I've never understood encouraging people to repress their sexual attraction to others in terms of fantasy. I can understand encouraging them to not act on their attraction in real-life scenarios, and I can also understand the idea that certain 'fetishes' are anti-social (e.g. men who are turned on by women crushing small animals with their heels, it was a little difficult for me to write that out) but attraction is never wrong. There are no exceptions in this (if a naked woman runs up to a man screaming and crying in terror and distress and her attractiveness is all that he can focus on that implies a lack of sympathy, but the attraction per se is not wrong anymore than him finding the shade of blue the sky is at that moment aesthetically pleasing; it's just that her distress warrants greater attention). I wish pro-LGB liberals would take their stance to its logical conclusion. It's ok to be attracted to Nazis and serial killers and the most abusive or sociopathic people. It's ok for someone to be attracted to their parents, their children, their siblings or their relatives. It's ok to be attracted to babies, prepubescent children, teens and younger adults. There is not a single exception to this (I think that fetishizing death is immoral but there's nothing wrong with just being attracted to a corpse although I suspect that many of the people who are turned on by the idea of necrophilia would find it disgusting in real life depending on how far along decomposition is. Imagine a doctor who works in a hospital and, unfortunately, sees death relatively often. He comes across the body of an attractive woman, sympathizes with the people who loved her and appreciates the value of what she's lost and later on at night fantasizes about having sex with her, alive and happy and just as into it as he is, that would be completely benign to me). Trying to shame people for who they're attracted to and sexual fantasies that don't imply de-valuing anyone's happiness is one of the harshest things to me, it makes you a relatively unkind person (I've watched a couple of shows where someone would comment on the attractiveness of some 15-year-old girl in a photo who isn't even in the room and a character I liked would gently scold them for it, what's the point? They said nothing about having real-world sex with them, they're not cat calling them, not only does it not affect them in the slightest but it doesn't imply some callous disregard for their suffering or de-valuing their happiness either. What's the point in policing people's sexuality? Is this ever going to stop?).
One thing that might help put things into perspective- imagine a man who fantasizes about some of the 12 (or younger)-year-old girls that he went to school with, who are now his age. Would that be acceptable? They're the same age as he is. What about fantasizing about a 12-year-old girl you see in some historical photo from the 1800s? That woman is long dead and gone, hopefully having passed peacefully in old age after an overall decent life, who's the prey in that scenario? What if, when he fantasizes about any given 12-year-old girl, he is himself, in his fantasy, 12 or younger?
How do people honestly expect the average man to not have a sexual response to a nude conventionally attractive 15-year-old girl? Why would you ask him to suppress his natural urges so the fantasy of intimacy with her can't be a source of pleasure for him in the privacy of his own mind? I can get behind not making her feel uncomfortable with unwanted (revealed) attention, coming on to her, etc. (when it would make her uncomfortable or cause her stress for whatever reasons).
You would expect some of this from conservatives but in many ways leftists might be even more sexually repressed, almost certainly they are as repressed.
Brain O'Conner,
I guess by their own logic, they are all potentially cheaters and murderers since a lot of people have those thoughts on their mind. It makes you realize how silly these people are to the point I'm not even mad.
In my view, thoughts can't be unjust (if we define injustice as malintent or negligence + actual harm) but they can be immoral. If x is bad then a desire for x to exist is immoral, and fantasizing about x in a way that implies positively valuing it should be considered immoral from the standpoint that x is bad, albeit harmlessly. It's extremely unrealistic and even unsympathetic for people to expect their partners to not fantasize about anyone else but I think that's consistent with the monogamous ideal. If you're ok with your partner fantasizing about other people, I don't see how you can consistently oppose their actually being with other people on principle.
I thought GayWad69 made an interesting point about nudity or certain physical contact only being problematic if the adult viewing or engaging in it takes sexual pleasure in it (I only skimmed through her post, although I probably read it long ago). The goal here isn't to protect children but to prevent adults from privately sexualizing them.