The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
Published on January 2, 2026 11:05 PM GMTEvery 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, https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/consent-isnt-sexy-but-you-need-it