**IMPORTANT WARNING**
This article addresses sexual fantasies of "forced submission" and involuntary physiological responses in actual abuse (lubrication, forced orgasm, moaning, fawning, freezing). It can be a trigger or a trigger. If needed, stop and seek professional support.
Every so often, the same misunderstanding resurfaces:
“If so many women fantasize about being forced, then deep down they want it… right?”
The answer is "NO".
Never.
Not even a little.
The fantasy of “abuse” or “forced submission” reported by between 31% and 62% of women (depending on the study and definition) is not a genuine desire to be abused. It is a mental construct where the woman retains absolute control, whereas actual abuse is precisely the complete annihilation of that control.
These are two opposing realities that patriarchal culture, film, and certain pornography have attempted to merge for decades. This article surgically separates them.
1. In fantasy, she is the absolute director
When a woman fantasizes about a scene of "force" or "apparent non-consent," she controls all the parameters:
- Choose the “aggressor” (almost never a real stranger; it is usually a physically idealized, safe, known or invented archetype).
- Decide the setting, the time, the lighting, the script.
- Control the intensity, the duration and —above all— the invisible stop button (orgasm, resolution or simply the “mental cut-off”).
- In most fantasies, there is a poetic justice ending: the “criminal” is punished, humiliated, subdued, or discarded. She regains—or never loses—power.
This is theater of mental sovereignty.
Fantasy is not "I want to be raped"; it's "I want to be so desired that the other person loses control... but only within a script where I never lose mine."
2. In actual abuse, control is annihilated
In a case of actual rape or sexual assault:
- The aggressor decides **everything**: time, place, duration, intensity.
- There is no stop button.
- There is no guaranteed punishment (it often goes unpunished).
- The victim doesn't choose who, how, when, or what happens afterward.
They are polar opposites.
Confusing them is not just a psychological error: it's a form of cultural gaslighting that obscures trauma and legitimizes violence.
3. The error of the male gaze and the pornification of trauma
Films like *Straw Dogs* (1971 and 2011 remake), certain sequences in *Game of Thrones*, or much of mainstream pornography commit the same narrative crime: they take biological survival responses (fawning, freezing) and present them as "latent desire" or "repressed pleasure".
- Fawning (complacency to survive) → is presented as “erotic cooperation”.
- Freeze (paralysis from shock) → is interpreted as “sensual surrender”.
- Forced lubrication or orgasm → is read as “proof that deep down she enjoyed it”.
This is not a realistic portrayal of trauma; it is a male projection of the desire for conquest. The camera (and the viewer) aligns itself with the aggressor, sexualizing the suffering and erasing the dissociation, terror, and nausea that the victim actually experiences.
4. The treacherous biology: arousal non-concordance
The body can react with lubrication, erection, moaning, or orgasm to direct genital stimulation… even in the midst of horror. This is called arousal non-concordance (a disconnect between genital response and subjective desire).
- Studies show that 4–50% of sexual abuse victims report involuntary physical responses (lubrication, orgasm).
- The same occurs in non-abusive contexts: 33–50% of women experience arousal or micro-orgasms during breastfeeding due to the release of oxytocin.
It's not pleasure. It's a mechanical reflex of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.
Consent is mental, free, continuous, and enthusiastic. A bodily reaction **never** grants it.
5. The 4 F's of trauma: none of them is complicity
Pete Walker and complex trauma experts identify four instinctive responses to extreme danger:
- Fight → subsequent guilt for “not having fought harder”.
- Flight → guilt for “having fled”.
- Freeze → guilt for “not having screamed or resisted” (most common in abuse).
- Fawn → guilt for “having cooperated or appeared to enjoy it”.
They are all **survival**, not choices.
And they all generate self-blame afterward: “If I gave in, if I moaned, if my body reacted… something is wrong with me.”
That guilt is the continued abuse within the mind.
The scientific and ethical truth is clear: none of the 4Fs invalidates the abuse. It is still rape. .
Conclusion: We are what we choose to do, not what we imagine.
Sexual maturity consists of understanding that eroticism is a symbolic language.
Fantasies of “abuse” are not an invitation to violence; they are a safe exploration of the limits of power and surrender in the only place where it is safe: the imagination.
Confusing fantasy with reality is not just psychological ignorance: it is the foundation of the culture of abuse.
The male gaze, films that eroticize fawning, pornography that romanticizes non-concordance… all contribute to this confusion.
The line is clear:
In fantasy, the woman maintains consent; she chooses the setting, the aggressor, the duration, the actions, and guarantees the perpetrator's punishment… completely contrary to real abuse.
M. MONTERD (2026)
Exactly.
They are polar opposites.
We are not called to erase fantasies (they are part of the human psyche).
We are called to not confuse them with permission to harm.
Because in the end, we are what we do in the real world, not what we secretly dream about.