Sexual fantasy is important to the lives of most people. In it, a person's dreams can be seen. However, it also shows certain things about the way the fantasizer perceives himself or herself and about the gender roles society expects him or her to maintain.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the materials that popular culture represents as proper examples of fantasy for men and women, and to draw whatever conclusions seem to be forthcoming from such an examination. Although the materials chosen as properly representative fantasy for the two genders may not seem comparable, the types chosen seem to be representative of the sexual material chosen by persons of each gender. It is also important to remember that images of proper sex-role behavior are part of a circular process: the image presented is approved by the culture and consumed, making it profitable for the image to continue to be produced, and thus ensuring its reproduction and reinforcement. This process is as true of sexual fantasy as it is of any other image or product available in this society.
The material chosen as properly representative fantasy for men is the Forum column in Penthouse magazine. The cover of Penthouse says that it is "The International Magazine for Men", so the intended readership is beyond question. The column purports to be "Correspondence"[1], although some readers question whether the editors of the magazine do not either make up some of the letters themselves or at least heavily edit the ones they receive from readers. The Forum columns from four recent issues of Penthouse magazine will be used as a sample.[2] The issues used here were supplied by a subscription reader who kindly consented to lend them for use in this paper.
The material chosen as representative fantasy for women was the historical romance genre of novels, commonly known as "bodice-rippers" due to the scantily clad state of the heroines as depicted on the covers of such novels. Although there are some magazines which cater to women in the same way that Penthouse and Playboy cater to men (e.g., columns of explicit sexual fantasy and explicit pictorials of nude persons). However, the only one commonly available is Playgirl. The historical romance novels, by contrast, are commonly available in large and varying quantities.
Such novels also sell themselves by means of the sexual blurbs on the back covers:
But the passion they fought against so fiercely, burning yet with the ecstasies of first desire, was destined never to die ... their bodies and souls entwined for always in the magnificent splendor of love's possession. [3]
Such an explicit appeal to the sexuality of the reader indicates that the novel itself is also sexually explicit.
Six historical romances by different authors will be used in this paper. These are The Tiger Lily, A Rose in Winter[4], Sweet Passion's Pain[5], Sea Jewel[6], When Love Awaits[7], and Dawn of the White Rose[8]. These novels were chosen randomly from the shelves of a local bookstore, and they appear to be fairly representative of the genre. The "standard format" for such a novel is the growing love of a man and a woman kept apart by one or more of the following circumstances: personal misunderstanding, malice of rivals, social standing, or material circumstances.
One apparent difference between the historical romance novels and the Penthouse Forum is that the former consists of interconnected sexual incidents against an emotional background while the latter consists of apparently isolated incidents with little or no background. The message is that it is acceptable for men to view sexual behavior in a compartmentalized fashion, while such behavior is not presented as acceptable for women.
A related issue is that of the relationship between sexual partners. In the Forum letters, 55% (twenty two out of forty} of the letters about sexual exploits represented sexual intercourse or other forms of genital stimulation (e.g., homosexual interactions or oral sex) between recent acquaintances or strangers. Of the remaining letters, only three (8%} could be positively identified as sexual experiences between a man and a woman in a long term exclusive relationship. Fifteen of the letters (35%} involved infidelity in a long term relationship or the addition of at least one extra partner to a twosome.
By contrast, the attitude in the romance novels is that enjoyable lovemaking is only truly possible in an exclusive love relationship. When a woman is involved in sexual activities with someone other than the destined lover, she often finds the embraces of the other man repugnant [9] or enjoys them only by fantasizing that she is with the man she loves [10]. Her lover sometimes can enjoy another woman, but although he is capable of finding physical release, he is aware of something that is missing in the lovemaking. [11]
The obvious implication is that women are expected to be emotionally involved with their sexual partners, and that they ought to expect the same of their lovers. The expected attitude of the men is that both man and woman can approach a sexual experience without emotional attachment and enjoy it from a purely physical standpoint. In fact, ten of the letters in the sample were apparently written by women (25%}, with the gender of another writer being uncertain. As a group, the women's letters were not different in any significant way from the letters apparently written by men[12]. Similarly, the emotional behavior of the men in the romances was portrayed as being like that of the women.
Possibly as a result of the absence of emotions in most of the Forum letters, there is a heavy emphasis laid on the physical sensations of sex. In the nine letters in the Forum of the August Penthouse, seven of them (78%) included multiple orgasms for at least one of the partners. In both of the remaining two letters (22%), further sexual activity was either implied or explicitly stated. By contrast, in the three incidents of explicitly described lovemaking in A Rose in Winter, the partners enjoyed only one orgasm apiece before satiation. However, the lovers in A Rose in Winter were married. Although it seemed Erienne, the heroine, was unfaithful to her husband Stuart with his "cousin" Christopher, Christopher and Stuart proved to be one man, and his wooing of Erienne both as Christopher and as Stuart was a sign of his great love for her. [13]
Also, the explicitness of the language and the sorts of language used were very different in the romances from that used in the Forum letters. A sample of the vocabulary from the October Forum letters (four) and the lovemaking scenes from The Tiger Lily will show this.
The terms used for male genitals and parts thereof in the Forum letters are as follows: testicles, cock, shaft, dick, balls, rod, crotch, member, Johnson, pile driver, skin flute, prick, big one, peter, and hard-on.[14] Terms used for the same thing in The Tiger Lily are as follows: arousal, manhood, organ, shaft, maleness, his body, and him. Terms used in the Forum letters for female genitals and breasts are as follows: breasts, sex, cunt, she, snatch, slit, love bush, pussy, clit, love muscles, nipples, box, tits, 34Bs, boobs, pussy lips, lips, and cunt lips. The matching terms used in The Tiger Lily are as follows: breasts, thighs, nipples, groin, loins, center of her being, her, between her legs, most intimate part of her, and sheath.
The terms used in the Forum letters can be divided into several distinct types. The first is the medical type of term, such as testicles, breasts, and nipples. These words are ones that a person might use in describing an illness to his or her doctor. The second type is vulgar or obscene terms, such as cock or cunt. The third type is humorous or comparison terms, such as skin flute or pile driver. Of the fifteen terms used for male genitals, two were medical, five were listed as vulgar or vulgar slang in the dictionary [15], and an additional one was not listed but might also be considered to fall into that class, and three were humorous or comparison terms. Although no one type of term was in the majority, the obscene or vulgar terms made up the largest of the shares. Similarly, of nineteen terms concerning female genitals and breasts, six were definitely listed in the dictionary as vulgar or vulgar slang, and another three might be considered to fall into that class.
By contrast, the terms used in The Tiger Lily were almost exclusively either medically correct anatomical terms or euphemisms which did not even refer directly to genitals. Of the ten terms used for women's genitals and breasts, five were euphemistic and two were medical. Two of the remaining three., groin and loins, were defined as referring directly to reproductive organs or external genitals, but were not listed as vulgar. The terms for male genitals numbered seven: five of them were euphemisms and the others were medical.
Not only was the language in the Forum more explicit and vulgar, the Forum letters also contained a wider variety of sexual activities. In the November Forum (sixteen letters), the following types of sexual activity took place: intercourse in a variety of positions (including doggie-style and female superior), manual stimulation of each gender by the other, lesbian manual stimulation, cunnilingus (both by men and women), fellatio by women, sixty-nine, masturbation by both genders, voyeurism, making a film of sexual activity, and intercourse and other activities with multiple partners (one woman with many men or one man with many women).
By contrast, in A Rose in Winter, the sexual activities that occurred were limited to intercourse, manual stimulation, and kissing.[16] The kissing scenes are intentionally titillating. For example, the following incident is the first time that Christopher and Erienne kissed:
In the next instant his lips were on hers, and his fiery kiss warmed her to the core of her being, twisting, bruising, demanding. His mouth moved hungrily over hers, forcing hers to open beneath his mounting ardor. His tongue played upon her lips, then slipped within to taste leisurely the full sweetness of her mouth ... She was held in an unyielding vise, her waist clamped beneath his arm, and her soft breasts crushed against his chest. His hand slid downward over her buttock, pressing her to him until she could not ignore the evidence of his burning passion ... [17]
The kissing continues for about a half page, but nothing further happens except that he kisses her breasts as well as her lips. Such seductive kisses and the passion they arouse are one way in which a man or a woman can identify his or her true love. By contrast, although kissing does happen in the Forum letters, it is almost always an immediate prelude to other sexual activities. This difference is another indication of the association of sex and emotion for women and the dissociation of the two for men.
Another issue of interest is the issue of sexual aggressiveness. Who is supposed to be the aggressor in a sexual encounter? This is important both in terms of who initiates the encounter and who initiates specific actions within the encounter. There were distinct differences between the Forum and the romances in this area.
In the September Forum, there were eleven letters. Five of them had to be discounted because the writer was not a participant, the activity was primarily homosexual, or the letter described a fetish. Of the remaining letters, men wrote half and women wrote half. In the letters written by men, there were four separate sexual encounters. Women initiated all of these. In the letters written by women there were five sexual encounters, in which women were the initiators three times. Thus in the Forum letters women were the aggressors in encounters most of the time (77%}.
As for specific actions, in the three letters written by men there were twenty-five separate actions (intercourse, oral and manual stimulation, etc.). Of these, women initiated seventeen (68%). In the letters written by women, there were twenty-three separate actions and the women initiated seventeen (74%). Overall, women were the initiators of specific actions in 71% of the cases.
However in When Love Awaits, the hero Rolfe was much more aggressive than the heroine Leonie was. He was the initiator of all of the fifteen sexual encounters described in the novel. Additionally, of the forty specific actions described, he initiated thirty-four (85%). The evidence indicates that each gender expects and desires the other to take the initiative both in terms of suggesting sexual activity in general and in terms of the specific sex acts to be performed. The men's fantasies include aggressive women and the women's fantasies include dominant men.
In fact, in the romance novels the men are expected to be so aggressive that they will take women who apparently do not desire them. For instance, in A Rose in Winter, the hero Christopher had shot and maimed Erienne's brother, while her marriage to his alter ego Lord Stuart Saxton was arranged without her consent. Arranged, unwanted marriages also take place between the heroes and heroines of When Love Awaits, The Tiger Lily, and Dawn of the White Rose. In Sea Jewel, the heroine Freya is a slave of the hero Alaric, and in Sweet Passion's Pain, Joan, the heroine, believes that her lover Edward's family had brought about the murder of her father. Thus in each novel, the hero must overcome the reluctance of his lover. The reluctance of the women to deal with their lovers for such reasons may be partially responsible for the high percentage of male-initiated sexual contacts in the romances.
Furthermore, in each of the romances, the heroine lost her virginity to her destined lover, though all the men were very experienced. This was another reason that the men in the romance novels were the aggressors the vast majority of the time. In the Forum letters, none of the participants were specifically said to be virgins, and participants were often said to be very experienced. The fact that the romance heroines lost their virginity with their heroes was indicative of the importance of their attachment to these men. The experience of the male partners in the Forum letters is as different from the virginity of the heroines of the romances as the exclusive relationships these women enjoy with their lovers is from the average short-term encounter of the Forum hero.
From the above evidence it is obvious that the socially acceptable fantasies for men and women differ greatly. The acceptable male fantasy presented in the Forum letters in Penthouse magazine is one in which a man and a woman, often strangers, meet and enjoy a highly-charged sexual encounter with no emotional strings attached. The fantasy often includes other partners, varying forms of sex, lesbianism (male homosexuality is depicted in only one letter), and voyeurism; it is described in explicit detail and by using words that are often vulgar. The acceptable female fantasy concerns a young, virginal woman and her lover, with whom she enters into an exclusive relationship, often marriage, and with whom she has repeated sexual encounters that are enhanced for both parties by the love they share. The language used to describe their encounters is more euphemistic and never crude. Each gender expects the other to be the primary aggressor and for the enjoyment of sex to be intense. These acceptable fantasies set up conflicting expectations that are the cause of some of the difficulties in many relationships today.
Notes
1 Contents, Penthouse August 1987: 1.
2 Issues of August 1987, September 1987, October 1987, and November 1987. These contain a total of forty-two letters, two of which concern articles in previous issues of Penthouse. Thus the size of the sample of letters dealing with sexual experiences is forty.
3 Shirlee Busbee, The Tiger Lily (New York: Avon, 1985): back cover.
4 Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, A Rose in Winter (New York: Avon, 1982).
5 Karen Harper, Sweet Passion's Pain (New York: Zebra, 1984).
6 Penelope Neri, Sea Jewel (New York: Zebra, 1986).
7 Johanna Lindsey, When Love Awaits (New York: Avon, 1986).
8 Mary Pershall, Dawn of the White Rose (New York: Berkley, 1985).
9 The Tiger Lily: 175-176.
10 Sweet Passion's Pain: 340-341.
11 Sweet Passion's Pain: 308-309.
12 In the November issue, there was one letter, entitled "Double Time", about a woman's experience with her two boyfriends, which had more emotional content than any of the other letters. It was the only letter in which the word "love" was used between the partners.
13 A Rose in Winter: 457-461.
14 The size of the male genitals is also considered to be very important. A specific size is given in six of the forty letters, but in almost all of the letters penises are described as long, thick, huge, massive, enormous, etc. The shortest length given is eight inches, and the longest is eleven. The length of the average male penis is supposed to be six inches.
15 The American Heritage Dictionary, 1976 ed.
16 Cunnilingus takes place in When Love Awaits, Sea Jewel, and The Tiger Lily, but fellatio is not given in return.
17 A Rose in Winter: 94.