Power, desire, and pleasure in sexual fantasies

Abstract

One hundred and sixty-two participants (ages 21-45) wrote open-ended sexual fantasies and completed self-report measures of rape myth acceptance, adversarial sexual beliefs, and attitudes toward women. We coded fantasies using a newly developed scoring system that includes themes of dominance, submission, sexual pleasure, and sexual desire. Men fantasized about dominance more than women did; they also tended to focus more on the desire and pleasure of their partner. Desire and pleasure were more closely linked in the fantasies of men than in the fantasies of women, for whom the two were distinct constructs. Although fantasies of submission were not associated with problematic attitudes for either gender, men's fantasies of dominance were associated with greater acceptance of rape myths. For women, greater rape myth acceptance was associated with emotional and romantic fantasy themes.

Gender Differences in Liking and Wanting Sex: Examining the Role of Motivational Context and Implicit Versus Explicit Processing

“…This implies that women tend to place greater emphasis on relationships as a context for sexual feelings and behaviors than do men (Meana, 2010;Peplau, 2003), especially when focusing on subjective (i.e., self-reported) sexual arousal (Chivers & Timmers, 2012). Furthermore, women's sexual fantasies include more romantic themes, affection, and commitment whereas men's fantasies focus more on explicit sexual acts and physical gratification (Kimmel & Plante, 2002;Leitenberg & Henning, 1995;Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004). It has also been shown that women have a preference and better memory for romantic stimuli compared to men, who show enhanced processing of sexual stimuli.…”

Men Presenting with Sexual Thoughts of Children or Coercion: Flights of Fancy or Plans for Crime?

“…the variable 'Paraphilic' behaviors with codes of Voyeurism, Fetishism, etc.) [31,[45][46][47]. These coding schemes were applied to a representative subset of sexual thought descriptions, and the codes were refined or discarded as needed.…”

“…Some studies have examined descriptions of men's sexual fantasies, usually their favorite/most frequent [e.g. 30,31], but typically only selected SEXUAL THOUGHTS OF CHILDREN OR COERCION 7 aspects are analysed and comparisons with SO groups are rare [21]. To our knowledge, descriptions of men's sexual fantasies of children or coercing others have not been examined specifically, raising questions about the nature of these fantasies (i.e.…”

Theories of Deviant Sexual Fantasy

“…For example, a number of studies have demonstrated a relationship between deviant sexual fantasies and negative emotional/affective states (Looman, 1995;McKibben, Proulx, & Lusignan, 1994;Proulx, McKibben, & Lusignan, 1996), personality traits (Curnoe & Langevin, 2002;Williams, Cooper, Howell, Yuille, & Paulhus, 2009), behavior (MacCulloch et al 1983Woodworth, Freimuth, Hutton, Carpenter, Agar, & Logan, 2013) and cognition Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004). Thus, rather than being restricted to sexual arousal, this research suggests that deviant sexual fantasy is a much more multifaceted phenomenon (Bartels & Gannon, 2011).…”