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Loading...Rape Ranked as Third Most Popular Sexual Fantasy for Women
In my mind the words rape and fantasy do not go together – ever. To me these two words could not be more opposite.
That’s why I was shocked, not to mention highly offended, when I came across a top 10 list of female sex fantasies from askmen.com that ranked rape as the third most popular sexual fantasy for women.
Rape, a sexual fantasy for women? Is this some sort of sick joke?
Apparently not. According to askmen.com: “These female sex fantasies usually involve a gorgeous man carrying her off to his bedroom and quickly getting down to business. She’ll protest as he tears her clothing off and expertly arouses her body, but on the inside, she’ll love every minute of it. This continues to the point of penetration, and leads her to an incredible orgasm despite her earlier protests.”
This description of a fantasy rape is problematic for many reasons. First, the description glamorizes rape as a satisfying sexual experience where the attacker is a gorgeous sex expert and the victim enjoys “every minute of it.” Luckily I have never been raped, but I imagine that many survivors would disagree with this assessment.
Secondly, the description explicitly states a woman’s protest and the attacker’s complete disregard for her pleas for him to stop. We’ve heard it time and time again – “No means no!” – but in this instance “no” is ignored and ends with “an incredible orgasm.”
This depiction of rape is very dangerous. It paints a picture of rape as an enjoyable experience that women crave even if they protest or say no. This type of message creates a huge miscommunication between the sexes in the bedroom. Men may end up thinking that a woman’s doesn’t mean it when she says “no” to sex and that by ignoring her requests he is really appealing to a sexual fantasy of hers, but without consent what he is really doing is raping her.
Anouk Collins at The Frisky shares her story of how this type of miscommunication can go horribly wrong. Collins had shared with her boyfriend her fantasy of going beyond “being dominated and playing the innocent who secretly wasn’t” to what she considered the “final frontier— a simulated rape.” She knew, however, that she would never act out the fantasy with her partner without having a conversation with him first about “safe words and boundaries.”
That conversation, however, never happened and one night things went terribly wrong. Collins recalls:
“As he crawled on top of me, I rather sternly informed him that I didn’t want to have sex with him. To my horror, he got a menacing look on his face and ignored my protests. I knew after a few misguided attempts to block him from entering me that he thought what was happening was drastically different from what I knew to be taking place. To him, this was the fantasy I’d been talking about. To me, it was not. The problem, of course, was that since we’d never discussed it, his decision to enact it without any prior dialogue, without my consent, robbed me of the control that would’ve made it a rape fantasy rather than an out-and-out rape.” (emphasis mine)
And herein lies the problem of glamorizing rape as a popular female fantasy – consent, consent, consent! Teaching men to ignore women’s protests during sex doesn’t fulfill a woman’s sexual fantasy – it teaches men to rape women. And what’s worse? It opens the door for further victim blaming and claims that women “really wanted it” or were “asking for it” when they actually meant “no” when they said it.
This isn’t to say that fantasizing about sex is wrong. In fact, a study in the Journal of Sex Research analyzed 20 studies on sexual fantasies in the last 30 years and estimated that 31-57 percent of women have so-called rape fantasies (that is a whole other story for another day), but sexual fantasies, whatever they may be, are built on feeling safe and in control (or at least they should be) – none of which are true when a woman is actually raped.
Sadly, Collins can’t help but partially blame herself for what happened to her because she she says she didn’t explain her boundaries to her boyfriend in time, but saying “no” should have been enough.
What do you think about the askmen.com poll?
Read more: assault, consent, fantasy, poll, rape, sex, womens rights
iStockphoto - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/09/cbsnews_investigates/main5590118.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
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+ add your ownA single woman got raped. After that, she met a kind man and they fell in love with each other. She told him about the time that she got raped. Before they made love, he agreed to stop anytime that she said "no". In the course of their lovemaking, she said "no" several times and each time she said "no", he
stopped. Then she got to the point when she said "don't stop...don't stop!" Never get involved with someone who does not respect your boundaries. Rape is the ultimate in disrespect of personal boundaries.
Good analogy, Julia A!
Megan, I appreciate your comments. I think there are some circumstance around speaking about these fantasies and other topic pertaining to sex.
First, I spoke publicly for the first time as a victim of rape, who regained my personal power by having these fantasies. My comments on this are near the beginning of this discussion.
Second, the only way that I got to a point of fantasizing was to get over sexual shame. That was a long process. It results from our culture in the US, a culture that hides sexual issues, and attaches shame to them, or has in the past, and which still permeates our culture.
I believe that speaking on sexual issues can help people to gain a healthier view of sex, and take it out of the milieu of shameful or titillating secrecy which can create many problems related to a persons self worth and interrelationship with a partner. It is time to see sex as a part of a healthy human being, a beautiful and meaningful self expression, not something to be ashamed of or feel embarrassed about, or even worse.
I do believe that discussing specifics of a fantasy should be limited to those one trusts, and with recognition that once trusted people can become untrustworthy. The discussion here is not about details, rather that some women have this fantasy. There can be multiple reasons for having them.
I agree with Julie A. Her analogy is exactly right.
Julie A., that give a very good idea of the difference between reality and fantasy, no matter what the specific area is. Thank you for sharing that.
Kate
Be my guest.
Julie A-
Best analogy ever. really it is. I'm stealing it. ^_^
I haven't read all the comments here (there are too many) so my apologies if I am repeating what has already been said. I think in the term 'rape fantasy' the real meaning of the word 'rape' is changed. Because it is a fantasy, you the person fantasising remains in control, the images or thoughts can be switched off, you are safe. In a real rape no such control exists and that is where the true horror starts.
It's a bit like the difference between watching a scary film and having that psychopath actually at your own door.
Suzanne B- The only time I ever correct somones english is when they have asked it to be corrected if they make a mistake- or if I'm trying to confirm what they said.
We have alot of different ways of saying things here in Australia too. The whole "shrimp on the barbie" thing seems so wrong to me, where I live we eat prawns- and we eat them cold. But in some parts of my country it's very different and that saying makes alot of sence.
Australia being the only country that is also a continent we know isolisation- but It's rediculous that we don't try and learn multipule languages as our country has so many different peoples that have come here. (we do have a lote program, but that's only in year 7-8 that it's compulsery. in my scholl we could pick french or german.in year 9 we could move to an asian studies peogram that focused on the culture and not the laungage if we wanted.)
since our town was so close to the capital and Sydney I found it strange that it wasn't encoraged that we learn different languages prior to highschool.
(continued)
Where was I.... "it's those who don't want that fakness of a dom/sub relationship that will turn to actually committing rape-and they DO know the difference."
Now there are those without the gloy of internet chatroomsget validated by the people they talk to- the wrong people- people who see rape as the only way.peoplewho talk to people like that feel very validated and neglect to do the research to see they are not. (not to mention those that research sex- not anything particular.)
It'sTHOSE people who blur the line- and people that see rapefantasy and rape as the same thing. THAT is what blurs the damned line. Rape is rape. Rape fantasy, s&m, bondage,BDSM, ect is CONSENTUAL sex done by two people who agree to and fully understand the action being taken.(making these things very differnt to the rape, beastiality and child molestation they get compared to ALOT)
And I really don't think a woman getting what she wants from her sexual partner is warped in the slightest.
a fetish is a fetish. if one is warped they all are (of course, the variety of sex for us humans is a little warped itself!) even if the fetish is vanilla (including different postions and such.)
Also, not ALL men are arshole rapist barstards. the percentage of men who are submissive less then the women, but still quite large- and getting larger. the percentage of men into the whole dom thing is less then that, then comes the number of men into vanilla, the the swaps.
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