By Gwen Frost
TW: assault, rape, power dynamics
Love Column,
I was assaulted about two years ago, and without going into specifics, it has been an interesting journey re-engaging with my sexual activity and sexuality again after the trauma. Why I am actually writing is this: I have been unable to push one sexual fantasy out of my head as of late, which troubles me. It’s a fantasy involving being heavily dominated, almost like a rape-fantasy. I obviously don’t want to be raped, and have a lot of fear and baggage surrounding the reality of a situation like that, but viewing porn related to and fantasizing about a power dynamic of total submission is really attractive to me, and I feel like there is something wrong with me (also given my history, shouldn’t it be triggering to fantasize about??) Is this a normal reaction to assault? Does this have any relation to my assault? Should I try to dissuade these thoughts?
-Conflicted
Dear Conflicted,
First I would like to say thank you for writing in, and and I am proud of you for embarking on a journey of re-engaging with your sexuality after trauma. It is a hard road to navigate, and there will be a lot of emotional baggage and unknown triggers that can be surprise-encounters on the way.
When someone is assaulted, they are often denied their own agency of what they would like to do with their body, because of their lack of or inability to give consent.
Fantasizing about something happening to you in a hypothetical scenario gives you something that you wouldn’t have in an actual situation of assault: power, autonomy and control. When we fantasize about situations where we do not have power, we still have power over every aspect of the situation: how far our partner(s) go, what boundaries they push, and when the encounter should stop.
We control both their and our own abilities and desires, which gives us a comfortability as we are not confronted by things we do not have an active interest in engaging with.
There can be a certain amount of empowerment to be embodied in a rape-fantasy for sexual assault survivors. Through the fantasy, you reclaim the personal agency to be however submissive you wish, with whomever you wish. And in your case, you may feel you are able to assert power in a situation where you were once powerless.
Many people that I personally know have felt more comfortable engaging in dominant-submissive sex or roleplay with someone who they are in a trusting relationship. To give someone the benefit of trust by letting them be dominant within your own set boundaries is an immense offering of trust, because you are trusting them to not take it too far, to not take advantage of you.
David Ley is a Clinical Psychologist and author who has studied sex and ethics, and authored three books regarding sex and relationships in the past ten years.
“We should not automatically characterize this fantasy as a symptom of an illness, resulting from a history of rape or sexual assault,” he said. “Instead, we may need to consider the possibility that this fantasy represents a normal, even a healthy, attempt by a person to regain some control over their sexuality, and the way in which their traumatic history affects them.”
I’m unsure of your gender identity, but I have found a lot of prevalence in studies about women experiencing what are called “rape-fantasies.” I believe these findings can be relatable or insightful for any gender identity.
In a 2009 Journal of Sex Research article, two psychologists from North Texas University asked 355 college women how often they had fantasies of being overpowered/raped by a man/woman against their will.
When using the word “overpowered,” 52 percent of women said they had experienced this fantasy. When the word “rape” was used, 32 percent reported experiencing it. Your fear of being raped is reasonably juxtaposed by the mental eroticization of scenario where you can control and recontextualize the sexual aspects of a traumatic event.
Though I do believe our society romanticizes sexual domination (often male domination), I am not convinced that these fantasies stem entirely from social conditioning.
Check out the podcast episode “Sex Gets Real 125: Rejection, rape fantasies, painting consent violators as evil” with Dawn Serra on Spotify.
In the podcast, Serra says “as a rape survivor, there is something for me very empowering about choosing to give my power away and being able to play that out with someone I trust. And It’s this re-telling of what it means to have either my power taken away or giving my power away.”
In summation, no, you’re fantasies are not something that should be triggering (or not triggering). Because this has been a persistent fantasy for you, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that it has emanated as a product of your assault. However, people who have either a) not been assaulted or b) not had your particular experience have shared the same eroticization.
I think you should only try to dissuade these thoughts if they are traumatizing or causing you pain. But I believe the anguish about whether your fantasies are abnormal is something you can let go of, because these kinds of fantasies aren’t abnormal. And for some people, they are even therapeutic.