Social Dominance and Forceful Submission Fantasies: Feminine Pathology or Power?

Abstract

This study addresses forceful submission fantasies in men and women. Although many approaches implicitly or explicitly cast women's force fantasies in a pathological light, this study seeks to explore the associations of such fantasy to female power. By adopting an evolutionary meta-theoretical perspective (and a resource control theory perspective), it was hypothesized that highly agentic, dominant women prefer forceful submission fantasies (more than subordinate women) as a means to connect them to agentic, dominant men. In addition, it is suggested that dominant women would ascribe a meaning to the object of the fantasy different from that assigned by subordinate women (i.e., “warrior lover” vs. “white knight”). Two studies were conducted with nearly 900 college students (men and women) from a large Midwestern university. Hypotheses were largely supported. Analysis of meaning supports theoretical perspectives proposing that forceful submission reflects desires for sexual power on behalf of the fantasist. Implications for evolutionary approaches to human mate preferences are discussed.

We thank the students of the Peer Relationships and Social Competence Lab including Libby Huber, Spencer Lazorow, Justin Lynn, Matt Hall, Bethany Blackmon, Paige Feinstein, Jennifer Sloan, Jackie Ratliff, John Geldhof, Waylon Howard, and Sarah Johnson. Special thanks go to Tara Hamilton, Cara Tickle-Kelly, Jamie Lowder, and Paul Alderman for their enthusiastic and tireless pursuit of the romantic vignette.

Notes

¹The concern about men's fantasies focuses not on submission but on dominance and aggression (e.g., Dean & Malamuth, 1997; Malamuth & Brown, 1994; Murnen, Wright, & Kaluzney, 2002; Mussweiler & Förster, 2000; Zurbriggen, 2000; Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004).

²More recently, attitudes about sexuality have been addressed via implicit association test studies (Rudman & Heppen, 2003; Sanchez et al., 2006) and have shown, for example, that romantic fantasies (of a chivalrous hero) reflect women's implicit disinterest in personal power (Rudman & Heppen, 2003).

³In the extreme case of masochistic fantasies (pain and humiliation), men express a higher preference than women (Baumeister, 1988, 1989). For the most part, masochism lies outside the scope of this study.

⁴Full discussions of form versus function in evolutionary work as it pertains to social dominance can be found in Hawley (1999, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, 2007).

⁵The same psychologists presumably would argue that women's preferences for forceful submission fantasies are higher than men's preferences for the same fantasies (an empirical question that they do not pursue, to our knowledge).

⁶The variability in force fantasies in the literature is startling. It ranges from “I imagine that I am being overpowered or forced to surrender” (Hariton & Singer, 1974) to “You are being raped by a man,” and “A partner humiliates you” (Meuwissen & Over, 1991; Shulman & Horne, 2006). Content analyses score for power assertion themes in the respondents' own terms and presumably encompass both extremes (e.g., Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004). Bond and Mosher (1986) distinguished “erotic fantasies of rape” from the “violent reality of rape”; the former involves a sexually desirable, passionate man who finds her irresistible, to whom she offers token resistance versus a sexually violent, callous man who degrades her by overcoming her earnest resistance. For Bond and Mosher, erotic imagery of sexual domination and token resistance led to significant subjective arousal, whereas the realistic rape scenario did not. Failure to make this distinction, the authors argued, fuels the “willing victim myth.” This study avoids the ambiguous and politically charged term rape altogether in favor of the more neutral term of submission fantasy, and avoids realistic rape scenarios by depicting interactions characterized by token resistance rather than strenuous or violent resistence.

Note. The subscripts indicate significant differences using Fisher's least significant difference test, p < .05. Bi-strategic controllers are denoted by “a,” prosocial controllers by “b,” coercive controllers by “c,” typical controllers by “d,” and non-controllers by “e.”

Note. Percent My Fantasy represents participants’ estimations of the percentage of their own fantasies that match target type. Percent Not My Partner is their estimation of the percentage of those fantasies involving an object that is not a current romantic partner. Percent Women/Men Have are participants' estimations of the frequency that other women and men entertain the target fantasy.

Note. Women are below the diagonal, and men are above the diagonal.

∗p ≤ .01. ∗∗p ≤ .001.

^a For women, F(7, 137) = 6.20, p < .0001 (R ² = .24); for men, F(7, 134) = 4.24, p < .0003 (R ² = .14).

^b For women, F(8, 136) = 7.66, p < .0001 (R ² = .27); for men, F(8, 133) = 1.38, p = .21 (R ² = .02).

Note. The subscripts indicate significant differences using Fisher's least significant difference test, p < .05. Bi-strategic controllers are denoted by “a,” prosocial controllers by “b,” coercive controllers by “c,” typical controllers by “d,” and non-controllers by “e.”

⁷Because we presume that men's mainstream erotic literature caters to male sexual preferences, we perused two recent volumes of Penthouse Letters. We found that 43% of the stories described exchanges that were instigated by a sexually assertive female, 28% were instigated by an assertive male with a willing female, and only 6% even hinted at female indifference or resistance (the remainder were ambiguous). This pattern suggests to us that female sexual assertion and ardent female consent represent a generous portion of male fantasy life.

⁸Although we know of no similar study with men, we presume that men who entertain such fantasies also foster no such wish to be raped.

⁹For perhaps the most controversial item, “Many women secretly desire to be raped,” the means were even lower (for men, 1.69; for women, 1.72).