Rape fantasy

What is a rape fantasy?

A rape fantasy is a sexual fantasy in which someone is forced into sex against her will. A rape fantasy is an event in the head and not a wish. The research distinguishes an erotic and an aversive kind. Anyone who acts it out agrees everything in advance and keeps a signal at hand that stops the scene at once.

How common a rape fantasy is

In nearly two in three women, and mostly a few times a year.

Jenny Bivona and Joseph Critelli gave 355 female students a fantasy checklist that followed the legal description of rape, plus a diary in which they rated their own fantasies. In The Journal of Sex Research they arrived at 62 percent, higher than earlier estimates, with 14 percent who had such a fantasy at least weekly.

The second finding matters more than that percentage. Where earlier research assumed such a fantasy was either erotic or unpleasant, they found a scale in between: for 46 percent, arousal and aversion sat in the same image, against 45 percent fully erotic and 9 percent fully aversive. For almost half, then, there is no answer to the question of whether you enjoy it, and that is exactly why women find it so hard to talk about.

Why the same fantasy is erotic or instead frightening

Because the two kinds probably come from different systems.

For the aversive side there is, recently, an explanation that claims the opposite of what people fear. Danielle Roberto, Michael Morris, and Melissa McDonald proposed in Archives of Sexual Behavior that an aversive rape fantasy is not a desire but a rehearsal: the mind runs through an attack in order to be better prepared for it. Their study showed that the fear of being raped was linked to the aversiveness of those fantasies and not to other forms of anxiety. Women who had earlier experienced sexual violence had more aversive fantasies, and that link ran through that fear.

What that means in practice: if your fantasy is mostly unpleasant, that points to fear and not to desire. Two women can have the same scene in their heads and do something completely different with it.

Why women have this fantasy

Because in the fantasy there is nothing to decide, and because the being wanted in it is absolute.

Patricia Hawley and William Hensley put questionnaires about fantasies of being forcefully submitted to nearly 900 students, men and women. They found in The Journal of Sex Research that it was precisely the most independent, dominant women who had those fantasies more often, and that the two groups saw something different in them: a fighter against a rescuer. Their conclusion is that it is about the power of the fantasizer rather than about powerlessness.

• For you, the question “do I want this” falls away without your giving anything up, because there is no one taking anything over from you.
• For a partner, the fantasy is the most honest message he can get, as long as he understands that it is about an image and not a command.
• For the two of you together, the gain is in the conversation. What sits underneath often turns out not to be force but the absence of a choice, and there are much milder forms of that.

A fantasy does not have to go anywhere. There is no command in it, and for many women it works best as long as it stays in her head.

What people do with the fantasy

In most cases nothing, and that is an outcome and not a shortcoming.

1. Keeping it where it is. By far the most common. The fantasy does its work during masturbation or ordinary sex and does not come out any further.
2. Telling it. The step women find most nerve-racking, and which is more often about shame than about the scenario.
3. Acting it out. Then the subject changes. An acted-out scene is called rape play, falls under CNC, is fixed in advance down to the detail, and can be stopped at any moment with a signal that is not a word, because “no” there is part of the role. Without those two things it is not play.

Misconceptions about rape fantasies

“A fantasy like that comes from something that happened to you.” As a general rule that is not true. Donald Strassberg and Lisa Lockerd found among 137 female students that more than half had ever had a force fantasy, and that a history of sexual coercion had no link with such fantasies. What did have a link was a more open relationship with sexuality in general.

“Then deep down she wants it after all.” No. The study by Roberto and colleagues points the other way for the unpleasant variant: the more afraid a woman is of really experiencing it, the more unpleasant her fantasy about it.

“Only women have this.” Hawley and Hensley included men, and the oldest Dutch newspaper citation is not about women at all. In NRC Handelsblad of 17 May 1979, Joke Huisman reviews a book in which French men are asked about their fantasies; they say they “all” keep rape fantasies, with a 26-year-old architect who hopes it happens for real one day. That is the same word for something else: a fantasy about forcing someone.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, gigolo, more than twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. This subject almost never reaches me as a request for a scene. It comes in as a confession.

The order says the most. Women first explain where they think it comes from, and only then tell what the fantasy contains. Without that self-made explanation, the image often turns out much more ordinary than she thought.

The second thing: for most it is not about force but about not having to decide and about being irresistible. That is almost always the point where a conversation becomes relief.

What you can do yourself

• Write down separately what happens in the fantasy and what you feel with it. For nearly half of women, arousal and aversion sit in the same image, and that confuses as long as it seems like one thing.
• See whether the unpleasant variant dominates. If so, it is about fear rather than desire, and this conversation belongs with a professional and not in a bedroom.
• Tell the meaning first and only then the image. “I don’t want to have to choose” lands differently than the scenario.
• Agree that telling a fantasy is not a request. Without that agreement almost no one says anything, and with it people tell everything.
• Act nothing out without fixing everything in advance and without a signal that stops it, and not on a first date.

More on rape fantasies

On this site rape play describes the acted-out scene with the legislation included, CNC gives the framework around it, and consensual non-consent when booking a gigolo is about the conversation that precedes it.

Beyond this site, the article by Bivona and Critelli is the best starting point for the figures, and Roberto, Morris, and McDonald place the unpleasant variant in a framework rarely written about.

Where this fits on this site

Most people who come here want to book nothing; they want to know whether they are normal. I have that conversation more often than the scene. If you do later want to know how something like that is prepared, that is on the rape fantasy as a service page.

Sources

• The nature of women’s rape fantasies. An analysis of prevalence, frequency, and contents. Jenny M. Bivona & Joseph W. Critelli, The Journal of Sex Research 46(1), 33-45, 2009 (DOI 10.1080/00224490802624406, PMID 19085605). Abstract read; the full text is behind a paywall. Provides the design with 355 female students, a fantasy checklist that followed the legal description of rape and a fantasy diary with self-ratings, the prevalence of 62 percent, the median frequency of about four times a year with 14 percent at least weekly, and the distribution over the erotic-aversive scale: 9 percent fully aversive, 45 percent fully erotic, and 46 percent both.
• A Threat Management Approach to Explaining Women’s Aversive Rape Fantasies. Danielle P. Roberto, Michael Morris & Melissa M. McDonald, Archives of Sexual Behavior 55, 195-209, 2026 (DOI 10.1007/s10508-025-03344-7, PMID 41495360). Abstract read; the full text is not freely accessible. Provides the hypothesis that an aversive rape fantasy belongs to a system for gauging threat and serves as a cheap mental rehearsal for a possible attack, the finding that women’s fear of being raped was linked to the aversiveness of their rape fantasies and not to other forms of anxiety, and the finding that a history of sexual violence was linked to that aversiveness through that fear.
• Social dominance and forceful submission fantasies. Feminine pathology or power?. Patricia H. Hawley & William A. Hensley, The Journal of Sex Research 46(6), 568-585, 2009 (DOI 10.1080/00224490902878985, PMID 19353371). Abstract read. Provides two studies among nearly 900 students, men and women, the outcome that strongly independent and dominant women preferred fantasies of forceful submission more often than less dominant women, the difference in meaning the two groups gave them (a fighter against a rescuer), and the conclusion that such fantasies point to a desire for the fantasizer’s sexual power rather than to pathology.
• Force in women’s sexual fantasies. Donald S. Strassberg & Lisa K. Lockerd, Archives of Sexual Behavior 27(4), 403-414, 1998 (DOI 10.1023/a:1018740210472, PMID 9681121). Abstract read. Provides the sample of 137 female students, the outcome that more than half had ever had a force fantasy, and the core finding for this page: a history of sexual coercion or violence had no link with reporting force fantasies, while those fantasies did go together with a more open and varied relationship with sexuality.
• Verkrachting: eindelijk een serieuze zaak. Joke Huisman, NRC Handelsblad, 17 May 1979, via the newspaper archive of the National Library of the Netherlands; the OCR was proofread word for word. The oldest citation of the word in that archive. Provides the review of De vrouw en haar verkrachter by Marie-Odile Fargier, in which French men questioned say they “all” keep rape fantasies, with the written-out fantasy of a 26-year-old married architect who hopes it happens for real one day. Used as a dating and as a usage example of the Dutch word, not as evidence about how often something occurs.

Related terms

• Rape play. The same fantasy, but acted out, with the Dutch legislation included.
• CNC. The consent framework an acted-out version falls under.
• Stop signal. The signal that replaces a word once “no” is part of the role.
• Hard limit. The list that has to be finished before a fantasy becomes a scene.
• Fear play. The practice the aversive variant of this fantasy comes closest to.
• Primal play. The form in which resistance is not scripted but arises.
• Kidnapping scene. The scenario named most often alongside this fantasy.
• Consent. What exactly is given once a fantasy comes into the room.