The Female Slut Fantasy
Exploring the flip side of the Madonna-whore complex
During dinner, an old friend recounted his most recent Tinder dates. After a few anecdotes about his attempts to understand female sexuality, his expression got serious. He leaned in, dropping his tone to a whisper.
“But what I hate most is when girls cheat with me and…”
“Wait, cheat with you?”
“Yes, like cheat on their boyfriends with me. And they say ‘fuck me in the ass’ because they miss anal.”
Hm..?
“So, I ask, why don’t you do it with your boyfriend and they say ‘Ew, I can’t let him know I’m like that.’” I’m pretty sure my mouth opened involuntarily as I listened to him.
He shook his head. “Why can’t girls just share that with their boyfriends? Why punish him?”
A Whole New Whore Complex
In the 1900s, Freud identified a male psychological phenomenon widely known as the Madonna-Whore Complex. He explained, “where such men love, they have no desire and where they desire, they cannot love.” For those afflicted, the nurturing, feminine qualities of the Madonna and the sexuality of the archetype of a “Whore” are mutually exclusive.
But Freud never considered, and very few have deigned to talk about, similar phenomena occurring in female sexual arousal. We have so little understanding of female sexuality, how to turn a woman on, or her sexual problems. And nobody is talking about woman’s growing affliction with the other side of this complex — something I call, the female slut fantasy.
The Cause
Centuries of public shaming of female sexuality have conditioned women to see their sexuality as immoral and shameful. In America, puberty-ridden teenagers read The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaid’s Tale just as they become interested in sex. Society has focused on how female sexuality can go “wrong” with such fervor that it’s difficult for women to view their sexuality as being in any way righteous. Our obsession with female promiscuity, infidelity, and unwanted pregnancies has done nothing but shame our women and confuse our men.
Young women just growing into their sexuality get the message “don’t have sex, or you’ll be a slut”. They are given no realistic examples of how female sexuality can go right.
The thing is — it’s problematic we venerated Mary for being a Virgin.
It created an impossible symbol of purity and femininity. The message is — “Be a mother, but don’t have sex.” The problem is sex is a necessary prerequisite for motherhood. That is unless we are talking about adoption, which is hardly given the same social accolades as having one’s own children (women really can’t win, can they?)
When women are considered sluts for wanting sex and men are simply considered normal for the same desires, there’s something very wrong with this picture.
The female psyche finds itself stuck between sexual repression and the role of a slut. To retain sexuality in this hostile environment, the psyche adapts. More often than we realize, it chooses both roles in a psychological split that closely mirrors the Madonna-Whore Complex.
So What Exactly Is The Female Slut Fantasy?
In the female slut fantasy, a woman derives sexual pleasure from fantasies where they play the role of a “slut” or star in other sexually degrading scenarios. In these fantasies, the woman is openly defamed, her vulnerability and sexuality both revered and insulted, simultaneously with the receipt of physical pleasure. This scenario is a physical manifestation of a trauma bond, where abuse and love coexist before their resolution through orgasm.
But this “kinky” exploration of sexuality can develop into a syndrome much like the Madonna-Whore Complex. The Female Slut Fantasy Syndrome develops when the sufferer is unable to derive sexual arousal or to reach orgasm outside of the degrading fantasies.
Furthermore, these degrading fantasies become more and more extreme — oftentimes involving risky sexual behaviors, rape, or violence.
The syndrome leads some women to act out these fantasies and avoid committed relationships altogether. Others attempt relationships but have difficulty sustaining sexual feelings for a loving partner. And more often than not, the syndrome results in overwhelming sexual attraction to toxic and abusive partners.
The sufferer then gets stuck in a cycle of unhealthy sexual patterns. They are no longer capable of being aroused by healthy, loving men. In fact, the sufferer is unable to find sexual satisfaction by men at all. The reality is the sufferer is aroused by fantastic scenarios, not the attributes of the people in them. Their sexuality becomes masturbatory.
The Role of Pornography, Tinder, and Sexual “Liberation”
More and more women are using pornography. And like their male counterparts, women are becoming addicted. Porn usage statistics are staggering — 40 million Americans regularly visit porn sites; 35% of all internet downloads are pornography; 1/3 of all porn users are women. With reach as wide as this, the impact of pornography on human sexuality is enormous. Moreover, it is a huge contributor to the development of the Madonna-Whore and Female Slut Fantasy Syndromes.
The problem with pornography is it is necessarily objectifying. Since the viewer does not know the participants in the film on a personal level, arousal is necessarily reliant on the roles and scenarios portrayed. And much like a drug, as the user becomes desensitized, they seek more and more extreme scenarios to attain the same level of arousal.
As a result, pornography has become a ‘race to the bottom’. What might have started as boudoir photos in the late 1800s has evolved to the porn of today, where the most popular searches involve violence or abuse in one form or another. For example, the five most popular porn searches online today involve the following themes:
- Sexual assault and rape;
- Cheating;
- Incest;
- Hentai involving rape, incest, bestiality, under-aged children and violence; and
- Teens.
These pornographic scenarios are focused on the objectification, trivialization, and subjugation of other humans — not appreciation, love, or even sexual desirability.
What’s worse is modern feminist dialogue calls for an acceptance of sexuality through the acceptance of pornography and of casual sex. Modern society touts pornography as a necessary outlet and casual sex as sexual liberation. Tinder further popularized casual sex by developing a platform for people to pick sexual partners in the same cavalier manner they chose what to order for dinner. What’s missing with both vices is, ironically, intimacy — the experience of seeing one another for our authentic selves — which is the central component of human sexuality.
Modern Maladaptive Social Movements
In recent years, social movements fighting the stigma of the word “slut” have gained traction. SlutWalk is a global movement organizing protests where women dress as “sluts” in a plea to end rape culture.
While we do need to normalize female sexuality, many of these social movements swing in the direction of over-sexualization and the promotion of casual sex. By focusing on “rape culture” and the word “slut”, they further exacerbate society’s focus on woman’s sexuality as a problem.
What’s worse is many modern, “sexually liberated” women are not liberated from the overarching dynamics of society’s Madonna-Whore complex at all; they simply embrace them. The message about female sexual liberation from anti-slut shaming movements read like an oxymoron. It says,
“Don’t shame me for being a slut.”
It’s contradictory because the word slut inherently implies the sexual behavior involved shameful activities. Continuing to refer to women who have sex as “a slut” is detrimental. If we want to stop “slut-shaming”, we need to stop using the word slut altogether.
Healthy Sexuality vs. Dysfunction
Sexual dysfunction refers to psychological and/or physical phenomena that prevent the sufferer from maintaining sexual arousal. Sexual dysfunction is problematic, particularly in a loving, committed relationship, where the sufferer has emotional and sexual feelings for the other.
A healthy sexual relationship is built on the ability to be turned on by your partner in the raw and authentic form they embody in the present moment. While there is room for the exploration of kinks, role-playing, and other fantasies, this exploration is secondary to the healthy couple’s sexual foundation. They may share fantasies and play roles based on the other's direction, but they are perfectly capable of having sex based in reality and outside of the shared fantasies.
The Madonna-Whore Complex and the Female Slut Fantasy, however, go beyond an exploration of kinks in that the sufferer is unable to achieve orgasm without engaging in a degrading sexual fantasy.
Being solely turned on by scenarios driven by the Madonna-Whore Complex / the Female Slut Fantasy is not a “kink” or a “sexual orientation”, it’s a sexual dysfunction.
The fantasies powered by such a dichotomy separate love from sex. They focus on degradation, power, and exploitation — aspects that have nothing at all to do with someone’s partner. In fact, these fantasies are self-centered. The afflicted derives pleasure from the role they themselves are playing as either “slut” or “degrader”, not from the virtues or physical attributes of their partner.
Sex, then, has very little to do with feelings for the other person. The more the sufferer respects and adores their partner, the more they may struggle to fit their lover into their fantasies of sexual degradation.
While fantasies, in general, have their role in healthy sexuality, the Madonna-Whore Complex / Female Slut Fantasy prevents the afflicted from developing healthy sexual relationships within a loving, committed relationship.
Overcoming Dysfunction
We can’t compartmentalize our sexual and emotional lives like we compartmentalize our work and home lives. We must learn women can be both sexual and nurturing; Men can be both strong and loving; Relationships can be both passionate and comfortable.
The pathologies of the Madonna-Whore Complex and the Female Slut Fantasy are as difficult to disentangle as addictions such as gambling or alcohol addiction. That is to say, the problems individuals are developing from toxic social views on sexuality are not trivial. They have real quality of life impacts which cause the dissolution of relationships, and ultimately, the family structure.
It is no small request to ask that we begin to accept our sexuality. That we begin to disentangle sex from abuse. That we begin to train our minds to love holistically and with full presence.
We must overcome dysfunction by slowly letting go of the fantasies gripping us. And with our minds free, begin to focus on what’s raw and real about the partner before us.
