Female superiority fantasy

Some men get off on fantasizing about female superiority, amazon women, being dominated by certain types of women, and so on.

As with many fantasies of women that men in a patriarchal society engage in, the result can be fetishistic and offensive. Men who have such fantasies sometimes confuse their interests with feminism. However, attraction to strong women, wishing to be brutalized or dominated by women, and so on, is not the same thing as a political analysis of oppression and oppressive structures; a personal assessment of and attempt to abjure one's own male privilege; or a commitment to social justice and / or political equality.

Someone who has such a confusion, and who continues to unthinkingly or unquestioningly exercise their own male privilege, may not understand why their interests may be subject to critique and not per se support (see critique versus criticism).

For instance, in the late 1990s on the FeministSF mailing list, a man who was interested primarily in SM and particularly domination by women joined the list, began discussing his sexual interests at length, and then was angry that people critiqued him and told him it wasn't relevant. He was confused between being turned on by amazon fantasy -- a sexual kink -- and being a feminist; and he had failed to understand any concepts of male privilege; and he consequently did not understand how to engage in conversation about sexism and feminism as an ally. He felt entitled to make the conversation all about himself and his interests, and thus his postings to the list acted to derail the preexisting and ongoing conversations.

In SFnal creation, this sort of thing can come out as an exoticization of warrior women. Some of the critique of Joss Whedon is founded on those critics' sense that, at least to some extent, he exoticizes or fetishizes young women who kick ass. (This is disputed by others and, as is common in large fan cultures, intelligent debate about the issue is significantly hindered by cult of personality and hero worship concerns. And, of course, by the general dearth of a robust media culture.) See also Black warrior woman stereotype and Asian dragon lady stereotype.

See also

• See also the male fantasy of female sexual liberation.
• woman warrior