Every time I see someone mention statistics on nonconsent kink online, someone else is surprised by how common it is. So let’s start with some statistics from Lehmiller^[1]: roughly two thirds of women and half of men have some fantasy of being raped. A lot of these are more of a rapeplay fantasy than an actual rape fantasy, but for purposes of this post we don’t need to get into those particular weeds. The important point is: the appeal of nonconsent is the baseline, not the exception, especially for women.

But this post isn’t really about rape fantasies. I claim that the preference for nonconsent typically runs a lot deeper than a sex fantasy, mostly showing up in ways less extreme and emotionally loaded. I also claim that “deep nonconsent preference”, specifically among women, is the main thing driving the apparent “weirdness” of dating/mating practices compared to other human matching practices (like e.g. employer/employee matching).

Let’s go through a few examples, to illustrate what I mean by “deep nonconsent preference”, specifically for (typical) women.

Generalizing just a little bit beyond rape fantasies: AFAICT, being verbally asked for consent is super-duper a turn off for most women. Same with having to initiate sex; AFAICT, women typically really want sex to be someone else’ doing, something which happens to her.

Generalizing further: AFAICT, having to ask a guy out is super-duper a turn off for most women. Notice the analogy here to “women typically really want sex to be someone else’ doing”. Even at a much earlier stage of courtship, women typically really want a date to be someone else’ doing, really want every step of escalation to be someone else’ doing.

Alternative Hypotheses

For all of these phenomena, people will happily come up with other explanations.

If you ask people to explain why being asked for consent is such a turn-off, they’ll often say things like “asking for consent is a signal that he can’t already tell and is therefore not attuned”. And sure, that would be a plausible explanation for that one thing in isolation. But then why are women typically turned off by asking a guy out? There’s plenty of reasons that even a very attuned guy might not make the first move.

If you ask people why having to make the first move in courtship is such a turn-off, they’ll often say things like “it’s sexier for a g...

mimi10v3

mimi10v3