Reasons For Rape Fantasies
College newspaper sex columns have long provided rich fodder for sex blogging, but too often (especially in the early days when campus sex columnists tended to spray burbling prose in a “Squeee! I’m writing about sex like a grownup!” sort of tone) they’ve tended to instigate mockery rather than respect. However, when “Dr. Strokes” addresses the extremely tricky subject of the rape fantasies so many women enjoy, the result is just about the calmest and sanest such discussion I’ve ever seen. Here’s an excerpt from Anatomy of A Rape Fantasy:
What are some of the reasons that people want to pretend rape?
1. Guilt avoidance. It sucks, but we still live in a society where people, especially women, are made to feel guilty about wanting sex. Let me quote Nancy Friday, from her classic 1973 book of women’s fantasies:
“The most popular guilt-avoiding device was the so-called rape fantasy… it simply had to be understood that what went on was against the woman’s will. Saying she was ‘raped’ was the most expedient way of getting past the big No to sex that had been imprinted on her mind since early childhood.”
2. Being irresistible. It can be fun to imagine that you’re so attractive that nobody can resist the urge to touch you, and that they need to have sex with you so much that they’re just going to take it. Let me repeat: it can be fun to imagine when you are in a highly sexually aroused state and completely in control of who is touching you and how. Not so much otherwise.
3. Fear can heighten excitement. This is a known fact–fear gets our adrenaline up, our heart pumping, our pupils dilate, even our genitals aroused. Think of a rape fantasy as like a roller coaster–a controlled fear experience which you can get off of, and not you being thrown around out of control at 150 mph.
4. The more positive side of guilt avoidance is “pressure to perform” avoidance. In my violent rape fantasy, nobody really expects me to “perform” or to be “good” or to really do anything but what my instincts tell me to do. And it’s fun to imagine a situation where we’re expected to just run on instincts. (This is another gradation for me between “BDSM” and “rape” fantasies–in my BDSM fantasy, I have less pressure to perform because I have less ability to perform, but in my rape fantasy, I become a purely instinctual creature.)
2024 update: Somewhere between 2008 and now, the link not only broke, but the entirety of the Swarthmore Daily Gazette at that URL has been excluded from the Internet Archive. That in turn presumably has an associated controversy or story, but I do not know it:
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=4117
That *is* an intelligent discussion–are at least the start of a discussion. My wife has sometimes been puzzled by her own rape fantasies. I’m going to send her a link with the heading “See? It’s not just you, Dear. It’s NORMAL!”
Good post! There is alot to be said for intelligent discussion of such desires over the knee-jerk reaction of “you’re WRONG for thinking that! How could any feminist/self-aware woman/etc. ever WANT to be raped?!?”
I agree that these reasons are quite convincing, well put, and succinct.
However no one mentioned (so I will…) that a LOT of homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual MEN have the same fantasies, for apparently the same reasons. You can engage in specific KINDS of sex acts, that one may not otherwise afford oneself. Not only can rape fantasy give you guilt-free sex, but you can be the recipient of guilt-free “dirty” sex. Anal… oral… gay… straight… bestial… muliple partners… whatever.
The impending spectre of rape is a tool that any good master or dominatrix is not only aware of, but may employ (or at least threaten with the use of), in a BDSM scenario, and the reasons are the very same as outlined in the above article excerpt. BDSM and rape fantasy are practically synonymous.
The following additional reasons may be implied from some of the reasons already given, but perhaps deserve separate paragraphs:
Reason #5. In a rape fantasy, neither sex has to do the “work” or take the “risk” of initiating a seduction. No one has to think of a clever line, present alluring body language, or give a look or even raise an eyebrow. The “victim” runs no risk of being rebuffed, rejected or of failing to engage the regard or favor of the other party. No question about it, sex is going to happen, and it’s going to be intense. The rapist is going to be focused, fervent and perhaps even enthusiastic.
Reason #6. As opposed to an actual act of non-consent, in a rape fantasy, as in other fantasies, the rapist is ultimately going to be desirable. Even if the fantasized characteristics of the rapist are on some level “unattractive”, if the dreamer is employing and enjoying the image, then that IS what they desire, in that particular instance…