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Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies : An Evaluation of Theory and ResearchJoseph W.Critelli and Jenny M.Bivona

Journal of Sex Research,45(1),57-70,2008Copyright C Taylor & Francis Group,LLCISSN : 0022-4499 print/1559-8519 onlineDOI : 10.1080/00224490701808191

Introduction

Sexual fantasies or daydreams can range from brief thoughts or images to stories withdetailed plotlines. They may deal with actual past experiences, purely imaginedexperiences, or a mixture of both (Leitenberg & Henning, 1995).

A rape fantasy may be amental imagining (asexual fantasy) aboutrape,a fictional story about a rape, or an acted out scene of pretend rape betweenconsenting adults. As Hazen (1983) articulated,” Itdoes not seen normal that a person should want to imagine rape. The true mystery is whyanyone does’ (p.23).Because real-world rape is a violent crime, the choice of rape as asubject for fantasy is very disturbing to some people. In contrast, fantasies of forced sexare often exciting, pleasurable, and sexually arousing (Kanin, 1982).Although women’srape fantasies have been a subject of formal study since the 1940s, they are not wellunderstood. For example, the existence of these fantasies, along with the belief thatfantasies often operate in the terms of wish fulfillment, allows a possible interpretationthat, at some level, women may want to be raped (Deutsch, 1944; Maslow, 1942).Although many researchers have argued against such an interpretation, their positionshave not been entirely convicting, largely because of gaps, ambiguities, or other 1

weaknesses in the explanations given. One of reason why these fantasies may have beensystematically avoided by some researchers and theorists.

Defining Rape Fantasies

Rape fantasies contain three key elements: force, sex, and nonconsent. Individuals expertcontrol over the contents of their own fantasies involve sexual activities that take placeconsistent with the will and desire of the fantasize, even though these activities areagainst the will of her self-character in the fantasy. From the point of view of the self-character, there is nonconsent, and these are fantasies. From the viewpoint of thefantasizer, an implicit consent has been given and these fantasies might be viewed asritual displays of male dominance and female surrender (Fisher, 1999)

The Prevalence of Woman’s Rape Fantasies

As awareness of rape as a social problem and depictions of rape in the popular culturehave increased over the past 40 years (Bevacqua, 2000), it is possible that this hasaffected the prevalence of rape fantasies. Claims have been made within the academicand popular cultures that rape fantasies reflect personal and societal pathology (e.g.Brownmiler, 1975)

.Sentiments such as these suggest that many women may be ashamedof having rape fantasies. For example, research ( Gold, Balzano, & Stamey 1991) hasfound that woman who wrote fantasies of forced sex also rated themselves as morefrightened, guilty, and disgusted after writing the fantasy than did

women who did notwrite about forced sex. Strassberg and Lorckerd (1998)

found

that 55% of females havehad rape fantasies, and these females estimated that their rape fantasies occurred anaverage of three times a month with a median of once a month. Shulman and Horne2

(2006), in an Internet survey, reported that 10 % of women have rape fantasies that occur once a month or more. Two studies (Person, Terestman, Myers, Goldberg &Salvadori,1989, Hsu et.al.,1994, respectively) have estimated the percentage of womenwho have had rape fantasies within the last 3 months s 20% and 22%.

Erotic and Aversive Rape Fantasies

Kanin (1982) stated that some women have rape fantasies that are exclusively sexual anderotic, while other women have rape fantasies that are exclusively fearful and exclusivelyfearful and aversive. This conclusion may be somewhat misleading, as 21 % of his participants classified their fantasies a reflecting a combination of sexual excitement andfear/terror, and 54 % of fantasies that were characterized as exclusively fearful containedfearful contained male rapist who were described as physically attractive.According to Kanin, erotic rape fantasies contain low to moderate levels of fear with norealistic violence. In these fantasies, women typically are approached aggressively by adominant and attractive male who is overcome with desire for her, she feels or expressnonconsent and present minimal resistance, he overpowers her and takes her sexually.Kanin made the interpretation that these were not true rape fantasies, that the describedresistance amounted to a “token no” and he called these “seduction fantasies”.Participants themselves characterized these as rape situations, however and the self – character in these fantasies showed nonconsent. As no evidence was presented that theself-character’s non-consent was insincere, the label of “seduction” does not seem justified. Certainly, in actual rapes minimal resistance and female sexual arousal do3