Sexual Fantasies of College Students With Coercive Experiences and Coercive Attitudes

Abstract

Men sexually aroused by the portrayal of force in stories or pictures also self-report a high likelihood to rape if they could get away with it and have hostile and aggressive feelings toward women. The present study assessed males' and females' written sexual fantasies and the fantasies' relationship to past sexually coercive experiences and coercive attitudes. One hundred students answered questions about their fantasies and sex life, and their fantasies were scored for explicitness, theme, emotionality, and forcefulness. Significant main effects were found for coercive experience and force versus no force in the sexual fantasies. Those with coercive experience had more sexually explicit and less emotional fantasies and males had more actual sexual experience and more themes of much younger or older partners. More force in the fantasies was associated with greater explicitness, less happy feeling, and, for males, greater feelings of excitement after the fantasy and less satisfaction with their sex life.