What proportion of women who report submissive fantasies want to enact them with a consenting partner versus not wanting to act them out?
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Executive summary
Roughly half of women who report fantasies of sexual submission say they do not want those fantasies to be enacted in real life, while the other half — varying by study and definition — are open to acting them out with a consenting partner; estimates depend on how “submission” and “want to enact” are measured and on sample differences (e.g., population surveys vs small clinical samples) [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the headline numbers mean: prevalence versus enactment
Large survey work has repeatedly found that a substantial share of women report submissive themes in their fantasies — figures commonly cited run from roughly 30% up to about 60–65% depending on the question and study [1] [5] [3] [4] — but prevalence of a fantasy is a different metric than desire to make it real, and the literature makes that distinction explicit [1] [4].
2. The roughly “half-and-half” finding across multiple summaries
Several summaries of the pivotal 1,516-person Montreal study and subsequent reporting highlight that about half of the women who endorsed submissive fantasies also said they would not want to live those fantasies out in reality, a clear and repeated result emphasized in media coverage and secondary analyses [2] [3] [4]; EurekAlert and The Independent likewise stress that many women distinguish fantasy from desire and explicitly reject turning certain fantasies into real behavior [1] [4].
3. Nuance: consenting role‑play versus fantasies of non‑consent
Studies and reviews separate fantasies that involve consensual power play from fantasies that involve non‑consensual scenarios; many women who report “forced” or coercive imagery still frame it as fantasy only and say they would not want it to occur in reality, whereas fantasies that can be translated into consensual role‑play are more plausibly enacted with a willing partner — but exact proportions for these distinct categories are not consistently reported across sources [1] [6] [3].
4. Why estimates vary: samples, wording and context matter
Differences in measurement drive the spread of estimates: population surveys (e.g., >1,000 respondents) produce the higher prevalence figures, small student or clinic samples (e.g., 40 sexually healthy women in one UVM study) examine enactment and relationship context and find that enactment is more likely when partners feel close — yet these smaller studies cannot yield population proportions on their own [7] [5] [3].
5. Balanced takeaway and limits of the reporting
The defensible, evidence-backed statement is that among women who report submissive fantasies, roughly half explicitly state they would not want to enact them, while the remaining half are more open — sometimes wanting consensual role-play and sometimes preferring fantasy alone — but the precise split fluctuates by study design, definitions (consensual role‑play vs imagined non‑consent), and demographic/contextual factors; the existing sources do not provide a single, definitive national proportion adjusted for all these variables [1] [2] [3] [4].