On the other hand, regardless of the facts about rape in the real world, where it is usually a waste of time, it is clear that rape fantasies are extremely common in both men and women. This is not to be taken to prove that there is really no manhood in any man or that women are peculiarly degenerate creatures. Rather, the healthy man does, from time to time, want to rape; he is probably built that way; it is natural to be sexually eager to capture and use a beautiful woman; it is, I suppose, part of our animal heritage; similarly it is quite probable that it is part of our biogenetic heritage that a woman, on some level, desires her own capture and subjugation. This would be, it seems, a natural complementarity. If man’s natural role is that of hunter and captor and woman’s that of game and captive, our instinctual sexual fantasies would be precisely what they are. We are, of course, or should be, far from the jungle. Rape, real rape, even if we are naturally inclined to do it, is not to be done. Our rights to self-expression end where the other person’s feelings begin. Civilization, as Freud recognized, requires restraint. All things considered, civilization is better than the jungle, and it is a fragile and delicate set of relationships. We have lost it many times, and we must try not to do so again.

In short, a true man, one with normal aggressions and fully operating glands, presumably desires to rape, but also, having a hard-won manhood, does not in fact rape. This is not particularly because he does not wish to agitate the precinct detectives, but rather because, when the chips are down, if he really had the choice, he would not want to hurt or intimidate a woman. He might desire to do so, but, on the genuine level of his humanity, he just would refuse to do so. It is not a humanly good or worthy thing to do. From a woman’s point of view a man who wishes to rape her but does not, because he gives her her due as a human being, is probably more interesting to her as a male than either one who does not wish to rape her, who does not find her worth the fantasy, or one who catches her by accident in a dark alley and does in fact penetrate her, ejaculate and dash off. The first man excites her; the second two, in their different ways, are bores.