This kind of also makes you wonder if a lot of the violence against Women and general bad male behavior is rooted in the cognitive dissonance between this fact and toxic patriarchal gender norms. That is, due to said norms, when many males experience natural submissive desires, they are made to feel “unmanly” and “weak,” and then they might project the resulting insecurities and self-loathing onto the Women they can blame for causing their psychological distress.
Yet another reason why we would all be better off under matriarchy.
Very interesting, and I would love to know this was true. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the study on the internet, nor could I find any articles about it. That makes me skeptical, since this is dramatically different from most of the BDSM studies I’ve seen. Does anyone have a link?
It’s hard to find because you would probably not recognize it by its title,
“Social dominance and forceful submission fantasies: feminine pathology or power?”and its abstract mentions none of this, as the study is still primarily focused on explaining submissive fantasies in women. The, in my opinion, more interesting data on male fantasies seems to have gathered with the original intention of just serving a control purpose.
Here’s a link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490902878985?journalCode=hjsr20.
It’s hard to find because you would probably not recognize it by its
title, “Social dominance and forceful submission fantasies: feminine
pathology or power?” and its abstract mentions none of this, as the study is
still primarily focused on explaining submissive fantasies in women. The,
in my opinion, more interesting data on male fantasies seems to have gathered
with the original intention of just serving a control purpose.Here’s a link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490902878985?journalCode=hjsr20.
Unfortunately, unless you subscribe to the Journal of Sex Research or have
some sort of institutional access like I did in college, you can’t get the full
text version.However, here are some direct quotes from the study to back some of this
stuff up:“Participants were presented via a web interface a single elaborate vignette
reflecting a submission scene derived from Dara Joy’s (1998), Mine to Take
… After reading the vignette, the participants rated (a) the percentage (from
0%-100% on a seven-point scale) of their fantasies (i.e., a relative frequency)
that follow the theme in the vignette (i.e., sexual domination by a member of
the opposite gender.” (p. 575) “Only
6.64% of the entire sample denied ever having the fantasy (and thus were
dropped from our analysis of meaning). A
full 66.2% of men and 57.52% of women reported that 50% to 100% of their
fantasies were on the theme represented in the vignette.” (p. 577)That means, despite all the socialization for Women to be submissive and
males to be dominant, on average a greater proportion of male fantasies are
about submission than are female fantasies.
One can only imagine how wide the gulf would be in the absence of patriarchal
indoctrination.Furthermore, the study also collected data on how appealing submission fantasies are to Women and males in addition
to frequency data. When asked to rate
the appeal of a submission scenario on a seven point scale (with 1 being not at
all appealing and 7 being extremely appealing), the average score on submission
fantasies for males was 5.15 but for Women it was only 4.16. Again, think of what the difference might be
if Women were not brainwashed into “wanting” to be submissive and males were
not made to “want” to be dominant.
Indeed, the data also shows that males find fantasies in which they
submit to a Woman far more appealing than one in which they dominate Her, as
the average appeal score of domination fantasies in males was only 3.48!So to sum up: Despite the force of centuries of patriarchal brainwashing, males
entertain submission fantasies more often than Women, find them more appealing
than Women, and find the idea of submitting to a Woman significantly more
appealing than dominating Her!I actually got my hands on the study–you can get it on iBooks for $5.99 rather than $41 from the publisher directly, so I figured I’d take the plunge.
You’re right in that it found the majority of men to fantasize about “submission” more than “domination” as the study defines it (more on why I put those terms in quotes below). Unfortunately, it appears that our love for submission is largely unrequited. “Not surprisingly, women do not favor dominating a man in fantasy (not even [socially] dominant women). This finding has been repeatedly anticipated by learning theorists and evolutionists alike.” :(
I put the terms “submission” and “domination” in quotes because the study addressed a very specific fantasy:
“All vignettes are characterized by (a) being “sized up” (or sizing up), (b) being followed (or following), © attempts to draw away, (d) “vice-like gripping,” (e) pinning and forceful kissing, and (f) fading resistance.” (emphasis added).
While lots of submissive men, myself included, do enjoy the idea of being “forced” into sex with a woman every now and then, this doesn’t cover the full range of proclivities that we (as perverts on tumblr debating this shit) would include in the “Femdom” genre. The study hypothesizes, and shows some data to confirm this, that male fantasies about forced intercourse with a female aggressor are about “assuag[ing] doubt” about their ability to attract a woman, i.e., as the study puts it, “it’s clear she likes me so I needn’t have doubts,” and “She overcomes my shyness.”
However, that fantasy, while farther along on the Femdom spectrum than most, is still relatively “mainstream” and does not necessarily line up with being “into Femdom.” There are a lot of farcical teen sex comedies that involve a lovable idiot at some point stumbling into some super horny woman’s bedroom, and being tied up and ridden while he he wonders what the hell happened and the audience laughs and laughs–see, for example, the “say my name, bitch” scene in American Pie. But lots of submissive men (also including myself) fantasize not about being coerced into intercourse with a woman, but actually beingrestricted from sex with her; for example, through fantasies about chastity, cuckolding, tease and denial, CFNM, sissification, ruined orgasms, financial domination, sex conditioned on domestic servitude, “forced” sexual interaction with another man, etc. Those fantasies were not covered in this study. See footnote 3:
“In 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.”
Sadly, that wording implies that the authors of the study considered any “pain and humiliation” to be equivalent to “masochism,” whereas many Femdom practitioners would differentiate between mild to moderate pain/humiliation and the more “extreme cases.” For example, the former could be used in a lot of Femdom/Female-led relationships as a means of punishment, or just as the woman giving the man a friendly reminder of who’s in charge. The latter (sounding, severe CBT, whipping to the point of breaking skin), would be considered by many to be an entirely separate “niche” category of BDSM separate and distinct from “loving Femdom.” It would probably even be difficult to find a pro dominatrix willing to inflict that much pain–they exist, but they’re the ones who truly love the job and aren’t doing it simply because it pays better than Starbucks. This seems to be borne out by the BDSM community’s own attempts at classifying themselves. For example, BDSMTest.org will put you on a spectrum that includes a number of power-imbalanced relationships, including “Sadist” and “Masochist,” but also “Daddy,” “Brat,” “Pet,” “Rope Bunny,” etc. So bottom line, while the study recognizes the existence of submissive fantasies in men more than most, it still bypasses where I would argue the bulk of male submissives (and female dominants) live.
It’s no secret that there are way more male dominants, and submissives of both genders, than female dominants. Spend enough time on tumblr and even the most hardcore male masochist will end up flooded with reblogs from posts that originated with “Daddy Doms” and female subs. It may be years before there’s a gender-reversed 50 Shades counterpart that gets the same mainstream reception as the original (I’m only using the book as an example of the market size for male dom/female sub erotica, not as an example of good literature or an accurate portrayal of healthy BDSM). Scientists and academics will likely continue to focus on female submission fantasies because of the raging debate over campus sexual assault and the seeming contradiction between an increasingly vocal movement calling for equal rights for women and the increasing comfort among women themselves in acknowledging their submissive sexual fantasies. There’s hand-wringing among some feminists. There’s trolling ammo for men’s rights activists. It’s a hotter topic than “why do some guys enjoy a foot in their face?”
I do think, however, that there are shortcomings in the way female sexual dominance is studied, that may yield surprisingly different results if they’re addressed.
First, almost all of these sexuality studies are conducted on college campuses with undergraduate students as test subjects (the average age for both parts of the University of Kansas study was around 19 with a standard deviation of less than 2 years). In my personal experience both on tumblr and in “real life,” most women do not start exploring their dominant side until they’re older–usually between the post-college graduation phase and their mid 30s. Most Femdom blogs that focus on a relationship, rather than particular fetishes, involve marriages or long-term relationships that had been established for some time before the woman began experimenting with Femdom (usually at the initial request of her male partner). Regardless of whether it’s a matter of younger women not yet escaping patriarchal norms, or female sex hormone production peaking later in life than men, or submissive men being generally shitty at articulating their desires in a way that would actually appeal to a woman until they’re older and more self-aware, a study with a bunch of 18-to-20-year-olds taking a survey is not going to capture as many sexually dominant women–or at least women who have experienced playing the dominant role, as one where the average age was, for (arbitrary) example, 32, with a standard deviation of 10 years.
Second–again, like most sex studies–this one relies on participants accurately and honestly answering questions. Even when they’re reassured that the study is anonymous, and they are don’t have to talk to another person face-to-face, people who feel shame about their sexual desires may be reluctant to answer those surveys truthfully, because putting the true answer on paper means admitting that answer to themselves, and only adds to the private shame or confusion they already carry around. I was always intrigued by the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which mined data from porn-related Google searches back when Google would make anonymized records of internet searches publicly available. They no longer do that, and there are legitimate ethical questions around that methodology, but the beauty of it was that the searches did not come from people who were being told that they were going to participate in a study about sex–it was a completely unfiltered reflection of the kind of erotica the searcher wanted to see at that exact moment. Tentacle porn, clown porn, “erotic falconry,” and other things that very few frat bros would probably admit to liking even in an anonymous setting. The book does not reveal some hidden underground of dominant women who could usher in a Femdom utopia if only they knew what everyone else were googling–the results are similar in terms of the prevalence of male dom/female sub porn, and, sadly but expectedly, they pretty much gloss over the interests of female dominants entirely (though they do spend a fair amount of time on male interest cuckolding and foot fetishism).
Third, rather than just glossing over them as a set of outlier wierdos, let’s do a study specifically on dominant women. What’s different about them than the other +90%? Ethnicity? Socioeconomic status? Something in their childhood? Age? Political or religious beliefs? What need does the act of sexually dominating a man fulfill for them? How does it do that? How did they come to learn this about themselves? What types of men are they attracted to? How many of them have been pro Dommes? What’s their attitude about pro Dommes in general? What about Findom? Do women who participate in it genuinely enjoy it on any level other than the monetary gratification? And a million other questions that most sexologists walk right by when they throw in their obligatory “not many women enjoy being dominant” line.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, what the fuck even is a “Sexually Dominant Woman”? A woman who pursues a man and overcomes his initial resistance to intercourse, like the University of Kansas study defines it? A woman who manipulates a man into giving her what she wants by stringing him along? A woman who likes behaving submissively to a group of men while her husband watches tied to a chair? What if the husband knows but isn’t in the room and isn’t humiliated by it? What about a financial dominatrix who participates in little to no direct BDSM play? A professional dominatrix who enjoys her job because it pays well, but neither loves nor hates the play, and is vanilla or submissive in her personal life? A woman in a long-term relationship who indulges her partner as a favor to him but personally finds it disgusting? A woman who likes getting her toes sucked but won’t do any other BDSM play? A woman who doesn’t object when she meets a man who loves eating pussy but hates blow jobs? Because most studies about BDSM end their analysis on the topic with “very few women have dominant fantasies,” I’m not sure anybody has actually thought about this. And I don’t think you can really measure “dominant” fantasies in women until you define your universe and look for everyone who fits within it.
The study is encouraging in some ways and discouraging in others, but most importantly, there is so much more to do before we truly understand how and why Femdom exists, especially when it comes to the “Fem” part–which, of course, is the most important part. It’s possible that more recent studies have addressed some of this, of course, but if they have, nobody seems to have widely reported it. If anybody has any further studies, please share! And if anybody has any connection to the sex research community, please consider devoting some of your time and resources to the study of Femdom as an independent phenomenon, not as a mere anomaly in your research on the “more important” topic of female submissive fantasies.
I may have to plead guilty to cherrypicking the parts I liked for erotic fantasy reasons (in my defense, I was trying to make sexy tumblr caption images, not write a rigorous academic analysis of domination, submission, and human sexual behavior).
Putting fantasies aside, the non-horny part of my brain pretty much agrees with your take on your study, and I suspect the reason that the extremely high percentage of males admitting to “submissive” desires has to do with the fact the study defined submission in a relatively vanilla way (though as you say, “
farther along on the Femdom spectrum than most”).Another interesting thing about the study though I think is that it pretty convincing demonstrates that it shows that on average we male dig these force/submission fantasies at leas somewhat more than women, and for fairly similar reasons. To me that means that feminists should not feel the need to hand wring about women enjoying force/submission fantasies (and MRA assholes shouldn’t gloat about the fact), because the reason many Women enjoy such fantasies is not because they are Women or because being feminine and submissive go hand in hand. It’s because they are human, and for some wierd reason, a majority of humans, regardless of gender, like these kinds of fantasies.
maleformatriarchy:
the-khaleesi-fetish:
maleformatriarchy:
the…
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