The Real Damage Behind Censoring Women’s Sexual Fantasies

TW: This article contains mentions of sexual assault and violence towards women 

Nicole Kidman on her knees, licking milk from a saucer at the feet of Harris Dickinson, is just one of the scenes dividing audiences in film-of-the-moment Babygirl. The story, which follows a high-powered tech CEO who becomes sexually involved with a younger intern at her company, is, at its core, one woman’s deepest fantasies laid bare. The result: an ongoing power play entangled in sex, desire and a stripping back of female sexual shame.

This is, of course, not the first creative foray into the intimate inner workings of women’s sexual psyche. Last year saw a more open display of women’s pleasure across the board, from Penelope’s secret longing for Colin laid bare in Bridgerton to Sabrina Carpenter’s openly sexual lyrics (“He pins you down on the carpet/Makes paintings with his tongue,” for starters) resulting in one of the most popular albums of 2024. Not forgetting the 800,000 people who responded to Gillian Anderson’s request to hear “fantasies, frustrations, explorations, the forbidden, childhood, sounds, fetishes, guilt, insatiability” in a callout for a book she was undertaking. “Anything is up for grabs.” The result – a selection of 174 anonymous women’s fantasies – was published in the book Want.

‘To want’ is an act that has been historically denied to women; the female eros distorted and warped over centuries of misogyny and internalised sexual suppression. To express want has had the depraved effect of leading women to danger – to shame and sexual violence, evidence that we’re ‘asking for it’, and courtroom acquittals. It’s no wonder that, as in the words of Audre Lorde, ‘We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves.’

Of course, contemporary women’s desire has evolved into something more free-wheeling and expansive. Gradually, as the dialogue around sexuality has widened, there’s been a shift from a language of consent to a language of desire – one that feels a bit more like ownership. Anderson’s Want came at a time already saturated in diverse literature on desire: the 2024 summer of smut (as coined by The Cut); the relaunching of The Erotic Review – a literary journal which focuses on desire, now ‘with the explicit aim of moving away from the male gaze’; Miranda July’s novel All Fours, with its intense focus on one perimenopausal woman’s lust and longing.

Want, as an intentional reworking of Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden – the 1973 collection of similarly anonymous women’s fantasies – intends to mark the sexual epoch. But while the fantasies contained in it are boundary-pushing – everything from milking and robot sex to voyeurism – they were also censored, not including any depictions of violent or forced sex. It can be understood why – such scenes might be triggering for certain readers or may be seen to endorse violent behaviours against women.

But fantasies of non-consensual sex are very common. One 2009 study found that 62% of women participants had sexual fantasies in which they were forced into sex against their will. A survey of 4,000 American adults by Dr Justin J Lehmiller – a senior researcher at the Kinsey Institute – for his book Tell Me What You Want, backed this up. Speaking to Service95, he says, “Women were more likely [than men] to have these fantasies and to have them often. Specifically, about two thirds of women reported having fantasised about sex being forced on them.”

While women fantasising about violence against their own bodies can feel like unchartered waters, it needs to be better understood – as it can often be stigmatised as the ‘wrong’ kind of desire. “Since the #MeToo movement started, many sex therapists have heard from more and more women who are feeling increased anxiety, guilt or shame about having these fantasies in particular,” says Dr Lehmiller. “They see their fantasy as being incompatible with their feminist ideals or their desire to support victims of sexual assault.”

The first step to destigmatising these narratives is to understand that they do not reflect our belief systems. There is a clear line to be drawn between the idea of an act and a genuine desire for it to take place; a marked difference between a fantasy of sexual assault and sexual assault itself.

Crucially, in the former, the woman consents to the scenario of non-consent. In a fantasy, “You get to select who your partner is, and dictate the terms of the encounter: how it begins, and how it ends,” says Dr Lehmiller – a fact that obviously isn’t the case in an actual scenario of sexual assault. He suggests using the term ‘consensual non-consent fantasies’, rather than ‘rape fantasies’, to solidify the distinction.

It’s also crucial to remember that our fantasies are a reflection of the world around us – and the darker contexts of our existence hold great influence on desire, especially as fear can intensify erotic experiences. Fantasies, “like dreams, are generally an outlet for emotions and psychological undercurrents we can’t or don’t want to include in our everyday experience,” writes Mariella Frostup, author of Desire. Given that we exist in an environment in which rape culture is real and violence against women is endemic, the prevalence of these threats in fantasy seems somewhat inevitable.

Mentally enacting scenarios of violence can also offer a sense of control. Amia Srinivasan writes in The Right To Sex that some women may identify with the male perpetrator, that “[they] might find something salutary in a phantasmic role reversal”. Dr Lehmiller has even found a direct correlation between previous experiences of sexual victimisation and the occurrence of these fantasies, noting that the latter may be a way of asserting sexual autonomy. He urges that if you do have a history of sexual trauma, you should discuss these fantasies with a qualified sex therapist to tackle the root cause.

Fantasy can be many things: an outlet for pleasure, escape, fear, control, but it should not be a source of shame. Above all, it is a complex thing, tangled in a web of psychological and sociological forces often difficult to grapple with. If we can start to reframe the nature of fantasies as just that – complex – we can start to unravel the attached stigma for women.

Ruby Conway is a Lisbon-based writer and editor who has contributed to titles including The Face, Huck and Wallpaper*