The structure of male submissive sexual fantasies: History and terminology

Masochism, fetishism, paraphilias, kinks, sexual fantasies… To avoid any confusion, a word on terminology is in order.

This is part of a series of essays that collectively survey male submissive kinks. Find the Table of contents here.

Terms such as masochism and fetishism can cause a great deal of confusion. Here, I give some definitions of these words along with a very brief historical view of how their meaning developed over the years. I present a more complete lexical history elsewhere. Then, I clarify the way in which I use these words and which concepts I associate them with in my descriptive survey of male submissive sexual fantasies.

Masochism

The word “masochism” was coined in 1890 by Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the eminent 19th-century German psychiatrist, to refer to the phenomenon of submissive sexual fantasies.¹

By masochism I understand a peculiar perversion of the psychical sexual life in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as by a master, humiliated and abused. This idea is colored by lustful feeling; the masochist lives in fantasies, in which he creates situations of this kind and often attempts to realize them.²

Masochism is a paraphilia. Paraphilias are atypical sexual interests that differ from whatever is considered conventional sexual interests, these representing the domain of normophilia.

Krafft-Ebing coined the word “masochism” after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian novelist whose literary work featured the themes of men’s sexual submission to women. The most famous of these is undoubtedly Venus in Furs, a novella published in 1870 that remains to this day the only classic literary work of female domination that survived the test of time.³

People were familiar with the themes that often colored the writings of Sacher-Masoch, and many of his male readers found in his literary productions the expression of their most intimate sexual desires. These men were of interest to people like Krafft-Ebing who were pioneering the scientific study of atypical sexual interests. This is how the German psychiatrist, in deciding on a name to describe the sexual desire to be submissive, came up with “masochism”.

I feel justified in calling this sexual anomaly “Masochism,” because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently made this perversion, which up to his time was quite unknown to the scientific world as such, the substratum of his writings. I followed thereby the scientific formation of the term “Daltonism,” from Dalton, the discoverer of colour-blindness.⁴

Sacher-Masoch not only wrote about sexually submissive men, he was one himself. His sexual proclivities were not known to the public in his lifetime, but they were exposed in salacious detail after his death. From this record, we know that he explored his peculiar fantasies to a great extent in several relationships. The most notable was with his long-time wife Aurora who went by the name Wanda, the dominatrix in Venus in Furs.⁵

Sacher-Masoch had no shame about his desire to be sexually dominated by women. In fact, he seemed to have a certain pride in it. In any case, by the time Krafft-Ebing coined the word “masochism” in 1890, Sacher-Masoch was rapidly deteriorating. He died in 1895.

Krafft-Ebing observed the “perversion” of masochism in many men whose case histories he documented in his Psychopathia Sexualis. It was only by extension that he used the word to describe possible analogous fantasies in women of being sexually dominated by men. Indeed, not much was known back then about women’s sexuality, and much less so about women’s masochism. The custom of the time made the sexuality of women even more taboo than that of men.⁶

Corruption

Such was the usage reserved for the word “masochism” until it was corrupted. This occurred when the meaning was extended to describe self-defeating behavior beyond the realm of sexuality. Krafft-Ebing never intended for the word to be used in this way. Indeed, he expressly stated:

The distinguishing characteristic in masochism is certainly the unlimited subjection to the will of a person of the opposite sex […], with the awakening and accompaniment of lustful sexual feelings to the degree of orgasm.⁷

In the 1920s, Sigmund Freud cemented this conflation by defining what he called “moral masochism” (i.e. nonsexual self-defeating behavior), inextricably linking it with the original (sexual) masochism in his psychoanalytic theories. In doing so, however, he was following a trend that had been well underway in language.⁸ Freud did not give the word masochism the new nonsexual meaning, but he advanced baseless ideas that purported that the two were part of the same phenomenon.

Ever since, submissive sexual fantasies (masochism in the original sense) have unfortunately been conflated with nonsexual self-defeating behavior (masochism in the new sense), most notably by the generations of psychoanalysts who followed Freud. It was simply assumed, with no evidence whatsoever, that submissive sexual fantasies and nonsexual self-defeating behavior must somehow be one and the same. It is in this fashion that the scientific study of masochism was derailed from the original track started by Krafft-Ebing.

The new meaning came to dominate the usage of the word “masochism” in the lay and the academic vocabulary both, so much so that the original masochism had to be qualified as “sexual” to differentiate it from the corrupt meaning of self-defeating behavior. This new meaning of masochism was crystallized in the field of personality disorders by the introduction in the 1980s of the concept of the masochistic personality.

People with the masochistic personality show a pervasive pattern of self-defeating behavior. They prefer to put themselves in situations that bring them down and make them suffer, they seem to reject opportunities to better their situation or the offers of others to help them, and they seem to avoid any pleasurable experiences, preferring self-defeat instead. These self-defeating behaviors have to occur in the absence of sexual arousal in order for the masochistic personality to apply. ⁹

Masochism in the original sense of submissive sexual fantasies and masochism in the new sense as illustrated by the masochistic personality are two different things that have nothing to do with one another.¹⁰ People who enjoy being sexually submissive often draw a sharp line between how they act sexually and how they conduct themselves in nonsexual matters. Likewise, people who show pervasive patterns of self-defeating behavior in their personality are not sexually aroused by this behavior.

Unfortunately, the word “masochism” in general usage came to be associated more with the aspects of self-defeat than with submissive sexual fantasies. The original sense of the word, as intended by Krafft-Ebing, receded into the linguistic background. For this reason, wherever possible, I tend to avoid using the word “masochism” for fear of bringing up the unwanted connotations of the corrupt meaning.

When I discuss submissive sexual fantasies, I do not wish to bring forth to the imagination of the reader any association with nonsexual self-defeating behavior and tendencies, in the broad sense in which the word “masochism” is understood today by the general public. I prefer to use the neutral but more verbose “submissive sexual fantasies”. When I do use the word “masochism”, especially in reference to past literature, I always use it in the original sexual sense, never in the corrupt meaning.

Fetishism

Many people today make liberal use of the word “fetish” to describe any atypical sexual interest, and the word is even used in a figurative sense to describe mere preferences in mates. This, however, is not the correct meaning. The definition of fetishism which became widely accepted is the one proposed by Krafft-Ebing in Psychopathia Sexualis, in reference to sexual arousal by certain body parts or articles of female clothing:

Erotic fetishism has for its object either a certain portion of the body of a person of the opposite sex, or a certain article or material of wearing apparel of the opposite sex.¹¹

The concept of fetishism, and especially how it relates to masochism, has an interesting history that I discuss elsewhere. For our purposes here, suffice it to say that fetishism in the correct meaning is distinct from masochism. The two are different paraphilias but they can occasionally overlap.

For instance, if a man is sexually aroused by women’s feet without any accompanying ideas of humiliation by the women or subjugation to them, he would fall squarely and solely in the fetishism category. If, however, his sexual interest in a woman’s feet is associated with ideas of being submissive to her, he would be a masochist. Whether or not, in this latter case, he would additionally be considered a foot fetishist, is up for debate.

For the purposes of this survey, I make no reference to fetishism, concerning myself exclusively with the paraphilia of masochism. Discussion about the relationship of fetishism to masochism will be found in other work of mine.

Kinks

Masochism is the paraphilia that describes a certain class of sexual fantasies where the masochistic person is subjugated, humiliated, made to suffer, etc. These sexual fantasies can take many forms. The man who fantasizes about worshiping a woman is a masochist, but so also is the man who fantasizes about being kicked in the testes by a woman, and also the one who fantasizes about being forcibly feminized. These are but a few examples that illustrate the diversity of the submissive sexual fantasies that collectively make up the paraphilic class of masochism.

Between the level of masochism as a paraphilia and the level of the individual sexual fantasies that compose it, there is a missing level of description. The man who fantasizes about worshiping a woman’s buttocks and the man who fantasizes about worshiping a woman’s feet have different sexual fantasies, but it is readily evident that there is a common element that they share that is not found in the men whose sexual fantasies do not have to do with worship at all.

When one examines submissive sexual fantasies, one recognizes the necessity of an intermediate level of description, midway between the overarching paraphilia of masochism and the individual sexual fantasies. In the lay vocabulary, this concept has a name: kink. Whereas sexual fantasies are seemingly endless, bound only by the limits of creativity, the kinks that make up masochism are a finite number of elements that repeat in identifiable patterns across individuals.

Things such as small penis humiliation, cuckolding, forced feminization, and many more, all fit into this intermediate level description that I call kinks, following colloquial usage. The sexual fantasies of masochism are then, to borrow a phrase from Alfred Binet, infinite variations on the unique themes that are encapsulated in the concept of kinks.

What is even more interesting—and what makes this mid-level description necessary—is that a single sexual fantasy can be simultaneously built on more than one kink. Any submissive sexual fantasy is then an elaborate construction based on one or more submissive kinks. To identify the kinks in a fantasy, one has to ask: what are the elements in it that lie at the heart of sexual arousal?

To illustrate, consider a man who fantasizes about his wife’s sexual infidelity. In his fantasy, he imagines she is driven to cheat on him because she finds his penis too small to satisfy her in bed. In this case, this single sexual fantasy has two kinks: cuckolding and small penis humiliation. These same two kinks, either individually or in combination, can give rise to an infinite number of other scenarios resulting in new and different sexual fantasies.

In this descriptive survey of men’s submissive sexual fantasies, I adopt the notion of kink as described above, but somewhat loosely. There is a vagueness that we have to accept in this analysis, as the relationships between kinks are complex. Consider the man who fantasizes about worshiping the woman’s feet and the one who fantasizes about worshiping her buttocks. Is there a specific “foot worship” kink that is distinct from a “buttocks worship” kink? Or do both men simply have a worship kink? Perhaps the former are sub-kinks of the latter?

I do not contend with these questions. What I am interested in is to propose a classification system that models the structure of kink that underlies submissive sexual fantasies. To this end, a vague concept of kink is enough. Colloquial usage also employs the word “fetish” for this intermediate level of description, but since that word already has a formal definition, I prefer “kink” for its neutrality.

Summary

Here then are the concepts that I employ in this work, in descending order of description:

1. Masochism is the overarching paraphilia that is made up of various submissive kinks.

2. Submissive kinks are the finite number of ideas that lie at the heart of sexual arousal in masochistic men. These kinks are the building blocks of submissive sexual fantasies.

3. Submissive sexual fantasies are elaborate scenarios that are built on one or more submissive kinks. Sexual fantasies are endless variations on a finite number of themes.

These three concepts are both necessary and sufficient for a thorough survey of the subject matter.

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The line art in this essay’s card is by Georgian artist Dorian Chelios.

1. There were other propositions to describe submissive sexual fantasies, notably “passivism”, coined by a certain Dimitry Stefanowsky, and “passive algolagnia”, coined by Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. Krafft-Ebing’s coinage ultimately prevailed and all the others fell into desuetude.

2. Krafft-Ebing, Richard von. (1965). Psychopathia Sexualis. Translated by Franklin S. Klaf from the twelfth German edition. Stein and Day. (Originally published in 1886.) p. 86.

3. Available in English translations. For example, Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. (2000). Venus in Furs. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel from the German. Penguin Classics. (Originally published in 1870.)

4. Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., p. 87.

5. For details on Sacher-Masoch’s submissive sexual life, consult biographies such as Cleugh, James. (1967). The First Masochist: A Biography of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Stein and Day.

6. There is an irony in the origins of the word “masochism” and the subsequent identification of it primarily with women.

7. Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., p. 133. Emphasis mine.

8. “There must be some meaning in the fact that linguistic usage has not given up the connection between this norm of [self-defeating] behaviour and erotism and calls these self-injurers masochists too.” Freud, Sigmund. (1961). The Economic Problem of Masochism (1924). In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (vol. 6). The Hogarth Press.

9. For an overview of the masochistic personality, consult Millon, Theodore, et al. (2004). Personality Disorders in Modern Life (2nd ed.). Wiley.

10. Baumeister, R. F., & Butler, J. L. (1997). Sexual Masochism: Deviance without Pathology. In D. R. Laws & W. T. O'Donohue (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment (1st ed.). The Guilford Press.

11. Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., p. 146.