Evolutionary psychology provides a unified explanation for why male masochists fantasize about being losers while female masochists fantasize about being sluts, a major sex difference in masochism.
Your account of submission fallaciously conflates submission, masochism, and humiliation kink. A submissive may like certain types of physical pain but not like humiliation (indeed, many submissives prefer praise), or may enjoy neither pain nor humiliation, and simply enjoy being bound and/or told what to do during sex.
You also confound a genre of sexual literary fantasy with sexual play. While a kinkster may enjoy playing a slut, for example, many kinky people don't see themselves as playing a role in that sense. Many submissives aren't someone else when they play -- they're simply themselves following orders, or being subjected to various things.
You see this even in literary sexual fantasies. For example, NC fantasies by women are often fantasies about themselves being forcefully taken. Alternately, a woman may fantasize about being seduced by a powerful man who then trains her.
Both of these are far more common female sub fantasies than the "slut" fantasy you seem to think predominates. But one thing they share with slut fantasies is that they're largely about being irresistible -- either to one man or to many.
The "slut" archetype adds a flavor of masochism drawn from our cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality, but low status is not a necessary part of submissive fantasy. Often, quite the opposite. Many submissive fantasies, both male and female, center around being elevated by the experience. For example, a service sub of any gender will enjoy showing their competence in meeting the exacting demands of their dominant, with the dominant's praise often playing a key role.
As for the male "loser" sub, I'm sure they're out there, but in my experience it's not a common fantasy. Outside of cuckold play, male degradation fantasies aren't about being lower status than other males. If they were, youd see degradation by other men as a much more common element. Rather, they're generally about low status relative to the woman, who is a queen, a goddess, etc. The pleasure is often in worship of the woman. By being a submissive, a man can be really into pleasing a woman in a way and to a degree that's not socially sanctioned generally. And of course it lets men be vulnerable and receptive in a way that's difficult for many men. But of course the "meaning" will always be personal and idiosyncratic to a degree.
Finally, you ignore the rich variety of sexually submissive personas, and seem to assume your own fantasies describe everyone else. A submissive may be a brat wanting to be tamed, a strong man or independent woman who is made weak and compliant, a slut who is used, a robot who is programmed, a servant or slave who is commanded, an animal chased and wrestled with by other animals, a midget picked up and toyed with by giants, a victim defiled, and many other things. If your theory accounts for any part of the submissive community, it is a very small part.
I get the appeal of evolutionary psych to a certain kind of kinkster. It lets you see your fantasies as expressing some profound, scientific truth about the universe, while requiring no rigor or scientific discipline -- just a good story. But you're really reducing something complex and thrilling to a rather
dull story, like a Freudian who reduces everything to mommy and daddy. No shame if you like being put in a tawdry little box recreationally, but your imagination needs more room.
Apologies for not including this in my first comment: if you'd like a more plausible evopsych style explanation of slut fantasies, I'd recommend Sex at Dawn. It's still a bit reductive, since sex is so heavily cultural, but it does provide some good insights about why the idea of a woman with many men is such a common fantasy among both.
Thank you for reading and engaging with such a lengthy and thoughtful criticism. I'll try to briefly answer all your points below.
On submission/masochism/humiliation: I use the expression "submissive sexual fantasies" synonymously with masochism, mainly because of the undesirable connotations that psychoanalysis gave the word masochism. Of course, not all masochism involves humiliation.
To the uninitiated, masochism appears to be a motley of different sexual interests that have little to do with one another. In my opinion, masochistic fantasies are infinite variations on a finite number of themes (I use "theme" here to mean an idea that ultimately lies at the heart of sexual arousal).
For male masochism, there are about a dozen or so unique themes according to my own categorization. I don't know how many themes there are for female masochism, but I suspect the number to be not too different. Male and female masochism have some overlap in themes, but they also have strongly sex-specific themes.
In the same masochistic fantasy, multiple themes often appear in synergy. Fantasies have to be analyzed to identify which themes they incorporate. What do all these themes have to do with one another? In my opinion, they all depict perilous scenarios for the reproductive strategies of humans. Because men and women evolved to have different reproductive strategies, it fully explains the differences in their masochistic fantasies, as the perils that lie in the pursuit of a successful reproductive strategy—evolutionarily speaking—are different for men and women. I call this the evolutionary theory of masochism.
One of the themes of male masochism is sexual denial (i.e. the idea of being denied access to a woman's sexuality). One of the themes of female masochism is promiscuity (i.e. the idea of defiling sexual purity). On the surface, these themes don't seem to have anything to do with one another, but my evolutionary theory offers a unified explanation for them.
These two themes are expressed in a variety of different fantasies. A prominent element in male fantasies of sexual denial is the man being a "loser" (which simply means not meeting women's evolved mate preferences in men). A prominent element in female fantasies of promiscuity is the woman being a "slut" (which simply means not meeting men's evolved mate preferences of sexual purity in women).
This essay only delves into these two specific themes and gives a unified explanation for them. My apologies if it sounded like it went beyond. (I might edit this essay to make this clearer.) Nonetheless, the evolutionary theory of masochism fully explains and predicts all the fantasies of male and female masochism, when they overlap and when they differ. It's the only theory I know of that has this explanatory power. I'll expound more on this in future essays when time permits.
Some more of your points:
- On my supposed conflations of literary fantasy and sexual play: I have no idea what you mean.
- On the claim that I think "slut" fantasies predominate in female masochism: I never claimed this nor do I think it. The theme of promiscuity is simply one among many. Some female masochists are into it; some are not.
- On the claim that "loser" fantasies are not common in male masochism: Again, sexual denial is but a theme among many. Some male masochists are into it; others are not. This theme frequently appears in Femdom pornography, a type of pornography strongly driven by consumers (male masochists), so I don't think you can argue that it's rare.
- On degradation by other men: This is not common, but some bisexual male masochists are into it.
- On the claim that I ignore the "rich variety of sexually submissive personas" and that my theory only accounts for "a very small part": I hope my explanation of the themes of masochism elucidates this point, and I hope that my future writing will help explain how the evolutionary theory of masochism fully accounts, not only for the fantasies of each sex, but the sex differences as well.
I liked your criticism; it's thoughtful. But I was surprised to see that you claimed to know what my fantasies are. So out of curiosity, what are they? And how have you come upon this knowledge?
Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful reply. I'm glad to hear that you didn't intend the message that your theory currently accounts for all types of masochism. I do think that, from the title on, the text does strongly imply my reading, even if that wasn't your intention in writing it.
But if you're talking about one type each of submissive male and female fantasy, and you concede there are many different ones, in what sense does it say anything about evolution? If you want to show that reproductive fitness is a factor in submission generally (and not just in a particular flavor of submission), you'll have to survey a much broader cross section. I'd be interested to hear how you categorize themes in fantasy, and what your justification is in labeling them male or female, beyond intuition. If I write a M/f fantasy as a male author, and it's enjoyed by some women, does it count as a female submissive fantasy? Would you code it differently if it were only enjoyed by men? What about if I wrote F/m fantasies that were only enjoyed by women? Would it then be primarily a female dominance fantasy with the author how might simply know his audience?
Frankly, I don't think any evopsych unified theory is possible, because there are too many examples that don't fit within it. I mean, think of all the 50 Shades style fantasies, which are extremely popular among women (at least, as far as femsub lit goes.) An unsuccessful woman is chosen by a very successful man to be his mate. From an evo psych perspective, it's a fantasy about increasing her reproductive success. A lot of harem fantasies follow this pattern as well: a woman is forced to procreate with a powerful man who has lots of resources for her children.
As for forced chastity fantasies (which do seem to be much more common among men, though not exclusive to men), certainly if that chastity is permanent it will preclude reproductive success. But permanent chastity is pretty niche as a fantasy and in play, is even more so. The appeal of a fantasy involving delayed sexual gratification is obvious, and requires no appeal to evolution: you're prolonging pleasure. And a submissive male reader taking cues from the writing can go on enjoying it. The male refractory period explains this adequately. Female submissives also have fantasies about delayed sexual gratification, and the differences in how they're typically structured seem to align pretty well with differences in hardware.
As for your own fantasies, I saw you looking at a pretty narrow section of submissive fantasies and discussed them in a way that seemed to imply they characterize sub fantasies as a whole. Usually when people fall into that trap, the bits they choose align with their own interests. I didn't mean to imply that everything you discussed is something that gets you off, or claim any deep knowledge of your fantasy life or anything like that.
And what do you do with a fantasy like, e.g. being made someone's pet or seduced by the teacher, or made into someone else's fantasy partner, or transformed into an inanimate object, or mind controlled by aliens, eaten by plants, or dragged off by cryptids, or any of the wacky subby things both men and women get off on? You can see culture in it everywhere, but you really have to stretch to see archetypal evolutionary roles.
As for the difference between literary fantasy and play, I mean that you can't treat solo fantasizing and, say, a bdsm scene enacted in the real world as the same thing, or assume that someone who enjoys bondage or impact play or whatever is internally experiencing some typical erotic script from fiction. If there's an evopsych explanation of submissives generally, it would have to account for e.g. people who just enjoy the feeling of a spanking as foreplay without recourse to fantasies those people may not be having, and I don't see how that's possible.
I don't think the argument was that these fantasies improve reproductive fitness. It's rather the opposite, that these are fantasies about scenarios of failure
My theory does, in fact, account for all expressions of masochism. I think the problem is that you have an incorrect understanding of my claims. My evolutionary theory of masochism doesn't claim that masochism is adaptive. I actually don't say anything at all about why masochism exists. Rather, my theory explains the diversity of themes in masochism as well as the sex differences in those themes. There is a huge difference here.
Some points:
- "If you want to show that reproductive fitness is a factor in submission generally...": That is not at all what I'm doing as I explained above.
- "you'll have to survey a much broader cross section": I do in fact do this. One of my goals is to fully describe all the themes of male masochism. (Female masochism is harder to study because data is less available than for male masochism.)
- "your justification is in labeling them male or female, beyond intuition": The justification is based on the data.
- On the richness of fantasies: Sexual fantasies are not interesting per se. They are infinite variations on a finite number of themes. To get anywhere, scientific inquiry must discern the elements that constitute the core of the phenomenon from the superfluous details that are of no consequence. Those core elements (what is loosely called "kinks" in the vernacular) repeat in identifiable patterns in different individuals. They are the ideas that truly lie at the source of erotic arousal in masochism.
- On chastity: In men, these are fantasies that express the theme of loss of sexual autonomy (i.e. to no longer be in control of your sexual function).
- "I saw you looking at a pretty narrow section of submissive fantasies": I aim to look at all of masochism, although it takes a lot of time and effort to go through everything. In no way do I wish to limit my study to a subset.
- On the analysis of fantasies: My approach is to identify the themes that are part of every sexual fantasy. To do this, you have to delve into what's going on in the head of a masochist who gets off on the fantasy. For example, being someone's pet: What does the masochist think about when he's enjoying this fantasy? What are the ideas that truly lie at the heart of his or her arousal? What are the ideas expressed through the fantasy of being a pet? And are these ideas different perhaps for men and women? When you take this approach, you quickly realize that the same sexual fantasy can mean different things for different people. So there is an added challenge there.
- On the difference between fantasy and action: All attempts to put masochism into action are simply attempts to enhance the original fantasy. The element of importance is fantasy. Everything else is auxiliary. To take your example, you have to distinguish people who simply like being spanked as a physical sensation that enhances sexual arousal from those who like being spanked as an expression of a masochistic theme. There is a long and rich discussion about this in the early literature on masochism. It's obviously only the latter group that is of interest to the study of masochism, and in their case, being spanked in real life is simply an attempt to put a fantasy into practice.
Makes me better understand how women feel when engaging in slut fantasies
I hope my writing brings more understanding between the sexes.
Sluts & losers would be a great name for a band.
Haha. Has a Guns N Roses ring to it.
Your account of submission fallaciously conflates submission, masochism, and humiliation kink. A submissive may like certain types of physical pain but not like humiliation (indeed, many submissives prefer praise), or may enjoy neither pain nor humiliation, and simply enjoy being bound and/or told what to do during sex.
You also confound a genre of sexual literary fantasy with sexual play. While a kinkster may enjoy playing a slut, for example, many kinky people don't see themselves as playing a role in that sense. Many submissives aren't someone else when they play -- they're simply themselves following orders, or being subjected to various things.
You see this even in literary sexual fantasies. For example, NC fantasies by women are often fantasies about themselves being forcefully taken. Alternately, a woman may fantasize about being seduced by a powerful man who then trains her.
Both of these are far more common female sub fantasies than the "slut" fantasy you seem to think predominates. But one thing they share with slut fantasies is that they're largely about being irresistible -- either to one man or to many.
The "slut" archetype adds a flavor of masochism drawn from our cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality, but low status is not a necessary part of submissive fantasy. Often, quite the opposite. Many submissive fantasies, both male and female, center around being elevated by the experience. For example, a service sub of any gender will enjoy showing their competence in meeting the exacting demands of their dominant, with the dominant's praise often playing a key role.
As for the male "loser" sub, I'm sure they're out there, but in my experience it's not a common fantasy. Outside of cuckold play, male degradation fantasies aren't about being lower status than other males. If they were, youd see degradation by other men as a much more common element. Rather, they're generally about low status relative to the woman, who is a queen, a goddess, etc. The pleasure is often in worship of the woman. By being a submissive, a man can be really into pleasing a woman in a way and to a degree that's not socially sanctioned generally. And of course it lets men be vulnerable and receptive in a way that's difficult for many men. But of course the "meaning" will always be personal and idiosyncratic to a degree.
Finally, you ignore the rich variety of sexually submissive personas, and seem to assume your own fantasies describe everyone else. A submissive may be a brat wanting to be tamed, a strong man or independent woman who is made weak and compliant, a slut who is used, a robot who is programmed, a servant or slave who is commanded, an animal chased and wrestled with by other animals, a midget picked up and toyed with by giants, a victim defiled, and many other things. If your theory accounts for any part of the submissive community, it is a very small part.
I get the appeal of evolutionary psych to a certain kind of kinkster. It lets you see your fantasies as expressing some profound, scientific truth about the universe, while requiring no rigor or scientific discipline -- just a good story. But you're really reducing something complex and thrilling to a rather
dull story, like a Freudian who reduces everything to mommy and daddy. No shame if you like being put in a tawdry little box recreationally, but your imagination needs more room.
Apologies for not including this in my first comment: if you'd like a more plausible evopsych style explanation of slut fantasies, I'd recommend Sex at Dawn. It's still a bit reductive, since sex is so heavily cultural, but it does provide some good insights about why the idea of a woman with many men is such a common fantasy among both.
Thank you for reading and engaging with such a lengthy and thoughtful criticism. I'll try to briefly answer all your points below.
On submission/masochism/humiliation: I use the expression "submissive sexual fantasies" synonymously with masochism, mainly because of the undesirable connotations that psychoanalysis gave the word masochism. Of course, not all masochism involves humiliation.
To the uninitiated, masochism appears to be a motley of different sexual interests that have little to do with one another. In my opinion, masochistic fantasies are infinite variations on a finite number of themes (I use "theme" here to mean an idea that ultimately lies at the heart of sexual arousal).
For male masochism, there are about a dozen or so unique themes according to my own categorization. I don't know how many themes there are for female masochism, but I suspect the number to be not too different. Male and female masochism have some overlap in themes, but they also have strongly sex-specific themes.
In the same masochistic fantasy, multiple themes often appear in synergy. Fantasies have to be analyzed to identify which themes they incorporate. What do all these themes have to do with one another? In my opinion, they all depict perilous scenarios for the reproductive strategies of humans. Because men and women evolved to have different reproductive strategies, it fully explains the differences in their masochistic fantasies, as the perils that lie in the pursuit of a successful reproductive strategy—evolutionarily speaking—are different for men and women. I call this the evolutionary theory of masochism.
One of the themes of male masochism is sexual denial (i.e. the idea of being denied access to a woman's sexuality). One of the themes of female masochism is promiscuity (i.e. the idea of defiling sexual purity). On the surface, these themes don't seem to have anything to do with one another, but my evolutionary theory offers a unified explanation for them.
These two themes are expressed in a variety of different fantasies. A prominent element in male fantasies of sexual denial is the man being a "loser" (which simply means not meeting women's evolved mate preferences in men). A prominent element in female fantasies of promiscuity is the woman being a "slut" (which simply means not meeting men's evolved mate preferences of sexual purity in women).
This essay only delves into these two specific themes and gives a unified explanation for them. My apologies if it sounded like it went beyond. (I might edit this essay to make this clearer.) Nonetheless, the evolutionary theory of masochism fully explains and predicts all the fantasies of male and female masochism, when they overlap and when they differ. It's the only theory I know of that has this explanatory power. I'll expound more on this in future essays when time permits.
Some more of your points:
- On my supposed conflations of literary fantasy and sexual play: I have no idea what you mean.
- On the claim that I think "slut" fantasies predominate in female masochism: I never claimed this nor do I think it. The theme of promiscuity is simply one among many. Some female masochists are into it; some are not.
- On the claim that "loser" fantasies are not common in male masochism: Again, sexual denial is but a theme among many. Some male masochists are into it; others are not. This theme frequently appears in Femdom pornography, a type of pornography strongly driven by consumers (male masochists), so I don't think you can argue that it's rare.
- On degradation by other men: This is not common, but some bisexual male masochists are into it.
- On the claim that I ignore the "rich variety of sexually submissive personas" and that my theory only accounts for "a very small part": I hope my explanation of the themes of masochism elucidates this point, and I hope that my future writing will help explain how the evolutionary theory of masochism fully accounts, not only for the fantasies of each sex, but the sex differences as well.
I liked your criticism; it's thoughtful. But I was surprised to see that you claimed to know what my fantasies are. So out of curiosity, what are they? And how have you come upon this knowledge?
Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful reply. I'm glad to hear that you didn't intend the message that your theory currently accounts for all types of masochism. I do think that, from the title on, the text does strongly imply my reading, even if that wasn't your intention in writing it.
But if you're talking about one type each of submissive male and female fantasy, and you concede there are many different ones, in what sense does it say anything about evolution? If you want to show that reproductive fitness is a factor in submission generally (and not just in a particular flavor of submission), you'll have to survey a much broader cross section. I'd be interested to hear how you categorize themes in fantasy, and what your justification is in labeling them male or female, beyond intuition. If I write a M/f fantasy as a male author, and it's enjoyed by some women, does it count as a female submissive fantasy? Would you code it differently if it were only enjoyed by men? What about if I wrote F/m fantasies that were only enjoyed by women? Would it then be primarily a female dominance fantasy with the author how might simply know his audience?
Frankly, I don't think any evopsych unified theory is possible, because there are too many examples that don't fit within it. I mean, think of all the 50 Shades style fantasies, which are extremely popular among women (at least, as far as femsub lit goes.) An unsuccessful woman is chosen by a very successful man to be his mate. From an evo psych perspective, it's a fantasy about increasing her reproductive success. A lot of harem fantasies follow this pattern as well: a woman is forced to procreate with a powerful man who has lots of resources for her children.
As for forced chastity fantasies (which do seem to be much more common among men, though not exclusive to men), certainly if that chastity is permanent it will preclude reproductive success. But permanent chastity is pretty niche as a fantasy and in play, is even more so. The appeal of a fantasy involving delayed sexual gratification is obvious, and requires no appeal to evolution: you're prolonging pleasure. And a submissive male reader taking cues from the writing can go on enjoying it. The male refractory period explains this adequately. Female submissives also have fantasies about delayed sexual gratification, and the differences in how they're typically structured seem to align pretty well with differences in hardware.
As for your own fantasies, I saw you looking at a pretty narrow section of submissive fantasies and discussed them in a way that seemed to imply they characterize sub fantasies as a whole. Usually when people fall into that trap, the bits they choose align with their own interests. I didn't mean to imply that everything you discussed is something that gets you off, or claim any deep knowledge of your fantasy life or anything like that.
And what do you do with a fantasy like, e.g. being made someone's pet or seduced by the teacher, or made into someone else's fantasy partner, or transformed into an inanimate object, or mind controlled by aliens, eaten by plants, or dragged off by cryptids, or any of the wacky subby things both men and women get off on? You can see culture in it everywhere, but you really have to stretch to see archetypal evolutionary roles.
As for the difference between literary fantasy and play, I mean that you can't treat solo fantasizing and, say, a bdsm scene enacted in the real world as the same thing, or assume that someone who enjoys bondage or impact play or whatever is internally experiencing some typical erotic script from fiction. If there's an evopsych explanation of submissives generally, it would have to account for e.g. people who just enjoy the feeling of a spanking as foreplay without recourse to fantasies those people may not be having, and I don't see how that's possible.
I don't think the argument was that these fantasies improve reproductive fitness. It's rather the opposite, that these are fantasies about scenarios of failure
My theory does, in fact, account for all expressions of masochism. I think the problem is that you have an incorrect understanding of my claims. My evolutionary theory of masochism doesn't claim that masochism is adaptive. I actually don't say anything at all about why masochism exists. Rather, my theory explains the diversity of themes in masochism as well as the sex differences in those themes. There is a huge difference here.
Some points:
- "If you want to show that reproductive fitness is a factor in submission generally...": That is not at all what I'm doing as I explained above.
- "you'll have to survey a much broader cross section": I do in fact do this. One of my goals is to fully describe all the themes of male masochism. (Female masochism is harder to study because data is less available than for male masochism.)
- "your justification is in labeling them male or female, beyond intuition": The justification is based on the data.
- On the richness of fantasies: Sexual fantasies are not interesting per se. They are infinite variations on a finite number of themes. To get anywhere, scientific inquiry must discern the elements that constitute the core of the phenomenon from the superfluous details that are of no consequence. Those core elements (what is loosely called "kinks" in the vernacular) repeat in identifiable patterns in different individuals. They are the ideas that truly lie at the source of erotic arousal in masochism.
- On chastity: In men, these are fantasies that express the theme of loss of sexual autonomy (i.e. to no longer be in control of your sexual function).
- "I saw you looking at a pretty narrow section of submissive fantasies": I aim to look at all of masochism, although it takes a lot of time and effort to go through everything. In no way do I wish to limit my study to a subset.
- On the analysis of fantasies: My approach is to identify the themes that are part of every sexual fantasy. To do this, you have to delve into what's going on in the head of a masochist who gets off on the fantasy. For example, being someone's pet: What does the masochist think about when he's enjoying this fantasy? What are the ideas that truly lie at the heart of his or her arousal? What are the ideas expressed through the fantasy of being a pet? And are these ideas different perhaps for men and women? When you take this approach, you quickly realize that the same sexual fantasy can mean different things for different people. So there is an added challenge there.
- On the difference between fantasy and action: All attempts to put masochism into action are simply attempts to enhance the original fantasy. The element of importance is fantasy. Everything else is auxiliary. To take your example, you have to distinguish people who simply like being spanked as a physical sensation that enhances sexual arousal from those who like being spanked as an expression of a masochistic theme. There is a long and rich discussion about this in the early literature on masochism. It's obviously only the latter group that is of interest to the study of masochism, and in their case, being spanked in real life is simply an attempt to put a fantasy into practice.
Fascinating! Well-written. I’ll look forward to reading more about your research.
Thank you very much!