50 Shades of Grey
How similar are men and women’s sex fantasies when it comes to sexual domination?
I’ve already looked at gendered similarities and differences in romantic fantasies, sex with strangers and multiple partners. But what about fantasy when it comes to dominance and submission?
I used University of Montréal research, which had looked at how common different sorts of fantasies were, to make a sex comparison.
About 1500 Quebec adults, with an average age of 30, ranked 55 fantasies and described their favorite in detail. 85% we’re straight, 3.6% were gay/lesbian and the rest were none of the above.
Men had more fantasies, described them more vividly, and typically wanted to enact them in real life.
Women more commonly distinguished between fantasy and real-life desires. And when discussing submission, they were especially likely to say that they never wanted them to come true.
Below are the percentage of women and men who have had each fantasy.
Would you like to be dominated?
You might be surprised at how similar women and men are when it comes to fantasies of being sexually dominated. Women are a bit more interested, but it’s fairly close:
Being forced to have sex
Women 29, Men 31
Being sexually dominated
Women 65, Men 53
Been tied up to obtain sexual pleasure
Women 52, Men 46
Being spanked or whipped to obtain sexual pleasure
Women 36, Men 29
Keep in mind that people who enjoy submission are often powerful in real life and want a break from being in charge.
But that’s not always the case. Some people fetishize their own powerlessness — or the symbolic powerlessness of their gender, race or class. But even when people eroticize their own disempowerment, it doesn’t mean that they seek weakness in real life. In fact, most women said they would never want to act out these fantasies for real.
Other times these fantasies have no clear cause.
Or do you want to dominate?
Men are noticeably more interested than women in dominating someone to gain sexual pleasure, but usually the gender gap isn’t huge. The biggest divide comes when pain is used. Men are almost twice as likely to be sexually aroused by thoughts of spanking or whipping someone.
Forcing someone to have sex
Women 11, Men 22
Sexually abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious
Women 11, Men 23
Tying someone up to attain sexual pleasure
Women 42, Men 48
Spanking or whipping to obtain sexual pleasure
Women 24, Men 44
Dominating someone sexually
Women 47, Men 60
We’re more alike than different
Since we stereotype men as active and women as passive, and since people often work to meet expectations, it might be surprising to see how much overlap there is between the genders.
And in fact, many have written about why women desire submission, or why men desire dominance in sex, when we actually seem to be more alike than different in these fantasies.
Related Posts on BroadBlogs
- Do Men & Women Have Wild or Romantic Fantasies?
- Men v Women: How Flexible Is Orientation?
- Learning to Like Torture in Shades of Grey
