The Significance of Fantasies

By Yaldahtovh <yaldahtovh@aol.com> - May 2000

The essay below was originally posted to the newsgroup alt.lifestyle.master-slave and is reproduced here, in the Essays section of Enslavement.

Recently, I wrote of the childhood roots of the heterosexual female submissive personality. In contemplating early roots of "kink" I have come to consider the role of early sexual fantasies, and their significance.

I believe that some people have particular kinds of sexual fantasies that hold enormous power to shape not only their sexuality, but also their lives. I call these fantasies "signal fantasies" because they call attention to an overriding psychosexual need, which can be so determinative of behavior that they define identities and shape lives.

Fantasies such as these are typically masturbatory, begin very early in childhood, as young as 3 or 4 years of age for some, remain fairly fixed over a lifetime, and are the "efficient" fantasies, the reliable ones, the ones that bring its creator to climax more quickly than any others.

The body doesn't lie.

These fantasies are the ones that get a person who has them reliably wet, reliably hard, every time. They are the fantasies that play in the mind during sexual activities too far afield from them to be satisfyingly arousing. These are the fantasies that when encountered in literature, in the movies, online for the first time, shock the person who is unfamiliar with the power they hold, and usually disturb the person to some degree with that power.

Some signal fantasies are related to gender: if you are a man, and fantasies of anal or oral intercourse, or other loving activities with another man have been with you over a lifetime in the compelling way of signal fantasies, you can safely assume you are homosexual.

Some signal fantasies are related to fetish: if you can only reliably get aroused by women's feet or shoes, you have a foot fetish, and so on.

Some signal fantasies are related to future submissiveness or Dominance. If those nearly fixed fantasies feature control, surrender, authority and obedience, force and submission, you can be assured that you have a submissive or Dominant sexual "orientation."

The earlier these fantasies appear, and the more reliable and efficient they are, the more they have been fixed over a lifetime, the greater the degree of necessity to live them out for real satisfaction. Those people with the earliest, most fixed, most intransigent signal fantasies can be considered to be "hard-wired" for the behavior.

This is a critical area for self-reflection. One must know and evaluate where on this continuum one's fantasies fall. For the hard-wired amongst us, we MUST seek our complements who are equally hard wired. A homosexual woman will never be truly happy living with a man. A hard-wired female submissive will never be truly happy with a non-Dominant man. To put it simply, we love differently. A gentle, non-Dominant passive man will never be able to keep a profound submissive happy. His gentle, giving, passive lovemaking will leave her to turn to her fantasies of force, authority, bondage, and pain to carry her through her their sexual acts.

In seeking a partner, a goodly period of time should be spent talking about, and listening to one another's fantasies, as well as the history of those fantasies. This is an extremely valuable tool for determining compatibility. Oftentimes, people with BDSM fantasies that are pervasive enough to make them Dominants or submissives will have within their personality makeup a prediliction for certain expressions of their sexuality, i.e. a fetish within their psychosexual repetoire. Thus, not every Dominant is a good fit for every submissive. For some, bondage carries the most power, for others it is sadism. A heavily sadistic Dominant will be ill-matched with a non-masochistic submissive. Often, the best way to determine if such a steak exists is to look to one's signal fantasies.

Such signal fantasies often make themselves felt in early childhood. Some young submissives play "house" in which they manage to get themselves spanked by baby Dominants. Some children are insistent on playing "cowboys and Indians" because of the tying up part of the game. Others, bold little creatures, are determined to find playmates for a game of "Master and slave."

When two complementary souls meet up with another early in life, tentative explorations begin. Many of those people have their first brush with power sexuality, bondage or discipline in late adolescence.

Typically, there is a degree of shame and guilt about feeling "different" from early on. This seems to be more typical of submissives, though Dominants raised in a family stressing "mainstream" values may also suffer from this. While most people do not go about life revealing their fantasies, somehow we know we are different, perhaps because our secret lives are *so* different from most of what we see growing up.

The body doesn't lie. Strike a female masochist, and she will be wet. Overpower a submissive, or set her to service, and she will be wet. Present a submissive posture to a Dominant, and he will get hard.

Look to signal fantasies for a LOT of information about how you, and a prospective partner, are made. Look to the body's response, the body doesn't lie. There, in the recesses of the mind, and the body's responses, lie our signal truths.