Mental Onanism

Your sexual fantasies are yours. You may have never shared them with someone and you may never share them in the future. The nine women interviewed for this study did share them and their sincerity was striking. Even if their fantasies did not comply with existing ideas about what normal sexual fantasies are or when you can indulge in your minds eyes erotic world, the respondents showed how fantasies can include orgies, incest or a male torso without a head. The women also show how they lived their fantasies, how they use them while they have sex or how they want to have nothing to do with their imagination in reality. Sexual fantasies are silenced. For this research the silence was broken and this revealed hidden understandings of the experience of the erotic minds eye. Sexual fantasies do not exist in a vacuum. They are personal, but by means of the reflexive process individuals experience, the internal dialogue in which people make sense of desires and practices, the minds eye is a cultural place too. This reflexive process is where cultural narratives influence the experience of sexual fantasies.

Mai Groenevelt has always been interested in sexual fantasies, what does the mind's eye say about you? Does it say anything at all? After concluding her political science bachelor she decided to study gender and sexuality studies at the University of Amsterdam to find out how other people feel about the endless possibilities of imagination.