fantasize about is healthy. Her opinion about fantasizing comes from her experiences with fantasizing. If she were to state some facts about fantasizing and then incorporate her opinions in with the facts, that would have made her argument valid and make people believe what she is saying. The opinions that were stated are believable but does not prove her argument.

Finding a safe place to store all of your thoughts is a good idea, but only when that safe place is actually safe. When the author says that people tend find a safe place online to share their fantasies; it made me think about how the Internet is not as safe as everyone seems to think. Anything that is put on the Internet can easily be changed and seen. There is no “safe place” on the internet. Anyone that searches something in Google can easily find this “safe place” and read everything that these people are fantasizing about. Most people do not want to put themselves out there because they would rather keep everything to themselves. She states, “By seeking out like-minded people online and offline, you increase the opportunity to bring a secret desire to reality.” She describes this as a “healthy reality”. How, in fact, does this make a healthy reality if all this website is for is to put people’s business out in the open? This proves that her argument is based off of her opinions because she does not have anything that proves any of her information. The lack of facts in this article is a weakness of the article as a whole.

In conlusion, the article, “Be Careful Not to Criminalize Fantasies”, talks about how people are judged on what they fantasize about and how the author thinks that this should not be the case. People should people able to talk about what they fantasize about because it helps them vent about things that are secretive and may be making them feel some type of way. Venting is always a good way to get your emotions and thoughts out so that they are not held in and this is what the author is trying to say in her article. The way she goes about it, though, does not make her argument valid because she does not state any facts or statistics to make the readers believe that what she is saying is actually true, even though it is her opinion. If she would have stated some facts and statistics that would have made her article also seem more professional and well thought out. She also could have included some interviews from people that have fantasized before. She could have asked them plenty of questions and that would have made her argument more convincing than it was. Therefore, adding more information into her article would have made her argument more convincing.