The Exact Same NC/R Discussion We Always Have... Once More.

[big_cane_sugar]

I assume we all know about Atwood's story "Rape Fantasies" but worth a mention just in case.

 

[FrancesScott]

So are you doubting that women have rape fantasies?

My question was clear and unambiguous. Your reply is wholly unconnected to it.

 

[FrancesScott]

I don't have peer-reviewed links, but if you look at Nancy Friday's collections of women's sexual fantasies, the first volume (I think early 70s), My Secret Garden, has rape fantasies as the majority - the women interviewed mostly couldn't admit even to themselves that they wanted sex.

Two decades and books later, Women on Top showed a huge shift - the rape fantasy was much rather though the 'I wanted to be Swept Away' one was still very common, along with a substantial bunch of fantasies where the women sought out satisfaction.

I think you'll have a huge difference in fantasies depending on age and background.

I understand that you know what a reputable peer-reviewed journal is. That’s what I am after. Robust, statistically significant findings from a representative sample. Ideally with the results being butressed by other studies.

 

[AG31]

My question was clear and unambiguous. Your reply is wholly unconnected to it.

How is my reply unconnected? It does seem that your answer is "Yes." You do doubt it. You wouldn't ask for peer reviewed articles if you were confident that they do. I'm confident that they do, based on the illative sense. That sense that lets us be confident that the world is round in the absence of reading scholarly studies that prove it is so.

The illative sense is an epistemological concept developed by John Henry Newman, referring to the mind's unconscious process of gathering probabilities from various experiences and evidence to arrive at a certain and convincing conviction, especially in concrete and complex matters beyond the reach of formal logic.

From AI. But I know it's not lying because I studied Newman's writing in graduate school.

 

[forgotmyantidepressants]

Excellent articulation of something I think about a lot. I'm female, but my whole life I've been drawn to stories of heroic self-sacrifice, usually on the part of a male. I've also had fantasies about being sexually dominated. Up until about four years ago the MC of my fantasy would be a woman/me. About four years ago this shifted to having male MCs.

Anyway, I became very intrigued by what held these two interests together, heroic self sacrifice and sexual submission with dignity. I don't have the anwer yet, but maybe I'll get some clues in this thread.

Note: I have not scintilla of interest in acting out this sexual thing in real life. I'm so vanilla you could eat me with a spoon. To support your thesis.

You intrigued me with this and I'd like to offer my own two cents:

Do you think it could be some kind of Madonna complex? Marriage and motherhood is touted as the "heroic self-sacrifice" that woman make for society (The Virgin Mary) in some conservative circles. Men die in wars. Women die in childbirth.

 

[FrancesScott]

How is my reply unconnected? It does seem that your answer is "Yes." You do doubt it. You wouldn't ask for peer reviewed articles if you were confident that they do. I'm confident that they do, based on the illative sense. That sense that lets us be confident that the world is round in the absence of reading scholarly studies that prove it is so.

From AI. But I know it's not lying because I studied Newman's writing in graduate school.

I’m not going to argue about something I didn’t ask about.

 

[SimonDoom]

Stepping into this area again with some trepidation. My own views seem to be at variance to many.

I keep seeing references to a majority of women having ‘rape fantasies’ (if ever there was an oxymoron). I find this incredible based on my girlfriends and women relatives. (yes I do talk openly about sex with a subset of them). Can anyone provide a link to a study supporting this claim published in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal?

If it is survey based, the precise wording of relevant questions would be useful.

I'm not a specialist and I haven't read the original studies, but you can find citations to specific articles in peer-reviewed journals that support the notion that rape fantasies are very common at this Wikipedia page,wikipedia: Rape Fantasy . There's also reference, without specific citations, to rape fantasy studies in this article in Psychology Today:Women's Sexual Fantasies: The Latest Scientific Research, (2015)Psychology Today . I wouldn't take these secondary sources as definitive, but they can get you started on tracking down the source material. I wouldn't rely on these two secondary sources as a definitive proof that a MAJORITY of women have these fantasies, but I think we can say with confidence that a great many women, and many but somewhat fewer men, have these fantasies.

I agree with you that specific wording is important. Imprecisely worded surveys lead to questionable results and even more questionable conclusions.

I've read books on women's sexual fantasies in the past, too. It seems pretty clear that at the least we can say that these fantasies are very common, and they're not indicative of a disorder in the people who have them.

 

[FrancesScott]

I'm not a specialist and I haven't read the original studies, but you can find citations to specific articles in peer-reviewed journals that support the notion that rape fantasies are very common at this Wikipedia page,wikipedia: Rape Fantasy . There's also reference, without specific citations, to rape fantasy studies in this article in Psychology Today:Women's Sexual Fantasies: The Latest Scientific Research, (2015)Psychology Today . I wouldn't take these secondary sources as definitive, but they can get you started on tracking down the source material. I wouldn't rely on these two secondary sources as a definitive proof that a MAJORITY of women have these fantasies, but I think we can say with confidence that a great many women, and many but somewhat fewer men, have these fantasies.

I agree with you that specific wording is important. Imprecisely worded surveys lead to questionable results and even more questionable conclusions.

I've read books on women's sexual fantasies in the past, too. It seems pretty clear that at the least we can say that these fantasies are very common, and they're not indicative of a disorder in the people who have them.

The one thread I followed extrapolated interviews with 300+ female college students to deduce that 62% of all women have rape fantasies. That was just the abstract, I can’t read the full paper, but I already have massive methodological issues.

 

[SimonDoom]

The one thread I followed extrapolated interviews with 300+ female college students to deduce that 62% of all women have rape fantasies. That was just the abstract, I can’t read the full paper, but I already have massive methodological issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if your issues turned out to be well founded. My impression is that an awful lot of what qualifies as "social science" is junk. That's true even of work prepared by so-called specialists with good credentials. That said, even if we allow for a very high error rate I think we can say with some confidence that rape fantasy is "common," whatever that means, even if a majority of women don't have such fantasies. The particular percentage doesn't matter that much, certainly for the conversations we have here.

 

[FrancesScott]

I'm not a specialist and I haven't read the original studies, but you can find citations to specific articles in peer-reviewed journals that support the notion that rape fantasies are very common at this Wikipedia page,wikipedia: Rape Fantasy . There's also reference, without specific citations, to rape fantasy studies in this article in Psychology Today:Women's Sexual Fantasies: The Latest Scientific Research, (2015)Psychology Today . I wouldn't take these secondary sources as definitive, but they can get you started on tracking down the source material. I wouldn't rely on these two secondary sources as a definitive proof that a MAJORITY of women have these fantasies, but I think we can say with confidence that a great many women, and many but somewhat fewer men, have these fantasies.

I agree with you that specific wording is important. Imprecisely worded surveys lead to questionable results and even more questionable conclusions.

I've read books on women's sexual fantasies in the past, too. It seems pretty clear that at the least we can say that these fantasies are very common, and they're not indicative of a disorder in the people who have them.

Your psychology today article links to Wikipedia.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I wouldn't be surprised if your issues turned out to be well founded. My impression is that an awful lot of what qualifies as "social science" is junk. That's true even of work prepared by so-called specialists with good credentials. That said, even if we allow for a very high error rate I think we can say with some confidence that rape fantasy is "common," whatever that means, even if a majority of women don't have such fantasies. The particular percentage doesn't matter that much, certainly for the conversations we have here.

Good point. One of many problems is that they all too often interview a bunch of college students and then extrapolate that to the world at large. They do that for the simple reason they have easy access to a bunch of college students who can be easily be enticed to answer a survey.
In this case I'd question if those college girls were a representative sample in the first place, then narrowed down to the segment that was willing to answer those types of questions.

I don't question that the fantasy exists in a not insignificant number of women. I'm just not sure you're ever going to have any sort of accurate idea of how many women that actually is.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

There is also a huge problem (pointed out by Atwood) in the definition of "rape fantasy." I doubt women having rape fantasies is any more common than men having fantasies of suffering horrible physical abuse. But I don't doubt that some of them have fantasies of being taken by a handsome stranger who finds them so irresistible that he ignores their less-than-heartfelt pleas to stop.

 

[FrancesScott]

Your psychology today article links to Wikipedia.

I found the article myself, it’s an opinion piece advertising the author’s book, and citing his own “research” the details and methodology of which are not presented in the article.

I think I’m used to the statistical bar set for scientific findings. It appears - ironically from a small sample - that psychology sets the bar differently. I’d expect randomized samples and processes to check these for bias.

What I find are survey results. Without substantiating why the sample was representative, these are meaningless. Very few cite the actual questions asked, or what control groups were employed.

I’ve looked in three places now and none have been robust. That’s enough checking to satisfy me. This isn’t statistics as i understand it.

 

[FrancesScott]

There is also a huge problem (pointed out by Atwood) in the definition of "rape fantasy." I doubt women having rape fantasies is any more common than men having fantasies of suffering horrible physical abuse. But I don't doubt that some of them have fantasies of being taken by a handsome stranger who finds them so irresistible that he ignores their less-than-heartfelt pleas to stop.

And being swept off my feet by and handsome stranger who takes me away from my boring life is as far from actual rape as dreaming of having a unicorn.

Sexually unhappy and repressed women from constrained cultures are going to want to have something different. I hope they never find out what real rape is actually like.

 

[FrancesScott]

I’m ducking out. I won’t change any minds. No one has yet presented any data of a standard to change mine. I’ll let you argue among yourselves.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm not going to drag @FrancesScott back in if she's bowing out and this isn't want she was asking for, but this conversation reminded me of a thread we had on here at least a year-ago (possibly longer). I haven't been able to find it, but I did find the chart that was the subject of discussion. Now, from what I remember, this was the very opposite of a peer-reviewed study - it was a woman (IIRC) who wrote about sex asking her readers to rank their fetishes - so obviously very skewed.




If you look at it for long enough, it starts to become almost funny how practically all the submissive and violent types of fetishes skew female. For example, men seem to have a whole thing about various bodily functions (semen, breast milk, farting/belching, scat) but then when blood is involved it suddenly switches back to far majority female. It's the sort of chart I don't want to be true, some of the fetish choices raise some eyebrows and my gut is telling me to attack the methodology but then I see something like 'monsters' and remember, oh yeah, chicks dug the Twilight Saga.

At the end of the day, I think as erotic authors, we'd all like perfect statistical data on what people actually want and we're never going to get it. I'd be wary of making claims like 'The majority of women have a rape fetish' but for the purposes of writing fiction, these people exist and these people can be fictionalized into stories.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I'm not going to drag @FrancesScott back in if she's bowing out and this isn't want she was asking for, but this conversation reminded me of a thread we had on here at least a year-ago (possibly longer). I haven't been able to find it, but I did find the chart that was the subject of discussion. Now, from what I remember, this was the very opposite of a peer-reviewed study - it was a woman (IIRC) who wrote about sex asking her readers to rank their fetishes - so obviously very obviously skewed.

View attachment 2561107


If you look at it for long enough, it starts to become almost funny how practically all the submissive and violent types of fetishes skew female. For example, men seem to have a whole thing about various bodily functions (semen, breast milk, farting/belching, scat) but then when blood is involved it suddenly switches back to far majority female. It's the sort of chart I don't want to be true, some of the fetish choices raise some eyebrows and my gut is telling me to attack the methodology but then I see something like 'monsters' and remember, oh yeah, chicks dug the Twilight Saga.

At the end of the day, I think as erotic authors, we'd all like perfect statistical data on what people actually want and we're never going to get it. I'd be wary of making claims like 'The majority of women have a rape fetish' but for the purposes of writing fiction, these people exist and these people can be fictionalized into stories.

I'm both fascinated and terrified by this.

 

[alohadave]

I'd be wary of making claims like 'The majority of women have a rape fetish' but for the purposes of writing fiction, these people exist and these people can be fictionalized into stories.

It's probably helpful to state it as a common fantasy, and not try to assign percentages or try to nail down quantities.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm both fascinated and terrified by this.

I've decided, after staring at this long enough, that I shouldn't be focusing on all the low-interest high-squick stuff at the bottom right but should be writing stories based around the high-interest low-taboo popular stuff top left.

Now, let's see, to appeal to men I need to write a story where one white woman and one Asian woman both with large breasts and too-small-clothing sensuously make-out then give blowjobs and get creampies...

Actually, nevermind, those are already my stories.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I've decided, after staring at this long enough, that I shouldn't be focusing on all the low-interest high-squick stuff at the bottom right but should be writing stories based around the high-interest low-taboo popular stuff top left.

Now, let's see, to appeal to men I need to write a story where one white woman and one Asian woman both with large breasts and too-small-clothing sensuously make-out then give blowjobs and get creampies...

Actually, nevermind, those are already my stories.

Move over Shakespeare! I have a new favorite author!

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I don't see anything surprising on the chart. But I'm not good at stuff, so am I missing something?

 

[MediocreAuthor]

I hope they never find out what real rape is actually like.

This feels like similar to seeing two kids playing an imaginary war with nerf guns and saying in a dark, forlorn tone, "I hope they never find out what real war is like."

Yes. Of course. We all want to shield the innocent from real life horrors. No one here feels differently.
(Not trying to call you back into the discussion, mind you. Just thinking aloud).

---

Btw, I don't personally think that the majority of women are like me. In the original post, I quoted some guy who was treating all women like a monolith, but obviously I've never believed that.

While I don't have any concrete evidence, I will just point to the success of Anne Rice's book The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

That's story was written by a woman and largely popular with a female audience.

And yet, rape is literally described in the opening scene. Not violent rape, mind you, but rape nonetheless.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I don't see anything surprising on the chart. But I'm not good at stuff, so am I missing something?

The red/purple dots are where women are more likely to be interested in a fetish than men. The top-left is common and safe fetishes with things getting less popular and less acceptable as you go down and right.

If you look only at bottom-right and only at the female-preferred ones, nearly everything is either about pain or monsters (who presumably inflict pain) - executions, brutality, body horror, vore, pain without sexual gratification, mindbreak, rapeplay, humiliation, hate and so on. Even higher up on the more acceptable scale, you have things like choking (not that taboo? Really?), obedience, begging/worshipping*, spanking, being submissive all clustered together as majority female interests.

(*as issue with this chart is that some of the fetishes imply whether the responder is giving or receiving an act while others don't)

 

[big_cane_sugar]

The red/purple dots are where women are more likely to be interested in a fetish than men. The top-left is common and safe fetishes with things getting less popular and less acceptable as you go down and right.

If you look only at bottom-right and only at the female-preferred ones, nearly everything is either about pain or monsters (who presumably inflict pain) - executions, brutality, body horror, vore, pain without sexual gratification, mindbreak, rapeplay, humiliation, hate and so on. Even higher up on the more acceptable scale, you have things like choking (not that taboo? Really?), obedience, begging/worshipping*, spanking, being submissive all clustered together as majority female interests.

(*as issue with this chart is that some of the fetishes imply whether the responder is giving or receiving an act while others don't)

None of that seems very surprising to me. In fact, a lot of it seems to me like variations on the fantasy of being desired by a powerful man. I suspect if the data included items like "taller partner," "confident partner," "gentle strength," we'd see them in bright pink up at the top left, while "shorter partner" and "helpless partner" would be purple.

A lot of my ideas about this stem from paperback romances. I'm not saying women have the fantasies a benevolent social engineer might want them to have, but if I put myself in the place of someone who sometimes feels physically vulnerable and wouldn't mind being fervently loved by someone capable of protecting me, it makes sense. At least some women feel that way. It's kind of the main idea of this thread: most women probably don't really want to be raped in the violent sense, but some of them obviously want to be irresistible to handsome strangers. I'd interpret stuff like choking as that but also the fantasy of being able to satisfy a man's darkest desires, winning an exclusive place in his affections (a la 50 Shades).

I can't see that there's been any accounting for sexual preference. If they'd distinguished between homosexual and heterosexual fantasies, I suspect the things that are bothering you would stand out even more.

 

[TheRedChamber]

None of that seems very surprising to me. In fact, a lot of it seems to me like variations on the fantasy of being desired by a powerful man. I suspect if the data included items like "taller partner," "confident partner," "gentle strength," we'd see them in bright pink up at the top left, while "shorter partner" and "helpless partner" would be purple.

A lot of my ideas about this stem from paperback romances. I'm not saying women have the fantasies a benevolent social engineer might want them to have, but if I put myself in the place of someone who sometimes feels physically vulnerable and wouldn't mind being fervently loved by someone capable of protecting me, it makes sense. At least some women feel that way. It's kind of the main idea of this thread: most women probably don't really want to be raped in the violent sense, but some of them obviously want to be irresistible to handsome strangers. I'd interpret stuff like choking as that but also the fantasy of being able to satisfy a man's darkest desires, winning an exclusive place in his affections (a la 50 Shades).

I can't see that there's been any accounting for sexual preference. If they'd distinguished between homosexual and heterosexual fantasies, I suspect the things that are bothering you would stand out even more.

Maybe not surprising depending on what your expectations were, just quite funny how stark it is in the way that data is presented.

There's a lot I dont know about how the data was collected (again I'm not suggesting any of it is necessarily valid) but, yes, I thought account for cis-trans but not gay-straight was weird. (Gay men are presumably a 'fetish' for gay men. They seem to skew to female fetish anyway)