A brief history of the Rape Fantasy Epidemic
By: E.R. Feilds
Tags: Rape, Feminism, Capitalism, Religion, History

It first came up when I was conversing with a friend about sexual fantasy.

‘Let me guess, you fantasize about rape,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why?” I returned.

Anecdotally, he mentioned that it was an almost universal phenomenon. From the women he had talked to about sex, the women that he’d slept with, the media he’d consumed, he’d formed the impression that every young woman attracted to men had all desired a sexually violent encounter at one point or another. The more I considered this, the more I was inclined to believe it wasn’t a natural occurrence. Rape fantasies are a pipe dream of a sexual encounter in which no guilt is felt for sexual desire, and ultimately a longing for a society in which a woman’s lust isn’t demonised.

The societal context in which we exist begins with private property requiring monogamy both upheld by organised religion. The shift toward monogamy was relatively recent in the timeline of Homo sapiens; it’s believed to be caused by factors including less spread of STDs and a father’s provision for his own children, many point to the main reason being conservation of private property. Early humans created communities which would aid in raising children; all men and all women nurturing all children. Communal upbringing was common until agriculture arose in 10 000 BC as a response to a changing climate and permanent settlements creating scarcity in resource. Mass harvesting of food gradually lead to larger societies, currency, and private property. Within these societies, children weren’t provided for communally anymore, instead raised by coupled parents- demanding a need for the family unit as we know it. Women’s polygamy became disadvantageous for men, as it created the possibility that a man may have to nurture another’s child. Hence, monogamy and the family unit arose.

Marriage cemented monogamy and conserved property within a family by religious law. It formalised the agreement to fidelity which evolved to demonise female sexuality, ultimately to conserve the patrilineal genome. This has carried for millennia, into the 20th century, only beginning to shrink in influence during the sexual revolution in the 60’s. However, with hooking up and ‘sleeping around’ now common place, we’re still seeing the religious fallout of repressed female sexuality. What remains in secular society is an immense cultural stigma surrounding women who want and enjoy sex. This manifests in a multitude of ways including a vast number of women having desired sexual violence. Rape absolves a woman of wanting sex; if she didn’t ask for the act to occur then there’s no guilt in it. It points to a society of women subconsciously tortured by their own desires, wishing they could have a sexual experience that didn’t suggest they were capable of lust.

Some would call this fantasy ‘power play’- an extension of wanting to be dominated. However, I’d argue that domination, another widely female fantasy, is about disinhibition, a novel experience, as a break from the mediocrity of life. Potentially coupled with a retreat from adult responsibility — a therapeutic regression into a position of subordination which requires another to make her decisions, creating a temporary relief from stresses. Furthermore, dominating, assertive men may evolutionarily have been better protectors and providers, and domination implies a level of trust. Therefore, when woman seeks domination, it’s a craving for a strong partner and a break from stress, not about creating a situation in which she experiences a lack of subconscious guilt.

However, women’s rape fantasies are never based on the reality of actually wanting her body violated. No woman genuinely wants to be raped or brutalised. It would be counter-intuitive for a rape to be wanted, as then it wouldn’t be a rape. I hope no reader believes that women want actual rape, nor use sexual fantasies to even consider or justify any type of nefarious act or non-consensual behavior.

The fantasy solely exists as a theoretical scenario of pleasure without accountability. It is a capitulation to our inner conscience, which deems female sexuality as only moral if the sex is imposed onto her by a man and not initiated by herself. This conscience is a remanent of organised religion, which had originally aimed to encourage female fidelity, eventually perverting into complete vilification, repression, and damnation of a woman’s lust. The resulting monstrosity was centauries of populations with a collective conscience opposed to female sexual desire. Even in 21st century Britain, in secular society, the fallout from organised religion is in our cultural taboos, the way we discuss sex and teach it — or not- to teenagers. Women today are still aware subconsciously, that their desires are immoral. We naturally seek to mitigate guilt by imagining the only scenario in which sex is permissible -when female sexual desire isn’t present.

So, until we rid our society of stigmas against female sexual desire and non-monogamy, we will always burden women with self-hurting fantasies and deeply repressed guilt, creating generations of women who imagine brutality as the only escape from the shame of lust.